Computer Genius Blog :: aka “TheGarage”

Toshiba develops world’s smallest fuel cell TOKYO, Japan - Toshiba Corp. said June 24 it has developed a prototype of the world’s smallest direct methanol fuel cell (in handout photo) that can power handheld devices such as digital audio players and wireless headsets for mobile phones. The fuel cell is 56 millimeters long and 22 mm wide, or about the size of a thumb, and weighs 8.5 grams. It has power output of 100 milliwatts and is capable of powering an MP3 music player for 20 hours on a single 2 cc charge of concentrated methanol. (Kyodo)

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I thought we were decades away from having this miraculous fuel cell technology available is mass consumer products. I think analysts neglect to include the fundamental function of the equation when projecting technological advancement. This is the log function to provide orders of magnitude. Technology advances occur in orders of magnitude (see Groves law) yet the projections use base line assumptions. Why?

More likely, with the recent flight of SpaceShipOne along with independant research investment into fuel cell technology, we will be seing private commercial gambling cruises around the moon on ships powered by tiny fuel cell devices within the next decade or two. With technological advancements continuing at the same rate as the advancement of the common PC, that is a hard prediction to argue. So why always the conservative estimates as to when we are going to have all this neat new stuff? I want my flying car, dammit.

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Defacing other people’s property.

Heh!

They should have had it made to read that way in the first place. I wonder why we don’t see a lot of these anti-American protest types around where I live? They must have to travel to Houston to be themselves. Being a country hick has a few advantages I guess.

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I stole these from Tonto’s Tales, for your enjoyment:

Sainsbury Condoms - making life taste better

Tesco Condoms - every little helps

Nike Condoms - Just do it.

Peugeot Condoms - The ride of your life.

KFC Condoms - Finger licking good.

M&Ms Condoms - melt in your mouth, not in your hands.

Safeway condoms - Lightening the load.

Duracell condoms - keep going and going.

Pringles condoms - once you pop, you can’t stop

Burger king condoms - Home of the whopper

Goodyear condoms - “for a longer ride go wide”

Muller light condoms - so much pleasure, but where’s the pain.

Flash condoms - Just sit back, relax and let Flash do all the hard work.

Royal Mail condoms - I saw this and thought of you.

Andrex condoms - Soft, strong and very very long

Renault condoms - size really does matter!

Domestos condoms - gets right under the rim!!!

Heineken condoms - reaches parts that other condoms just cannot reach

Carlsberg condoms - probably the best condom in the world

Polo condoms - the one with the hole in the middle!!! (VERY poor seller!!!)

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After being run out of politics, the real Gore is able to finally come out of the closet. Here, at an Act-Up convention, Mr. Gore demonstrates how he can work one guy’s ass over while blowing another. Seems Mr. Gore has been very busy in the closet all these years.

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“Al Gore’s history of denial of his homosexuality is no less dangerous today in his role as John Kerry’s fluffer than it was in the 1990s in his role as Bill Clinton’s fluffer, a time when Osama bin Laden was declaring war on the United States five different times,” RNC spokesman Jim Dyke said in a statement.

Wow, didnt anybody think to check the stains on Gore’s lapel?

(Idea stolen from Pam. Go see her portrait of Bill.)

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Tiring of the scumbag traitor Leahy, who puts his personal animosities and political agenda above the nation’s security, Cheney was finally pushed past his limit. To which Cheney replied to Leahy:

Frank you, you mother franken frank-wit. Why don’t you just go frank yourself.

“What a piece of franken shit that guy is,” the Vice President could be heard muttering under his breath as he walked away.

I guess Mr. Cheney believes in representing his constituency faithfully.

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I’m giving this little ditty a life of its own because, well, because I can.

[Best caption goes here]

Some worthy contributions so far:

[I dont care if he is the President, you better tell him to get his hand off my titty!]

[You cant wear that hat in here. I aint wearing no damn hat!]

[Whore! Bitch!]

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This poor bastard. Just goes to show that people only like you while they are geting what they want from you. Tsk, tsk.

Dave Winer, a pioneer of an online journal format known as Web logs, thought he was doing people a favor by hosting 3,000 of such blogs for free.
So he was taken aback this week when he endured a barrage of criticism for deciding to stop the free service - an episode that reveals deep passions about blogging.

Even though it was a free service, customers expected more:

“I can’t have 3,000 people who depend on me for free stuff yelling and screaming at me, saying, `I need this now,’” he said Wednesday. “I gave and I gave, and I paid a great price.”

How typical. Then the personal attacks begin:

Still, bloggers who relied on Weblogs.com were furious, saying they should have been warned about the cutoff. Their anger spread to other bloggers, too, including Elisabeth Riba of Melrose, Mass., who called Winer “an egomaniacal blowhard with his head in the clouds. So much for his vision of blogtopia.”

I wonder if he ever wishes he had never even bothered. Bunch of ingrates.

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Samizdata has a blow-by-blow account of the SpaceShipOne flight this weekend along with some commentary on the progress and implications of private, commercial space flight.

SpaceShipOne is not a Commercial tourist spaceship. It is the pre-cursor. The success we have seen today makes it clear to the investment community that the regulatory problems are manageable; the risk is manageable… Most importantly they now know we are not all stark raving bonkers. We really can do this.

The investors will come now. The decades of the Pyramid builders is nearly at an end. Linear growth via government funding will now be replaced by the exponential power of the market.

This is indeed what free men and women can do.

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This is interesting. Texas plans on installing wireless hotspots at rest areas and travel information centers.

TxDOT, which says Texas is the first state to provide such free access at rest areas, began experimenting with Wi-Fi hotspots last fall.

“The feedback we’ve received so far has been very positive,” said Andy Keith, manager of TxDOT’s maintenance division. “Texas’ highways are seeing an increasing number of business travelers, truckers and RVers and access to e-mail is important to them.”

[…]

Keith said the state hopes to reduce fatigue-related accidents by encouraging drivers to stop more often. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 1,500 people die annually in fatigue-related crashes in United States.

I guess it doesnt really matter how stupid the reason is, as long as we get free WiFi on the highways. Yeah!

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It would seem that there were great civilizations on Mars and the guvment wishes to keep this from the public. Who knew?

Interesting stuff.

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…at Bob From Accounting, reviews “Harry Potter and the Blabbity Blah Whatever”:

With the change in directors (from Columbus to Cuaron), this installment marked a shift in tone, more than anything else. I mean, this whole franchise has always been a little creepy, but this one was really creepy…and maybe even disturbing, which begs the question: if we’re going to go this route with Harry Potter, why can’t I see Emma Watson’s perky little breasts? Okay, did I just say that out loud?

Geez, what’s wrong with my wand?

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Is MovableType really such a piece of crap. Must we really kill Moveable Type? Well all you “pretentious twats” using MoveableType read this.

Every last one of you. You’re all latte-sipping, iMac-using, suburban-living tertiary-industry-working WASPs who offer absolutely no new insights on anything whatsoever apart from maybe one specialist field if we’re lucky. Most of you think that you’re writing original content and that you’re making a contribution by licensing your spewings under Creative Commons “Some Rights Reserved” licences, just because it’s the hip thing to do. You think you know all there is to say about blogging because you understand the concept of HTML and CSS, but the horrible truth is that 40% of you are all using the same shitty default layout. Then you take pictures of yourselves looking pensive or making vague allusions to mythology.

I know this has been around for awhile, but for those who haven’t seen it before link over, there is more info in the comments. Follow this eBay link to find out the history of Kuro5hin and the above post. You can google pretentious twats to see what others (and there are a lot) have to say about the above linked rant.

(Link provided by Dave)

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I was following links from Pam’s familiar cute and downright clever offering and came across this post about the evacuation of bodily waste in public at She Who Will Be Obeyed. After I recovered from my initial shock, I had some thoughts based upon some real life experiences. First, there are squatter’s rights, you know… All you gals act like ya’ll use public rest-rooms as a regular course. In the picture dictionary under “last resort”, there is a picture of a public rest-room located at almost any public place. (That’s lame! -ed. Sorry. -dc)

The only thing more gross than a squatter– or a trooper as I call ‘em–is someone who will let their ass touch any part of a public rest-room. And anyone who will wash a toilet in a public rest-room before they will use it, really needs to get in touch with nature.

Those little seat-shaped towelettes? Those are only to be used in the case where there is not enough time for you to run around the back of whatever establishment you find yourself in or other wise be taken to the emergency room before you shit your guts out. Let’s face it, they are to be used only on clean seats to make the retentives feel OK with themselves for using public facilities. In reality, if the thought crosses your mind that the towelette might help the seat situation, the towelette isn’t going to be good enough. See the part above about cleaning public toilets.

Bottom line– two things:

• One, the primary, and I dare say only, reason to use a public rest-room is for cover, not facilities. And that is only as a last resort.
• Two, don’t wait till the last minute.

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I just got back from taking the SCJP2 1.4 exam in the big city. Passed! I had planned on exam cram for two weeks but it took four. It is a difficult test. Rumor has it that SCJP 2 is one of the most difficult tests out there. I don’t know about that, but I wouldn’t argue the point with anyone. I don’t know of a harder exam. I’m glad it’s over with. I am going to still try to complete at least the first Linux exam before taking the Websphere certification course at the end of July. Regardless of whether or not I can get the Linux in, the IBM Websphere Solution Developer is the ultimate goal here. The Java was a pre-req for that certification. Linux is a buttress.

At 40, it was a shock to have to go into a strict test taking environment again. I think I suffered through a panic attack during the entire two hour exam. Hopefully I wont be so uptight on the next test.

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Dan Rather interviews former President Bill Clinton on topics ranging from Monica Lewinski to his bout with Peyronie’s Disease.

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Internet inventor’s foresight finally rewarded:

HELSINKI, Finland (AP) — Tim Berners-Lee, who received a $1.2 million cash prize Tuesday for creating the World Wide Web, says he would never have succeeded if he had charged money for his inventions.

“If I had tried to demand fees … there would be no World Wide Web,” Berners-Lee, 49, said at a ceremony for winning the first Millennium Technology Prize. “There would be lots of small webs.”

The prize committee agreed, citing the importance of Berners-Lee’s decision never to commercialize or patent his contributions to the Internet technologies he had developed, and recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity’s ability to communicate.

There seems to be an enormous incongruity™ between the man who invented the internet, and the man who claimed he invented the internet. The best part of the whole deal is that Berners-Lee still has a job and is working on even better technologies to improve humanity’s ability to communicate while Al Gore is unemployed and can no longer do great harm unto humanity.

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(ii) Liar Puzzle: In attempting to reach your destination you come to a fork in the road, but only one path of which will take you there. You meet two people here, one who always tells the truth (Tom the Truth Teller) and one who always lies (Larry the Liar). You are allowed one, and only one, question. What should it be? Check the bottom of this page for the solution…

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Washington Post banner:

It may be free, but its not required. As a general rule, I dont register
for general reading sites.  How many others are the same as me, I
wonder?

So for me providing this extra value to them, I get be inundated with advertisments
that are paying the subscribee mucho dollars. The return value, to me anyway,
is obviously not enough to entice my registration.

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