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United States

House Narrowly Avoids Having to Debate Impeachment of Cheney 1033

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sweep-it-under-the-committee-rug dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) yesterday successfully moved articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney to the House Judiciary committee. 'Today's resolution from Kucinich (D-Ohio) was essentially the same as the legislation he introduced earlier this year, which included three articles of impeachment against Cheney based largely on allegations that he manipulated intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. The last article accuses Cheney of threatening "aggression" against Iran "absent any real threat."'"

Comment Re:Elevator Garage? (Score 1) 308

by TWooster (#21074527) Attached to: Very High Tech - Elevator Garages in an NYC Hi-Rise
Don't forget that elevators are very energy efficient. Properly counterweighted, the energy required to lift your car (or, conversely, the counterweight -- dependent upon whether you're moving the car up or down) would be considerably less. My physics is quite rusty, but I'm fairly certain the costs are closer to the work to lift the weight-different and the work to overcome friction. And make no mistake, these suckers will be counterweighted to match the weight of your Bentley -- costing the building owners less in maintenance and energy costs, assuming you don't pay those. Without taking friction into account, energy usage would be closer to:

Work required to lift 70 kg (let's call that the average weight of your tycoon, minus gold bars) 50 meters: W = 70 * 9.8 * 50 = 34.3kJ
Work required to lift your car every day for a year: 12.556 MJ.

But all this is moot anyway -- it'd be very close to exactly the same as that same tycoon just taking the elevator.
Data Storage

Hard Drive Imports to be Banned? 391

Posted by CowboyNeal from the outlaw-drives dept.
Arathon writes "Apparently the International Trade Commission is beginning an investigation that could lead to the banning of hard drive imports from Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba, among others, on the grounds that they fundamentally violate patents held by Steven and Mary Reiber of California. The patent apparently has to do with "dissipative ceramic bonding tips", which are important components of the drives themselves. Obviously, a ban would be unthinkable, and yet the ITC has 45 days to settle on a fixed date for the end of the investigation. If the patents are found to be violated, and the Reibers do not allow those patents to be bought or otherwise dealt with, the importation of almost all hard drives would actually be ceased."
The Internet

Submission + - Characteristics of traffic to the blogosphere

Submitted by
virgilio almeida
virgilio almeida writes: "Traffic to the blogosphere is less influenced by search engines than traffic to web sites is. This is one the several findings about blogosphere reported in the study, "*Traffic Characteristics and Communication Patterns in Blogosphere*," published in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, held in March 26-28, 2007, in Boulder, Colorado. The study concludes that the intensity of traffic directed to a blog through search engines (which use traditional page-rank algorithms) does not seem to correlate with the "real" popularity of the blog, and suggests that social-network-based navigation may be playing an increasingly important role in web navigation in general, and blogosphere navigation in particular. On that count the authors note that in blogspace, the popularity of a blog is more a reflection of its owner's social attributes (e.g., celebrity status, reputation, and public image) than a reflection of the number and rank of other blogs or web pages that point to it. This highlights the need for the development of page-rank algorithms that take into consideration the social attributes of blogosphere actors (as opposed to solely on the topology of the underlying blogspace), possibly using inference techniques. The study has also analyzed the nature of interactions between users and blogs. This more-interactive nature of the blogosphere leads to interesting traffic and communication patterns, which are different from those observed in traditional web content. They have observed different levels of "conversation" in the blogosphere. Access to objects in blogspace could be conceived as part of an interaction between an author and its readership. As they show in the study, such interactions range from one-to-many "broadcast-type" and many-to-one "registration-type" communication between an author and its readers, to multi-way, iterative "parlor-type" dialogues among members of an interest group. The study is available at: http://www.icwsm.org/program.html"
Patents

Amazon Goes Web 2.0 Wild to Defend 1-Click Patent 77

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-really-it's-cool-when-we-do-it dept.
theodp writes "Six years ago, Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly urged the masses to give-patent-reform-a-chance as Richard Stallman called for an Amazon boycott. On Monday, the pair will reunite to kick off O'Reilly's new Amazon-sponsored Web 2.0 Expo with A Conversation with Jeff Bezos. Be interesting if the conversation turned to Amazon's ongoing battle against an actor's effort to topple Bezos' 1-Click patent, which The Register notes included dumping 58 lbs. of paperwork on the patent examiner, including dozens of articles from the oh-so-Web-2.0 Wikipedia, which the USPTO had already deemed an un acceptable source of information ('From a legal point of view, a Wiki citation is toilet paper,' quipped patent expert Greg Aharonian)."

Feed Cell Phones Qualify As Hazardous Waste (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
The cell telephones that consumers in the United States discard by the millions each year classify as hazardous waste, according to a study published in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal.

Feed Bisphenol A On Trial (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Bisphenol A (BPA), a weak synthetic estrogen used in a variety of consumer products ranging from baby bottles to resins that line food and beverage containers, has been linked in some studies to adverse health effects in rodents, including obesity, cancer and insulin resistance. There is growing concern that the chemical may cause similar adverse effects in humans, particularly in babies and young children.

Feed The Samsung and Intel PC design winner: the Egg (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops

What you're looking at up there is the winner of a recent Samsung and Intel PC design contest in Korea. Those three "eggs" on the tabletop are actually a media player, disk drive, and digital camera. Just place them on top of the bed-tray PC to initiate communications. Nice, a la some Bluetooth 2.1 near-field communications we presume. But seriously, is that Intel Inside sticker really necessary on a freakin' concept? Check out a few more concepts after the break.

Continue reading The Samsung and Intel PC design winner: the Egg

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Privacy

Surveillance Cameras Get Smarter 186

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the walk-without-rhythm-and-you-won't-attract-the-one dept.
kog777 writes to mention that the IB Times is taking a look at where surveillance camera technology is headed. Soon researchers tell us that cameras will be available that not only record, but are able to interpret what they see. "The advancements have already been put to work. For example, cameras in Chicago and Washington can detect gunshots and alert police. Baltimore installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers. In the commercial market, the gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before."
Perl

Submission + - Randal Schwartz Pardoned

Submitted by
friedo
friedo writes: "Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski has expunged the criminal record of Perl author and guru Randal "merlyn" Schwartz. Schwartz was fired from his job and convicted of three felonies after cracking some passwords while working for Intel."
Announcements

Submission + - $25 Mill for solution to removing greenhouse gases

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Virgin Earth Challenge (of Virgin Airlines fame) is a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth's climate. http://www.virginearth.com/"

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