Two Million is chump change for any Government Agency in California. They have that much slop in just about every department.

Nobody will notice this except the lawyers who got bitch-slapped by the Supreme Court. They may be more cautious next time the governor or the legislature decides to pass something like this, if for no other reason than protecting their good reputation.

Wait, they are lawyers, what the hell was I thinking. Where's my meds.

Been there, done that.
I like mine rare, thank you.

Seriously, grow up.

And this is different in what why when compared to meat from Cattle or Pigs, or Lettuce, or tomatoes? We really don't know all there is to know about ANYTHING, and we never will. Yet I bet you eat these things with impunity.

Interestingly enough, Tomatoes are one of the first bio-engineered foods. Originally no bigger than a berry, it had already been engineered by indigenous farmers in South America to be about the size of a large grape when the Spanish arrived. Only after it was spread to Europe was it widely cultivated, crossbred, and selected until it reached its current size. Every once in a while someone decides to make tea out of tomato leaves. Bad Idea. And we don't know All there is to Know about tomatoes yet, but we eat them by the ton.

This "We don't know all there is to know" is just another version of the rallying cry There are some things science can't explain! which is thrown out by the "back to the earth" crowd any time anything challenging is presented.

I haven't decided if this an example of the Fallacy of False Dilemma, or the Fallacy of the Appeal to Ignorance, but its pretty annoying in any case.

On a continent that goes apeshit over Genetically Modified and other Bioengineered Crops, it seems unlikely this will gain any traction in the commercial market place, at least not in the EU. On the other hand, the EU may take the stance that since this work was pioneered in the EU, it can't possibly be bad.

Now on Mars, or long space voyages this might have some appeal, especially Mars, where there is a possibility of finding water, thereby eliminating one of the heaviest component of any food product. Although unless making and transporting the necessary equipment and media takes up less room and less weight than a freezer full of hamburger this seems unlikely there as well. Chances are the growth media can be shipped dry as well, and reconstituted with distilled water from any source.

Even if the cost per pound could be brought in line with animal sources, it seems unlikely to be a rational method of food production here on earth, simply because significant portions of the meat supply would be put at risk by a simple power failure, or contaminant in the growth media.

The rest of this story will no doubt be filled with hand wringing posts over the amount of CO2 that cattle produce (something never attributed to Wildebeest herds), and how this will save the earth. The whole concept creates an intellectual conundrum for the Peta crowd. They would love to get animals off the farm, and this method presents a way forward, but having to embrace those huge corporations, and bio-engineering is probably more than they could stomach.

Essentially a throttle, but more likely a demand based system, such that non-busy processors can run at the lowest possible speed and voltage, and when work stacks up, it ramps up.

Great for the smart phone in your pocket which has nothing to do for hours at a time other than check the email and listen for calls.
Since its screen is off, you really don't care how fast it does those things as long as they are just barely fast enough.

There is a great deal of "stare time" that happens when people look at computers, and the processors are spinning away all the time while you are reading this. They could just as well drop to an extremely low power state, and wait for a mouse move, finger tap, or something else.

This much we've been doing all along, for the last 20 years. But power consumption still remained high, because even simple tasks like checking the clock to see if its time to increment that digital time read out took processing power, and historically any use of the processor kept it awake at something like full power for that task.

Now, those tasks can be performed at extremely low power, without ramping up the speed. Only when the processor can't meet the demand would the system increase the voltage and speed up the chip.

Yes Intel did demo a solar cell powering a Pentium, but that was merely to make a point about the inefficiencies of near-threshold voltage (NTV) CPUs. They have no particular focus on Solar powered processors.

Near-threshold voltage (NTV) CPUs are the focus of Intel's research here.
NTV transistors can switch at voltages just the threshold for the device's powered state, and CPUs made of these can idle along at extremely low voltage doing real work (slower) or they can ramp up the power and work much faster.

The Register has a much better explanation of this technology than the linked article.

Also a good summary here:

Once again, the Register does a better job of reporting than Techworld.

Even Google Execs don't use google +

http://mashable.com/2011/10/04/google-needs-to-use-google-plus/

One has to wonder just how serious your employer is about this.

Grab your coat, and exit the building.

There are tons of collaboration packages, and even Google Docs, without the need to join a social network.

Other than Facebook itself, and Google, has anyone actually been asked to join a Social Network by their employer?

(No, Gmail does not count).

I've heard of people being asked to follow twitter, but that's hardly a social network, and its far from bidirectional.

One is enough to mod.
    You are supposed to mod a comment based on its content, not score them on a curve like in grade school.