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Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Renewable Energy Brightens Small Off Grid Homes but Problems with Accessing Supply Keeps Some In The Dark
1.5 billion people don't have electricity to see at night, to charge their cell phones, to power their computers. They are at the whims of the elements, not having a fan to cool off in the summer or a heater to stay warm in the winter. New sources of renewable energy provide the ability for them to have more of a normal life and may one day even allow them to take a hot shower, but without access to the supply they are literally kept in the dark.
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
African Huts Far From the Grid Glow With Renewable Power
The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal.
There is no reliable data on the spread of off-grid renewable energy on a small scale, in part because the projects are often installed by individuals or tiny nongovernmental organizations.
But Dana Younger, senior renewable energy adviser at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, said there was no question that the trend was accelerating. “It’s a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed,” Mr. Younger said.
With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. “You’re seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts,” Mr. Younger said.
In addition to these small solar projects, renewable energy technologies designed for the poor include simple subterranean biogas chambers that make fuel and electricity from the manure of a few cows, and “mini” hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village.
Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread.
“Finally, these products exist, people are asking for them and are willing to pay,” he said. “But we can’t get supply.” He said small African organizations like his do not have the purchasing power or connections to place bulk orders themselves from distant manufacturers, forcing them to scramble for items each time a shipment happens to come into the country.
Cityville More Popular Than Farmville on Facebook
500 to 700 million in revenue for virtual goods. 61.7 million players for Cityville alone. 261 million active users of Zynga games. Not too shabby for free games online.
Amplify’d from www.readwriteweb.com
Thursday, December 23, 2010
New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'
Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk
New solar fuel machine 'mimics plant life'
A prototype solar device has been unveiled which mimics plant life, turning the Sun's energy into fuel.
Don't Ask Don't Tell Being Repealed
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Obama Signs Away ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’
WASHINGTON — The military’s longstanding ban on service by gays and lesbians came to a historic and symbolic end on Wednesday, as President Obama signed legislation repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the contentious 17-year old Clinton-era law that sought to allow gays to serve under the terms of an uneasy compromise that required them to keep their sexuality a secret.
“No longer will tens of thousands of Americans in uniform be asked to live a lie or look over their shoulder,” Mr. Obama said during a signing ceremony in a packed auditorium at the Interior Department here. Quoting the chairman of his joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, Mr. Obama went on, “Our people sacrifice a lot for their country, including their lives. None of them should have to sacrifice their integrity as well.”
The repeal does not immediately put a stop to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Mr. Obama must still certify that changing the law to allow homosexual and bisexual men and women to serve openly in all branches of the military will not harm readiness, as must Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mullen, before the military can implement the new law. But the secretary and the admiral have backed Mr. Obama, who said ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” was a topic of his first meeting with the men. He praised Mr. Gates for his courage; Admiral Mullen, who was on stage with the president during the signing ceremony here, received a standing ovation.
While there is still significant resistance within the military to the change in policy, especially within the Marine Corps, at least one proponent — Representative Barney Frank, the openly gay Democrat from Massachusetts — insisted on Wednesday that this latest effort to integrate the armed services will go more smoothly than did racial or gender integration.
In the years since President Bill Clinton first enacted “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, some 17,000 service members have been discharged under the policy. While many gay people in the military are now breathing a sigh of relief, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which represents soldiers facing charges under the policy, is warning its members that they are “still at risk” because the repeal will not take full effect until 60 days after Mr. Obama, the defense secretary and admiral certify readiness.
“The bottom line is DADT is still in effect and it is not safe to come out,” the organization said.
The Next Evolution in Computer and Electronic Memory
It is interesting to have seen the giant leaps that memory has taken in the past and to see that engineers are able to still enhance it to such a great degree makes me excited about the types of devices we will have in the next couple of decades.
Amplify’d from news.cnet.com
New IBM memory promises faster, higher-capacity devices
A new kind of memory from IBM Labs is promising to revolutionize how much data we can store and how fast we can access it on our mobile and desktop devices.
After spending six years as a theoretical concept, the memory, dubbed Racetrack, finally is a huge step closer to reality. Researchers at IBM have recently confirmed that their theories of the physics behind Racetrack are valid and can be used to develop and manufacture this new type of memory.
This revolutionary type of memory could open up a whole new world for laptops, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Users would be able to store as much as 100 more times data on their portable gadgets, perhaps keeping as many as 500,000 songs or 3,500 full-length movies on one mobile device. And since Racetrack would use considerably less power, a single battery charge could power a device for weeks rather than days or hours.
The new memory is also expected to play a role in desktop computers and servers, allowing them to access more data much faster. In some ways, Racetrack combines the best elements of flash memory and magnetic storage and could prove to be the one technology to someday replace current RAM, Flash RAM, and even conventional disk drives.
Images of a "racetrack" designed to pin domain walls at specific positions.
Romeo the Robot To Assist The Elderly
Amplify’d from news.cnet.com
Romeo the robot ready to love you
Aldebaran Robotics, a Parisian company known for creating the pint-sized Nao robot, is working with major French research organizations on a new assisted-living humanoid bot named Romeo.
Set to debut in prototype form late next year, Romeo is a 4.5 foot, 88-pound autonomous companion that aims to assist the elderly and disabled with daily activities. The robot with the romantic-hero moniker could do things like keep tabs on owners' health and summon medical assistance if something appears to go wrong; keep track of small objects such as eyeglasses and remote controls; and help with tasks like taking out the trash, opening and closing doors, or fetching a snack from the fridge.
Movies going to video on demand concerns theaters
Obama To Restore Wilderness Rules For Public Lands
Amplify’d from www.npr.org
Obama To Restore Wilderness Rules For Public Lands
The Obama administration plans to reverse a Bush-era policy and make millions of undeveloped acres of land once again eligible for federal wilderness protection, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday.
The agency will replace the 2003 policy adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Salazar said. That policy — derided by some as the "No More Wilderness'' policy — stated that new areas could not be recommended for wilderness protection by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and opened millions of acres in the Rocky Mountain region to potential commercial development.
Congressional Republicans pounced on the "Wild Lands'' announcement as an attempt by the Obama administration to close land to development without congressional approval.
When Freedom of Speech Lands on Deaf Ears
Amazon pulls service from WikiLeaks after intense pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman. "The whistle-blowing site was effectively taken offline when Amazon withdrew its hosting services and DNS provider, Every DNS, pulled the plug on its services." "...the ability of virtually anyone to speak freely online can be constrained by the corporate decision making of internet intermediaries."
Amplify’d from www.pcpro.co.uk
Human rights sites "under constant DDoS attack"
The “cyber war” involving WikiLeaks was only the tip of the iceberg in a wave of political hacking attacks targeting sites with differing opinions, according to a report from Harvard University.
"Amazon’s decision to remove WikilLeaks from its servers – under intense pressure from Senator Joe Lieberman – complicated one of the major suggestions we offer in the report,” said Zuckerman.
“Amazon’s disturbing decision to stop providing services to WikiLeaks suggests that our advice might need to be rethought - the ability of virtually anyone to speak freely online can be constrained by the corporate decision making of internet intermediaries."
Untitled
Amplify’d from blogs.pcmag.com
Microsoft has issued an advisory for an unpatched vulnerability affecting all versions of Internet Explorer on all platforms. The vulnerability could allow a malicious web page to trigger a denial of service or remote code execution in the context of the IE user. Exploit code for the vulnerability has been published but there not yet any reports of active exploits in the wild.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
I love books and digital books rock
I would love to see Kindles, and improved Kindle like ebook devices replace paper books. The savings of the trees... the ability to walk around with a library in your backpack...and if they are proliferating so profusely does that mean a decline in the price? Could you see them replacing school books at public schools? Parents buying a Kindle for their child and the schools getting rights, or even creating their own text books, such that all they have to do is download them to the Kindle and never complain about not having enough text books ever again. Open source education, what a concept. And whatever author could say no to having a child have access to their book for free is an author I wouldn't want to read anyways. lol
Amplify’d from uknewsreporter.co.uk
Kindle eBook Reader Now the Most Popular Gift on Amazon
A message from The Kindle Team on Amazon says, “Kindle is far and away our bestselling gift item.” In fact sales of the updated version of the eBook reader have grown so fast in the current period that the statement also says, “in just the first 73 days of this holiday quarter, we’ve already sold millions of our all-new Kindles with the latest E Ink Pearl display. In fact, in the last 73 days, readers have purchased more Kindles than we sold during all of 2009.”
What... no due process needed any more?
Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com
Music Web Sites Dispute Legality of Their Closing
When federal authorities shut down five Web sites last month on suspicion of copyright infringement, they gave no warning and offered no details of their investigation, and they have not filed any criminal charges since.
But after the seizure warrant used in the operation was released last week, the operators of several of the sites said in interviews that they were innocent of infringement, and criticized the investigation for misrepresenting how their sites worked.
The agent also said the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade groups for the major film studios and record labels, had confirmed that the music and movies on the sites had not been released with the authorization of their copyright holders.
Yet after being shown the affidavit, the operator of dajaz1.com — a widely read hip-hop blog that posts new songs and videos — disputed many of the warrant’s examples of what it called copyright infringement. He said that, like much of the material on his site, the songs had been sent to him for promotional purposes by record labels and the artists.
Waleed A. GadElKareem, an Egyptian who operated torrent-finder.com, said his site was essentially a search engine for BitTorrent — a decentralized file-sharing system that can be used for any data — with results that are easily found elsewhere on the Internet.
(Torrent-finder.com, like several of the seized domains, has relocated; it is now fully operational at torrent-finder.info.)
The sites were shut over the Thanksgiving weekend as part of “Operation In Our Sites,” a crackdown on 82 domains, or Web addresses, suspected of copyright infringement and selling counterfeit handbags, sunglasses and other consumer goods. The investigation is continuing. Unlike most previous similar government crackdowns, the domains were seized with no warning.
The move has drawn criticism among many bloggers and Web advocates who see it as a preview of a controversial bill in Congress, the Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act, which would extend the attorney general’s power in pursuing Web sites believed to be “dedicated to infringing activities.”
“There is tremendous concern about the climate of fear and uncertainty this is going to create,” said Peter Eckersley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group. “It’s a troubling situation where basically any Web site that the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t like and is convinced has too much infringing material on it can just disappear overnight.”
Zamzar - Free online file conversion
Interesting site. Convert images, videos, documents online. Has the ability to to take a url of a video and convert it to a specific format and email it to you. Convert pdf to Excel( recommendation by Ashraf as a free alternative to the give away of the day today.) Posted for later reference, if needed.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Print any file to pdf format for free
Print to pdf format as easily as printing to a printer.
Amplify’d from www.ronyasoft.com
Is it hard to make your own PDF files, or convert the existing documents to PDF format? With help of PDF Printer it is absolutely not. PDF Creator works as virtual printer. It allows making PDF files from any Windows programs that support printing. Created documents are fully compatible with Adobe’s Acrobat Reader and can be viewed with any PDF viewer in any operating system.
PDF Writer is as easy to use as 1-2-3. Just open the needed document, select PDF Printer in the list of available printers, click print button, specify path to the output file and your own quality PDF is ready! Create PDF files with your own free PDF Maker!
Automate the acceptance of Gifts from your friends on Facebook
I get tired of accepting all those facebook gifts for Farmville, and numerous other games I play on Facebook. Once had over a hundred and some just sitting there because I am too lazy to collect them all. That's when I ran across this little script to automate the acceptance of those gifts. Let me get back in the game while not spending all day gathering.
Amplify’d from userscripts.org
Adds checkboxes to each request and a big accept button allowing you to accept them all at once
Train your monkey to grab posts off Farmville on Facebook
Playing Farmville on facebook but getting tired of clicking on all those posts from your friends to get animals, eggs, etc? Well don't fret because the Grease Monkey add on for Firefox is here for you. With this user script you can train your monkey to get all those Farmville posts for you. Don't forget to check out Frontierville Wall Manager as well if you are playing that game.
Requires Grease Monkey add on.Amplify’d from userscripts.org
FarmVille Wall Manager
Manages farmville wall posts; accepts bonuses, grabs bouquets, adopts animals, hatches eggs, and more