No More iTunes!

Ever get tired of managing your MP3s with both Winamp and iTunes? Wary of giving Steve Jobs just a little too much power over your life? Or simply a firm believer of open source?

Will Fisher introduces the latest release of ml-iPod, which allows you to use Winamp to manage your iPod. This means no more worrying about weird updates for iPod and iTunes (which helped destabilize my desktop), that latter of which is a pretty, but memory-sucking application. This plugin allows you to retain much of the best functions of iTunes, such as being able to sort by artist, album, or track, and being able to create Playlists. Moreover, based on this screenshot, it seems you can copy music from the iPod to your hard drive. This is great for faster sharing of music between friends.

Waiting for a live site to download the executable file can take a while, but the download itself is small (less than 200 KB), the installation is very quick, and you don't have to reboot. Moreover, you can use your iPod as both hard drive and MP3 player at the same time. Good stuff!

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Voyager Enters Final Frontier

Voyager 1 has crossed into the heliosheath, the region beyond the termination shock:

The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the Sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from its average speed of 300 to 700 km per second (700,000 - 1,500,000 miles per hour) and becomes denser and hotter.

The plucky spacecraft, at 27, is almost as old as I am, and continues to send data back, rewarding NASA scientists with a treasure trove of information about the outer reaches of our solar system. Indeed, Voyager and her sister craft, Voyager 2, are likely to keep plugging along:

For their original missions to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyagers were destined for regions of space far from the Sun, so each was equipped with three radioisotope thermoelectric generators to produce electrical power for the spacecraft systems and instruments. Still operating in remote, cold and dark conditions 27 years later, the Voyagers could last until 2020.

They sure don't make probes the way they used to anymore, do they?

(Hat-tip: Smash)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]