Anybody who has ever worked with compressed or cryogenic gasses knows how much power can be contained within a cylinder of air. Now a New Jersey company is ready to commit $20 million into the development of an energy storage system that would take power from a variety of sources and store it in immense underground caverns and wells. It’s an interesting proposal to be sure, but does anybody really trust that underground caverns can safely contain all that pressure?

More after the Jump »

From News.com: Instead of just pulling down pirated clips, copyright owners are choosing to use YouTube’s copyright filters to generate advertising revenue, Google said Wednesday.

Late last year, Google introduced a copyright identification system called Video ID, which tracks unauthorized videos. It enables a copyright owner to either block the clip, leave it up, or enable YouTube to sell ads against the material.

In theory this sounds like a good idea: if somebody posts a clip of copyrighted material onto YouTube the real owner of that media will have the option to delete the clip or to earn revenue from the traffic. It’s only fair… if they OWN the material, then they should be the ones to bennifit from its display.

Unfortunately a problem arises when you combine this new program with the “Safe Harbor” provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) which provides protection for an ISP (in this case YouTube) if they pull down the content in question the moment a DMCA takedown notice is filed by a copyright holder. — That process has not been well scrutinized and all-too-often it has been used by copyright holders as a shotgun solution for piracy, often catching videos and users who have not violated copyright at all.

If YouTube is going to give the larger copyright holders the ability to earn from offending videos, then Google needs to simultaneously implement a program to curb DMCA takedown abuses. To not do as much is to invite a different kind of piracy in which large corporations can wantonly filed DMCA notices to steal the revenue of content creators who cannot otherwise fight the legal onslaught.

Did you ever see the action flick, “The Core” a few years back? (I will admit that it’s one of my regular guilty pleasures.) The hero, Dr. Joshua Keys, played by Aaron Eckhart, has a moment before the Joint Chiefs in which he is explaining why it’s impossible to fix the core of the earth. He rambles off a bunch of numbers that blend in to the background, but then he mentions that “the deepest we’ve ever been is 7 miles, with a two inch drill bit.” — The first time I heard that I paused, then I pulled out my laptop and started to search for deep Earth drilling, curious to know if we had actually every been 7 miles down. Surprise, surprise… we had! (Well not “us”… but “US” in the sense of humankind)

From Wired.com: “Between 1960 and 1962, the combination of economic interest and national pride during the Space Race period inspired scientists of the Soviet Union to plan drilling a “Russian Mohole” whose objective was to reach the Mohorovicic Discontinuity before the American drilling program,” Dean Dunn writing in the book, Science of the Earth.

The original goal was soon subsumed by the desire to learn more about how valuable ores formed, so the hopes of the Russian effort eventually landed in the middle-of-nowhere mining region, Pachenga. There, the Soviets drilled the deepest hole in the history of the world, more than 7 miles deep.

File this under, “Home Theater Nirvana”…

Planar just introduced a new unit in their home-theater line of high-end prejectors. Called the “Viper”, this projector sports 3CCDs, a 10,000 to 1 contrast ratio, 2,000 lumens of brightness, and can support 480i all the way up to true 1080p. It’s optimized for screen sizes of 110 inches or more and should bring the upper stratosphere of home entertainment quality down to the level of us mere morals.

The $15k price tag isn’t pocket change to be sure, but it’s still much less that the $20k+ that many manufacturers want for their comparable products. — We won’t be crossing our fingers to get a review unit in the lab any time soon, but perhaps one of our well-heeled fans might be able to tell us how it fares in their private theater.

More after the Jump »

You’ve heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, right? You know… those 2,000 year old parchments that were found sealed in earthen jugs by a group of Bedouin shepherds in 19467. Untill recently only a very few people have had full access to the scrolls because age had made them incredibly fragile, to the point at which even bright light can cause irreperable damage.

Well thanks to a group of scholars, technicians and scientists, the scrolls might soon be available online in all their ancient glory…

From Reuters: Using powerful cameras and lights that emit no damaging heat or ultraviolet beams, scientists in Israel have been able to decipher sections and letters in the scrolls invisible to the naked eye.

A team of specialists has taken 4,000 pictures of some 9,000 fragments that make up the scrolls, which number 900 in total. A few large pieces of scroll are on permanent display at the Israel Museum.

Since getting my Nike+ Sportband several months ago, I have toiled and tried different ways of securing the little sensor to my shoes. I’ve tried a few cases I bought online, I’ve made my own little cloth case via my own shoddy sewing, I’ve even tried gluing and velcroing it to my shoes and shoe laces…every single time ending in disappointment

My new solution: in walks the SwitchEasy Runaway for iPod Sport Kit. My friends, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for! Now, this is primarily meant for the Nike+ iPod kits, but hey, the sensor is exactly the same for the Nike+ SportBand. It’s a cute little case that completely envelopes the sensor and is weather proof. It has a reinforced 3-point lock to completely secure the clip from the base for harsh running conditions. Also, they’ve had the foresight to include a click lock mechanism to hold your receiver when you are not using it. To use this case: simply place your sensor in the see-thru case and snap it closed, take the base of the case and place it under your shoe laces, twist the sensor 45 degrees until you hear a click, and voila! No messing around with velcro straps, ugly cases, or pouches. I’ll be trying this on a couple of runs soon and will let you know how it goes!

Like a sucker, I signed up to receive Obama’s text message regarding his choice for VP. I was a sucker because I foolishly thought that when I gave my email address and cell phone number and other demographic type of information, that I would actually get the text message.

It’s been three days since the announcement, and I’m still waiting for the text. I’m pissed that I took the time to sign up for the text without any follow through. I’m pissed also that I get daily email from Obama’s camp. I didn’t sign up to get the email and I get the email. I signed up for the text message and I didn’t get the text.

Should this be a sign of things to come? Or is this just a normal tech glitch not unlike Apple’s MobileMe mess? Only time will tell.

Now, I’m off to add Obama to my spam filter. I might still vote for him, but I won’t get any of his emails.

The formation process for a Jesuit is long… REALLY LONG. It starts with 2 years of Novitiate, a time during which the Novice is taught how to live, pray and work as a Jesuit. Novitiate takes two years, after which the Novice takes perpetual vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience en route to becoming a Scholastic.

The Scholastic period can last anywhere from 5 to 11 years, depending on how much education and work experience the man may have had upon entering the Society. During this time the Scholastic studies Philosophy and Theology, also perhaps finishing any other degree that they may be pursuing, and spends several years working in one of our apostolates.

If deemed worthy by the powers-that-be the Scholastic is then invited to petition for Ordination. Assuming that they are approved, they are then ordained into the Catholic Priesthood. — But it’s not over yet…

At some point after ordination (and by “some point” I mean 3-30 years after) the Jesuit Priest is invited to petition for Tertianship. This “second Novitiate” leads to the Jesuit pronouncing perpetual vows of Poverty, Chastity, Obedience and Special Obedience to the Pope.

All told, the process of formation will take anywhere from 12-40 years. I’m somewhere towards the end of the process. The seven men who entered the California Province Novitiate this past week are at the very beginning. — God Bless Them!

More after the Jump »

I likey this one…
 

Wow… that didn’t last long.

With the air over Beijing still tinged with the smoke from the closing ceremony fireworks, it seems as if the Chinese government is back to business as usual. The semi-openness and tolerance of the Olympic hosts (I mean, they only arrested a dozen or so Americans) evaporated more quickly than their promise of Internet freedom at the start of the games.

From Catholic Online : On the concluding day of the Olympics, Msgr. Giulio Jia Zhiguo, underground bishop of Zhengding (Hebei), was taken away by police to an unknown location. The bishop had been under house arrest for months.

According to AsiaNews sources, the bishop had celebrated Sunday mass together with a small group of faithful in Wuqiu Cathedral. At 10 in the morning, 4 police entered the Church and dragged him away without explanation. The faithful have no idea of his whereabouts or why he was arrested. One priest commented: “After the Olympics, everything is back to the way it was before in China”.

I don’t normally like generic press releases, but this one really caught my uberGeek eye. — The boys over at CRU-DataPort just sent me a note about a new SAS/SATA external enclosure that has been specifically designed for high-performance external storage.

You may remember CRU-DataPort from the ‘gadget’ review that we did of the DataPort 25, a high-performance RAID enclosure that gave users a stacked RAID array of 2 x 2.5″ hard drives in an enclosure the size of a 3.5″ hard drive. Well now they’re upping the ante with several 2 and 4 bay enclosures that are capable of transfering data at rates up to 3Gbps with standard SATA drives, making them faster than NAS, cheaper than traditional SAS, and small enough for the desktop.

You can bet that we’re going to request a unit for the lab. A product like this nicely fills the gap between in-system and NAS storage qutie nicely. — When we get it… you’ll get it…. and that’s a promise!

More after the Jump »

From Catholic Online: A priest who was at the orphanage was also badly hurt and is now being treated in hospital for multiple burns.

Churches, community and pastoral centres, convents and orphanages have been attacked yesterday and today by mobs shouting “Kill the Christians; destroy their institutions.”

Let’s be clear about one thing: this has nothing to do with Christianity or Hinduism. It has everything to do with intolerance and the gathering of power through hate speech. It’s a sad commentary on humankind that it is so much easier to bring people together under the banner of hatred than that of unity and forgiveness. — Sigh…

When the lights when up on the Democratic< National Convention in Denver it was more than just a meeting of political big wigs and cultural icons, it was also an opportunity for some of the newest technologies and services to be showcased. Not that we should be surprised, Information Technologies have become increasingly important on the political stage and there's no reason why this election should reverse the trend. Still, this article is worth a once-over just to see what kind of technologies are behind the scenes at the DNC.

From News.com: To handle the increased demand, the Democrats have enlisted the support of Qwest, Cisco Systems, and other companies to upgrade the technical infrastructure at the Pepsi Center and Invesco Field.

Working with two large facilities made the logistics of the convention more challenging, said Damon Jones, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Convention Committee, or DNCC. “We essentially had to duplicate a lot of the infrastructure,” he said.

Did you get a brand-spanking new iPhone 3G? Are you worried about scratching it up? Do you want that protection without destroying the “natural beauty” of your new toy? — Then maybe you need to check out the Air Jacket for the iPhone 3G.

More after the Jump »

Imagine this…Take a tricycle, put it on skis, add an engine and a propeller to the back. Now make it a green vehicle that is capable of a 3,000 mile trek across the unforgiving terrain of the polar caps without giving off more CO2 than the pilot driving the thing… Oh… did I mention it was a Lotus?

More after the Jump »

Oops…

From Reuters: New York should ditch a $2 billion plan for a statewide wireless network for emergency workers unless a Tyco Electronics Ltd unit can fix the already-delayed system’s problems, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said on Thursday.

The plan was created to improve communications between emergency first responders such as police and firefighters after the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001.

So… you’ve been tasked with coming up with a state-of-the art solution to a difficult problem: how to keep communications running when an emergency strikes your city. You’ve got all the money you need, plenty of brain-power and industry-leaders lining up to give you the technology to make it happen. Somewhere along the line however, as requirements add up and delivery dates get pushed back, you lose sight of your mission as your budget begins to spiral out of control. — Deep in your heart you know that you can’t do what they want, but your’re too far into the project to turn back and somehow you still hope that some breakthrough will happen that will make it all worthwhile.

Six years later, a three year-old contract after, $2 Billion into, and you’ve got nothing to show…

Who HASN’T been there before?!?!

I want to preface this entry by saying that I have bashed Vista as much as the next person. I found it clunky, buggy and more than a little annoying for users who really just wanted the OS to do what THEY wanted it to do. — However, over the last few months as I have reviewed systems from Gateway, Dell and HP that have been designed from the ground-up to work with Vista, I have to say that I have come to enjoy working with the OS for many things. It still doesn’t rule my desktop and my satisfaction has only come at turning off several Vista “features”, but I see a time in the near future when XP becomes a rarity on the production side of our offices.

That being said, I do believe that Vista has a perception problem. It really isn’t as bad at most people think it is… at least not now. There was definitely a learning curve, and the new OS is clearly more resource hungry than its predecessor, but the main problem with Vista for so many of us was that there was really nothing wrong with XP for the vast majority of Windows users. — So… how do you correct an image problem?

From Reuters: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld will star in a $300 million marketing campaign for Microsoft Corp aimed at burnishing the image of its computer operating system, a person familiar with the effort said on Thursday.

The centerpiece of that campaign, to debut next month, is a series of television advertisements in which Seinfeld, 54, best known for his eponymous NBC sitcom, will appear with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, the person told Reuters.

While I like the fact that they’re thinking out of the box, I’m not sure if putting a mediocre comic into less-than-funny TV spots is really going to work. Seinfeld was funny because of the material and his co-actors. If they just have him pitching some straight-laced message of “Windows = Good!” then this isn’t going to be pretty. On the other hand, if they are willing to get outrageous and let Seinfeld do his thing… then maybe this might quiet the Vista haters.

Maybe the Vista lovers need to face the reality that Vista…isn’t so great. According to this Info World article more than 1/3 of “mainly enterprise-class” users “downgrade” their new Windows licenses to XP. I use the term “downgrade” facetiously since I consider XP to be an upgrade, but in any event, this survey (of 3,000 or so users) is damning evidence that Vista has not lived up to the hype.

Now, the inevitable response from Vista Fanboy is that enterprise users were also slow to adopt XP from Windows 2000. Obviously, when you have tens of thousands of computers to deal with, change is not necessarily better even if it is a change to a superior operating system. However, now, we’re more than 18 months into this Vista experiment and the adoption rate is still only 2/3rds?

But the more troubling thing for Vista is the issue of perception. Even their “Mohave Operating System” campaign where they duped people into thinking they were playing with a different operating system (and claiming that they loved the “different OS when, in fact, it was still Vista) only serves to cement the idea in people’s minds that there is a perception problem with Vista. Now they’ll hear about this study, which will input two ideas in their minds (if it wasn’t there to begin with): 1. Oh, I have the option to downgrade to XP, cool!, or 2. That shiny new macbook which will be coming out next month is looking better and better!

Here’s the link. http://tinyurl.com/6qopbq.

What do you think? Comment here or twitter me at twitter.com/dballecer.