Autopia
European automakers and energy companies have agreed on a plan for what is needed to develop an infrastructure to support hydrogen cars.
The paper published jointly by BMW, DaimlerChrysler Ford, General, MAN Nutzfahrzeuge, Shell Hydrogen, Total France and Volkswagen states that Berlin should be the location where a network of hydrogen filling stations should be installed so that the companies can test their vehicles.
One would hope that the group is standardizing on a common fuel format (ie. gaseous hydrogen at a specific PSI) to simplify refueling. The group set interim goals for 2010 and 2015 with the intention that commercial vehicles begin to be available within 10 years.
Similarly West Coast states led by California and joined by Oregon, Washington and British Columbia want to establish a hydrogen highway from San Diego to Vancouver. Centralizing on a city is probably the smarter move.
These goals may seem ambitious given the limited funding relative to the current technology challenges, but it’s nice to dream of a day when thousands of vehicles will be rolling without the ben
work was not to busy tonight, it was pretty slow actually. I was acting pretty goofy, from everything to” Xerxes chicken.” To Allah Allah Allah on 3, and inducing Inductions.
I am still trying to get this Dragon NaturallySpeaking program to recognize sentences correctly.
It is slightly frustrating, but still very cool that I can just say some words and the computer will cut it for me, even though it probably is slower than typing it out myself, I’m too tired to fix the typos and assignments due to Dragon NaturallySpeaking screwing it up for me.
Oh yeah, the Tops checks came in today, yay.
Cordelia lexically bubble. Cordelia likes to say bubble. Sometimes this program does not understand me correctly but it is okay. Right now Cordelia is playing with the clouds were the headphones. The previous sentence was not actually spoken by me, it is the programs interpretation of what I said. What I actually said, was right now Cordelia is playing with the words for the headphones. I did take words and not words. Words with this. Sometimes this program is frustrating, for example I tried to say the word words with this see for several times.I have just returned the program initiates a cool words correctly now. I have just retrained the program, it should type cords correctly now. Overall this program is pretty neat considering I does have to say a few words and it types all of it. More updates on this later I suppose.
Markus:
What’s up
Icy
Guess what
AndyDrew:
what?
Markus:
I am using Dragon NaturallySpeaking
I did not type any of these words
AndyDrew:
?
Markus:
I spoke to him through a microphone
AndyDrew:
you talking at your computer
Markus:
he I’ve spoken them
AndyDrew:
gay
Markus:
It is not always correct
AndyDrew:
nope
Markus:
But it is pretty good
AndyDrew:
its alright
Markus:
You have it
SMO
AndyDrew:
alright…. i gotta kick brett’s ass
i have it?
Markus:
Damn
Yes, do you have it
I am still trying to learn how to use this program
AndyDrew:
i dont think i have it
Markus:
Have used this program before
AndyDrew:
alright… ill be back later
Markus:
Damn you
I will talk to you later face
Goodbye
I like Itasca lives of everything that’s pretty nice
Not what I said
Ha ha
What I did say was, I like how it catalyzes everything
Colitis
Utilizes
And it
Damn
it
Capitola why
Erg I am very angry
This is a stupid program cannot understand capitalize
Finally got it right
Luke
Debut 002
Double you 00 feet
Ha ha his program is so gay
You in a little bit, Andrew. Control enter enter return
Dag dag dag die
Cordelia can talk inter-
While it don’t Cordelia’s name right
It did spell her name right
Stupid program
But this is pretty hilarious
How to get the right about 75 to 80% of the time
Cordelia is playing with the clock
And caught talks every time you press the button says she is always responding to it
V. Quat talks
D. Clarke talks
The clock talks
Shark slaughter shock - life - 30 September 2006 - New Scientist
At least four times as many sharks are killed for their fins as are reported in official figures.
From inventories of shark-fin sales at auctions in Hong Kong, researchers from the University of Hawaii and elsewhere estimate that the numbers of sharks caught around the world are far higher than the figures published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “It is not a question of blaming the FAO,” says Shelley Clarke, who led the investigation. “But it highlights the scepticism we should have about fisheries data,” she adds.
Clarke’s team collected auction inventories from leading Hong Kong fin markets between October 1999 and March 2001. About 1.7 million tonnes of fins are sold globally each year, Clarke estimates, more than quadruple the 0.39 million tonnes estimated by the FAO. This equates to 73 million sharks per year (Ecology Letters, vol 9, p 1115).
If anything, the team’s figures are likely to be underestimates, says Clarke, as they are based on data only from international auctions.
Windows Vista: Aero Glass and Java Don’t Mix
Among the wrinkles still to be ironed out of Microsoft’s Windows Vista before the long-awaited client operating system goes gold is the tendency of Vista’s shiny new “glass” UI to balk at Java-based applications.
In eWEEK Labs’ Vista tests, most recently with the post-RC1 Build 5728, Aero Glass has reverted to the sans-translucence, sans-3D effects, plain old Aero interface each time we’ve launched a Java-based client application.
We’ve experienced the glass-out with the Azureus Bittorrent client, with the XenEnterprise 3.0 management console, and with the Eclipse software development tool. In each case, Aero Glass wasn’t just disabled for the (apparently) offending application, but for our test machine as a whole–until we closed the Java app.
Sun Microsystems would do well to give a ring to one of the interop contacts at Microsoft that came out of the firms’ historic make-nice agreement back in 2004, and figure out how to make Java apps first-class Vista citizens.
Perfect Beat - Your One Stop Source for Dance Music
With the release of “Smooth,” the third single from East Coast duo Iio, the group appear to have cemented themselves among the best artists working in dance music today. It’s difficult to recall when the last time club culture saw a group release not one but three successive huge hits, certainly none as big as “Rapture” or “At The End,” and it’s definitely been a while since we’ve heard a band as deserving of such attention as Iio have clearly proven themselves to be. This domestic CD single comes to you direct from Made Records, which means you not only get a series of extended remixes from names like Blackwatch and Airbase, you also get them at a mercifully reduced price. It doesn’t get much more “essential” than this.
Speedometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A speedometer measures the instantaneous speed of a vehicle.
Traditional automotive speedometers are driven by a flexible, sleeved cable that is rotated by a set of small gears in the tail shaft of a transmission. The speedometer itself is two rotating, barrel-shaped magnets. One magnet is connected the sleeved cable, and the other is connected to the speedometer needle. These magnets are calibrated such that a given revolution speed of the flexible cable corresponds to a specific speed indication on the speedometer. This calibration must take into account several factors, including ratios of the tailshaft gears that drive the flexible cable, the final drive ratio in the differential, and the diameter of the driven tires. The speedometer mechanism often also drives an odometer.
The speedometer was invented by Josip Belušić of Croatia in 1888 and was electric. Modern speedometers are electronic. A rotation sensor, usually mounted on the rear of the transmission, delivers a series of electronic pulses whose frequency corresponds to the rotational speed of the driveshaft. A computer converts the pulses to a speed and displays this speed on a digital display or an electronically-controlled, analog-style needle, the latter of which is more common. Pulse counts may also be used to increment the odometer.
As of 1997, federal standards in the United States allowed a maximum 5% error on speedometer readings (per “Auto Tutor”, American Automobile Association of California magazine, Oct. 17, 1997). Aftermarket modifications, such as different tire and wheel sizes or different differential gearing, can cause speedometer inaccuracy.
The Daily Advertiser - www.theadvertiser.com - Lafayette, LA
Willie Nelson and associates were recently cited with a misdemeanor summons for possession of 1.5 pounds of marijuana in St. Martin Parish. Details are a little sketchy, but I assume the State Police Criminal Patrol Unit made the stop. They are extremely good at that sort of thing, maybe the best in the nation.
Many people in Lafayette have expressed that the release of old Willie was not justified, since your average Texas redneck would have been charged with felony possession, thereby winning a free trip to the St. Martin Parish Prison.
Wired News: Scheduling Sex Is Sizzling Hot
Considering how much finagling and finessing people will do to make time for an online lover, it surprises me when I talk to people who dislike the idea of scheduling sex in offline relationships.
In fact, scheduling sex — not just time to be together with the understanding that sex might arise, but actually saying “we will start nookie at 9 a.m. Saturday” — is so taboo, some couples refuse to do it.
I’ve been thinking about this ever since a reader e-mailed to tell me how hot his sex life has become since he and his wife began scheduling it (”Wednesdays and Saturdays”).
Debian To Rebrand Firefox - OSNews.com
Debian adheres to a strict interpretation of what is Free Software and what isn’t. The Firefox logo is trademarked, so Debian doesn’t consider it to be Free and will not include it as part of its distribution. Mozilla claims that using the Firefox name without the official branding is a trademark violation. Furthermore, Mozilla claims that if Debian runs any patches to the version of Firefox included with Debian distros, it has to run them by Mozilla first for approval. What all this ultimately could mean is that the Firefox name is wiped from the face of Debian and its offshoots. Debian developer Eric Dorland confirmed to internetnews.com that Debian will re-name Firefox and that the re-naming process could be completed as soon as next week.
BBspot - Top 11 Geek Porn Names
11. Harry Joystick
10. Dorothy “Dot” Org
9. Alan Cocks
8. Richard Ballman
7. Anita Ram
6. Donny Dongle
5. Steve Jobs
4. L.C. Dee
3. Bender Over
2. Kernel Python
1. Jean-Luc Prickhard
DefenseNews.com - China Attempted To Blind U.S. Satellites With Laser -
China has fired high-power lasers at U.S. spy satellites flying over its territory in what experts see as a test of Chinese ability to blind the spacecraft, according to sources.
It remains unclear how many times the ground-based laser was tested against U.S. spacecraft or whether it was successful.
But the combination of China’s efforts and advances in Russian satellite jamming capabilities illustrate vulnerabilities to the U.S. space network are at the core of U.S. Air Force plans to develop new space architectures and highly classified systems, according to sources.
According to experts, lasers — depending on their power level — could blind electro-optical satellites like the giant Keyhole spacecraft or even interfere with radar satellites like the Lacrosse. Blinding, one source said, is different than disabling given the enormous power required to shoot a laser through the dense lower atmosphere and reach a fast-moving satellite in space. The hardware on the spacecraft can’t be changed given they’re in orbit, but software changes can help them weather disruptive attacks.
Russian jamming systems are publicly known — the Air Force destroyed such a system deployed to Iraq to keep American GPS guided bombs from finding their targets during the 2003. The site was destroyed by GPS guided bombs.
‘One degree and we’re done for’ - earth - 27 September 2006 - New Scientist
“Further global warming of 1 °C defines a critical threshold. Beyond that we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know.”
So says Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Hansen and colleagues have analysed global temperature records and found that surface temperatures have been increasing by an average of 0.2 °C every decade for the past 30 years. Warming is greatest in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, particularly in the sub-Arctic boreal forests of Siberia and North America. Here the melting of ice and snow is exposing darker surfaces that absorb more sunlight and increase warming, creating a positive feedback.
ITPRO
It might seem odd to celebrate a 23rd anniversary but every year since I heard of this man I go out and raise a glass to his memory. In truth you can get most journalists to raise a glass to anything but in this case I’m thanking him for my life.
On 26th September 1983 the hero of the day, Colonel Stanislav Yefgrafovich Petrov, clocked on for work as normal. Petrov was in charge of the Soviet Union’s satellite warning systems and this was the height of the cold war. Everyone was on edge because NATO was carrying out its annual tactical exercises and two weeks before the Soviets had shot down a Korean airliner that had wandered into the wrong airspace.
Meanwhile in the wider picture Ronald Reagan was publicly calling the Soviet Union an ‘Evil Empire’, the warm up man at a UK Conservative party rally had opened with the call to “Bomb Russia” and we had Andropov, a former leader of the KGB, as the current ruler of the Kremlin. Things were, to put it mildly, on a hair trigger.
Here’s an old sheet with some formulas on it: maclaurin series.jpg
Slashdot | Google Calls For Power Supply Design Changes
“The New York Times reports that Google is calling ‘for a shift from multivoltage power supplies to a single 12-volt standard. Although voltage conversion would still take place on the PC motherboard, the simpler design of the new power supply would make it easier to achieve higher overall efficiencies … The Google white paper argues that the opportunity for power savings is immense — by deploying the new power supplies in 100 million desktop PC’s running eight hours a day, it will be possible to save 40 billion kilowatt-hours over three years, or more than $5 billion at California’s energy rates.’ This may have something to do with the electricity bill for Google’s estimated 450,000 servers.”
SiliconBeat: Google maps stealth bomber
This is pretty amazing. Germany’s Spiegel Online has found a stealth bomber on Google Maps. It should have been blurred out, because it’s on a secret part of a military base — but Google must have missed it. As of this writing, the bomber is still there, in good ol’ Palmdale, California. Hit the link, and zoom out. You’ll see metropolis of Los Angeles emerge just below it.
40 Years of STAR TREK: The Collection
Giant auction to be held October 5-7 at Christie’s in New York. Article in USA Today.
Matrix and Quaternion FAQ
Version 1.4 26th December 1998
——————————-
This FAQ is maintained by “hexapod@netcom.com”. Any additional suggestions or related questions are welcome. Just send E-mail to the above address.
Wiitimer.com - North America
Even with the Wii being the most affordable of the Next-Gen consoles, a little financial planning never hurt anyone!
Please select your launch day purchases to see just how much you need to set aside.
Your Wii Day Needs:
AllaboutSP
All about south park. Watch some episodes!
Wired News: Cell Phones? Hell Phones
Surveillance
A hell phone is a device you carry that, when switched on, tells a satellite exactly where you are every few seconds. Its a device with a microphone in it that can transmit all it hears even when youre not consciously making a call. You dont have to be super-paranoid or bin Laden to see how this compromises your privacy, and you dont have to read very far in the newspapers to see how little we can trust governments these days not to use, misuse and hoard whatever information they can get on you.
Business 2.0…Big Innovations: EEStor - Sep. 18, 2006
Forget hybrids and hydrogen-powered vehicles. EEStor, a stealth company in Cedar Park, Texas, is working on an “energy storage” device that could finally give the internal combustion engine a run for its money — and begin saving us from our oil addiction. “To call it a battery discredits it,” says Ian Clifford, the CEO of Toronto-based electric car company Feel Good Cars, which plans to incorporate EEStor’s technology in vehicles by 2008.
EEStor’s device is not technically a battery because no chemicals are involved. In fact, it contains no hazardous materials whatsoever. Yet it acts like a battery in that it stores electricity. If it works as it’s supposed to, it will charge up in five minutes and provide enough energy to drive 500 miles on about $9 worth of electricity. At today’s gas prices, covering that distance can cost $60 or more; the EEStor device would power a car for the equivalent of about 45 cents a gallon.
source
Speech recognition and voodoo had much in common during the 1990s. Both were more art than science, both required prayer and a bit of luck, and both failed to work much of the time.
Let’s follow the Spirit of Christmas Past into an Iowa living room 10 years ago, a room in which my 80-year-old grandmother pulled the wrapping from a present and held aloft a cardboard box. “Oh,” she said in some confusion, “what is this?” One of her children explained that this was a voice recognition program—she could use it to dictate her AOL e-mails without having to hunt and peck her way across the keyboard.
It was a thoughtful gift. My grandmother, though the best of women in ways too numerous to count, never learned to type during her many years on the farm, and the “delete” key perpetually eluded her. Her e-mails contained sentences that started out well enough before devolving into a mishmash of symbols, numbers, and letters, before wandering back to sense again like a pilgrim returned home after a lengthy journey. Voice recognition seemed just the thing.
Wired News: Moving Beyond String Theory
Ask any credentialed nerd what the ultimate theory of physics is, and chances are they’ll reply, “string theory.”
In string theory — an idea that’s been around since the late 1970s — the universe is a 10-dimensional place, with six of those dimensions curled up inside themselves like a cat in front of a fireplace. All particles and forces are different resonances and vibrations of these 10-dimensional strings.
Strings are far from the only game in town. There are other, potentially equally promising approaches to unifying physics’ two seemingly incompatible visions of the cosmos: general relativity and quantum mechanics.
This fall, Columbia University mathematician Peter Woit has published a critique of string theory (Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory), pointing out that in more than three decades, string theory still has yet to make a single prediction that can be verified in the lab or through the lens of a telescope. If all scientific disciplines maintained such fluffy and forgiving standards, Woit argues, science would devolve into little more than medieval disputations about angels and heads of pins.
Flavonoid
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from EGCG)
The term flavonoid refers to a class of plant secondary metabolites based around a phenylbenzopyrone structure. Flavonoids are most commonly known for their antioxidant activity. Flavonoids are also commonly referred to as bioflavonoids in the media – these terms are equivalent and interchangeable, since all flavonoids are biological in origin.
