Friday Miscellany

– Less than 1% of all Windows XP installations are 64-bit. Around 11% of Windows Vista installations are 64-bit. However, it seems that a whopping 46% of all Windows 7 installations are 64-bit. The future is almost here! FWIW, Casa Cofer is 100% 64-bit, thank you very much.

– Speaking of tech, you could use an iPad or Kindle to read a book… but it seems that old fashioned “books” are faster.

– Need more proof that America’s waistline is rapidly expanding? A new study has found that Colorado, the nation’s healthiest state, has an obesity rate (19.1%) that exceeds the 1991 obesity rate of Mississippi, the nation’s fattest (15.7%). For what it’s worth, Mississippi’s current obesity rate is 33.8%. From here.

– Britain has gone nuts with the anti-terror laws. Recently, a man was threatened with arrest for taking a photograph of overcrowded trains. The man, an IT worker, was worried that the overcrowding was causing a safety issue, but train officials threatened to arrest him under anti-terror laws. This would be bad if it were an isolated case, but it’s not. People photographing police officers have been threatened under similar laws, and other photographers have been threatened with arrest for taking pictures on British streets. And here’s the thing: the terror laws allow the government to declare certain areas as “off-limits” for security reasons, but also allows the government to keep those areas secret. So no one knows whether they’re breaking the law or not. Google “Britain photographers anti-terror” for more sad stories.

– And lastly, in 1964 a British man named David Threlfall asked bookmaker William Hill to place a £10 bet on whether man would set foot on the moon before January 1970. Hill agreed to the bet and gave him 1000:1 odds. As the years passed, and it looked ever more likely that man would indeed walk on the moon, the odds dropped. Gamblers offered Threlfall thousands of pounds for his ticket, but he refused. After Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, Threlfall collected his £10,000 winnings – around $185,000 in current dollars. Read more here.

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