“2012″ marketing fomenting irrational fear

Via KurzweilAI.net — Just what mentally marginal need, another shove off the cliff via viral marketing and faked “scientific evidence.”

I’d say the reality challenged swing the Discovery Channel, National Geographic and other once science-based cable channels are doing plenty of damage on their own.

2012 Prophecies Sparking Real Fears, Suicide Warnings

National Geographic News, Nov. 9, 2009 Amid the hype — including a viral marketing campaign for 2012, the disaster movie opening Friday, with bogus scientific organizations, press releases, and 2012 whistle-blowers –some people are developing “end times” anxiety that has experts seriously concerned. NASA’s Nibiru and Doomsday 2012: Questions and Answersand 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End? web pages seek to debunk stories about the fictionalplanet Nibiru and predictions of doomsday in December 2012. Scenes from the motion picture “2012″ (Columbia Pictures)   Read Original Article>>

Carbon nanotubes are the wiring of the future

Previously I’ve blogged about carbon nanotubes replacing copper wiring, and here’s news of a new manufacturing technique that gets that idea closer to the mainstream. This shift in wiring is most likely a “when” instead of an “if.”

From the second link:

A new method for assembling carbon nanotubes has been used to create fibers hundreds of meters long. Individual carbon nanotubes are strong, lightweight, and electrically conductive, and could be valuable as, among other things, electrical transmission wires. But aligning masses of the nanotubes into well-ordered materials such as fibers has proven challenging at a scale suitable for manufacturing. By processing carbon nanotubes in a solution called a superacid, researchers at Rice University have made long fibers that might be used as lightweight, efficient wires for the electrical grid or as the basis of structural materials and conductive textiles.

Others have made carbon-nanotube fibers by pulling the tubes from solid hair-like arrays or by spinning them like wool as they emerge from a chemical reactor. The problem with starting from a solid, says Rice chemical engineering professor Matteo Pasquali, is that “the alignment is not spectacular, and these methods are difficult to scale up.” The better aligned and ordered the individual nanotubes in a larger structure, the better the collective structure’s electrical and mechanical properties. Using the Rice methods, well-aligned nanotube fibers can be made on a large scale, shot out from a nozzle similar to a showerhead.

The late Nobel laureate Richard Smalley started the Rice project in 2001. Smalley knew solution-processing would be a good way to assemble nanotube fibers and films because of nanotubes’ shape. Carbon nanotubes are much longer than they are wide, so when they’re in a flowing solution, they line up like logs floating down a river. But carbon nanotubes aren’t soluble in conventional solvents. The Rice group laid the foundations for liquid processing of the nanotubes five years ago, when they discovered that sulfuric acid brings the nanotubes into solution by coating their surfaces with positively charged ions.

Nanotube fiber: This fiber, which is about 40 micrometers in diameter, is made up of carbon nanotubes.
Credit: Rice University

2009 Wall Street bonuses …

… are not going to go over all that great. I understand the nature of compensation in the financial industry, but sometimes image is everything, and the industry has a pretty shabby image on Main Street.

From the link:

Ask yourself, in this day and age, with officially reported unemployment at 10.2%, the highest since 1983, should a 36-year-old derivatives trader get $10 million or $15 million in bonus money on top of a $400,000 to $1 million direct salary. It’s the hot-button money issue of our time, the only visible totem of Wall Street that the public can easily understand. The public sees headlines about stocks being up 62%, the Dow over 10,000, gold at $1,100 an ounce, interest rates at zero and a handful of financiers able to buy $40 million apartments.

It’s a great time to play the market, sure, but the overall effect on the economy is pretty hollow when small and medium businesses cannot borrow money. Treasury Secretary Geithner admits to this huge vacuum, but he has no concrete or meaningful solution.

Japan planning space-based solar power plant

Via KurzweilAI.net — Space-based solar collection gets a lot of ink and now it looks like it might even get a test run.

apan eyes solar station in space as new energy source

AFP, Nov. 8, 2009 The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to collect solar power in space and send it to Earth by 2030 using laser beams or microwaves, and has created a consortium (the Institute for Unmanned SpaceExperiment Free Flyer) that includes Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Fujitsu and Sharp. (Japan Institute for Unmanned Space Experiment Free Flyer)   Read Original Article>>

Sully on K-Lo

Kathryn-Jean Lopez is an editor-at-large for the National Review Online and is no rocket scientist. Sadly, the National Review, a once bastion of intellectual thought on the right, is now pretty much lockstep with what passes for political philosophy on the American right — that is, it doesn’t exist. Plenty of me-tooism and anger at paper tigers, but not so much on the fronts that make any difference.

Andrew Sullivan, blogger of the Daily Dish, and an actual philosophical conservative, totally nails Lopez here:

… this is National Review, a place where intellectual Catholicism once had a home, where Buckley and Muggeridge wrote, where Wills got his start … and now we’re left with a person with the intellectual heft of a college sophomore …

 

House of Representatives passes health care reform bill

Final tally of 220-215 for the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Now the show is off to the Senate.

SEC football officials are either on the take …

… very high or just incompetent. The new conference rule fining coaches who complain about the officiating is crazy. The zebras make NBA officials look good and that’s saying something.

And this post is coming from someone who thinks college football is an almost impossible-to-watch game played by kids who’ll never make it in the NFL aside from the few hundred that end up on NFL rosters each new season.

The SEC ought to be very very embarrassed by its officiating, particularly the replay booth work.

So conference executives which is it — bribery, drug use or lack of ability?

Do exchange-traded funds create investment bubbles?

More specifically, bubbles in emerging markets — short answer, no.

From the link, a bit more behind the short answer:

So what does all this mean for investors? ETFs probably haven’t caused a bubble, and they might even help a bit to prevent one from forming. But many will remain superconcentrated bets on very risky markets. If you invest in an ETF with most of its assets in a few stocks and think you have made a diversified bet, the real bubble is the one between your own ears.

My deepest condolences and sympathy go out …

… to the victims, family and loved ones of everyone affected by the tragic Fort Hood shooting.

Now that more sober details are coming to light it’s clear the gunman was very disturbed, and his religious beliefs were a factor in the rampage. And there were many heroes — not unexpected among our armed forces — that day, particularly Sgt. Kimberly Denise Munley, a member of the SWAT team for Fort Hood’s civilian police department, who in a tactical move charged the still firing Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, taking rounds herself while ending his shooting spree.

Overdraft fees — consumer banks v. consumers

Consumer banking has largely been about screwing the customer for a long time — at least as far as the large, national, impersonal banks (you know, the ones that advertise on television) go. Long ago, something like 15 years ago, I wrote an article for a business magazine on some of the underhanded techniques consumer banks were using to gouge customers.

Back then one of the growing trends was charging a premium for what was called a “meatspace transaction.” Although it sounds vaguely pornographic, a meatspace transaction was anything that involved a living teller, either face-to-face or through drive-up banking. Happily that bit of foolishness didn’t have any legs. One troubling practice that did, and still does, is overdraft fees and how they are processed.

They are almost unavoidable in terms of the bank will happily let you go below your balance instead of declining the transaction.

From the link:

Ever write a check thinking you had plenty in your account to cover it? Make a debit card purchase before your paycheck cleared? How about the time you withdrew $5 too much from the ATM?

Sure, your bank was happy to cover the amount. Why not? Although touted as a customer “convenience,” overdraft fees have been soaring. Last year, overdraft charges generated nearly $24 billion dollars for banks and credit unions. That’s 35% more than just two years earlier, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

Warning! No Warning

The first problem with overdraft fees is that you don’t receive any notice that the transaction you’re about to make will exceed the balance in your account. If you did, at least you’d be able to choose whether you want to continue with it or not.

In some cases you can trigger overdraft charges even if your online statement shows you have plenty in yourchecking account! That’s because your balance is “theoretical” and doesn’t reflect the fact that a recent deposit may not have been in your account long enough for the funds to “clear.”

But the really dirty part of the process is how your incoming transactions are handled:

The Re-ordering Trick

Another criticism is that financial institutions can play games with your transactions in order to trigger a cascade of overdrafts.

For instance, say you make four debit card purchases in a day. Your available balance was $90. The first three transactions were for $25, $20, and $40. The last one was for $100. If taken in chronological order, there is adequate money in your account to cover the first three purchases. Only the last one would result in an overdraft charge.

But that’s not the way your bank computer system is programmed. Instead, it will change the order of your purchases in order to deplete your account sooner by subtracting the largest transactions first.

In the above example, your $100 purchase would come out of your account ahead of the other three. Since it exceeds your balance by $10, it generates a $35 charge. Next, with your account already under water (according to the bank’s math), your other three purchases are posted. You end up paying $140 (4 x $35) for the “convenience” of overdraft protection.

Quite the trick there. Consumer banks have been playing so dirty for so long, and were on the receiving end of so much government bailout money Congress is stepping up to the plate for the consumer at long last.

We’ll see where this ends up, but I think it’s about time Main Street was given a little protection from practices that should have been illegal from the get-go. I guess we ought to be happy consumer banks didn’t go around breaking kneecaps like Vinny from the corner might have. Because really, that’s about the only difference between usury and a typical consumer bank.

Also from the link:

Kathleen Day, a spokesperson for the Center for Responsible Lending, calls the current state of overdraft fees “ridiculous” and an “outrage.” The Center and other consumer protection organizations place the blame squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve, which regulates most large financial institutions in this country.

“The Fed has known for years these practices are hurting customers and they’ve failed to act,” charges Day. The Senate Finance Committee has drafted the “Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act,” or the FAIR Act, which would limit overdraft fees banks can impose.

China fears microblogging

Doesn’t the leadership know information wants to be free — even at 140 Modern English alphabet characters a pop.

Jokes aside, here’s a bit from the first link:

A Chinese government watchdog plans to push Twitter-style Web sites to censor their content, the country’s latest move to block Internet users from posting certain politically sensitive information online.The government-linked Internet Society of China plans to compose “self-discipline standards” for microblogging services, a group representative said in an e-mail. The representative declined to give details, but the group has released similar guidelines for other Web sites before. A document the group released for blog providers calls for them to delete “illegal or harmful information” as it appears on their sites, or simply to cease blog service for infringing users. Chinese authorities have used the term “harmful information” to describe online content including pornography and discussion of politically sensitive topics such as Falun Gong, a spiritual group banned in the country.

Twitter and Facebook have been blocked in all of China since July, when deadly ethnic riots in the country’s western Xinjiang region led it to crack down on communication tools that could be used to gather people at a given location. Authorities also blocked all Internet service and text messaging in Xinjiang after the rioting, which state-run media say killed nearly 200 people.

Some Chinese-language Twitter rivals also went offline after the rioting. One of the bigger sites, Digu, came online again last month, but rival service Fanfou is still down.

The HP DreamScreen 100 internet touchscreen

This thing looks pretty cool …

HP DreamScreen 100 Internet Touchscreen
Think of it as a digital photo frame on steroids. The HP DreamScreen 100, available in 10- and 13-inch models, does more than merely display family snapshots. Connect this sexy display (#98 in The PC World 100: Best Products of 2009) to your home network via Wi-Fi or ethernet, and you can then use the handheld remote to stream your favorite Pandora channels or up to 10,000 Internet radio stations, view your calendar, set alarms, see a five-day weather forecast, and catch up with your peeps on Facebook. Put this beauty on your nightstand, and you can finally toss your old clock radio.

Full review | $250 to $300 | Check prices

Texting and driving just don’t mix — even hands-free

An interesting blog post from Dan Ariely, a visiting professor at MIT’s Media Library on the “tiny irregularities” of texting while driving:

Sad story out in the New York Times describing growing concerns about texting while driving. In Britain, a woman was sentenced to a 21-month sentence after it was found that she had been texting while driving, which resulted in the death of a 24-year old design student. In many ways, texting while driving illustrates a case in which tiny, individual irrational decisions can accumulate and cause widespread suffering, not only for the individuals who are texting, but their unsuspecting victims. Unlike cases of drunk driving, in which the driver’s decision making abilities are impaired, drivers who text are at their full wits to wait until they’ve pulled over to check their texts, and yet in the process they routinely underestimate the risk they impose to themselves and others.

The professor was quite wrong, however, on one aspect of the issue:

… we can hope that cell phone companies are continuing to explore voice activation technologies that can read text messages aloud and also transcribe them from voice — thereby by-passing the problem altogether.

In researching web content I created for an insurance website, I came across this research that finds hands-free listening  to mobile devices is not much safer than hands-on cell phone use because the issue is the distraction of the usage, not merely taking eyes off the road ahead (all bold text my emphasis):

Five states currently ban the use of hand-held cell phones in favor of hands-free devices while driving. However, several studies have shown that there is little difference between the two when it comes to minding the road ahead. Both hand-held and hands-free devices involve listening. The act of listening is what distracts drivers from paying attention to the road. A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University placed participants in a functional MRI scanner that allowed researchers to observe brain activity while the subjects “drove” on a computerized roadway. Without distractions, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involved in spatial perception (knowing where you are and what’s around you). When the same subjects were tasked with listening to and correctly answering a series of questions as they drove, the area of the brain that lit up most was the area involving language comprehension, while activity in the spatial perception area of the brain decreased by as much as 37 percent. Multitasking places high demands on the brain.

Protecting your privacy when using search engines

Sounds like a useful tool in this world of massive data collection by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and many others.

The release:

A new system preserves the right to privacy in Internet searches

		IMAGE: A new system preserves the right to privacy in Internet searches. Click here for more information.

A team of Catalan researchers has developed a protocol to distort the user profile generated by Internet search engines, in such a way that they cannot save the searches undertaken by Internet users and thus preserve their privacy. The study has been published in the Computer Communications magazine.

Just imagine someone from Company X who uses the Google search engine to obtain information about a certain technology. If Company Y, a competitor of X, should discover this situation, it could infer that the abovementioned technology is going to be used in X’s new products, and with that information it could obtain a competitive edge. In the same way, a mass media enterprise that finds out the searches undertaken by the competition’s journalists could infer what news items they are working on and beat them to it. A personal report could also be drawn up on someone based on their searches.

In order to solve these types of situations, a team of researchers from three Catalan universities (the Rovira i Virgili University, the Autónoma of Barcelona and the Oberta of Catalonia) has developed a system which preserves user privacy via a new computer protocol, whose details are published in the Computer Communications magazine.

“It is a model based on cryptographic tools which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet”, explains Alexandre Viejo to SINC. He is one of the authors of the study and a researcher at the Computer Engineering Department of the Rovira i Virgili University, “in such a way that their privacy is preserved”.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Live search save the profiles of their users (via an analysis of the searches they undertake) with the argument that they are more familiar with their interests and offer a more efficient response.

There currently exist types of software which provide anonymous navigation, such as the Tor network, but the new system “offers a clear improvement in response time”. Nevertheless, Alexandre Viejo acknowledges that the application of the protocol delays searches slightly, “but it can be perfectly assumed by the user”.

The tool prototype has already been tried in closed (research centre intranets) and open (internet) environments, “and the results allow us to be optimistic with the global implementation of the model”. The researchers are now working on the development of a final user version and trust that it will soon be easily integrated into the main platforms and browsers.

###

References:

Jordi Castellà-Roca, Alexandre Viejo, Jordi Herrera-Joancomartí. “Preserving user’s privacy in web search engines”. Computer Communications32 (13-14): 1541�, 2009.

It’s that time again …

… autumn is in full swing and winter isn’t far behind. If you haven’t winterized your home, now is the time. Depending on where you live this could be a quick afternoon of mild chores, or an entire operation to get your house ready for worst Jack Frost can bring. The first step should be checking out the heating portion of your HVAC system to make sure everything is working order, clean and ready for operation. Next is the roof and chimney, particularly gutters and downspouts. Take a look at your gutters or gutter protection to make sure things aren’t clogged up preventing proper drainage. Also inspect the “envelope” of your home for drafts, air leaks and missing insulation. And don’t forget your pipes — especially outdoor pipes. You don’t want a surprise water leak after a hard freeze and thaw.

One good way to minimize your winterizing chores is to cover your chimney and gutters to minimize debris accumulation. A good gutter protection system will protect your gutters, downspouts and drains year-round and end that pesky winterizing chore of making sure every spot is clear of leaves, bird and rodent nests, and areas of standing water that can lead to corrosion and mosquito problems during warm weather.

Hit any link in this post to head to Outdora.com and the GutterPiller gutter protection system. The system has been featured on “This Old House” and has won the “Retailers’ Choice Award” multiple times. Outdora offers two GutterPiller gutter protection systems — the GutterPiller Twisted Wire Gutter Protection System and the Black Magic Filter Gutter Screen Protection System. You can even find gutter brushes to help you clear out clogged — and probably unprotected — gutters, and splash guards to help disperse water under your drainspouts.

If winterizing isn’t your favorite seasonal chore, and I’m betting it isn’t, a gutter protection system takes one item right off of your list.

 

 

Solar energy and the artificial leaf

Very interesting solar breakthrough, or near to it at least. Plus more on the state of the solar industry.

The release:

Chemists describe solar energy progress and challenges, including the ‘artificial leaf’

WASHINGTON, Nov. 5, 2009 — Scientists are making progress toward development of an “artificial leaf” that mimics a real leaf’s chemical magic with photosynthesis — but instead converts sunlight and water into a liquid fuel such as methanol for cars and trucks. That is among the conclusions in a newly-available report from top authorities on solar energy who met at the 1st Annual Chemical Sciences and Society Symposium. The gathering launched a new effort to initiate international cooperation and innovative thinking on the global energy challenge.

The three-day symposium, which took place in Germany this past summer, included 30 chemists from China, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. It was organized through a joint effort of the science and technology funding agencies and chemical societies of each country, including the U. S. National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society. The symposium series was initiated though the ACS Committee on International Activities in order to offer a unique forum whereby global challenges could be tackled in an open, discussion-based setting, fostering innovative solutions to some of the world’s most daunting challenges.

A “white paper” entitled “Powering the World with Sunlight,” describes highlights of the symposium and is available along with related materials here.

“The sun provides more energy to the Earth in an hour than the world consumes in a year,” the report states. “Compare that single hour to the one million years required for the Earth to accumulate the same amount of energy in the form of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are not a sustainable resource, and we must break our dependence on them. Solar power is among the most promising alternatives.”

The symposium focused on four main topics:

• Mimicking photosynthesis using synthetic materials such as the “artificial leaf”
• Production and use of biofuels as a form of stored solar energy
• Developing innovative, more efficient solar cells
• Storage and distribution of solar energy

   

The scientists pointed out during the meeting that plants use solar energy when they capture and convert sunlight into chemical fuel through photosynthesis. The process involves the conversion of water and carbon dioxide into sugars as well as oxygen and hydrogen. Scientists have been successful in mimicking this fuel-making process, termed artificial photosynthesis, but now must finds ways of doing so in ways that can be used commercially. Participants described progress toward this goal and the scientific challenges that must be met before solar can be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Highlights of the symposium include a talk by Kazunari Domen, Ph.D., of the University of Tokyo in Japan. Domen described current research on developing more efficient and affordable catalysts for producing hydrogen using a new water-splitting technology called “photocatalytic overall water splitting.” The technology uses light-activated nanoparticles, each 1/50,000 the width of a human hair, to convert water to hydrogen. This technique is more efficient and less expensive than current technologies, he said.

Domen noted that the ultimate goal of artificial photosynthesis is to produce a liquid fuel, such as methanol, or “wood alcohol.” Achieving this goal would fulfil the vision of creating an “artificial leaf” that not only splits water but uses the reaction products to create a more usable fuel, similar to what leaves do.

Among the “take-home messages” cited in the report:

• There’s no single best solution to the energy problem. Scientists must seek more affordable, sustainable solutions to the global energy challenge by considering all the options.
• Investing in chemistry is investing in the future. Strong basic research is fundamental to realizing the potential of solar energy and making it affordable for large-scale use.
• Society needs a new generation of “energy scientists” to explore new ways to capture, convert, and store solar energy.

   

“The meeting was an experiment worth trying,” said Teruto Ohta, executive director of the Chemical Society of Japan.

Conference organizers expressed hope that the symposium will be the first of several to tackle “the global challenges of the 21st century and the indispensible role that the chemical sciences play in addressing these issues,” said Klaus Mullen, president of the German Chemistry Association.

“Building on the success of this first symposium, we’re now gearing up for the future, convening top chemical scientists to address other, equally pressing global challenges,” said Julie Callahan of the ACS Office of International Activities and principal investigator on the project. “It is an exciting time to be a chemist!”

###

The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 154,000 members, ACS is the world’s largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

No more Sarb-Ox for small business?

This should be welcome news.

From the link:

Small businesses would be granted a permanent reprieve from complying with part of the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform laws, under a draft U.S. House of Representatives bill discussed on Tuesday.

Small companies have not had to comply fully with the rules since the Sarbanes-Oxley law was approved in 2002 in response to the Enron and WorldCom corporate scandals.

Companies with a market capitalization below $75 million have argued that they faced disproportionately higher costs compared with larger companies and have convinced regulators to delay compliance at least five times.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is now requiring small companies to report on the effectiveness of their internal controls as of June 15, 2010.

But Republicans, hoping to thwart this SEC requirement, introduced an amendment on Tuesday to a House Financial Services Committee draft bill to do just that.

Here’s one way to work out health care solutions

Via KurzweilAI.net – I’d say the X Prize has moved private space travel a good ways down the path to commercial viability.

Peter Diamandis: the joy of taking risks

New Scienist Space, Nov. 4, 2009 Peter Diamandis, CEO of the X Prize Foundation, wants to use our competitive instincts to make the world a better place–his latest: a heath care prize.   Read Original Article>>

Fed sees overnight lending rates remaining around nil …

… for an “extended period.”

Google’s Dashboard feature

Apparently this thing rolled out today, but after a quick peek around I couldn’t find it.

From the link:

Google is offering a new privacy control that will make it easier for people to see some of the information being collected about them.

The “Dashboard” feature unveiled Thursday pulls together all the data that pour into Google’s computers whenever Web surfers log in to one of the company’ services.

That includes summaries of an individual’s e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google’s video site, YouTube. Before, a user would have to check multiple places for all that.

Update 11/6/09 — Here’s the Google Dashboard story with links straight from Mountain View.

Genome 10K Project

Via KurzweilAI.net — Interesting. And it is just amazing to think DNA sequencing costs are expected to go down by an order of magnitude or more over “the next couple of years.”

Genome 10K: A new ark

Science News, Nov. 4, 2009 The Genome 10K Project aims to collect tissues or cells from at least 10,000 vertebrate species, enough to catalog DNA sequences from about every vertebrate genus. Its designers have decided to wait for sequencing costs to drop by a factor of 10 or more — probably in the next couple years — before launching their analytical program.   Read Original Article>>

Gamma ray astronomy

A weird, and in ways growing more weird, branch of astronomy. Gamma bursts are insanely intense, as this bit from the link attests, ” … they release in a few seconds, the energy equivalent to the rest mass of the Sun.” They are also becoming more mysterious as we learn more about them. I don’t subscribe to the idea, but I’ve heard it posited that what we as gamma bursts are evidence of alien races battling it out with unimaginably destructive weaponry.

China dominating solar manufacturing

If you follow the solar cell industry at all that fact should be very readily apparent. The Chinese government has put great emphasis o0n and money into solar. One major advantage Chinese firms have over U.S. and European competitors that’s not going away any time soon is labor costs.

From the link:

Solar companies presenting business plans to investors at a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conference this week devoted particular attention to how they hope to compete with Chinese manufacturers. The audience at the NREL Industry Growth Forum in Denver consisted largely of venture capitalists and partners from private equity firms.

Stellaris, a company that assembles solar modules in Lowell, MA, has already received $6.1 million in funding to develop techniques for packaging silicon and thin-film cells. The company, represented at the conference by CEO James Paull, is seeking further financing in 2010.

Selectable Output Control — Hollywood v. the consumer

These battles are growing very, very old. You’d think Hollywood would’ve gotten the message from the RIAA’s brainless battles against the digital world that this is going to solve very little to nothing, but the blowback can and will be significant. Just another entertainment dinosaur howling and thrashing at the changing world of smaller, nimbler and smarter competitors.

From the boing boing link:

Alex sez,

The battle over your home entertainment equipment is heating up again and the time to make your voice heard is now. Hollywood wants the FCC to grant the studios permission to engage in so-called “”Selectable Output Control.” SOC is a tech mandate that would allow movie studios to shut off video outputs on the back of your cable box and DVR during the screening of certain movies over cable.

Also from the link:

Yes, you read that right. The studios want the right to randomly switch off parts of your home theater depending on which program you’re watching. And the FCC is taking this batshit proposal seriously.

So do something.

Tell the FCC to Say “No” to the Cable Kill Switch (Thanks, Alex!)

Improving Captchas

Via KurzweilAI.net — And really anything — anything — that improved Captchas would be very welcome.

Animated ink-blot images keep unwanted bots at bay

New Scientst Tech, Nov 3, 2009 Captchas, the scrambled images used to separate humans from software bots online, could become harder for bots to solve and easier for humans to handle by animating them, says computer scientist Niloy Mitra at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, who along with colleagues has devised a system that should separate the bots from the humans.   Read Original Article>>

NewMajority.com has rebranded …

… to FrumForum.com.

From the link, David Frum’s take on the move:

From the time we launched the New Majority site, we have had to cope with a problem with our name. Simply put, there are a lot of “New Majorities” out there. There’s one down the road in Virginia, another at the New World Foundation, a conservative 501c4 here, a liberal one there. All this generated serious confusion, but the worst was with the best known New Majority of them all, TheNewMajority in California, because their mission and ours so closely overlapped. That overlap was leading to very unnecessary conflict with people who wanted many of the same reforms that we did.

The best solution seemed to be: a change of name. But to what?

New York-23

I’m of a split mind on this race and what it portends. Once a third-party (Conservative Party no less) entered the race and actually got enough traction to boot Scozzafava, the GOP candidate with New York state moderate Republican bona fides, I immediate thought this is beginning of the end of the GOP. The three-legged stool has been broken for a while and the 2008 election cycle busted it for good. The question has been how will the GOP regroup. The response so far has been a reduction to a theocratic, angry, white rump of a party with around a quarter of of the voting population willing to admit to even being a member of the Republican Party.

My second mind on this race is I see some sanity from different pundits around the blogosphere who argue not to make too much out of an off-year election in a tiny district.

The issue, now that the election is done, and has been won by a Democrat for the first time in more than 150 years. It’s just one vote in the House, but the national GOP leaders — and sadly that group doesn’t really contain any office holders and is largely comprised of entertainers — happily lost a Republican vote that was going to be a little squishy (and thus a RINO) for a Democratic vote that potentially will never cross the aisle.

The end result is the Democratic leadership has little to fear from a new Conservative Party leaving the GOP and a lot to gain from just that occurrence. The entertainers-in-chiefs leading the current GOP have been proven to be quite toothless in swinging elections and the angry rump of the GOP has been shown they can be quite effective in ridding the party of those less-than-pure RINOs. This group will trade ideology for elections any day believing that as the GOP becomes more “pure” — that is, pure to their thinking — it’ll start winning elections again.

This does not make for a winning combination. It’s telling the big GOP wins yesterday in governor elections did not come from the frothy edge of the right. Sadly for the GOP the frothy edge of the right owns the national spotlight, and as long as entertainers set the Republican standards that will remain the status quo. Money for the entertainers, Democrats in elected office.

The Green Wave continues

The revolution against Iran’s despotic ruling faction is far from over and there have been a multitude of reports of “Death to the Dictator” shout and defacing and stomping on posters of Khamenei.

From the link:

1902 GMT: Josh Shahryar, having gone through the videos and reports of today’s events, estimates that 25,000 to 30,000 opposition demonstrators were on the streets of Tehran at some point during 13 Aban. An estimated 2000-3000 were marching in Isfahan, but there is not enough information yet to project the numbers in other cities.

Breakthrough in large-scale nanotube processing

Via KurzweilAI.net — These manufacturing breakthroughs aren’t as exciting and sexy as a groundbreaking medical application or replacing copper wiring with carbon nanotubes or graphene, but they are key to turning nanotechnology into a viable industry.

Breakthrough In Industrial-scale Nanotube Processing

ScienceDaily, Nov. 3, 2009 Rice University scientists have unveiled a method for high-throughput industrial-scale processing of carbon-nanotube fibers, using chlorosulfonic acid as a solvent. The process that could lead to revolutionary advances in materials science, power distribution and nanoelectronics.   Read Original Article>>

Halloween video fun — Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash”

Have fun, be safe.