Silicon Asylum

I got this forward this morning and have seen a number of blog posts about it: Example : "New gas protest circulating for April 15th, see following: What the heck, I’ll go do it! If running low, just get your gas the day before on April 14 or the day after on April 16. Every little bit helps In April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight. On April 15th 2011, all internet users are to not go to a gas station in protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $1.20 a liter in most places. If all users did not go to the pump on the 15th, it would take $2,292,000,000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companies pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on April 15th and let’s try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry for at least one day. If you agree (which I can’t see why you wouldn’t) resend this to all your contact list. With it saying, “Don’t pump g...

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I just came across this bit about asteroid Apophis and the chances of it impacting earth . "NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid known as Apophis and now say it has only a very slim chance of banging into Earth.. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields, and updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036 for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million, NASA stated." So here's the bit that rubs me wrong: "four-in-a million". Why not say "one-in-250,000". If the authors are really stuck on the whole "four-in" thing then they should have said four-in-180,000 to start with. I really find inconsistencies like this baffling, I wish I knew the author and could understand what they hoped to gain by reporting the number in this way.

Just caught this over on slashdot "The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight tether. Its thin, fibre-optic tether to the research vessel Kilo Moana allows the submersible to make deep dives and be highly manoeuvrable. Nereus can also be switched into a free-swimming, autonomous vehicle. ... The Challenger Deep... is the deepest abyss on Earth at 11,000m-deep, more than 2km (1.2 miles) deeper than Mount Everest is high. At that depth, pressures reach 1,100 times those at the surface." Hmmmm lets see 11,000m that's 11km. Yup 11 > 2 ... good job! For anyone in a nation that hasn't switched to the metric system and still care how long the king's foot is, that's >6miles . Orignal source seems to be the BBC . As Homer would say " SMRT ".

So how did the City of Ottawa do for EarthHour 2009? http://www.hydroottawa.com/NewsEvents/news_display.cfm?LANG=e&act=form&News_ID=175 The FACTS: Hydro Ottawa measured the city’s usage at 697,270 kilowatt-hours (kWh) between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. a reduction of 43,581kWh (6%) – compared to the same hour on the previous Saturday. This represents enough electricity savings to power 58 homes for a month. Hydro Ottawa is responsible ... delivery of electricity to more than 291,000 residential and business customers in the city of Ottawa and the village of Casselman. So ~1.1 Million people in Ottawa Carleton managed to save enough power for ~0.000199312715% of Hydro Ottawa's customer base for a single month. (Rounded that's 1/5,000th of their customer base). I'm still trying to find numbers that show how 9:30-10:30 right after Earth Hour compare to the same hour the week before. I also tried finding Ottawa's annual consumption numbers with little luck (if anyone has an...

http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2007/06/salary_comparison It loads a flash animation...move the slider left/right. Gist: 1970 - CEOs made 28 times more than average workers. 2005 - CEOs made 465 times more than average workers. Gouge!

Well it's a New Year so I'm going to start with a new rant. I hate the forward button, I understand it's place in the evolution of email etc. but it seems that the only time I hear from certain relatives is when they're taken in by a stupid forward/chain email they got. This time of year there seems to be a reoccurring one suggesting that people should refrain from purchasing gas on a particular day. You know the email, I'm sure you've seen it. Basically it states that if everyone refuses to buy gas on a certain date it will cost the oil/gas companies so many 10s of millions to billions of dollars. Here's a few reasons why these forwards/chain mails are complete stupidity. The calculations are always wrong. 1) Yes, there are ~33.3million Canadians, but guess what? NOT ALL OF THEM DRIVE. Even if we assume the entire population between 15 and 64 drives that's only ~23million. Now what happens to that ~23million if we remove say 10% for public transit, 10% ...

Found over here: http://img.moonbuggy.org/provide-us-with-the-email-address-we-should-not-contact/ You've all heard the line from the song "Things that make you go hmmmmm", well I suggest we apply a slight modification making it "Things that make you go DUH!". Serious how could any even barely technology savvy individual think this was a good solution to the issue?

Well as expected my previous writing rant did NOT (sadly) "automagically" fix the world :( However, I have been able to encourage others to see the light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Copyedit#Copyedit_Tag_needs_copy_editing Wikipedia's CopyEdit tag used to display this text: "This article or section needs copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone and/or spelling." So I encouraged them to change it: " 'and/or' isn't really valid so it's kind of funny to see it in a statement regarding copy editing. Simply using "or" sufficiently indicates that any combination of grammar, style, cohesion, tone, and spelling need to be addressed. Either that or it should be changed to "and/exclusive or" but even that is implied by a simple "or" while avoiding the awkwardness of reading "and/exclusive or". Wikipedia even has an entry about "and/or" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And/...

The first in what will surely turn out to be a recurring topic. We'll start with "and/or". WTF is with people who use "and/or" can they not figure the logic out? It boggles my mind. Note : The OR allows for the same True result as the AND (bottom right corner), while also allowing for other combinations producing True results. Therefore all written usage of "and/or" should simply be "or".

This completely boggles my mind. Why do people refuse to engage their brains? How could any sane person think this was a good idea? Romney's Cruel Canine Vacation The incident: dog excrement found on the roof and windows of the Romney station wagon. How it got there: Romney strapped a dog carrier — with the family dog Seamus, an Irish Setter, in it — to the roof of the family station wagon for a twelve hour drive from Boston to Ontario, which the family apparently completed, despite Seamus's rather visceral protest. WTF? Why did the border worker ever let this car in to Canada. I feel like Canada is a worse place for them just having visited ... even if it was 1983. Original Article

Yes this is part one, I don't have a plan for Part 2 but based on the things I've encountered in this world I CAN NOT fathom that I won't come up with something else. So I ran across this "Zune Team Getting Amnesty for iPod Use" article on slashdot. Following the obvious set of links . The comments on the Flickr photo page just amazed me. By Flickr user ariel_waldman: "I wonder how many iPods Zune bought to make a marketing point. Notice how all the iPods in there are the same generation." WoW! Did she even read the story? Zune is a product, an in-animate object it can not possibly purchase anything. How could someone claim to be such a fan of Apple's iPod (see her other comments) and have NFC that Zune is a Microsoft product meant to compete with Apple's iPod. Hey Ariel has your iPod made any purchases lately? /sigh I know that in the grand scope of things this is a minor grammatical issue but seriously people, at least engage part of your bra...

Checkout this article: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/09/07/lacie_safe_drive_range_expanded/ Note the last line: "LaCie has also announced two SAFE Mobile drives with built-in encryption, which should reassure the more paranoid user. In the US the 80GB costs $219.99, which is a premium of $50 over the non-encryption SAFE, while the 120GB costs $299.99 - a premium of $20." Does anyone else see a problem there? If you pay a premium for encryption "over the non-encryption SAFE" doesn't that kinda suggest that their regular "SAFE" drives are just a pretty enclosure with a thumb print scanner that interfaces with software to do basically zero? If the data isn't encrypted then what prevents someone from stealing the device, ripping the drive out, and plopping it in any system or enclosure? Now I'll admit, I have't bothered to read LaCie's site so maybe I'm missing something but this seems like a complete Gimmick to me......give the con...