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Nicholas Carr comments on various studies about the amount of electricty required to power the US IT industry….
That amounts to about 350 billion kWh a year, representing a whopping 9.4% of total US electricity consumption. On a global basis, Sarokin estimates that the computing grid consumes 868 billion kWh a year, or 5.3% of total consumption.
Within the walls of the entombed Chernobyl nuclear reactor is a black slime that feeds on radiation!
This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma radiation as a food source. The fungi appear to use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use chlorophyll.
The fungi’s chemistry is altered after being bombarded by gamma rays. Of course, we can expect it to grow huge and green and go on a car-throwing tantrum, right? Or better, maybe it will grow to gargantuan proportions and go on a city-trampling, human-devouring rampage?
Groovle allows you to browse a directory of background images ” from celebrities to nature or sports, or your uploaded photo” to add to your ‘own’ Google-like search homepage. Like one with Jessica Alba. Search results show ads and are powered by Google via the Google Custom Search Engine service.
The URL for the resulting search page is fairly long, but you can bookmark it. In addition, there are are several other ways to ‘skin’ the real Google or iGoogle:
Amazon has released its new music store. As predicted, it’s DRM free music, from two of the four major labels — Universal Music and EMI, meaning that a large amount of popular music will be available in the DRM-free format. However, Sony and Warner are still absent from the line-up, and they’re not commenting.
DRM makes digital music unusable. In theory, and in practice, Amazon are making a painless (i.e. quick and simple) and safe (i.e. the files should be virus free) way to for you to ‘do the right thing’.
Supposedly, the store is currently unavailable outside the US. However, I have managed to download an album. Note that you actually download the MP3′s via an Amazon DownLoad Manager. It’s only available for Windows and OS-X.
I used my usual Amazon account and credit card, but Amazon asked me to change my billing address to a US address. Everything in the address is fictitious, except for the State, the Postcode – spot the cultural reference – and the Phone Number (which I found on an IBM page).
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The download manager stored the MP3′s in a folder called Amazon MP3/Artist/Album Name, and appears to be using the folder / file naming convention I’ve specified in Windows Media Player. A nice little extra is that it appears to clean up the amz file afterwards.
Throng is a New Zealand-based TV community web site, with plans to expand to Australia and Canada
Regan and Rachel, the site’s founders and designers, asked themselves how well the traditional grid of shows meets the viewer’s needs. The grid is either used as a reference (because it contains all the shows on at any time, you can hunt to find interesting things and program them into your TiVO) or as a browsable answer to the quick question “what’s on now?” It’s questionable how useful the grids are as references, but they do nothing to help you find something you might like to watch.
Via OReilly Radar
After two years (to the day, actually), the Times is (finally) opening up its entire site to all readers, ending the “TimesSelect” subscription program:
In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.
The newspaper said the TimesSelect project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers ??” out of 787,000 over all ??” and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.
This is an important signal of one of media’s most esteemed brands reaching the Acceptance phase in coping with the new economics of newspapers. Expect Dow Jones to follow suit with the Wall Street Journal.
Aimed squarely at home power users and small office situations, the new Fantom Drives G-Force MegaDisk NAS appliance features an integrated print server, an iTunes music server, and NTI Softwares Shadow zero-touch automated backup, and comes in 1.0 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2.0 TB configurations (list prices: $339, $579, and $999). However, please note these are US prices…
APC mag recently tested some Network Addressable Storage, but all I could find on their website were some lists of old reviews.
OK, so you hopefully know that pressing the End Call button on a Windows Mobile (Standard Edition) Smartphone ends a call. And you may know that pressing and holding the End Call button locks the keyboard (left soft-button and then * unlocks it).
But did you know that a simple press (and then release) of the button when you are not in a phone call moves you from whatever menu or app screen you are currently on back to the Today screen? This works on Pocket PCs with a End Call button too, btw. You can get back to the previous window (if you pressed End Call by accident) by pressing the Back (left arrow) button (this doesnt work on a Pocket PC Phone Edition, btw).
The End Call button is often bigger and easier to find than the Home button. So, this can be a quicker way to get back to the Today screen to, for example, make a phone call or quickly check for an upcoming appointment.
Here’s their guide to ripping CDs.
Many of our customers have already discovered that one cheap way to get DRM-free MP3s is to buy them on CD and rip them themselves
So Bush has made another stuff up, accidentially stating that Nelson Mandela is dead…..
Well, not quite… I see it as an analogy which no intelligent person could confuse.
In a speech defending his administrations Iraq policy, Bush said former Iraqi President Saddam Husseins brutality had made it impossible for a unifying leader to emerge and stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the Middle Eastern nation.
I heard somebody say, Wheres Mandela? Well, Mandelas dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas, Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington.
It is very clear he is using the name Mandela as a term for charismatic unifying leaders.