GraniteGrok

(H/T: Watts Up With That)

Posted by Skip at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fun for the whole family!

(H/T: Boing Boing)

Posted by Skip at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been waiting decades for the flying car - and like a lot of things, like fusion power, they have been "right around the corner - just a few more years".  So far, bupkiss.  However, Popular Science has an article on another way to get there - start with a motorcycle first:

How to build a commercially viable flying car: first, make it a motorcycle. The idea of creating a personal transportation craft that can both take to the skies and travel along the ground has been alive as long as science fiction. But meeting both the FAA's regulations for aircraft while simultaneously meeting the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's guidelines for automobiles means compromises on both sides. Enter the Switchblade, a flying motorcycle that Northern California engineering firm Samson Motorworks hopes to have on the road and in the sky by next year.

The company chose a three-wheel design for the Switchblade to meet the criteria for a motorcycle rather than a car, thus side-stepping some automobile regulations, like the inclusion of bumpers, that add weight and reduce aerodynamics. The Switchblade still retains some car-like features -- occupants sit side-by-side in an enclosed climate-controlled cab, for instance -- but the long nose and canard is more rocket or drag bike than modern sedan.

Where it couldn't dodge regulatory hurdles, Samson engineers have met them head-on, installing rearview mirrors that retract during flight to reduce drag and devising wings that scissor open during flight mode but stow away in contained, protective underbelly compartments during ground transit.

I've always been in favor of planes and almost had my private pilot's license (and bought my first house just before its completion - TMEW let me know what my priorities should be!)

Posted by Skip at 8:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From the same place as these:

Posted by Skip at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

CPAs are often portrayed as little men sitting at high accounting desks (think Scrooge) with green eyeshades and black bands around their arms - and not funny.  Sometimes, scientists are right up there (down?) with having no sense of humor either.  Stereotypical, to be sure.

However, sometimes it is warranted; Steven Haywood has the unamusing details:

This raises another small but perhaps significant point that I didn't have room to comment on in my Weekly Standard article: How is it possible for a group of smart people to write over 1,000 e-mails over the course of a decade without a single shred of wit or humor in any of them?  There isn't the tiniest hint anywhere that any of these guys ever grin.  It jives with my experience of environmentalists for 20 years now that they are the single most humorless slice of humanity on the planet.  (My favorite: I had a top greenie lawyer for the Audubon Society once say at a conference that "I regard the National Association of Home Builders to be every bit as evil as the National Rifle Association."  My comeback was: "I can understand why you'd think that about the home builders, but what's your problem with the NRA?"  The guy didn't even crack a smile.)  And here we see Andy Revkin threatened with a "cutoff" because he writes--on a blog--something mildly amusing about Copenhagen.

Well, it seems that a group of meglomaniac type of scientists that have a need to be right all the time would necessarily be devoid of humor...

It would also explain this:

Morano summed up his views on what ClimateGate reveals during the debate. “It exposes the manufactured consensus. Your fellow colleagues are saying this,” Morano said to Watson.

Morano also noted that President “Obama is probably attending [the UN Conference] because they are circling the wagons because of the magnitude of this scandal.” (See: ‘Welcome to the delayers’: Obama’s ‘half-hearted climate efforts’ welcomed by skeptics – Nov.17, 2009)

“You have UN scientists turning on UN scientists. This is the upper echelon of the UN and it has been exposed as the best science that politics and activism can manufacture. Prof. Watson’s whole argument is ‘trust me, take my word for it,’” Morano added.

It seems that while the wagons of the Climate Warming Activists have circled, it may have been to make it easier to dismount and shoot inward into the circle...

Posted by Skip at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From Make: creation, molding, testing, to liftoff!

Posted by Skip at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A jet powered electric supercar?

Capstone Turbine unleashes their Super car - the CMT-350.  Details:

CMT-380, a high performance hybrid electric supercar powered by traditional batteries and an untraditional ultra low emission range extending microturbine, which is essentially like having an ultra-clean and quiet jet engine under the hood. The supercar, which is in the design and test phase, was developed in partnership with Electronic Arts Chief Creative Director Richard Hilleman

"The CMT-380's design performance numbers speak for themselves:

• 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds
• 150 mph top speed
• driving range of up to 500 miles on a single tank of fuel,
• ultra-low exhaust emissions
• lithium-polymer battery cells
• operate on 100 percent battery power in zero emissions mode for a range of up to 80 miles
• Capstone C30 (30-kilowatt) microturbine that runs on diesel or biodiesel
  

What is a Microturbine?

The CMT-380's 30-kilowatt microturbine features an electric generator and turbine components mounted on a single shaft, which is supported by air bearings -- so there are no liquids to lubricate or cool the microturbine. It uses a patented combustion system to achieve extremely low exhaust emissions that do not require expensive exhaust after treatm. 

(H/T: Inhabit)

Posted by Skip at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Very interesting visualization map of the transactions conducted on eBay nationwide.  Who knew that while eBay started in CA, most of them would be in the eastern part of the US?

To see the actual map as it plays out in real time, click below:

(H/T: TechCrunch)

Posted by Skip at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is hard stuff - VERY hard stuff to do even as science fiction stories for years have made it seem simple (that genre of books was almost the ONLY thing that I read growing up - after I "ran the table" at the library on books on WW II.

Boeing's project for the Air Force seemingly done good:

Boeing has successfully tested their new Matrix laser over airborne targets, which is a world's first. In total, they shot down five drones at various ranges. That's a lot of pew pew in a day.

The Air Force and Boeing achieved a directed-energy breakthrough with these tests. MATRIX—Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXperiments—performance is especially noteworthy because it demonstrated unprecedented, ultra-precise and lethal acquisition, pointing and tracking at long ranges using relatively low laser power.

Sorry for the "lite" kind of posting tonight - had a meeting tonite, taking time away from posting.

Posted by Skip at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Amorphous robot locomotion:

Brought to you by the folks who gave us the Roomba.  From robotic vacuum cleaners to....lots of possibilities!

(H/T: Instapundit)

Posted by Skip at 8:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our friend DCE from Weekend Pundit also has a more local blog One Voice in Gilford (hmmm, trying to muscle in on the baby 'Grok???  ) for things that are more germaine to the local area.  He's got a post up concerning his thoughts about FairPoint Communications and how well (or not) things have been going since Verizon sold all their landlines in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine to FairPoint:

FairPoint Feeling The Heat
And the hits keep on coming!

FairPoint Communications is in the crosshairs again, with rising customer complaints, poor customer service, billing problems, and a host of other issues that have driven over 80,000 customers away from the company. As an editorial in the Laconia Citizen asks, can FairPoint survive its mis-steps?

Concerns over customer service woes at FairPoint have been in the public’s sights for two months, and pressure has increased for the communications provider to address them. Particularly nettlesome to the company and its customers have been the operation of the company’s call centers, the billing process and how it handles orders.

Earlier this year, an international credit rating agency lowered its outlook for FairPoint from stable to negative because it lost an unexpected number of access lines and customers. Reports in January had the company shedding 80,000 customers since buying Verizon’s assets in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Today, it seems fleeing customers remain the rule and not the exception.

...The transfer took place despite the lingering doubts of many observers and some regulators.

I was one of them, as you've seen from earlier posts I made on the subject.

...The consumers in northern New England were sold a bill of goods. FairPoint hasn't delivered as promised, is suffering from falling revenue, has a bad PR problem, and a debt load that would make some Third World nations take a pass.

This isn't going to end well.

To tell you the truth, DCE and I had some "discussions" concerning the sale - I held that being a private company, Verizon should have the right to sell whatever it owned to whomever they wished.  He, of course, took the tack of "No, as we the ratepayers are going to get screwed".

Well, I was right (philosophically) and the sale went through.  DCE was right, as we are in the state of being he described.

Continue reading "FairPoint - I'm to the point that I'm ready to go..." »

Posted by Skip at 6:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Many of today's inventions are the results of years of research, oodles of capital spent, and lots of sweat and tears.

On the other side of the ledger, sometimes, stuff just happens!  Accidents sometimes have given us the most bang for the buck (think "I was looking for one thing, and look what popped up instead!!").

5 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World

1. Penicillin
2. Safety Glass
3. Vulcanized Rubber
4. Krazy Glue and/or Super Glue
5. The Microwave Oven

All of these should seem common place; but go read the stories behind the accidents!

Posted by Skip at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BAE Systems' Marianne Murphy sends the following regarding this year's FIRST Robotics Challenge, which we intend to follow here at the 'Grok. This program is part of the GOOD stuff one finds in education today, as opposed to some of the junk that gets mixed in. We'll have some students from our local team in studio with us this Saturday on MTNP radio...

NASHUA, N.H. - Teams from 18 New Hampshire high schools and three community teams will unveil their FIRST robots at Nashua High School North Thursday, Feb. 12. 

At the unveiling, teams will discuss their design approach and performance capabilities to solve this year's FIRST robotics challenge -- "LunacyTM." 

The unveiling, which is free and open to the public, is in preparation for the seventh-annual Granite State Regional FIRST Robotics Competition, Feb. 26 to 28, at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester.

FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -designs accessible and innovative programs for young people to help build their self-confidence, knowledge and life skills. The programs seek to motivate students to pursue careers in science, technology and engineering.

Approximately 50 New Hampshire teams have registered to participate (click here to see teams by town.)

The Granite State Regional, sponsored by BAE Systems, brings more than 1,500 students and their mentors together in a competition that emphasizes teamwork, innovation, and strategy. In early January, teams received a challenge to design, develop, and build a robot in six weeks using a common parts list. The robots then compete in randomly selected alliances, performing a variety of tasks for scoring points.

This year's challenge - "Lunacy," asks teams to design a robot, within specifications, that operates on a low-friction playing field, picking up and transporting balls to the opposing robot's trailer. Performance is measured by the total number of balls in the opponent's trailer following timed rounds at regional and championship competitions.

Initial public rounds will be held on Friday, Feb. 27, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. On Saturday, Feb. 28, the meet continues at 9 a.m., with final rounds scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.   Organizers advise audience members to come early for the best seats.

BAE Systems has supported FIRST since the early 1990s, shortly after the nonprofit organization was founded by inventor Dean Kamen. This year, BAE Systems, a FIRST "strategic partner," doubled its commitment by increasing contributions of money, employee volunteering, and other resources to more than $2.2 million for the 2009 season.  

To learn more about the regional competition and its teams, please click here.

 

Posted by Doug at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Like many, TMEW and I each have a cell phone via Verizon Wireless.  Up until a little while ago, our landline was serviced by Verizon as well until it was purchased by Fairpoint Communications (as with most all other landlines in VT, NH, and ME). 

Service?  Typical on the landline until it rains and then NOTHING - it becomes UNUSABLE.  With underground cabling, Fairpoint is probably NOT going to fix it anytime soon which is rather sad as I always said I'd keep the landline for emergencies (after all, there is a real reason for all those batteries in the Central Office - lights may go out in a power outage but the phones won't).  But if the line goes unusable, why pay the money.

The only other reason for not chucking it has been that cell reception has been REAL poor in the house.  BUT, there's hope!  From Ars Technica:

Verizon Wireless will start offering in-home cellular base stations, known as femtocells, on January 25. Femtocells use licensed frequencies and a subscriber's own backhaul to extend a cellular network indoors, and avoid requiring new handsets.

As we reported just a few days ago, AT&T is querying its customers about a future femtocell launch that it has been testing with its employees, and Sprint already offers the Airave extender.

Femtocells allow a carrier to fill in areas that are hard or impossible to cover with conventional base stations, such as interior rooms of a house, or homes and businesses that have the best signal propagation in directions away from where cellular towers are located. (I had Verizon service a few years in an office that was practically a bunker on its south side into a hill, and I confirmed with Verizon that facing north, there wasn't a tower for some distance.)

Gizmodo has obtained a product manual and launch plans ahead of time, and first reported on the development.

The question will be purchase price, monthly charge, and if unlimited minutes are there if traffic is routed through the 'Net connection.....if everything works out, I'll transfer my home number to the cell number and get the rig -> ditching the cost of the landline.

Posted by Skip at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I used to work on this kind of equipment - a "two color" terminal: black background with green characters.  And all that size to act as a terminal - not as a PC!  Yet, as expensive as it was (thousands of dollars), it was a big improvement over the hardcopy terminals of the day.  So, I got a chuckle when I saw this:

It's the mid-1980s, and the mainframe programmers in this IT shop are all working the way IBM intended: on green-screen terminals.

"The guy next to me came in and fired up his terminal, but the screen stayed dark," says a pilot fish there. "After checking the cables, power and so on, tech support determined the CRT was bad."

So a new monitor is brought in, hooked up, powered up and tested, and it works fine.

As the support tech is preparing to cart off the defective CRT, he asks the user, "Do you want your glare protector?"

Sure, says user.

"He pulled the Velcro-connected glare protector off the old CRT," fish says, "and a black sheet of paper fell out from behind.

"We never found out who among the 50 programmers was responsible."

Thousands of dollars foiled by a penny's worth of black paper....

Posted by Skip at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, this is certainly an application of The Law of Unintended Consequences!  While we have none such idiotic things here in my tiny hamlet, these automatic speed cameras (and their kissing cousins, the dreaded Red Light Cameras) allow for a hands-off revenue source for politicians and police departments.  Stick it up, wait for the offender (either driving too fast or ignoring a changing traffic light), snap the picture, route it through the computer, send the ticket, and collect the money.  The offender meekly sends in the fine amount.  The camera never sleeps, gets paid for overtime, and needs no vacation or sick time.

At least that's how it is supposed to work.  Well, sometimes, things get a bit twisted: from The Sentinel:

As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera "Pimping" game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

Students are even obtaining vehicles from their friends that are similar or identical to the make and model of the car owned by the targeted victim, according to the parent.

"This game is very disturbing," the parent said. "Especially since unsuspecting parents will also be victimized through receipt of unwarranted photo speed tickets.

Continue reading "Revenge on Speed Cameras" »

Posted by Skip at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most distinguishing hallmarks of the Iraqi war (and now in Afghanistan) is the use of IEDs - Improvised Explosive Devices.  Simple, pretty much free (given the stockpiles of ordnance left all over Iraq by Saddam's forces) and triggered by a multitude of ways.  They have been the cause (and curse) of our forces there, accounting for most of the KIA and wounded these past few years.

Remember that phrase "Be nice to the geeks; you'll be working for one of them some day"?  Well, I can be glad that even those that thought math was cool in high school can help out in trying to make this scourge irrelevant (and isn't that what most engineers want to do - make problems no longer exist?).  When I saw this over at Strategy Page, I just had to note it here at the 'Grok:

Afghanistan Attacked By The Math Machine

December 19, 2008: The U.S. Army is deploying the same kind of "math and missiles" unit that defeated roadside bombs in Iraq, to Afghanistan. For the last two years, "Task Force Odin" has used of manned and UAV aerial reconnaissance aircraft, along with pattern analysis and data mining, to find IEDs (roadside bombs), and the people who plant them in Iraq.

Task Force Odin was reported in the media mainly as aircraft and UAVs watching the roads for signs of IEDs, and UAVs, while helicopters and gunships opened fire on terrorists trying to set up roadside bombs. Explosions and dead bodies are more of mass media staple than massive use of math, no matter how critical the number crunching was to the undertaking.

Task Force Odin is really about two very different technologies. On the one hand there was the effort to provide Internet like access to live video feeds from aircraft and UAVs...The less publicized effort was Constant Hawk. This was a U.S. Army image analysis system that's basically just another pattern analysis system. However, it's been a very successful system when it comes to finding newly planted IEDs. Last year, the U.S. Army named Constant Hawk one of the top ten inventions of the year.

...Constant Hawk uses a special video camera system to observe a locality and find useful patterns of behavior. Some of the Constant Hawk systems are mounted on light (C-12s, mainly) aircraft, others are mounted on ground structures. Special software compares photos from different times. When changes are noted, they are checked more closely, which has resulted in the early detection of thousands of roadside bombs and terrorist ambushes. This has largely eliminated roadside bomb attacks on supply convoys, which travel the same routes all the time. But those routes are also watched by Constant Hawk. No matter what the enemy does, the Hawk will notice. Eventually, the Hawk, and several other efforts, morphed into Task Force Odin. The Task Force Odin led to the death of over 3,000 terrorists caught in the act of setting up roadside bombs, or lying in wait to set them off and attack their victims with gunfire. Hundreds more terrorists were captured, and many thousands of roadside bombs were avoided or destroyed before they could go off.

...A related math tool is predictive analysis. This has been widely used in Iraq to determine who the bombers are, where they are, and where they are most likely to place their bombs next. This has enabled the geeks-with-guns (the Army OR specialists) to offer regular "weather reports" about expected IED activity. The troops take these reports very seriously, especially by those who run the hundreds of daily convoys that move people and supplies around Iraq. If your route is predicted to be "hot", you pay extra attention that day, and often spot IEDs that, as predicted, were there. Usually, the predictions are used to send the engineers and EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) teams out to scout and clean the route. It's the feedback from these guys that has brought the geeks their reputation. If the geeks, and their tools (computers, aerial images, and math), say there is something bad out there, they are generally right. For the geeks, it's all pretty obvious. Given enough data, you can predict all sorts of things, or just about anything, really. But to many people, including most reporters, it's all still magic. Task Force Odin is the latest name for an effort that has been going on for over four years, and traces its origins back to World War II, and the invention of Operations Research in the decade before that.

Afghanistan is different from Iraq, in terms of geography and the psychology of the enemy. But this doesn't matter to the math machine. It analyzes, it understands, and it tells you what the bad guys are up to and where they are.

Pay attention in math class, kids - some day, it might save a life of a loved one.

Posted by Skip at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've watched these jet pack daredevils since I was small - and I always wanted one and figured that when I got older, I'd have one along with a flying car parked next to it.  Turned out it was just plain physics - can't go to far when the jet pack tanks only have about 30 seconds of flight time!

So, I just put that idea on the shelf....but this guy decided to cross a canyon that would take just about 29 seconds....no parachute!

From CNET:

Appearing on CBS' The Early Show, Scott said he had been making jet pack flights for 16 years, and decided to make the attempt at this year's Go Fast Games, an annual weekend of base jumping and bungee jumping at the Royal Gorge Bridge.

Scott told co-anchor Harry Smith that the jet pack only has enough fuel for a 30-second flight, and that he expected the flight from one side of the gorge to the other to take from 25 to 29 seconds.

"Boy, if it had been 29," quipped Smith.

"I would have been right," Scott gamely replied.

And he really never thought of taking a parachute?

"People kept saying if you want to put a parachute on it, that's fine," Scott said. "It works beautifully every time--800 flights, the machine has never failed on me."

What was he thinking halfway through, on a picture-perfect day, at 1,000 feet above the Arkansas River?

"I'm picking up enough, I think I'm going to get over there," he said.

And once he landed?

"Man, my hands were just trembling," he said. "When I approached the far west of the canyon I overcorrected. Well, I saw that inflatable Go Fast banner; I thought, I can bounce off that if anything goes wrong."

Posted by Skip at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People - always wanting something for nothing.  Or much more without paying for it (and no, this is not about socialism - try stupidity).  Computerworld:

This pilot fish is support manager at a small software company, and part of his job is overseeing hardware requirements for the company's specialized products.

"Because of the unique type of software our engineers create, printers and memory are the two most taxing on our customer base," fish says. "To paraphrase our CTO, 'More RAM makes a bad product seem good!' What the heck does that mean?"

So when the installation manager tells fish that a big customer has a hardware problem, fish checks out the situation. Sure enough, the customer is using an approved printer: a low-end $100 printer that's intended for light use.

But at the large company, it's getting a steady stream of print jobs. Not surprisingly, it's failing because it's exceeding the monthly recommended output.

Ordinarily, fish would just recommend that the customer buy a high-end printer. But this customer was sold a "turnkey" package -- one that includes everything the customer will need, including the printer. That makes it the problem of fish's company.

"In a presales meeting, I argued that we were a software company and should only offer hardware when absolutely necessary and, moreover, not deliver equipment that would only fail under too much use," says fish.

"The installation manager's response to the failing printers? 'I need a $100 printer that will do the work of a $1,500 printer. Can you stop whining and get on the phone and arrange that?'

"I'm still on it."

Yup, expecting something to work without paying for it....except they already have and won't admit to it.

Posted by Skip at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From one of the stories of helping others:

Pilot fish is in charge of networking and PC repairs at this small company, and as it begins growing, he asks for some help.

"HR promptly hired two guys who had no PC experience whatsoever," groans fish.

"I decided the best course of action was to work with each 'technician' personally for a month and then allow them to do repairs on their own while I monitored them," he says.

The newbies' skills slowly begin to develop. But they really want more experience, and fish wants to expose them to a wider range of problems.

Then fish has a brainstorm. He goes to the HR manager and proposes an idea: free PC repairs for employees' home computers.

The conditions? "Such work would not interfere with regular company work, we would not charge for the work, and we offered no guarantees," fish says.

HR manager likes the idea -- it's a great perk for employees, and it will let the new techs learn more. He gives fish an OK.

And for the next two years, everyone is happy. Fish's techs handle every PC problem, from system upgrades to tricky diagnostics, and they learn so much they get their A+ certifications. And the employees couldn't be happier with the great new benefit.

Then fish and his techs get a new boss -- who's horrified that so much IT time is being thrown away on employees' home PCs and immediately pulls the plug on the program.

"Then his boss asked for some help," says fish. "Our boss told him to bring his PC in for repairs.

"Soon, other managers began bringing home computers in for repairs. You guessed it -- the regular employees found out and became very upset."

Ah yes, teamwork!  Inclusiveness!  Gotta love it...

Posted by Skip at 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been in the computer biz all my adult life...this one certainly rates a ID-ten-T.  From Computerworld: 

Support pilot fish gets a call from a user whose computer won't boot. "Going through the basics, I quickly determined that it wasn't a boot problem, but probably something a bit more basic," says fish.

"Is the computer plugged in?" fish asks. Yes, user tells him. "Is the power strip turned on?" Yes. "Does the power indicator turn on when you press the power button on the computer?" No.

"Did you do a normal shutdown the night before?" fish asks. "No," user says, "I just unplugged the computer."

"Why would you do that?" User: "There was smoke coming out of the computer, and it quit working."

Fish: "So let me get this straight. Yesterday, the computer was on fire and you didn't call. Today, first you actually plug the thing back in, and then you call because you can't get it to boot?"

User: "Oh...."

Yeah, a new level of being "burnt out" .

Posted by Skip at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Heh!

Today’s college students value a wireless campus environment. That’s not surprising, but the Wi-Fi Alliance, a wireless industry group, commissioned a poll of college students to see just how much wireless matters. Large majorities of students said wireless access was essential to their educations. The poll also found evidence that wireless may hinder their educations — with more than half saying that they have checked Facebook or MySpace and sent or received e-mail during class. How important is it to have wireless access? Almost half (48 percent) of students said that they would give up beer before giving up wireless access.

I wonder what the answer of the 'Grok collegiate is....or the 'Grok collegiate's Dad?

Posted by Skip at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Face it, in many ways, NASA has lost its way.  Bloated budgets, inefficiencies, and a lack of vision has slowed this once great agency to a crawl.  Not that I'm picking on just NASA - it happens to be just what happens to overgrown bureaucracies (public or private sector) as they multiply early successes into empires - slow, overbearing, and hidebound.

Elon Musk (founder of Paypal) has been bankrolling SpaceX with his own money.  Now, after three disasters, he and his 550 engineers and staff, have succeeded in launching their own space rocket - from scratch!  And that is the most important datum - from scratch.  No cast-off technology, no surplus parts, no government buy-in - private funding and all brand new.

A relatively small group of determined, motivated, and driven people succeeded in doing something that is VERY hard to do.  All in the name of capitalism - great risk in advance for great reward!  I wish them lots of luck in the future!

From TechCrunch:

SpaceX’s Falcon 1 spacecraft made history tonight as the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach earth orbit from the ground. “About nine and a half minutes after launch, the second stage engine shuts down, and the Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth,” the company said.

This was their fourth attempt. The previous three attempts failed to reach orbit - the last launch, in August, lost two NASA satellites and the ashes of 208 people, including astronaut Gordon Cooper and James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty in the original Star Trek television show.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), reached the milestone just four years after the company was founded, and with just $120 million in capital ($100 million from founder Elon Musk and another $20 million from Founders Fund).

Falcon 1 is a 70- foot tall two-stage, liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene powered launch vehicle. It lifted off today from Kwajalein Atoll (Omelek Island) in the Pacific Ocean, about 8,000 miles southwest of Los Angeles.

This fourth launch comes less than two months after the previous failure. The next launch will be a Falcon 1 carrying a RazakSat satellite for Malaysia. That launch, if successful, will be followed by the maiden flight of the much larger Falcon 9 rocket in the second quarter of 2009.

We first covered SpaceX in 2007, when a Falcon 1 craft reached space for the first time.

Congratulation, folks!

Posted by Skip at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most IT guys are sharp.  Oh sure, there are those that are running around with eternal parity checks (think "lights on, nobody home"), but for the most part, you have to have some smarts to be successful in this industry.

Until that "smarts" gets checked at the door, or lost in the wonderment of "oh, let's try this!" and the IT geeks forget that common sense really help BEFORE embarking on new fields of geekdom (yeah folks, we're thinking backups):

From Computerworld:

This IT pilot fish and his co-worker want to try out the 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista, but there's no testbed machine available.

"We decided to take a new hard drive and install Vista on it using my co-worker's machine," fish says.

"He swapped the hard drive and we started the install."

Everything runs like clockwork from that point. The OS installs like a charm, and fish and his cohort do what they need to do.

And when they're done, fish's co-worker takes out the Vista-laden hard drive, puts the other one in and reboots.

That's when he gets an error message: "Operating system not found."

"My co-worker mixed up the hard drives when he swapped them," fish sighs.

"He is now in the process of trying to recover his 60GB worth of data."

LIke I said, a bit of thinking things through....

Posted by Skip at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a lot of video here on the 'Grok - a lot of it is YouTubed but a fair amount that is also on our own server because it is way too long.  We are in favor of video as it gives a more complete experience of what interests / amuses us.

Thus, when I saw this, I just smiled and thought "hmm, we've been doing this for at least two years now....". Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit wrote a piece that talks to this as well based on the interviews of ABC's Charlie Gibson interviewing Governor Sarah Palin - there are a lot of complaints of editing that tried hard to put Palin in a bad light. 

The "BlogFather" (and Doug and I) have a solution for this:

CHARLIE Gibson's ABC interview with Republican veep candidate Sarah Palin produced a lot of complaints from Palin fans. There's not much anyone in the campaign can do about journalists like Gibson misstating candidates' "exact words," but there is something that candidates - and anyone else interviewed by a possibly hostile media - can do to make sure that things get played straight in the editing process.

You just have to break the camera monopoly. Luckily, that's become easy.

And it is EXTREMELY easy!  The great thing about the present Internet technology is that almost ANYONE can use a relatively common vidcam, there's software to transfer the WMA / JPG files onto a website, and most browsers pretty much know how to handle it when clicked.  

This takes vid (and audio, btw) journalism out of the hands of well funded organizations with fancy dancy stuff and into the hands of ordinary schlubs like Doug and I, and you!

An episode of "The Simpsons" a few years back centered on Homer facing bogus sexual-harassment charges. A TV news show ("Rock Bottom") interviewed him and edited his innocuous statements to make them sound incriminating. (To make the joke clear, the hands on a clock in the background were in a different position for almost every word). Ultimately, Homer was saved only because Groundskeeper Willie turned out to have shot video that exonerated him.

Real life isn't "The Simpsons" (though politics are seeming more and more cartoonish these days). Still, TV is all about the editing - and even modest tweaks can drastically change how an interviewee comes across.

As what seems to have happend, once again, by the MSM to keep their narrative alive.  Can you say, however,  "boomarang" for the results it got them?

So, when you sit down for an interview (unless it's live), you're putting yourself, like Homer, at the mercy of the editors. Usually they're honest, but not always.

But there's a remedy now, with technology being what it is. If I were a candidate, I think I'd bring my own camera to interviews, shoot the whole thing and post the unedited raw video on the Web.

The technology for this is easy - I've got a little Sony HD video camera that records on a chip and fits in a coat pocket or purse - and putting video on the Web is a snap, too.

Of course, the knowledge that this will happen is likely to be enough to keep people honest - but if anything is edited unfairly, the full video will tell the tale. No need to wait for Groundskeeper Willie to appear.

TV journalists won't be happy with this, of course, but it's hard to see a principled basis for objecting.

Yeah, they are one of "those groups" that feel that they can hold other people accountable to what they believe to be right - but hate it when they are held to the same standards.  After all, they are "Journalists".

Continue reading ""Bring your own" - so we did!" »

Posted by Skip at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We use Sitemeter to track hits to the 'Grok and on several other sites that we assist with. It's that little green doo-hicky that looks like a modernist version of a graph at the bottom of our pages.  Click on it and you can see how many people come to the 'Grok, how long they stayed, and what they looked it.  Go to other sites, and compare (and yes, we are not the "big dogs" in the blogosphere, but we are moving up a bit in this "long tail" environment - a few monster sites with huge numbers, and then a huge number of really smaller sites with few hits / day).

Well, there have been some knocks about it not being absolutely correct in how it came up with its stats, but LOTS of sites use it so it is useful to compare our site against others. 

Well, this was the weekend that they rolled out Sitemeter 2.0 - a new and improved version. 

Well, that was their intent.  Supposedly

Well, as the saying goes "Not so much!"

It sucked.  It sucked badly....really badly.  The old one was quick and easy to navigate.  No, it didn't give me everything that I would want to see, but it worked.  Lots of bloggers scope out their stats daily.  Some doing it multiple times a day (heh - ask Doug!).  Doug's impression was the same.

Tried the new one.  Gotta log in (and not just click in).  Then navigates through several reports....and wait a glacial amount of time to get the results....if they come up.

Well, good news:

We are in the process of rolling back SiteMeter to the former system.
SiteMeter should be back online soon.
Please check back later.
Sorry for inconvenience.

Sincerely, SiteMeter Support Team. 

Big Oops!

So, hopefully in a little while, you can see our stats again.  Better yet, WE will be able to see our stats now. Including the ones that WE want to see most often (today by hour, the current week, and the last 30 days).  Which were not available (or hid them so well, I wanted to squeeze them so hard they'd be squeaking "where's the stats".

As The Other McCain (H/T: Instapundit) put it:  It's worse than disco!

Having lived through disco, that's quite the slap.  But warranted.  He gathered up a bunch of other bloggers comments too.

Posted by Skip at 8:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this post, I warned about that you have to be nice to the IT folks since they have the "good" passwords (and can kill your business if they misuse them).

Well, now you know that if you don't maintain your code systems (as in "hey, they work, they're not broken, so leave them alone" or "it always worked so we never thought about them"), they can turn around and byte you.  Especially if there is no one left that knows where the  spaghetti code (code that has been changed / modified /played with so often that it is as twisted as a Gordian Knot).

From Slashdot:

"Last week, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a pay cut, to minimum wage of $6.55/hr, for 200,000 state workers — because a state budget hadn't been approved yet. The state controller, who has opposed the pay cut on principle and legal grounds, now says the pay cut isn't even feasible because the state's payroll systems are so antiquated. He says it would take six months to go to minimum wage, and nine months more to restore salaries once a budget is passed. The system is based on COBOL, according to the Sacramento Bee, and the state hasn't yet found the funds or resources, in ten years of trying, to upgrade it."

The article quotes a consultant on how hard it is to find COBOL programmers; he says you usually have to draw them out of retirement. Problem is, if there were any such folks on the employment rolls in California, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired them all last week, too.

10 years?  Really!  With all of the changes, at least at the Federal level, they haven't had to touch it?  Or are they running out of compliance?

COBOL is older (old?) nerd stuff.  It works, but not flashy. Nothing that is "Web-by" or elicits a "Wow" factor. It just works in the back office stuff as it was intended to. The problem could be thought of as trying to find a typewriter mechanic - they just don't stand around on the local corner anymore.

They will be able to find someone, but it will cost them.  And with all systems that aren't maintained, going cheap never is.

Posted by Skip at 2:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Hapless municipal bosses in San Francisco have been locked out of their network by a disgruntled sysadmin charged with computer sabotage.

Terry Childs, 43 and of Pittsburg, California, was held on remand over the weekend pending the outcome of committal proceedings (an arraignment) on Tuesday where he faces four counts of computer tampering. Meanwhile his former bosses were unable to access San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar FiberWAN (Wide Area Network). The network provides access to confidential databases including payroll files and law enforcement documents.

Childs allegedly created a password that gave him exclusive access to the system. Pass codes he gave to police failed to work. Even under threat of arrest Childs failed to cough up the goods, prompting officers to take him into custody on Sunday.

The sysadmin, who draws a basic salary of around $126,000, has worked for the Department of Technology for around five years. Childs was recently the target of disciplinary action over his allegedly poor performance at work. The San Francisco Chronicle quotes anonymous city officials in support of a theory that Childs rigged the system as an "insurance policy" against getting fired.

Memo to small biz CEOs - if it can happen to them, it can happen to you.

So, did they try the backup tapes from before they got locked out?

Posted by Skip at 7:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Having been in the computer industry over 25 years, I've met most of these folks....and this story from Computerworld has a lot of geeks and nerds going....yup!

Ah, end users. We sure do love them. Why, most of us wouldn't have jobs without them. But that doesn't mean users don't drive IT crazy sometimes, or maybe most of the time. Just as a zookeeper cares for his monkeys one way and his rhinos another (we kid -- sort of), so too should IT tailor its responses to fit the individual styles of its end users, support managers say.

1. The Know-It-All

You know this user. He knows a little HTML, and he defragged his hard drive once, so now he thinks he's an engineer who knows more than you.

2. The Know-Nothing

We've all heard the joke about the clueless user who looks in vain for the "any" key when prompted by their computer to "hit any key."

3. Mr. Entitlement

Often heard uttering the phrase, "Do you know who I am?" this particular user type comes in a variety of subspecies. It may be the CEO, who (let's face it) is genuinely entitled, or it may be a peon in marketing who thinks he's entitled simply because you're in customer service and he's, well, not.

4. The Finger-Pointer

Finger-Pointers never think (or at least, never admit) that they're in any way to blame for any of their problems -- you are.

5. The Twentysomething Whiz Kid

This person has dozens of freeware applications on his computer, along with three IM clients and a passel of unauthorized open-source software, and he knows how to use a proxy Web site to bypass the company firewall.

And then the guy / gal that all of us IT folks love to run into, and place at the top of the "when all else is equal, THEY get the service first:

The Dream User

While our IT help desk experts may have slightly differing opinions on the more negative user archetypes they see, all were in agreement about the user of their dreams....one of his more experienced remote users called him after encountering an error message while replacing a video card. "She wanted to know why that happened. Her desire for knowledge really tickled me."..."It's someone who grows along with the help you give them. They take the knowledge you give them to solve one problem and are able to apply it to another problem."

"My Dream User is someone who actually listens to what I say," says McCloud. "I don't mind if people call a lot. Ignorance is fine, but listen to what I'm telling you and follow through. Take notes if you have to, and don't be afraid. Be receptive and respectful as I've been to you."

Remember, there is something to that addage of "try to treat people the way you would want to be".  Yes, we all too often miss that mark, but that doesn't mean we can't keep trying.... 

After all, there's lots (many times, way too many) of people to help....be nice to nerds and they generally put you up near the top of their running list.  We like to be treated nicely too... 

(H/T: GeekPress) 

Posted by Skip at 7:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been a little while since I did anything on the "different" side of jets (like jet powered VW bugs, street luges, and the like).  Well, this is not all that strange, but couldn't resist....
 

SR-71 Blackbird

This was the premier spy plane of the US for years.  Conceived of by Kelly Johnson of the famous Lockheed Skunk Works division and first flown in 1964, it was a MACH 3 capable craft.  When I saw this over at DefenseTech, I thought I'd share:

One day, high above Arizona, we were monitoring the radio traffic of all the mortal airplanes below us. First, a Cessna pilot asked the air traffic controllers to check his ground speed. ‘Ninety knots,’ ATC replied. A twin Bonanza soon made the same request. ‘One-twenty on the ground,’ was the reply. To our surprise, a navy F-18 came over the radio with a ground speed check. I knew exactly what he was doing. Of course, he had a ground speed indicator in his cockpit, but he wanted to let all the bug-smashers in the valley know what real speed was. ‘Dusty 52, we show you at 620 on the ground,’ ATC responded.

The situation was too ripe. I heard the click of Walter’s mike button in the rear seat. In his most innocent voice, Walter startled the controller by asking for a ground speed check from 81,000 feet, clearly above controlled airspace. In a cool, professional voice, the controller replied, ‘Aspen 20, I show you at 1,982 knots on the ground.’ We did not hear another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.

Heh!  More Speed!

Posted by Skip at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

He's got our back on this one.  The current moratorium on taxes levied on Internet access is once again up for renewal by November 1 of this year.  Once again, Senator Sununu is out front to deny politicians yet another revenue stream and make the temporary moratorium permanent (The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act)

“State and local politicians should not be allowed to use the popularity of the Internet as an opportunity to broaden their tax base. Simply put, taxing consumers for accessing the Web discourages Internet use, reduces investment, stifles innovation, and limits the services available to consumers,” Sununu said. “I am also developing legislation to expand the Internet tax ban in order to prevent discrepancies and harmful practices by certain taxation jurisdictions.”

To me, this is quite important.  Being a telecommuter, I live and die by my access to the Internet.  It might be one thing to be taxes as a percentage of the monthly charge, but heaven help me as an employee OR as a blogger if I have to pay on a data rate ($x/byte).  Not only would I have to pay it here at home, but I'd have to pay it AGAIN at our hosting site.  Depending on the rate considered "fair" by politicians, I would have to rethink how things operate here at the 'Grok.  We do a lot of images, MP3s, and video - a rich multimedia site like ours effectively run as a no-profit -at-all ("profit? what profit" wonders TMEW) - would probably change in a hurry to stay open (thanks politicians that can't say no to much of anyone or thing).
 

The Internet is "critically important to interstate and global commerce," Sununu said. "It makes no sense to have a national and global communications and business network to be subject to taxes by every state, city and county in the country."

That's right.  I'm just an anecdote but...

Continue reading "Watching out for taxpayers on the 'Net" »

Posted by Skip at 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Emblem on Rusty Wallace's winglet

More jets!  No, nothing "different" about these - other then who they may belong to.  Today was the first race of the Chase in the Nextel Cup racing series at New Hampshire International Speedway (Clint Bowyer won the Sylvania 300).

Now, I'm not a huge racing fan, but I'll stop the clicker and watch from time to time, especially when the race is at any of the super speedways due to the higher speeds.  However, since NHIS has two Cup races, TMEW (and I!) gets two treats a year by going down to the Laconia Airport (actually located in Gilford, NH) and watch the jets take off (of which there are quite a number).  While many go to see if they can spot a driver, we just like to watch the planes.  Thus, here are a couple here (shots of Rusty Wallace's, Kevin Harvick, and Denny Hamlin) with more after the jump along with a number of helicopter "ferry" trips

Kevin Harvick emblem on his jet tail

Continue reading "Jetiness - Nextel Cup style at KCLI (Laconia Airport)" »

Posted by Skip at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

Over at Future Pundit is this:

High Intensity Ultrasound Seals Bleeding Lung Like Star Trek Tricorder

Leonard "Bones" McCoy's medical tricorder couldn't do everything. After all, it didn't detect any readings from Trelane. But the tricorder didn't just have the ability to scan. The tricorder could heas as well (e.g. the doctor in Voyager used his tricorder to heal a "hairline fracture of the pre-maxilla bone" after Seven clobbered an alien). Well, the US Department of Defense is funding development of a portable high intensity ultrasound sound wave device to stop internal bleeding.

Engineers at the University of Washington are working with Harborview doctors to create new emergency treatments right out of Star Trek: a tricorder type device using high-intensity focused ultrasound rays. This summer, researchers published the first experiment using ultrasound to seal punctured lungs.

"No one has ever looked at treating lungs with ultrasound," said Shahram Vaezy, a UW associate professor of bioengineering. Physicists were skeptical it would work because a lung is essentially a collection of air sacs, and air blocks transmission of ultrasound. But the new experiments show that punctures on the lung's surface, where injuries usually occur, heal with ultrasound therapy.

"The results are really impressive," Vaezy said. He cautions that this is still in the early stages and the technique is not yet being tested on humans.

As much as I like to see techie stuff advanced (although there are times I wish all the R&D folks would get a year's sabbatical and allow the rest of us to catch up), FuturePundit brings up an important point - sure it may be real useful in the future, he asks an important question:

But how do they know where to focus the beam? They can't heat the entire chest without basically cooking the bleeding person to death. So how to locate the locations with dangerous bleeds?

Guess more work is needed.... 

Posted by Skip at 8:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hey, if Doug can do Grok N'Roll, I can do more jet stuff, right?  RIGHT? It's a holiday - the last of the summer.  Time to be light today.

But this guy is NUTS!  A 112 MPH on a board 2 inches from asphalt with 80 lbs of thrust???

Jet powered street luge board

From Gizmodo:

Joel King just broke the world speed record on a jet-powered street luge, racing at 112mph (180km/h) —lying horizontally just a couple of inches above the asphalt of an old US air base at Ipswich. He strapped a small 90,000-rpm jet engine to the two-meter board, which gave him up to 80lbs of thrust. We talked with Joel and he revealed all the secrets of his heart-stopping feat.

Go and see the whole thing - including the video! 

Posted by Skip at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I haven't seen much in the way of "different" types of jets....but this rocks! 

The X-48B is aflying scale model (21 foot wingspan) acting as a proof of concept that has flown.  This may well be the airliner of the future.

What is so different about this plane's design is the placement of the engines (quieter in the cabin and on the ground) and the melding of the traditional  cylindrical body and wing into more of a blending of the two.

Looks better from the other end:

Posted by Skip at 8:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Our good buddy over at Right Wing News, John Hawkins, put up a post about what his toolbox looks like for blogging.  Being a techie by training, I find it interesting to see what other bloggers are using. 

Copycatting here? Not really - we realize here at the 'Grok that John / RWN is one of the big dogs in this world.  But I figure that even if we are not professionals like John, we are ardent about this new media type that regular folk can adopt and use for fun, enjoyment, and (at times) put up serious stuff.  And we let our readership sort it all out, which is as it should be.  And maybe someone will benefit by seeing what is in our toolbox

Software

Hosting platform:     Yahoo
                              I just don't have the time to do our own system management

Web Server:            Apache

Blog software:          Moveable Type 3.32 (I do some tweaking but not 'full depth' yet)

Tracking:                Sitemeter on GraniteGrok and GilfordGrok
                              I also check Technorati and BlogNetNews/NH.

Tools for postings:  OpenOffice 2.1 for text set up, spell checking, spreadsheet, and some
                                        graphics which I should use more often for spell checking)                                              MS WordPad (simple text)
                             Adobe Photoshop Elements (graphics)
                             MS Paint (graphics)
                             MS FoxPro (database management)
                             SmartFTP (File transfers)

Misc:                      Thunderbird (email)
                             FireFox (browser)
                   

Continue reading "Blogging tools - he started it!" »

Posted by Skip at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Skip at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Bloggers are a vital part of the information technology in America and the world."

"bloggers need maturing, the blogosphere phenomenon has had a fundamentally profound effect on how America communicates with itself and with the world."

Posted by Doug at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

This looks pretty cool!

Forget Flying Cars.  Meet the Driveable Plane 

(H/T: CNN) 

For years, heavy handed regulations have strangled the light aircraft industry.  Now that these have been removed and new classifications of plane / pilot licensing have been created, the atmosphere has been set to encourage innovation to soaring (bad puns intended). 

One of the results is the above. Details below: 

Business 2.0 Magazine) -- [snip]... The 29-year-old aeronautics Ph.D. candidate at MIT is also CEO of Terrafugia (from the Latin for "escape the earth"), a Somerville, Mass., startup building the Transition, which Dietrich says is not so much a flying car as a "roadable aircraft." That is, a two-seater plane with fold-up wings that you drive home at the end of your flight.

The design won Dietrich the prestigious $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in February. But Terrafugia is no dorm startup: The company is in talks to raise $2 million to $3 million and has hired two McDonnell-Douglas veterans in its quest to build a drivable prototype by 2008.

They aim to get the first Transitions to market by the following year, at a retail price of $148,000. The plane is tailor-made, Dietrich says, for the neglected "short-hop market" of 100- to 500-mile jaunts - a market that's only going to grow as airlines abandon low-margin short routes.

In terms of aircraft, this is dirt cheap, and the short hop market is a pain in the butt if you are relying on scheduled runs.

With licensing fees and training times both half those for regular aircraft, the FAA projects an influx of as many as 15,000 new light sport pilots by 2009.

"The market is ready for a new kind of aircraft," says Dick Knapinski, spokesman for the nonprofit Experimental Aircraft Association.

And as they always say in manufacturing, volume breeds lower prices. 

That doesn't mean there aren't red-tape obstacles: "Can you take it out off a flat stretch of road," Knapinski asks, "or do you have to take off at an airport?"

But Dietrich is undeterred. He's getting his first round of funding from angel investors who are also pilots. "They have firsthand knowledge of the obstacles that this vehicle would overcome," he says.

There have been experimental planes before that have been on the market, but none ever really became the hit that the designers wanted - more curiousity than anything else.  Hope this one goes further.... 

Posted by Skip at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Kay: Michael, is it true?
Michael: Don't ask me about my business, Kay.
Kay: Is it true?
Michael: Don't ask me about my business...
Kay: No.
Michael: [slamming his hand on the desk] Enough! All right. This one time, this one time I'll let you ask me about my affairs.
Kay: Is it true? Is it?
Michael: No.
Kay: [sighing relief] I guess we both need a drink, huh?

At the conference, I learned of the "professionalization" of spamming—by which I mean, the involvement of organized crime. As one speaker put it: Your typical spamming enterprise these days has a hit man in the organization chart.

.

A couple of speakers alleged (one explicitly, one implicitly) the involvement of (at least) the Chinese government in developing spamming technologies. Many other states (due to corruption, lack of interest, or lack of resources) fail to pursue the crooks.

That's pretty alarming, isn't it? Right now, spammers order their armies of zombie computers to send us all barely-coherent pitches for pump-n-dump stocks, counterfeit Viagra, and porn. What happens when someone decides to move from current tawdry economic goals to political and perhaps military ones? Will we be able to handle those any better? The stuff I heard didn't give me any reason to be optimistic.

Posted by Doug at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As the title of this post discusses, what has powered waterborne craft over the centuries has changed. Treehugger (yeah, I know, much more to the Left than I am, but there I am a conserv-ative) has a quick story about kite powered ships.

Now, I'm not talking about the run of the mill sailboat / yacht with a runaway sail....it really is all about using kites. And of course, these are not the grammar school kid type nor even sophisticated fighting kites that adults will fly in competition.

These are jumbo industrial kind that will be employed to help move massive cargo ships across the seas. While this may sound like a wacko idea, it has now come to the testing stage, as you can see here:

That horizontal "thing" at the top of the pole at the bow of the ship is the kite - currently it is furled in, but is supposed to be flown at some height above the ship. 

From Sky Sails own site:

By using the SkySails-System, a ship‘s fuel costs can be reduced by 10- 35% on annual average, depending on wind conditions. Under optimal wind conditions, fuel consumption can temporarily be reduced by up to 50%. Even on a small, 87 metre cargo ship, savings of up to 280,000 euros can be made annually.

Here is another rendition of what Sky Sails thinks:

Posted by Skip at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

YES!!! A Jet Powered Fire Extinguisher!

(H/T:  Gizmodo)

Let's take one perfectly good jet MIG-21 fighter, strip out the engines, and put them on a  tank, and go looking for a fire to play with!

A team of Hungarian engineers have created the ultimate fire extinguisher. They've removed the gun turrets from an old Russian tank, replaced them with 2 turbines from a MiG-21 fighter jet, and injected the whole thing with gallons of water. The result is the first ever jet-powered fire extinguisher. Though it'd be difficult to get the tank to confined spots, the turbines' speed and power could potentially help firefighters with oil-fires, which typically take days to extinguish.

My question: when they let off the brakes, how fast CAN those tracks go? 

Posted by Skip at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

 

Segway Inc. is recalling all 23,500 of the self-balancing scooters it has shipped to date because of a software glitch that can make its wheels unexpectedly reverse direction, causing riders to fall off -- and in at least one incident, break some teeth. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, with whom Segway is cooperating on the voluntary recall announced yesterday, said consumers should stop using the vehicles immediately.

Continue reading "Gizmos gone bad redux..." »

Posted by Doug at 5:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Computerworld:

Poetry in Motion

"There's a bug in my monitor," executive smirks as he calls in IT pilot fish for help. Some sort of prankware? fish wonders. Or a virus? "A tiny eight-legged bug appeared to be walking rapidly across his LCD, like something out of an old-time video game," fish says. Fish grabs another laptop and plugs the buggy screen into it. "It's still there," sighs fish. "There's a real bug trapped inside his display. Poetic justice."

Just what every computer tech wants....a real bug....

Posted by Skip at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

And for the general consumer, there is now this for hard disk space....2 terabytes (2,000 gigabytes).  Not so long ago, only huge corporations could afford the purchase and maintenance costs.  Now, a regular guy who is into movies could get one of these.

I go back a ways - I started with computers with an Olivetti 101 mag stripe card reader programmable CALCULATOR back in high school.  Then we got a DEC PDP 8-e, and I learned BASIC, FORTRAN, and FOCAL.  Storage was a magnetic drum and REAL magnetic core for ram (yup, the progenisis of a "core dump").  

First computer was an Apple II+ with 64K RAM and two floppy drives.  Next was a Fat Mac with 1MB RAM and two 5.24" floppies.  And I persuaded The Most Esteemed Wife to allow me the luxury of getting an external 40MB SCSI-2 hard drive.

For the never-to-use-all-that-storage-of 40MB, I paid $1500 back in the 80's. 

This 2TB (2K Gigabytes) beastie is only ~$2K. 

I like progress... um, TMEW, can we talk???  (H/T: Gizmodo) 

Posted by Skip at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)