Well, I’ll let you know now.. the rumor that was going around a month or so ago.. it is true.  The Walmart fliers that go out today have a front page announcing that iPhones are now for sale at WallyWorld for $3 less than the AT&T store.

A story from /. about two Indian cartographers that have been arrested and charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.

According to ATS officials, Mahesh and Anil claim to be employees of Biond Software Ltd, a Dombivali-based software company in Mumbai. They were caught from Khambhalia on Saturday night as they were travelling in a car fitted with a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device. They also had some area topography maps and a laptop containing distance charts, digital maps of Guajrat coastal line and even Wagha border.

Yes, is the above there are three piles of about 6,000,000 old tires (imagery from ~ 2005).  Try to find them without zooming in through.

It is kind of an infamous thing around here.. this is the Starr Tire Pile, a farm that for more than 20 years (till 1987) took in used tires and just let them be dumped wherever on the property.  For about as long as it took to fill the property up with tires, is how long it took to get rid of them all.  But, as of last month, all the fires from the farmland are gone.

How the tire piles looked before cleanup started.

During the cleanup at least one of the piles caught fire, not hours or days to put out.. but weeks.

Using a temporary mobile subscriber identity (TMSI), a UK company called Path Intelligence has shown they can track consumers and show where they spend the most time and proved that the longer people spend in shops, the more they spend.

The Path Intelligence FootPath™ system consists of a small number of discreet monitoring units installed throughout the center.

The units measure signals from the consumers’ mobile phones using unique technology that can locate a consumer’s position to within 1-2m. The units feed this data (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) to a processing center where the data is audited and sophisticated statistical analysis is applied to create continuously updated information on the flow of shoppers through the center.

For the people that are worried about having a uniqe ID attached to their phones, and in the long run no longer being an “anonymous consumer”. Phones on the network are given a TMSI number which is assigned by a locations base station, as you move out of one coverage area to the next, the TMSI number changes.  So, in theory, they can’t figure out just who is what phone.  Though with an accuracy of 1-2 meters and time logs.. you can correlate location with charges made and figure out who someone is that way (anything is possible anymore).

But there are good sides to this technology and use.  The system could also be useful for researching the layout of train stations, airports, shopping centers, etc.  This system ould also be used to find contraband phones in jails and prisons.

CNN is reporting this morning that the plane wreckage found last night is the one that Steve Fossett flew the day he disappeared 13 months ago.  While no remains have been found yet, the investigators are saying the damage is so severe that it is doubtful anyone could have walked away from it.

Not you’re local shopping mall, but the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. NOAA and the Smithsonian have worked together to develop “The Sant Ocean Hall“, this exhibit hall combines 674 marine specimens and models, high-definition video experiences, one-of-a kind exhibits, and the newest technology, enabling visitors to explore the ocean’s past, present, and future as never before.

What looks really interesting and worth a trip to go see is the “Science on a Sphere” exhibit.

NOAA’s Science On A Sphere™ will take visitors as if they were 22,000 miles in space where they will see ocean and atmospheric processes displayed across a spinning globe and understand why Earth is so appropriately called “the blue planet.” The Science On A Sphere™ was invented by Sandy MacDonald, director of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.