Sean Bell’s death, an Afterword

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In a business where the current tech is almost obsolete before it hits the store shelves, how important is it for Alienware to be able to claim supremacy with their new “Area 51″ line? (What happens when they run out of cute alien-oriented product names?) These are nice machines, but is pure horsepower the be-all and end-all? True, Alienware’s stock-in-trade is computing power, but what about thermal management, power consumption and battery life, system durability, and the other factors that help determine the true benefit of a laptop?

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The VinylDisc from Optimal Media Production is a cute idea. Why not put record grooves on the flip side of a CD? With the interesting resurgence of analog, this novelty disk may give more users the impetus to give the old turntable a try.

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Only the government can be so predictably scary. I recognize the threat, but those in power (regardless of stripe) are so intent on controlling us that they will continue to try and develop a magic spying technology that will allow them to catch every threat to their power from terrorists to peace activists. The (hopefully) suspended data-mining program created in the name of “homeland security” is only one of the manifestations of the strange mix of Orwellian and Huxlerian dystopia our leaders are trying to create.

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Is this an “about time” situation or the end of a noble tradition? Will there be clothing jokes over her new 1,400-pound (Sterling) uniform? The creation of the first female Beefeater is certainly an event of impact, considering that the group has been made up strictly of men for over 500 years.

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We all know that Bonds is already under fire over steroids, but this latest accusation of poor sportsmanship has to do with the jointed armored cup he wears over his elbow. This modern rambrace/couter assembly is claimed to give Bonds an unfair advantage both psychological and physical.

Beyond his alleged steroid use, Barry Bonds is guilty of the use of something that confers extraordinarily unfair mechanical advantage: the “armor” that he wears on his right elbow. Amid the press frenzy over Bonds’ unnatural bulk, the true role of the object on his right arm has simply gone unnoticed.

This is unfortunate, because by my estimate, Bonds’ front arm “armor” may have contributed no fewer than 75 to 100 home runs to his already steroid-questionable total.

Bonds tied Henry Aaron’s home run record of 755 on Saturday night and will go for the new standard this week back at home in San Francisco.

The article makes some very good points. The device on his arm may not be a bionic super enhancement machine but a brace can definitely help a swing and armor does give you confidence.

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Like any technology, if we have the ability to put a microdevice into someone it is going to be used for both noble and horrible purposes. However, science does march on and we’d better start getting used to the possibility that one day you may wind up with a chip (or two) somewhere inside of you.

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The promise of one less allergen in popular foodstuffs has been realized by a researcher who has developed an allergen-free peanut. If this can be commercialized it will be a boon to everyone. Let’s hope the process doesn’t otherwise remove what makes it a peanut.

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As much as I am a strong supporter of aerospace exporation and development I think we mayu need to get rid of NASA and re-examine how we should proceed into space. Recent news of drunk astronauts being allowed to launch with a mission and sabotaged equipment have increased the already-vocal criticisms of the space agency and its efforts. The two issues are almost certainly related. If I were going to fly on a ship I didn’t trust I’d fly crocked to the gills unless I’m the pilot, and if I wasn’t of a drinking nature maybe I’d break something to highlight system issues.

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I am a staunch technology advocate who believes in GM food used for the benefit of others. Vitamin-enriched corn, etc. I’m totally against what Monsanto is doing with GM as a proprietary technology placeholder to make farmers wage slaves. This rejection of some of the more distasteful patents is a victorious blow against those who see technology as a way to exploit others.

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Does this administration have no shame? How can the GOP support this lip sevice out the front door while hurting disabled vets out the back? Maybe we can get some of those rich young Republicans to donate some organs.

Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.

The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.

I HATE what lawyers do to medicine. But if the government can’t even help those wounded in its service, what’s vet to do?

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I had some mixed feelings when I came across this item about a man who has suffered from excessive water on the brain to the point where he almost has no brains at all. I feel for the guy, as his condition is not his fault. In fact, I applaud him for living a happy (I assume, or he’d have showed up in care earlier) and stable life. I just can’t keep the civil servant jokes out of my head (especially European civil servants) every time I think about it.

A French man with an unusually tiny brain has managed to live an entirely normal life despite his condition caused by a fluid build-up in his skull, researchers say.

Scans of the 44-year-old man’s brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue.

“He was a married father of two children and worked as a civil servant,” Dr Lionel Feuillet and colleagues at the Universite de la Mediterranee in Marseille in France wrote in a letter to The Lancet medical journal.

The article alludes that the man is not very smart, but manages to live a productive (as far as civil servants go) life as a very normal person. Has Bush had a head X-Ray lately?

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I live in an apartment with incredibly shitty cell reception, and use a mobile as my primary phone. That’s why I fell in lust with Samsung’s new Ubicell CDMA base station the moment I saw it. Just plug it into your modem and you can now bypass your local service. The great part is that all the (CDMA)cell phones in the household can use it.

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You can now buy 3-D glasses that will work with any new Samsung DLP-based rear-projection HDTV.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been in this business long enough to see nearly everything. In this case, I used to sell the Vectrex electronic game to the American Audio Clubs in Germany and so was able to play with all the accessories, including the light pen and the color-wheel based 3-D glasses.

The glasses (the first video 3-D device) were traditional alternate-frame/eye synchronization using a spinning color wheel synched to the screen. As the blocked/color/clear disk passed before each eye the corresponding frame was displayed. This is the core tech for half the devices used today, as parallax separation is a difficult task and you don’t need to play with the optics in an alternate-eye configuration.

Samsung’s glasses use LCDs to perform the rapid alternate-eye switching needed. They exploit the rapid switching capability of the DLP chip to create the rapid alternating images. The glasses are steered by an IR emitter on a cable that you place at the top of the screen.

The important difference is that up until this device, the glasses required for parallax splitting had to be physically tethered to the display involved for power and sync. LCDs are now available with very little current draw (especially for strobe on/off apps), and the driver circuitry is now on a single chip. These glasses are tolerable because they are untethered.

They work with every Samsung TV manufactured this model year.

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What I really liked about the Kingston USB microSD Reader + Card is that it enables those with smart phones to really use the microSD card slot as an interface tool. With the device on your keychain you can move files between your phone and any computer anytime, and it’s a pocket flash for everything else to boot.

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