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Comment "Who Cares?" is an old argument (Score 1) 533

by bihoy (#30426026) Attached to: How Do I Keep My Privacy While Using Google?

As mentioned in John Dvorak's Second Opinion this excerpt sums it up quite well:

Our privacy rights have been eroding for years and just accelerated with the Bush administration. President Barack Obama has been on board since day one.

What sort of society wants to tap the phone calls of all its citizens? What sort of society wants to rifle through your personal belongings after busting into your house? These notions are promoted on TV with shows like "24" and other cop shows, where warrantless searches are common. (Even the actual mechanisms are revealed: "Did you hear a scream for help in there?" "YES! Let's bust in.")

It ironic Eric Schmidt seems to feel differently about his own personal information that that of others.

Schmidt, it should be noted, had a few personal details of his life revealed a few years ago by CNet in an exercise to show the power of Google's /quotes/comstock/15*!goog/quotes/nls/goog (GOOG 590.51, -0.99, -0.17%) search engine. Schmidt was incensed that, for instance, his home address was unearthed, and the company then banned CNet from its press events. Read the CNet article at issue.

Using Schmidt's logic, one has to ask: Why did he care if he wasn't doing anything wrong?
Announcements

Submission + - Peices of earliest known Christian Bible go online

Submitted by bihoy
bihoy writes: A report on BBC News states "Visitors to the website www.codexsinaiticus.org can now see images of more than half the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript.

Fragments of the 4th Century document — written in Greek on parchment leaves — have been worked on by institutions in the UK, Germany, Egypt and Russia.

Experts say it is 'a window into the development of early Christianity'."

Accordinng to a New York Times article, "Not all of it has withstood the ravages of time, but the pages that have include the whole of the New Testament and the earliest surviving copy of the Gospels written at different times after Christ's death by four of the Apostles: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The bible's remaining 800 pages and fragments — it was originally some 1400 pages long — also contain half of a copy of the Old Testament. The other half has been lost."
Biotech

Submission + - Turning Sugar Water into Biofuel (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by bihoy
bihoy writes: It seems that a company bt the name of Virent has come up with a process to turn sugars directly into fuel rather than an ethanol additive.

Virent CEO Lee Edwards talks about the technology in an online vidoe stating that their patented catalysts turn biomass sugars directly into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, not ethanol, so it has a high energy content that can be dropped in to existing infrastructure, says .

There is also an article where he is quoted as saying "I believe we're at the bottom-end of the cycle on crude oil and that in the long-run crude oil will become more expensive," Edwards said in an interview with MarketWatch. "Virent's got a really unique technology that's able to transform sugars from biomass directly into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. In our view that's the right path to take."

Apparently, compared to water-based ethanol, the fuel contains more energy and it's easier to transport via pipeline since it doesn't absorb water and corrode pipes.

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