Obama

This is a very interesting analysis of Obama's State of the Union address last night. It's very reminiscent of some of the analysis we did to Bush's address in 2002, but for obvious different reasons that I can't really get into here.

If you like analytical reviews and comparative analysis, take a look at this article at FiveThirtyEight. Geekdom at it's highest point, I think.

Analysis of Obama's State of the Union Address

EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs

Ok, any of you tech-heads out there. Here's a new MoBo that looks like it could be awesome. It's still a prototype board, and it has some issues (like you can't use Core i7 chips in SMP mode on it, you need to use Xeon W5000 series chips which are more expensive, server-type CPUs), but just the thought of having 2 quad core hyper-threaded CPUs on one MoBo (16 processor equivalents!) think of the vitalization you could do on this baby!

Oh, and in case you didn't notice in the picture, there are 7, count them, 7 PCIe slots on this baby, which theoretically you could put 7 SLI or CrossFireX video cards into, to have 7 GPUs cranking out the video for your screen (do you REALLY need that much power? Um, yeah!)!

I haven't seen anything on pricing yet, but it looks AWESOME!

EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs: "

Think CrossFireX is nifty? We're betting you're a big fan of SLI, huh? For those who grew up bragging about their 'dual Voodoo' setup, there's nothing in the world that can stop you from lusting over this bad boy. Quietly introduced at CES, the EVGA W555 is just now being shown to the world in proper (prototype) form, and aside from being crafted to hold two overclocked processors and a dozen DDR3 DIMM slots, there's also space for seven PCI expansion slots. In other words, you could theoretically run seven GPUs in this thing. Of course, you'd need some serious software hacking skills to drive all that horsepower into a single display, but we get the feeling you like challenges, anyway. Hit the source link for more of the madness, but don't expect any units to hit retail until later in the year.

EVGA's W555 motherboard gets a once over, can hold seven GPUs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Puppy Tweets For Your Beloved Puppy

Had to comment about this, but I only have one word:

SQUIRREL!

Puppy Tweets For Your Beloved Puppy: "

Twitter is certainly a popular service, and deservedly so, but sometimes people take things to extremes. Would you want your dog to be tweeting as well? It seems that there are folks out there who would certainly want such an arrangement. Mattel has come up with a device dubbed ‘Puppy Tweets’, which you can attach you the puppy’s collar, allowing it to tweet for your dog. You’ll still need to help your dog create a Twitter account, and after everything has been set up, if your dog is barking non-stop at something, it’ll tweet stuff like “YAHOOOOOOO! Somedays you just gotta get your bark on." If your dog just ran around in circles for a long time, it might tweet something along the lines of "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!" Apparently this product wants to capitalize on peoples’ love for their dogs, as well as the trend for social media and real-time communication. It might seem rather pointless to you, but it’ll be debuting at next month’s Toy Fair in New York, so if you want to check it out, that’s where you can probably catch a glimpse of it.

Permalink: Puppy Tweets For Your Beloved Puppy from Ubergizmo | Hot: Nexus One Review

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Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure

OK, this is just another case of people blaming D&D for stupid things or accusing something inanimate of being evil.

My experience with D&D is that
1. It increases the ability to use the imagination
2. It improves teamwork
3. It can teach tactical thinking
4. It is a GREAT release of stress or boredom (one would think people in prison would need that)

People, please stop blaming things for your perceived problems and start blaming people.


Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure: "Trepidity writes "In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that 'one player is denoted the Dungeon Master... [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players... [which] mimics the organization of a gang.' The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the 'war on D&D,' but upheld it nonetheless as having a 'rational basis.' Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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UN Glacier Melt Report was Speculative Nonsense

One of the first things I was told when I started working on my masters degree was "Always check your sources!". Well, I guess you need to check your sources sources, and your sources sources sources, too!

Well, how about this: It it doesn't seem to make sense, check it out for yourself!

UN Glacier Melt Report was Speculative Nonsense: "

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

This sort of stuff really pisses me off. Taking advantage of a frightened public like this is just plain wrong. The original article here and New Scientist angle here.

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Left-wing Activist: Haiti Quake Caused By Global Warming

Um, OK, WHAT? An earthquake was caused by global warming? I couldn't believe the title on this one, but I watched the video and from 2:00 to the end of the clip, the gentleman from Seattle is actually saying that this sort of thing (earthquakes) could happen to any of the Caribbean nations because of global warming and the fact that we didn't do enough at the Copenhagen summit.

I'm sorry, but there's no way I can believe that an earthquake is caused by politics. However, I did notice we had a severe cold snap here in DC right after Congress went on recess. I attribute that to a lack of hot air.

Left-wing Activist: Haiti Quake Caused By Global Warming: "

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1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing

This is interesting. I remember the first CD player I saw, back in 1984. I was a "On-Air Personality", i.e. DJ, and assistant station engineer, at a small, community broadcasting station in Machias, Maine. I was in Ellsworth Maine with the station's engineer Craig Zurhorst, (my friend who got me the job) and we went into Radio Shack for some supplies. There it was; a shiny, black, device with VU meters on the right side and a sliding drawer on the left. We played with it for a while, and tried to figure out how we would que up a song on this, since we used 2 analog turntables at the time.

How times have changed. I'm guessing (because I haven't been in a radio station since 1985) that most stations are now using MP3 files, driven off a computer generated random list of songs from the library. Cool info, none the less.

1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing: "Here's a little bit of color for you. The gang at Retro Thing have brought our attention to a republished 1983 Stereophile review of the Sony CDP-101, the first-ever CD player. The results were that the audio quality was promising but not stellar, and the $1,000 (!) cost of entry for the device made it even less alluring. Knowing how history unfolded, we can't help but chuckle a bit at the worry that CDs would in the near-term become obsolete by another physical disc medium, but hey, we can't blame them for not being psychic. Just think, one day our own reviews will be discovered for the future to laugh about -- paying over $500 for a device that doesn't do multitouch on its native apps? What's up with that? Find yourself 15 to 30 minutes of quiet time and hit up the source link for a blast from the past.

1983 review of Sony's first-ever CD player unearthed: hindsight's a beautiful thing originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It Will Haunt Your Dreams Forever – The Horror of the Human-Faced Goat!

OK, this is just so odd that I have to post it. Seems that a goat in Turkey had a kid with a human-looking face. The pictures are quite gruesome, but it doesn't really look re-touched (although, I didn't actually analyze the data in the image itself).

Mutations happen; most are caused by what we've done to the world around us: chemicals, radiation, etc. (my opinion).

Follow the links if you dare.

It Will Haunt Your Dreams Forever – The Horror of the Human-Faced Goat!: "

You WISH the human-faced goat looked this cute!

To protect our dear readers with more gentle constitutions, you must click here to enter our freak show tent to view the beast. If you DARE!!!

(Note: DU relinquishes all responsibility for any physical ailment or insanity that may result from clicking the link above to view the unholy abomination. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!)

A sheep in Turkey has reportedly given birth to a lamb with a human-like face.

Vet Erhan Elibol performed a caesarean section to deliver the calf near the city of Izmir and was horrified to find it looked like a human, Russian and Turkish news sites said.

[...]

Photos purportedly of the lamb, which was stillborn, show human-like eyes, nose and mouth.

Vets said the calf’s mutation was most likely the result of an excess of vitamin A in the mother’s fodder.

Pravda reported that a goat in Zimbabwe gave birth to a similar human-like calf last September. But villagers killed it, believing it was the result of intercourse between the mother goat and a man.

If you could stomach that, perhaps you are now ready for THIS!!!

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Airnergy Wi-Fi Powered Charger

This looks FANTASTIC! Harvesting power from the WiFi signals around you. Who knew you could generate power from a sniffer?!

So, when do the replacement batteries come out?

Airnergy Wi-Fi Powered Charger: "
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CES 2010] Wireless charging seems like a dream to move gadget-users out there, after all, who’d want to plug a device into a charger, if you could charge it wirelessly, right? The Airnergy Charger certainly looks promising, and might actually fulfill your wireless charging fantasies. This device is able to harvest the electricity from Wi-Fi networks, and convert it into electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practical. When demoed at CES, it was able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% charge to full in about 90 minutes, using ambient Wi-Fi as a power source. So as long as you have a Wi-Fi network around you, you just have to carry it around, and it’ll charge itself. Of course, the proximity of the Wi-Fi source, and number of Wi-Fi sources will also be a factor. The best part is the company, RCA, says that the USB charger will be available this summer for just $40, and if they stick to that price point when it’s released, it’s going to be one interesting device.

Permalink: Airnergy Wi-Fi Powered Charger from Ubergizmo Hot: Blackberry Bold 9700 Review

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Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive

This borders on the crazy side. These guys actually hit a 256GB SSD drive with a baseball bat; and not just a little tap, either; I think this would at least have been a base hit.

Crazy stuff, but watch the video to see what happens at the end!

Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive: "

We put one of Kingston's SSDNow V Series drives through its paces last month, but we can't say we went quite as far as Kingston itself has gone in its latest demo video, which takes stress-testing to an all-American extreme. You can probably guess what happens next considering that Kingston is out boasting about the video, but, hey, it's not everyday that you get to see 256GB fly off the end of a bat.



[Thanks, Shane]

Continue reading Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive

Kingston takes a bat to its SSDNow V Series drive originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Beijing has coldest year since 1970

Yet another effect of "Global Warming"!

Beijing has coldest year since 1970: "

From the Australian ‘The Age’:

A FREEZING cold front swept over much of northern China on Sunday with snowstorms snarling traffic and air travel, while some of the coldest temperatures in decades were forecast for coming days.

Gale-force winds sweeping down from Siberia could result in temperatures as low as minus 16 degrees in the capital today, the Beijing meteorological station said.

Such temperatures are believed to be the coldest in the capital in 40 years.

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Rapture is set for May 21, 2011, are you ready?

Wow. This is a real bummer. I guess I should cancel our 28th anniversary plans for that day?

I would like to add something else, for those of you reading this that are believers (and one of the commenters talks about this, too):

Matthew 24:30-44 (NIV)

"At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the
nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the
clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels
with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds,
from one end of the heavens to the other.

"Now learn this lesson from
the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know
that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that
it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will
certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and
earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

The Day and
Hour Unknown
"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in
heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the
flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to
the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen
until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the
coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken
and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will
be taken and the other left.
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know
on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the
house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept
watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be
ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

So, reading this, I guess I don't need to cancel our plans, since the world won't really end on that day, because no one knows when it will be, so it won't happen on that day. Wait; did that make sense?

Rapture is set for May 21, 2011, are you ready?: "

sfgate.com – Friday, January 1, 2010:

Camping, 88, has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and says he has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book. One night a few years ago, Camping, a civil engineer by trade, crunched the numbers and was stunned at what he’d found: The world will end May 21, 2011.

This is not the first time Camping has made a bold prediction about Judgment Day.

On Sept. 6, 1994, dozens of Camping’s believers gathered inside Alameda’s Veterans Memorial Building to await the return of Christ, an event Camping had promised for two years. Followers dressed children in their Sunday best and held Bibles open-faced toward heaven.

But the world did not end. Camping allowed that he may have made a mathematical error. He spent the next decade running new calculations, as well as overseeing a media company that has grown significantly in size and reach.

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Flight 253 Passenger Says We Are Being Lied To About The Crotch Bomber Incident

This is a pointer to a short blog which points to an article on mLive from a passenger of flight 253.

I understand the need to classify some information, but lying to the public about something that is public knowledge is just bad form and stupid. Just more proof that the FBI and other agencies need to start working on the "flashy thingy" from MIB if they want to try to keep this stuff under a rug. Until then, we need to pressure law enforcement and the government to fess up and tell us what's going on.

There's more going on here with Flight 253 than we are being told.

The articles are long, but worth the read.

Flight 253 Passenger Says We Are Being Lied To About The Crotch Bomber Incident: "

You need to read the entire article to find out how things we are being told by the government are not what they seem. Confusion at the beginning is one thing, but this has been going on for days. Who are they trying to protect? This is just a small quote from passenger Kurt Haskell about what happened right after they landed:

We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway.

Lori and Kurt Haskell

This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.

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