NC Media Watch

You can not make this up: iPads and Internet clouds will fry the planet

Russ Steele

Dough Hoffman at the Resilient Earth has the details: Climate Alarmists Attack iPad & Cloud Computing

The current hot buzzword in Information Technology (IT) circles is “cloud computing,” the concept of a shared grid of computer resources, made available to a wide range of consumers in an on-demand, self-service and pay-as-you-go fashion. Even those not immersed in the arcane details of IT are aware of the latest must have techno-doodad from Apple Computer—the iPad. Proving that they can find a dark cloud to go with any silver lining, the perennial eco-pessimists from Greenpeace have declared that the combination of iPads and cloud computing are going to greatly accelerate mankind's march to a planet frying future.

I was going to wait until Apple introduced iPad V2.0 before buying may latest techno-toy, but now that Greenpeace is against me having an iPad I may reconsider and buy one ASAP. 

Yet again, another Sac Bee experiment in the blog-o-sphere

Russ Steele

This week the Sac Bee announced another experiment with content in the blog-o-sphere, called Sacramento Connect. Connect will put access to 25 hand picked blogs on their web page tool bar, including some of our local blogs.

When you visit sacbee.com or a couple dozen other sites and blogs in the Sacramento region next week you'll see a toolbar across the bottom of your screen with the Facebook and Twitter icons on it. Also integrated into the toolbar are a Yahoo search engine and an aggregator called LingoSpot, which will list related content based on what you are currently clicking.

Both the search engine and aggregator will focus on finding content from sacbee.com and a network of blogs and sites handpicked by Bee editors for their consistent quality. Some of the sites and blogs have been around the region for awhile and have a good number of followers.

More Details here.

I hope this is more successful that some of the past efforts of the Bee to join the blog-o-sphere.  In May of 2007 the Bee Launched the Hot House climate change blog.  Details here.

The blogger was Stuart Leavenworth, a Senior Editor at the Bee.  It was not long before some of the California bloggers who were interested in climate change started challenging the facts in Stuart's posts. He could not answer our questions, and in exasperation he finally declared that Hot House was only interested in the politics of climate change, not if climate change was real. I wrote this on January 20th 2008:

Stuart has banned any discussion of global warming on the Hot House blog that questions the belief  humans are responsible for global warming. Counter arguments showing global warming has stopped while CO2 continues to increase, that arctic ice melted is a natural cycle, hurricane intensity or numbers are not increasing, and more droughts are cause by the lack of precipitation not increased temperatures which increase atmospheric moisture are not welcome. Stuart is tired of answering all the blog posts that went against his religious preferences, so he banned all technical discussion of global warming from the Hot House. I guess it became to hot in the Hot House.  (More details here)

Who could have guessed?

 Russ Steele

Local liberal blogs will become part of the Sac Bee’s Sacramento Connect experiment, crows the FUE this morning here .

The McClatchy-owned Sacramento Bee (sacbee.com) is changing that starting Monday, March 29 with a product called Sacramento Connect. The details are here and here.

In short, sacbee.com is building a network of blogs and sites “handpicked by Bee editors for their consistent quality,” as Bee editors explain, including this one — “Jeff Pelline’s Sierra Foothills Report.”

In the foothills, Yubanet also has been chosen. The new website sierraculture.com, complimenting Sierra FoodWineArt magazine, also will be part of the network.

Congratulations to the FUE and Yubanet for being recognized by the Sac Bee!

We stopped the Sac Bee years ago as our blood pressure could not take the liberal carp on the editorial page and the twisted news stories viewed through tinted blue liberal lenses.

However, I do scan Rough and Tumble, an online news aggregator, for Bee stories of local interest and subscribe to the Sac Bee Capitol Alert.

You will have to book mark this site and Rebanes’s Ruminations for a more conservative views on local events and issues.  Maybe The Union would like to create Union Connect and link to local conservative bloggers?

Government jobs model leads us astray

Russ Steele

According to Bloomberg.com 824,000 US jobs that will disappear on Friday.  When the Department of labor releases Friday's employment report the number of American jobs will drop by almost a million as they revise the job losses from April 2008 to March of 2009.

Why? Because they were projecting job growth based on a flawed model. Here is an chart of the real world vs the model.



Did you see the SHOW ME green box at the end of the paragraph?   When you go on line, the display become interactive. This is a very dynamic way of displaying complex information. I highly recommend you visit the Bloomberg.com site and click on all the green boxes. You will be amazed.

DIY technologies can also impact our libraries

Russ Steele

While we are having an emotional debate "about outsourcing our library management, little has been said about how technologies are impacting our libraries" writes a former editor of The Union on his blog.

I was reminded of this statement about technology when I read about this low cost home built scanner that can scan a 400 page book in 20 minutes. The product is a pdf file that can be read on any computer.  Details in this Wired Article and attached pdf.

For nearly two years, Daniel Reetz dreamed of a book scanner that could crunch textbooks and spit out digital files he could then read on his PC.

Book scanners, like the ones Google is using in its Google Books project, run into thousands of dollars, putting them out of the reach of a graduate student like Reetz. But in January, when textbook prices for the semester were listed, Reetz decided he would make a book scanner that would cost a fraction of commercially available products.

So over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that’s fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes. To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he’s done, software on Reetz’s computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn’t automated–you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it’s fast and inexpensive.

“The hardware is ridiculously simple as long as you are not demanding archival quality,” he says. “A dumpster full of building materials, really cheap cameras and outrageous textbook prices was all I needed to do it.”

Note: Picture above is of version 2 of the DIY scanner.

How long before the County Library can buy a low cost scanner at Staples or Amazon and scan all the books in the library, including the historical library and store them in an online data base.  Why have multiple buildings for storing musty books, when one computer center can do the job.

Perhaps some of the more talented local DIY types can build a couple of scanners for our library. Detailed plans are here.

More Wireless Broadband for Nevada County?

Russ Steele

Comcast announced last week that its partner Clearwire has raised enough funding to provide a “reasonable likelihood” that it will be able to build out wireless internet in all 39 states, where the cable company operates. "I believe . . . there is a reasonable likelihood that Clearwire is going to continue to build out the 4G network all over our markets," said Comcast’s Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts. Clearwire has said that it expects to cover as many as 120 million people by the end of 2010.

Comcast is a major provider of Broadband in Western Nevada County, the addition of WiMAX service will spread Broadband into currently unserved areas in the Western County. WiMAX is a wireless service that covers miles rather than feet and provides handoffs to moving platforms like cell towers. This will provide stiff competition to the small wireless Internet service providers currently filling the gaps between AT&T's DSL and the current Comcast Broadband services over their cable network.

This WiMAX expansion will also provide stiff competition for the Nevada County Connected project which has applied for a $13 million dollar grant under the ARRA Stimulus Program. NCC recently received approval for $1.3 million in funding from the California Advanced Service Fund, managed by the California Public Utilities Commission. Stay Tuned.  

Posting may be slow

Russ Steele

I am going to be away from my broadband connection for few days, so posting may be slow. However,  I will have a column in The Saturday Union on the risk of investing in green business, given the increased risk that human caused global warming is a fraud. 

For those following the Climategate Scandal, I highly recommend that you visit Anthony Watts' blog Watts Up With That.

Climategate goes viral on Microsoft's Bing (Updated 11--29-09)

Russ Steele

I found it interesting to compare how the different search engines are treating the term "climategate." If you type "climategate" into Google, the search results are: 11,600,000. If you type the same term into the Microsoft Search Engine Bing the search results are 50,900,000.

Bing suggested "climategate" straight up, while Google required that I type in the full phrase, at no time did Google suggest the term "climategate."

If you type "global warming" into Bing the search results are: 13,600,000. Goggle search results are: 10,200,000.  In all cases, Bing or Google, the term "climategate" now exceeds the search results for "global warming."    

I thought we are training our high school students for 21st Century jobs?

Russ Steele

The NUundersground Blog provides local citizen insight into what our high school students are thinking and doing.  Here is a sample by Nell PK, the editor, on Technology not utilized on campus.

I returned to Nevada Union after travelling across California to check out colleges during fall break. After spending time at two UCs, two private universities and a high school in southern California, I began to wonder why NU doesn’t have WiFi access like the majority of college campuses and a rapidly growing number of high schools. At an institution that is supposed to be preparing us for college and the world beyond, why aren’t we learning more about increasingly digital solutions to modern problems?

The average NU student’s access to technology and the web is really sort of pitiful. The school has banned iPods and thereby opportunities for options like educational Podcasts and easy web access; the doctrine on laptops is unclear at best and restrictive at worst; library computers always available for quick access are hopelessly out of date; PCs that are even a generation behind current are only available via reservation and only usable under the watchful eye of a staff member; and the internet filter blocks the vast majority of Web 2.0 socially-created websites like YouTube, reddit, Digg, Blogger and Facebook that could potentially offer exciting new educational opportunities.

Nevada Union is currently operating under a policy established in 1998, eleven years ago. The official line: "students are not to have access to personal emails, videos, MP3 files or chat rooms..." And maybe the search engines that would let them find the sites, my school network experience below.

Formatting issues

Russ Steele

I changed the comment format to include a number, so readers who comment on a comment can refer to a specific comment by number. Also the comments are now threaded. As the number of comments by the same individual grows,  it makes referencing much easier.  These changes can cause formatting problems for some browsers. So far, I have isolated the problem to Internet Explorer.

I am reporting the problem to Typepad.  However, until a fix is found I recommend Firefox for reading NC Media Watch.