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April 2005 Archives
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St. Francis University is taking on a massive power generating and power saving initiative in which several electricity-producing windmills will be constructed throughout the area. Last week, Mr. Paul Gipe came to the university to discuss the project and the benefits of wind-energy and conservation which can be streamed here. I haven't listened to it all yet, but it sounds to be a pretty good speech.
I didn't realize that a laptop consumes just 10% of the power that is consumed by a comparable desktop.
Check out this video (get the hi-res if you can) to view a well done montage of nuclear testing that took place in the US and Russia during the 40s and 50s. I had no idea that they were testing the nukes so close to soldiers. The footage shows the amazing devastation that these things are capable of.
I'm sure this is WTLW (or even WTLY) for most people, but Bubb Rubb has to be one of the funniest things I've seen on the net in a long time.
There's an interesting article in today's Altoona Mirror about how our local Double A baseball team, the Altoona Curve, nearly lost its radio presence this past year. For the previous six seasons of the Curve's existence, a radio station affiliated with Forever Broadcasting carried the games. Forever is one of those large conglomerate companines that move into an area and purchase a ton of stations. In the Altoona, Johnstown, and State College areas, Forever owns at least 19 AM and FM stations.
For various reasons, the Curve and Forever could not work out a deal to cover the games this year. Fortunately, a radio station out of Ebensburg (about 20 miles from Blair County Ballpark) committed to carrying the Curve games.
The interesting part of this though is that Forever Broadcasting has told DJs of each of its affiliate stations explicitly that they may not even mention the Altoona Curve other than reporting the score of the previous day's game or briefly answering a question from a caller. Now considering that many of the stations owned by Forever are sports radio stations and there is at least one local sports show on one of the stations, it will be interesting to see how the DJs fill in the time considering they can't even mention the team that draws the biggest crowds in the area.
I'm obviously not an expert in the radio business, but it kind of disturbs me that Forever Broadcasting is essentially censoring at least 19 stations from covering one of this areas largest attractions. Apparently, there was a law passed a few years back allowing a company to create a media monopoly in radio for a local listening area and we are now feeling the effects with dwindling competition. I can understand the two entities not coming to a business agreement, but Forever slapped the community in the face by censoring the DJs.
The other downside to this is that the current station covering the curve has limited signal strength in the valley that the Curve actually plays in! From what I understand, it is now actually easier to take a Wi-Fi equipped PDA to the game and listen to the Internet stream than to take a $5 radio if you want to listen to the announcers during the game.
Remember that saying "There's no such thing as bad publicity"? I guess that's the question the folks over at Internet2 have to answer. Late last night I began reading reports that the RIAA has filed lawsuits againist several university students who allegedly have been using the i2Hub P2P software on the Internet2 network (Abilene) for downloading copyrighted material. As far as I know, this is the first time that Internet2 has made it to the mass media markets (including USAToday, MTV, MSNBC, etc...) Where are these reporters when it comes to the positive things being done on the high-speed network?
Some memorable quotes from the few articles I read:
* MTV.com - "In addition to downloading Web pages hundreds of times faster than the regular Internet, the Internet2..."
Yes, you are correct. 'The Internet2' was specifically designed so people could "download web pages hundreds of times faster".
* "We cannot let this high-speed network become a zone of lawlessness where the normal rules don't apply," said Cary Sherman, RIAA president.
Jeesh, kind of sounds like the Wild-Wild West, doesn't it? Guess I should wear my cowboy hat and holster to my next videoconference.
At several of the Internet2 presentations I've attended, they have used the graphic showing how fast it takes to download "The Matrix" over Internet2. It was a pretty simple visual to show just how fast the network ran. I'm guessing the RIAA will now go after every person who used that slide for promoting piracy.
I haven't gotten a chance to read the full text yet, but "The Anatomy of a Search Engine" was the initial research project that started Google.
Looks like an interesting read.
Anyone in Central Pennsylvania who is into Geocaching should check out the new Central PA Geocaching Forum over at Northeast Geocaching. The group recently moved over from Yahoo Groups to this new board.
If you do a lot of surfing with your mobile phone or PDA, check out Skweezer. It formats web sites to fit into the smaller screen used in handheld devices. Simply enter the site that you want to visit, and Skweezer takes care of the rest.
With gas prices reaching all-time highs, I figured I'd post a couple resources that let you track local gas prices:
1, GasPriceWatch.com
2, If you are in PA, check out PA Gas Prices.
3, Those using Konfabulator should check out the GasWatch Widget.
It looks like gas prices have topped $3 in some locales (Thanks GW!). Blair and Cambria counties seem to be averaging about $2.12 right now.
