lines in the sand

Shuttle Launch Seen From ISS?

There's a couple of cool pix here of a shuttle launch purportedly taken from the International Space Station.  Some commenters say hogwash but I'm not so sure.

They say a chase plane at about 60,000 feet is more likely.  You can't tell about the camera settings and all, but a launch seen from my front yard seems considerably closer and I'm about 50 miles from the pad.

Update: I received an email from Chris Bergin at nasaspacecraft.com where these were originally posted.  They were from a chase plane at around 60,000 ft.  Chris has a picture of the crew and plane responsible here.

Have your IVR call my IVR

I just hung up on Dell.  Their recording called the accounting guy who had this number two years ago, asking for him by name.   If I wasn't him they offered to let me pause the call while I transferred it to him or AP.  I think too highly of our AP people to send them a call that didn't include an actual person so I waited for a third option.

"If this is the wrong number, press 3," the voice finally said.  I did.

"Please hold for the next available agent."  I held.

"We apologize for the delay.  An agent will be with you shortly.  Thank you for your patience."  Not actually having that much patience with a wrong number, I hung up.

I've had calls from telemarketers and such that asked me to hold for a real person (I never do, of course,) but this is the first time I've been asked to navigate phone menus by an incoming call.

Dell, if you want a person to answer, have a person call.

Spam on his mind

A scary comment on spam from sf author  John Scalzi:

The fact I get 4700 spam messages a day is the primary reason why I suspect, should direct brain computer interfaces ever become available, I won't be getting one. Does anyone doubt that within weeks, the spammers would have found a way in, and your entire visual field would be riddled with spam advertisements for Tramadol, in Cyrillic lettering? And they would never go away. Yeah, I'll be keeping my brain unwired, I suspect.

Is this for real?

They want to tax your Warcraft loot.

Misadventure Capitalism

Venture capital firm Sevin Rosen recently stepped back from any new ventures and many observers apparently wonder if that signals the end of VC's as we know them.  Computerworld has a roundup and one comment jumped out at me.

John Cook at the Seattle Post Intelligencer says:

...there are warning clouds on the horizon -- namely the lack of initial public offerings and acquisitions.

There is a lack of IPOs when stock prices a playing with all-time highs?  I have to suspect this is one more way that Sarbannes-Oxley is "helping" investors.