Indeed. Right wing types tend to wring their hands about the increase electric infrastructure needed for electric cars, while having no problems pushing for new pipelines and oil wells. If you can build a pipeline you can build an electric line.

Yes, the US is dependent on big oil use, oil production, and the economy is intertwined in many other ways. On the other hand, the middle east and Russia are even more dependent. And our economy is more diversified than either of them. Also, we stand a chance to be on the forefront of emerging new technologies. Them? Not so much, despite their trying. The collapse of oil prices will lead to a decrease in Russian influence, not an increase.

Uhm, no. From a purely engineering standpoint, electric cars with their batteries compete with oil, not your car battery. Do you use your car battery to travel down the road at 60mph? No, you use oil. Just because ice engines use a battery to start does not mean they are battery powered.

Can vote by mail possibly be gamed? Yes. Everything can possibly be gamed. If you are worried there are places in every county where you can directly drop off your ballet. What is incredibly difficult to do by mail is change 10,000 votes at once. This is entirely possible with electronic voting.

Is this subtle sarcasm, cleverly pointing out the parallel to windows 8? Or is it pure self assured ignorance? Many times I observe people who assume that the new realization they just had is too brilliant for Microsoft to come up with on it's own. Sure, Microsoft has made some colossal blunders. But they aren't as stupid as some people think. In this case, one of the destiguishing features of windows 8 is that it splits enterprise application develpement from casual user application developement. The casual side uses the "app store" concept. Clearly the intent is to attract thousands of independent developers. Of course the implementation of the change is part of what people despise about windows 8, and why many are considering it a failure... and Microsoft can attract developers by its name alone (and repel them as well, I know).

I'm not sure the point you are trying to make; are you saying special interests keep trying to get bad bills past, are you saying they dont, or are you saying it doesn't matter? Oh, and I keep hearing the tired old argument of "assault rifles are only good for one thing: killing people". This is still as false as it ever was. With the literally MILLIONS of assault rifles sold, why aren't ther millions of deaths? Because millions of people have found things to do with them other than killing people, that's why. If you can only think of killing someone when you hold an assault rifle, I guess I'm glad you choose to not have one. But for the rest of us we've found other ways to occupy our time.

For decades Iceland has been contemplating ways to export their cheap geothermal electricity, and aluminum batteries are one such idea. I'll leave it to someone not on a mobile phone to do a detailed search, but here is one link: http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=765&first=3858&end=3857 The gist of Slashdot's linked to adver.... uh, article, is they think they have improved the process. Of course it appears they do it in their own custom built demonstration vehicle. There are ways to make custom built gas cars get almost that range on a tank of gas, but they aren't anything most of us would want to drive, and wouldn't pass US safety standards. So although this is probably good news, it also probably isn't as exciting or new as the marketing hype.

Even though the machine was new from a Ubuntu mfg, it randomly hangs. In this case there is no console available and the machine isnt pingable. Happens with the lid open or closed. Sometimea happens a few times a day, Sometimes happens after 3 days. It waa a major purchase for him as well; it cost half what he makes in a month. Now I dont know if I gave him good advice or not. Of course I've heard horror stories about major mfgs as well (yes even Macs) so it happens to all of them.

I'd mod you +1 funny for your take on my typo, but of course I can't.

I'd typed "stalin" without caps, and accidentally clicked the wrong choice. On a re-read I corrected the caps, but missed the "g". :( Oh, and the correct link to the siege of Leningrad is here. Stupid copy-n-paste doesn't all ways copy when you think it does.

Wait; Bell Labs - the lab which INVENTED the transistor ...(ignoring the Russian guy, named Oleg Vladimirovich Losev who Stalling starved to death during the siege of Leningrad before he could bring it to the world)... and made it possible for you to be typing this... They didn't contribute anything? How about IBM's research, which drove their HDD business to such success that at one point IBM was predicting they would own the entire industry in 6 months (but then IBM's mfg department "lost the formula" i.e. they couldn't upscale their success to larger densities, and IBM sold their entire drive business). How about all the research which has been done by a lot of companies around fiber-optics, which wasn't immediately turned into a product, but which now run the communications backbones of the world?

When you get it it looks like a product; that doesn't mean there wasn't a lot of theoretical research done before hand.

As an aside, can you imagine how world history may have been different if Oleg Losev had lived? We may very well have not "won" the cold war, as the impact of the Russians having the transistor decades before us would have had far greater repercussions then just them being able to listen to portable radios before us. One of many of our advantages was that we were using transistors in military technology while they were still using vacuum tubes, whose only advantage was that tubes required less radiation hardening.

My understanding is that it was originally called an emergency brake. My '64 dodge pickup truck actually had a separate brake drum and brake shoes attached between the transition and the drive shaft. This was truly an emergency brake, as it was a redundant system which used a completely separate mechanism to stop the vehicle. No modern manufacture would go to this expense, and they use a mechanical linkages to the car's existing brakes. The linkage is redundant, but the brakes are not. Thus it is sufficient for "parking" but will not help in certain "emergency" failure modes. As an added curiosity, when we were out horsing around in the mud with my truck, my buddies told me that when I applied my emergency brake one wheel would spin backwards. Not sure exactly why this would be other than for the same reason the differential causes one wheel to spin backwards when you turn the wheel of a car which is jacked up (unless it has a locker or posi, of course).

Congratulations to all of you you had no problem with Mint 12, but I had no end of problems. The gui kept hanging on me, and no amount of ctr-r or whatever (I forget the combo now) would restart it. I spent hours and days trying to sort it out; I tried loading Gnome 3, Gmome 2, different drivers, all to no avail. :( I wanted to retain an X based system so that things like ssh -X and all the other X based connections would work, and I wasn't sure how well Unity/Wayland would "play" with these. In the end I went to Kubuntu 12.04, and I couldn't be happier. For those who fret about Unity, I highly recommend Kubuntu.

Fox News reports is reporting that although Tepco can't see the fuel because of steam in the containment area, and although they can't find the current water level, the internal temperature of 112F qualifies as proof that the "cold shutdown" has been successful.

The other point of view at the washington post is that if they can't see the fuel, it has broken completely through the containment system, and "Given that steam forms when water boils this is an indication that the reactor is not in cold shutdown." Also "If the reactors are “cold”, it may be because most of the hot radioactive fuel has leaked out."

The New York Times pointed out last month: A former nuclear engineer with three decades of experience at a major engineering firm who has worked at all three nuclear power complexes operated by Tokyo Electric [said] “If the fuel is still inside the reactor core, that’s one thing” . But if the fuel has been dispersed more widely, then we are far from any stable shutdown.”

1) Include female synthesized voices in Germany and other places which prefer male.
2) Include male synthesized voices in the USA and other places which prefer female.
3) Sell "value enhancement" packages of other voices for $10 a shot.
4) Profit!
5) Uhm, where's my slice of the pie for thinking of the idea?