Sub-$100 laptop design unveiled
A big name provides a real prospect that this will happen.
Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, has been outlining designs for a sub-$100 PC.
The laptop will be tough and foldable in different ways, with a hand crank for when there is no power supply.
Professor Negroponte came up with the idea for a cheap computer for all after visiting a Cambodian village.
His non-profit One Laptop Per Child group plans to have up to 15 million machines in production within a year.
A prototype of the machine should be ready in November at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunisia.
BBC
A Small Step
The
Register reports that BT has started to respond to the challenge from VoIp. It will be interesting to see if Eircom can.
Another Test
I enjoy doing
these, I don't know why.
There must be some deficiency in my diet.
Turning The Pages
An opportunity to see some rare books in a level of detail that you could not see even if you went to
The British Library. I spent a fascinating time looking at the first Atlas of Europe.
Blog censorship handbook released
The BBC reports on an important handbook for Bloggers.A handbook that offers advice to bloggers who want to protect themselves from recrimination and censors has been released by Reporters Without Borders.
The media watchdog said it gives people who want to set up a blog tips on how to do so, how to publicise it, as well as how to establish credibility.
It also offers advice about writing blogs from countries with tough media restrictions, such as Iran and China.
Brilliant!
The BBC report thatA college student who hopes to graduate without debt by selling $1m dollars worth of internet advertising space has already made $74,000 (ã43,500).
Alex Tew, 21, of Cricklade, Wiltshire, who will go to Nottingham University in October to study business management, launched milliondollarhomepage.com.
Companies choose from the one million pixels on the site and buy their own for one dollar (60p) each.
As one user said
We tried Million Dollar Homepage because we were impressed at the level of ingenuity and the sheer simplicity of it. If we're honest, we didn't expect too much from it. Now, as a direct result, we are pitching for £18,000 GBP worth of new clients and have seen our site traffic increase over a hundred-fold. We're even going to have to upgrade our hosting facility! It's been exceptional
He deserves to succeed, this is brilliant.
What Else?
Why are things like this kept hidden? As reported in
The Irish IndependentENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche knew about a new leak from the Sellafield nuclear plant last week - but failed to tell his party colleague Sean Haughey...
More importantly he did not tell the public. We only learned about it by accident. These incidents are so serious that the public have a right to know and to hold these people to account.
Can this man save the world?
This looks good and its developement needs to be fast tracked...Joe Williams Sr. believes he has the machine that will help save the world. It will make the sky blue, allow everyone to breathe easier, and, in a time of skyrocketing fuel prices, save us all money...
"It" is his Hydrogen Generating Module, or H2N-Gen for short.
Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future. In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete. Basically, the H2N-Gen contains a small reservoir of distilled water and other chemicals such as potassium hydroxide. A current is run from the car battery through the liquid. This process of electrolysis creates hydrogen and oxygen gases which are then fed into the engine's intake manifold where they mix with the gasoline vapours.
... this is using technology the way we should, for a better world.Read the full article in
The Montreal Gazette Hat Tip
Irish Eves
Brrrrrr.....
Irish Independent reports
The British Met Office has warned power suppliers to be braced for the extra demand on gas and electricity.
...the UK Met Office includes the whole of Ireland in its predictions, which show our winter will be cooler than average.
The evidence is drawn from the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a concept associated with winter fluctuations in temperatures, rainfall and storminess in Europe.
The NAO is negative for winter 2005/2006, meaning westerly winds are weaker or less persistent, northern Europe is colder and drier, and southern Europe warmer and wetter than average.
Further encouragement to join the birds and migrate for the winter.
Stem Cells May Help In Multiple Sclerosis
Wired news reports
Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again.
...But the new work went an extra step, suggesting the connections that the stem cells form to help bridge the damaged spinal cord are key to recovery...
Surprisingly, they didn't just form new nerve cells. They also formed cells that create the biological insulation that nerve fibers need to communicate. A number of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, involve loss of that insulation, called myelin.
Now They Tell Me
I worked for a few years with some of these high fliersA team of U.S. scientists has found the emotionally impaired are more willing to gamble for high stakes and that people with brain damage may make good financial decisions...
One of the researchers said the best stock market investors might plausibly be called "functional psychopaths."...
now I understand them.
The Need To Be Number 1
We wring or hands about the results in our teaching of mathematics but as reported by Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times Singapore is forging ahead
...Being a tiny city-state of four million, Singapore is obsessed with nurturing every ounce of talent of every single citizen. That is why, although its fourth and eighth graders already score at the top of the Timss international math and science tests, Singapore has been introducing more innovations into schools. Its government understands that in a flattening world, where more and more jobs can go anywhere, it's not enough to just stay ahead of its neighbors. It has to stay ahead of everyone - including us.
Message to America: They are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top...
...some Singapore schools have adopted a math teaching program called HeyMath, which was started four years ago in Chennai, India, by two young Indian bankers, Nirmala Sankaran and Harsh Rajan, in partnership with the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University.
HeyMath is the way we should be going.
The Best
An entertaining and informative group of items. ...a month-by-month best-of-Boing-Boing for the five years leading up to last January...a really cool walk down memory lane...
All this was assembled by
Rich Burridge.
Guru Abuse
Boing Boing points to the disturbing traits of these people who hold so much power over their devotees. Jody Radzik of the excellent Guruphiliac blog stumbled across a collection of personal accounts of devotees who apparently got screwed (sometimes literally) by their various gurus. The page of links is titled: "Our Favorite Guru Stories: A Collection of True Stories About Gurus and other Religious Types Who Abuse Power."
Katrina: joke du jour
from
Boing Boing...
Q: What's George Bush's position on Roe v. Wade?
A: He really doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.
The Horror Continues
What has happened the most powerful country in the world? If this happened in a third world country we would be outraged.This body has been sitting here for over a week. This place isnÂt like Iraq. People need to stop saying that New Orleans is like the middle east. In Iraq the body would be cleaned up within hours and the tea boy would have settled me. This man has no shoes on, you can see his socks. HeÂs dead. HeÂs rotting in the hot sun.
Hat-Tip
Boing Boing
Danish Researchers Reveal New Hydrogen Storage Technology
This looks promising...Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material.
With the new hydrogen tablet, it becomes much simpler to use the environmentally-friendly energy of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a non-polluting fuel, but since it is a light gas it occupies too much volume, and it is flammable. Consequently, effective and safe storage of hydrogen has challenged researchers world-wide for almost three decades. At the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, an interdisciplinary team has developed a hydrogen tablet which enables storage and transport of hydrogen in solid form.
“Should you drive a car 600 km using gaseous hydrogen at normal pressure, it would require a fuel tank with a size of nine cars. With our technology, the same amount of hydrogen can be stored in a normal gasoline tank”, says Professor Claus Hviid Christensen, Department of Chemistry at DTU.
...but how will the vested interests of big oil react?
Science Daily Hat-Tip
Boing Boing
The Luck Of The Irish
I'll have to go to Skibbereen...It's official -- scientists have proved that the people of the small Irish town of Skibbereen do not have unnaturally good fortune. But they do seem pretty happy anyway.
The picturesque town near Ireland's southern coast earned a reputation as the country's luckiest after a series of lottery wins.
But Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire in England told a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Dublin that he had proved there was nothing particularly lucky about the place...
thanks to
Reuters
Poetic Justice
A thief gets Poetic Justice as reported by Reuters
God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again
Very funny as always The Onion casts a satirical light on the tragic events still unfolding in New Orleans...In an emergency White House address Sunday, President Bush urged all people dying from several days without food and water in New Orleans to "tap into the American entrepreneurial spirit" and gnaw on their own bootstraps for sustenance. "Government handouts are not the answer," Bush said. "I believe in smaller government, which is why I have drastically cut welfare and levee upkeep. I encourage you poor folks to fill yourself up on your own bootstraps. Buckle down, and tear at them like a starving animal." Responding to reports that many Katrina survivors have lost everything in the disaster, Bush said, "Only when you work hard and chew desperately on your own footwear can you live the American dream."
Hat-Tip
Doc Searls
Solving A Stickey Mess
An interesting suggection from Yanko Design hat-tip
Boing Boing
Better Lucky Than Rich
This confirms my view that a good sleep with Smirinoff .... MOSCOW (Reuters) - Even a freight train rumbling over a Russian man's head failed to spoil his peaceful slumber between the tracks, Interfax news agency reported Monday.
The engineer saw somebody on the line and braked sharply. Rescuers tried to pull the drunken sleeper from underneath the carriages, but failed, and the train had to continue driving to free him.
"The young man lying between the rails did not wake up ... which apparently saved his life," said railway policeman Vladimir Slaby.
solves a lot of problems....
Despair
A dramatic
video which you need to see.
As
Planet Potato says you need to see the video to the end. Having seen it I can understand the anger and despair.
Detached From The Real World
The
Independent has five serious questions which go to the heart of the matter. They look at the inability of the federal government to respond.
Their analysis of each questions is incisive but will they ever be answered or will the spin doctors take over and protect the leader and his henchmen?
Using The Internet
This seems a very good idea and one that could be adopted here. Some of these courses could be used and I'm sure that a Google search would reveal many more. Also there are many people who would make suitable courses.
Lots of people don't live near a large town or city. Even then access to evening classes is not possible for everybody due to work patterns, family commitments or other pressures. They would be particularly useful for those who are a distance from evening classes or confined because of illness. Given that the library system is operated by the County Councils a central effort would be needed.
Hat-Tip
mcarthurweb
A Lesson from Cuba
I know very little about Cuba. A lot of spin, mostly negative. How they organise for a Hurricane crisis is impressive. Perhaps others should be humble enough to learn from them.
Boing Boing has the story.Perhaps those of us in Ireland need to learn from them as well. When a crisis arrives it will be too late, we need to do it now.
The Strain on The Rescuers
The strain on those helping is immense
...There have been times on this journey I have hated being here because I can't be doing what these guys are doing, what I used to do, what I dreamed of and loved for so long. But that's not the feeling I have when I sit up against a cement wall, in filthy water, and a guy I've known for years cuddles up in me and sobs. I know that's not the way the public may want to think about their rescuers and their heroes, but that's how it is.
Swinging an axe and breaking into an attic to see if there's anyone there to save and finding a dead family of four instead will bring tears to even the most stoic of people.
The post in
Boing Boing is an emotional journey.
Katrina Predicted
From
Doc Searls.
When this is over we need to get answers as to who was asleep on their watch and to make sure that the other potential disasters are prepared for. Here in Ireland we need to look at our risks, Sellafield, flu pandemic,extreme weather event, terrorist act and plan. We do not have the resources or the wealth of the US. If an equivalent disaster had happened to us how would we have coped? Not so good I fear. We need to take this as a wake up call.
Science For All
It looks like a really exciting few days are in store for young and old as the British Academy of Science brings its annual Festival of Science to Ireland .
Karlin Lillington has the details and is also taking part. Hope to get to the session she is taking part in.
The Weakest Suffer
As always those least able to help themselves suffer.
The Guardian has the alarming details.
The total evacuation of New Orleans was today partially suspended when gunfire and arson slowed the rescue effort at the sports arena that had served as a shelter of last resort for many of the city's poorest.
The Katrina Disaster
A great overview of what is happening from
Doc Searl. He gives fascinating links .
Google Maps and Katrin
The use of Google Earth to overlay damage photographs
Bong Bong has very interesting links.
