Keir Dullea, are you there?

Today is HAL-9000's birthday. You remember HAL, don't you? HAL-who-won't-open-the-pod-bay-door-HAL.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave."

The last time I posted about HAL in 2003, Thus Spake Zarathustra started playing on iTunes radio. This time, a new program I had just installed popped up this window:


At first I thought it was an Easter Egg related to the date, but no. It's just a feature to let you know that you are being watched... Very creepy coincidences.

This shot was generated by a screen capture from Celestia, a most amazing program for touring the virtual Milky Way, with some extra data files from the Celestia Motherlode:


This image of one of the pods is from a Space Odyssey Icon set for Mac by Mischa McLachlan: