This had to be invented by a parent who got tired of dragging bags and suitcases around an airport while trying to keep track of your child. The Ride-On Carry-On attaches to a standard wheeled carry-on back to provide your child a seat as you wander with the zombies through the airport. It also has a pull-down snack tray.
Available at One Step Ahead
via OhGizmo!
The IPac Blog has noted that “Friends of John Kerry” has return the donated iPod that IPac sent to all senators. Senator Kerry becomes the second Senator who’s fund raisers refused the digital music device after Conrad Burns’ was returned earlier in the week. Must be the millions of dollars that Hollywood and the record labels donate to campaigns is just too important to risk enjoying their product. Or, being optimistic, maybe when you buy your politician you equip them with all the cool gadgets, so they just didn’t need the iPod.
From the IPac Blog (Who is IPac?)
This is a concerted effort to escalate Hollywood’s war on America by creating a generation of criminals and sending them off to jail. That’s right: the “Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006″ (IPPA) would double the authorized prison terms for existing copyright infringement, create a host of new offenses, and establish a division within the FBI to hunt down infringers. The Members of Congress in the pockets of the Hollywood cartels want to divert $20 million a year and FBI agents from fighting real criminals so they can go after people without computers.
In case you haven’t seen the early reports about this bill it’s basically DMCA 2.0. Rather than realize that the DMCA was flawed and far over-reaching, Congress is looking to make it even worse. The kicker for me is that they want the taxpayers (who fund the FBI) to enforce private copyright. The US government has gotten way too large if they have time to fight three wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Terrorism), and still act as Big Brother for Hollywood and the Recording Industry.
Abrams, the producer of the “Lost” and “Alias” television shows and director of Mission Impossible III will co-write, produce, and direct the movie for a planned fall 2008 release. The movie will chronicle the first meeting of Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy and their first outer-space mission.
It’s interesting that Paramount would go for another prequel given the problems “Star Trek: Enterprise” had getting an audience. This movie would also have the unenviable task of recasting the legends of the Star Trek universe.
via CNN.com
Trek Today
The EarthShell Corporation makes a line of “food service disposables” (wraps, plates, take-out containers) that are made from renewable materials and are biodegradable.
Patented, innovative technology allows us to combine simple, abundant, renewable materials, such as limestone and starch, into a material that, like leaves and grass, is 100 percent biodegradable and recyclable through composting. The result is a line of high quality, new-to-the-world food service packaging that is environmentally preferable and price-competitive to paper and plastic alternatives.
EarthShell recently announced the opening of the first dedicated manufacturing facility to product EarthShell Packaging.
via TreeHugger
The device — about the size of a credit card — pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly.
By comparison, it takes more than a day to produce biodiesel with current technology.
So how long before someone builds a car that can do this on it’s own and we fill up at the local grocery store?
Coupled with Microsoft SQL Server Express, the Visual Studio Express editions provide a tool that meets the needs of a wide range of software enthusiasts, including beginning Windows® developers, hobbyist Web developers, amateur game developers and even hardware developers. All the editions of Visual Studio Express will be offered as free downloads: Visual Web Developer™ Express, Visual Basic® Express, Visual C#® Express, Visual C++® Express and Visual J#® Express.
Several news stories are reporting that Meijer will announce a plan with GM to sell E85 fuel at 20 Michigan Meijer locations. E85 is a 85% ethanol, 15% petroleum gasoline blend that can be used in “flex-fuel” vehicles. There are more than 4 million flexible-fuel vehicles on the road today, but many consumers who own these vehicles don’t know that they can use E85 and it has been difficult to find.
Advocates of E85 tout the fuel as a made-in-America alternative to imported oil that also cuts dirty tailpipe emissions, boosts performance and helps farmers. Ethanol is a grain alcohol produced from crops like corn and soy.
WOODTV.com story
Detroit Free Press article
GM Press Release
Whether you agree with the Bush administration’s hard-line when it come to foreign policy or not, this article from the The Christian Science Monitor is a good analysis of why he acts the way he does.
Yet it also seems clear that this administration – galvanized by 9/11 – sees Iran’s words, too, as more than rhetoric, and sees itself as the only nation willing and able to take action.
Read the full article here.
No word on whether they’re working on a way to outsource the burger flipper, so maybe that job will still be available when all IT jobs go to India. Highlights from the NYTimes article:
What made the $12.08 transaction remarkable was that the customer was not just outside Ms. Vargas’s workplace here on California’s central coast. She was at a McDonald’s in Honolulu. And within a two-minute span Ms. Vargas had also taken orders from drive-through windows in Gulfport, Miss., and Gillette, Wyo.
Ms. Vargas seems unfazed by her job, even though it involves being subjected to constant electronic scrutiny. Software tracks her productivity and speed, and every so often a red box pops up on her screen to test whether she is paying attention. She is expected to click on it within 1.75 seconds. In the break room, a computer screen lets employees know just how many minutes have elapsed since they left their workstations.
But the backers of the technology are looking to expand into new industries. The operator of one of the McDonald’s centers is developing a related system that would allow big stores like Home Depot to equip carts with speakers that customers could use to contact a call center wirelessly for shopping advice.
via Workbench
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