February 28th, 2008 ecoli
Reviews of 2007 sales show that through iTunes, Apple, Inc. is now the number two music retailer in the country, beating out Best Buy and Target, but still lagging behind Walmart. 10% of legally obtained music is now downloaded, a 6% jump from last year. Meanwhile, the average American spends $4 less per year on music and approximately 1 million Americans stopped purchasing CDs.
These statistics speak volumes about the way the music industry is changing. Apple, originally a computer and software company found a niche in the market for portable music devices, in the way other companies were developing slimmer cell phones and digital cameras at the beginning of the 21st century. Apple was able to successfully advertise the iPod and its accompanying software, iTunes, and still largely commands the market on portable music devices.
However, portable music players are nothing new, so why is the iPod revolutionizing the music industry? What separates the iPod from the Sony Discman, and the Walkman before it, is that the iPod is completely dependant on computers in order to function. The rise of the iPod has coincided perfectly with the rise of the internet. People are getting used to transmitting information and communicating through the internet, so transmitting music is the next logical step. Completely digital transmitted music is cheaper, more efficient and less wasteful than CDs.
Through iTunes, Apple has 50 million customers and has sold 4 billion songs - and that is just music obtained legally through one music purchasing program.
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Posted in business, musings, news, technology | 9 Comments »
February 22nd, 2008 ecoli
For those of you who do anything with any musical/audio editing inclination, go and download this open source program: audacity.sourceforge.net
I create computer ‘electronic’ music, and I use it to mix all my tracks and add effects. It works superbly and the user has an extraordinary amount of control.
One of the best effects on it, is changing tempo, without altering the pitch of the notes. This is important for me because I play a lot of Eastern European folk music. There’s not a lot of sheet music and I mostly learn tunes by ear from recordings. For particularly difficult or technical pieces, I can slow down sections and catch exactly how the notes are played (I’ve been doing this all morning because my exam was canceled due to snow).
It also lets you record sounds directly off of your computer’s sound card… which means you can rip the soundtracks off of music videos from Youtube, or similar such things (of course, I expect everyone to obey all copyright laws).
You can download a small extra plugin that allows you to convert your audacity files into mp3s, .wav files come standard.
So even if you’re not a composer or musician, it’s handy to have, and it’s completely free. So what are you waiting for?
Posted in technology | 3 Comments »
February 20th, 2008 ecoli
The concept of infinity is often misinterpreted. Because we humans live in a finite world, anything that is conceptually too large to think about gets labelled as infinity.
For example let’s say I had a regular 8.5X11 piece of paper in a 10 trillion meter squared room. How many different positions could I place that paper in. The answer is not infinity because, while the number would be indescribably large, the fact that I am in a finite room, means that one day I will havev exhausted all options.
One would almost expect ‘laypeople’ to make this mistake, but when physics professors do it, you know there’s a problem. Today, my physics professor was talking to a student before class and I was able to overhear. I’m not sure what exactly he was talking about, but he mentioned something about a “nearly infinitely large sheet of paper.”
Something that is ‘near’ or ‘almost’ infinity means that it is still not infinity and that it is finite. It may be really big (or really small) but it is not infinity. I hope my professor was just using this term as a matter of speech, and didn’t imply the physically impossible by him language.
Uh oh.
Of course, this is physically impossible. Something cannot be of ‘near’ infinite size, because that implies that infinity is a definable size. If it has a definable size than it is finite. Something that is ‘approaching infinity’ is ok, because it implies that there is no upper bound limit. But something that is ‘near’ infinity implies that there is a definible end to its size, which precludes ability to be classified as ‘infinity.’
Posted in musings | 6 Comments »
February 17th, 2008 ecoli
“Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead…This attack on scientific freedom was so egregious that it prompted a congressional investigation.” - Ben Stein
Ben Stein is essentially correct in the first part of this quote. Science follows the evidence where it leads. Much to Ben Stein’s chagrin, it doesn’t lead to creationism.
I may be preaching to the choir here, but science has had hundreds of years to model neo-darwinist evolution, and none of the evidence requires a creator in the model. Still, that has not stopped creationists from infiltrating our schools and museums in the attempt to show an “alternative viewpoint.”
The attack actually comes from the creationists, in their attempt to inject religious doctrine into a scientific discipline without any evidence. Since creationists don’t provide a falsifiable model of creationism, it cannot be accepted as science.
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Posted in creationism, musings | 12 Comments »
February 15th, 2008 ecoli
The nations top retailer, Walmart, has officially chosen sides in the ‘Blu-Ray’ verses HD-DVD debate, according to this AP report.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Wal-Mart-Blu-ray.html?_r=1&ex=1360818000&oref=slogin
Netflix, Blockbusters, Target, MGM, News Corp, Fox, Disney and Time Warner have also chosen Sony’s Blu-Ray over Toshiba’s HD-DVD. Personally, I think because ‘Blu-Ray’ was a cooler sounding name, and thus more marketable to consumers.
Posted in business, news, technology | 1 Comment »
February 15th, 2008 ecoli
Today in my biochemistry class, I learned that mice telomers are so long (9000 bp, if I remember correctly) that the effects of mutations inhibiting the activity of telomerase will not be seen untill the next generation.
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February 14th, 2008 ecoli
Give you sweetheart one of these:
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February 6th, 2008 ecoli
Enterotoxigenic E. coli is a scary bug that makes people sick. Immuno-naive people, tourists, children and the elderly in third would countries mostly.
I am working with the ‘alternate’ chaperone usher pathway of CS1 pili in ETEC. It’s known as the alternate pathway because its functionally similar but genetically distinct from the ‘classic’ PAP pathway that we all know and love.
The original thinking is that this is an example of convergent evolution, since there is no homology, as far as we can tell between the two systems. And, until now, it was thought that the subunit interactions ran on slightly different mechanisms.
My project is trying to show that the chaperone-usher interaction is like that of the PAP pathway, showing that this actually a case of ancient divergence rather than convergence.
If I can do that, it could help elucidate a new model of infection for ETEC. w00t.
I don’t have any significant results yet, but I’m presenting my proposal and preliminary work to my lab group on Friday, and am currently working on my presentation. I’ll probably upload it to this blog upon it’s completion. Expect to be kept updated on my project and its results.
ecoli out.
Posted in microbiology, my research | 2 Comments »
February 3rd, 2008 ecoli
For the purposes of this article, I consider Creationism, also falsely know as “Creation Science,” as the same thing as “Intelligent Design.” While in reality, there are subtle differences, the Intelligent Design movement is merely a renewed attempted at hijacking science for the sake of religion, by the religious right in this (and other) countries. As the principles behind these two beliefs are the same, I can treat them as the same, for the purposes of this article, because I am only interested in dealing with their principles.
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