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7682. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 10/23/2008 5:56:06 PM Good laugh! 7683. jexster - 10/25/2008 4:22:12 AM In First Policy Speech, Piglin Blasts French Fruit Fly Research
Concerned must be the sorry sack of Moose Shit's science adviser 7684. wabbit - 11/5/2008 3:08:28 AM While the election rolls on, one decision has been made: Over the objections of the nation’s television broadcasters and other groups, Federal regulators on Tuesday set aside a disputed slice of radio spectrum for public use, hoping it will lead to low-cost, high-speed Internet access and new wireless devices.
The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 to approve the public use of the unlicensed frequencies, known as white spaces.
A coalition of powerful groups, including broadcasters, Broadway theater producers and sports franchises, hoped to derail or delay the decision. They have argued that their own transmissions — whether of television signals or from wireless microphones used in live music performances — could face interference from new devices that use the white spaces…
…In a blog post, Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and president of products, said he believed engineers and entrepreneurs would be quick to build devices to take advantage of the white spaces.
“We think that this spectrum will help put better and faster Internet connections in the hands of the public,” he wrote.
But the phone companies and cable companies will find a way to charge us more for bandwidth anyway.7685. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 11/5/2008 3:17:55 AM This planet! 7686. wabbit - 11/5/2008 4:04:00 AM LOL! 7687. jexster - 11/9/2008 3:23:43 AM CA TGV
Transbay Terminal SF
 7688. jexster - 11/14/2008 5:38:35 PM More proof recently that Concerned is right and AC wrong about global warming. Thanks to fossil fuel related brown clouds the earth is actually cooler than it might otherwise be
So fill er up with some of that 60 bbl oil and enjoy life again 7689. jexster - 11/15/2008 1:21:15 AM Is this some kind of sick joke?
No ..it is the interior of HonkerMotors Comeback car..the 2010 Camaro
Another 50 billion?
Bargain at twice the price
 7690. jexster - 11/21/2008 8:03:59 PM Plugged Into The Future
Oakland Mayor Dellums (left), S.F. Mayor Newsom (right) and San Jose Mayor Reed announced a $1 billion plan to create a network of electric-car charging stations in homes, businesses, public buildings and even streetlights by 2012. 7691. alistairconnor - 11/22/2008 12:30:10 AM oh ah so SF got jewed too?
These Better Place people impress me. It had better work. 7692. jexster - 11/22/2008 1:10:31 AM mmmm...hadn't thought of that..better percolate on it a bit 7693. jexster - 11/22/2008 1:11:55 AM OTOH while the rest of the planet is being rung out in a credit squeeze...The Bay Area and the Land Down Under should do just fine merci beaucoup 7694. jexster - 11/22/2008 2:40:08 AM Newsom: Recharge America With Electric Cars 7695. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 11/22/2008 8:11:16 PM 
7696. magoseph - 12/11/2008 2:51:03 PM Forty years ago, geeks: stanford.edu
Notable moments in mouse history
1963: Bill English constructs first mouse prototype based on Douglas Engelbart’s sketches. This mouse uses two perpendicular wheels attached to analog potentiometers to track movement. The first mouse has only one button, but more are to come.
1968: Douglas Engelbart gives a 90-minute demonstration on December 9 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. Among other things, it showcases a refined SRI mouse with three buttons.
THE DEMO
On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.
7697. alistairconnor - 12/11/2008 3:28:28 PM Mago :
I have a friend in NZ who was (according to her) babysitted in California by "the guy who invented the mouse". 7698. alistairconnor - 12/11/2008 3:35:01 PM Steven Chu, Obama's excellent choice for Energy Secretary :
(cribbed from a blog, I agree)
Nuclear has to be a necessary part of the portfolio," Chu, the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, said during the annual economic summit organized by Stanford University.
"The fear of radiation shouldn't even enter into this, he said. "Coal is very, very bad."
A very good choice
Chu was also involved with biofuels: Researchers such as Caltech's Simon have been analyzing microbes extracted from the termite's digestive system, looking for the enzymes that enable the bugs to turn wood cellulose into sugars.
... Chu is peak oil aware :
3 megabyte powerpoint from 2005
slide 15 and 16 show peak oil. "world production predicted to peak in 10-40 years" from 2004 when the stats referred to in the slide
"energy conservation can lengthen time by a factor of about 2 but the fundamental problem remains"
In 2007, 2008. Helios project replacing oil with solar and advanced biofuels
Steven Chu signed (Aug 2008) a nuclear energy position document along with the other directors of the national labs. The position was : A coherent long term nuclear power strategy is needed and nuclear power is a major and essential part of solving our energy problems.
-maximize current reactors (plant life extensions, uprate)
-deploy advanced light water reactors
-license Yucca mountain and research advanced fuel management
-aggressive R&D on advanced reactors
7699. magoseph - 12/11/2008 4:43:03 PM Ali,that's exciting about your friend. I spent much time this morning reading about Chu after I read his autobiography here:
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1997, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1998. This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Excerpt: In 1950, we settled in Garden City, New York, a bedroom community within commuting distance of Brooklyn Polytechnic. There were only two other Chinese families in this town of 25,000, but to our parents, the determining factor was the quality of the public school system. Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'être. Virtually all of our aunts and uncles had Ph.D.'s in science or engineering, and it was taken for granted that the next generation of Chu's were to follow the family tradition. When the dust had settled, my two brothers and four cousins collected three MDs, four Ph.D.s and a law degree. I could manage only a single advanced degree.
In this family of accomplished scholars, I was to become the academic black sheep. I performed adequately at school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre. I studied, but not in a particularly efficient manner. Occasionally, I would focus on a particular school project and become obsessed with, what seemed to my mother, to be trivial details instead of apportioning the time I spent on school work in a more efficient way.
The paragraphs that follow this excerpt concerning his teachers and professors are particularly interesting to me. 7700. magoseph - 12/11/2008 4:46:38 PM The first two sentences and the last one are mine, thanks to our expert, Ali, our chief geek. 7701. thoughtful - 12/13/2008 5:40:59 PM So we met with yet another a/v person last night to discuss the audio video home security situation for our new house and are extremely unhappy.
He started out like the first guy offering us a great system for "only" $40,000 +
He's nuts
So I explained what I'm looking for and got it down to probably in the realm of $15-20k, but that still seems excessive.
I'm thinking of trashing the whole idea...getting just a security system and then having the electrician pull the CATV wires where we want them and leave it at that...individually we can handle the surround sound and go wireless in the house and be done with it.
My extreme frustration is that somehow, with all this electronic wizardry, getting a system that is smart, simple, and easy to install/operate and inexpensive by this the 21st century should be a done deal. Instead it seems it's only gotten more expensive, more complicated, and further from end-user friendliness than ever!
Garrrr!
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