Archive for January, 2011

If you have a big sliding door in your house, along with kids and/or a dog, you know how quickly the glass can get dirty. The dog puts nose prints all over the glass, and kids put fingerprints over the nose prints. If you own a retail store, you know how often the glass – [...]

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Making humor of the simplest, little human things – eyebrows, standing, smells, stories and so on: It is funny that such simple little things can be made funny. Perhaps the key to the whole thing is that these simple observations are true, but we’ve never really stopped to think about them. They have woven their [...]

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New Device May Revolutionize Computer Memory – ““We’ve invented a new device that may revolutionize computer memory,” says Dr. Paul Franzon, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. “Our device is called a double floating-gate field effect transistor (FET). Existing nonvolatile memory used in [...]

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I know it’s been out for an entire month, so this post is woefully late, but I finally saw “True Grit” this weekend. When the credits rolled, I turned to my friend and movie-watching companion extraordinaire, Jack, and said, “I have a problem with the depiction of rattlesnake behavior in this movie.”

In case you’re wondering, yes, I was the kid who would correct the teacher in elementary school.

Find out what was so wrong after the jump.

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The New York Times had a bit of gloom as it’s lead story in its bacon email this morning. The article broke the bad news that the attorney fees for top former executives at the public/private hybrid mortgage behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These execs are the ones who helped fuel the current housing crisis — and, indeed, the global financial meltdown — by creating the pools of toxic mortgages that were securitized and sold to investors big and small.

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Amazon started selling groceries and mailing them to your home back in 2006. This is a commercial of that era advertising this development: Amazon also came up with a subscription service, which is a novel way to think about groceries and staple items: Amazon is not the only one doing this kind of get-your-groceries-mailed-to-you approach. [...]

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This video describes one man’s successful attempt to break the world record for the longest surfing session. He surfed for 26 consecutive hours and rode 147 waves: What could have gone wrong? For one thing, there is this risk – 25 foot waves: – Surfer Seriously Injured At Mavericks Surf Spot (video) – “The surfer, [...]

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Consider the content spectrum on the Internet. On one side, you have purely original content, generated by the webmaster or by those who work for him/her. On the other, you have user-generated content. With this model, the Web site is really just a forum in which users can post their own content for the enjoyment of other users. Most Web sites fall somewhere between the two extremes. Justin.tv, a site that allows users to stream video over the Web, slants more toward the user-generated model than the other. That’s what has caused the UFC to take notice.

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Flattr, which describes itself as a “social micropayment” system, made it to both The Economist magazine and Wired magazine in January, so it must be making some headway. Here is a very compact statement of how Flattr works and how it benefits the web: From Flattr’s about page: Flattr was founded to help people share [...]

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For many of us, when someone utters the phrase “road trip,” our eyes begin to glimmer with enthusiastic anticipation. These two little words can cause our hearts to race with excitement as our minds fill with thoughts of adventure. But for others, these two little words can cause gut-wrenching dread. OK, if you’re in the heart-racing, excited camp, you’re probably wondering what could be so awful about an open-road adventure. More than a few people from the knotted-stomach camp would say, “Packing for it!”

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