Dvorak News Blog

Terror Threat Turns Out to be Tasty Treat

By McCullough Sunday August 28, 2011

“Excuse me Homeland Security? Yeah, I’d like to report that I see a bunch of power mad scum who are taking over my country. Can you please arrest yourselves?”

A man caused a brief scare on the bridge Wednesday morning after someone reported he was carrying a suspicious package. It turns out the item was a gigantic replica candy bar, according to Trooper Guy Gill, a State Patrol spokesman.>

“It was called in as a suspicious package on the bridge, and we take that very seriously,” Gill said. “But then we go out there and find we are dealing with a big, old king-size candy bar.” He said the bar — which was 6 feet tall and more than 2 feet wide — was an advertising prop for a type of candy that is typically sold as school fundraisers. The brand of candy is unknown.

According to Gill, the call came in just before 10 a.m. The individual who was holding the plastic candy bar was “trying to advertise on the bridge.”

Yep. Someone tell the terrorists they can stop anytime…it’s over.

No Agenda Show
“Hunker Down!”

By John C Dvorak Sunday August 28, 2011

4 Comments

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Dumbass Reporter Pelted by Raw Sewage During Storm

By McCullough Sunday August 28, 2011

46 Comments

Reporter Gives Update Covered In Sea Foam: MyFoxNY.com

MYFOXNY.COM – A local news reporter from Washington, D.C. ended up getting covered in what is probably the remnants of raw sewage as he delivered live hurricane reports from Ocean City, Md.

WTTG-TV reporter Tucker Barnes was providing live updates for stations around the country as a wall of what he described as sea foam poured over him. Barnes was on the boardwalk as Hurricane Irene hit the coast of Maryland. He noted that he had immersed himself in organic material. That “organic material” was most likely the effects of raw sewage pouring into the water during the storm.

“It doesn’t taste great,” he said.

He said it had a sandy consistency and added, “I can tell you first-hand, it doesn’t smell great.” The foam is often a toxic mix of pollution and cyanobacteria. 60 mph wind gust sprayed the toxic mix across the reporter and the boardwalk and coated buildings. Bubbles and foam in the ocean can be caused by several other things, including oils from decomposing animals.

Mom always told me, even a dog has enough sense to get out of the rain.

Hurricane Irene

By Uncle Dave Sunday August 28, 2011

45 Comments

Anyone living in the affected area and have stories to tell?

Pic of the Day

By McCullough Saturday August 27, 2011

54 Comments

Story here.

An illegal marriage in Israel – between a Jewish man and a Jewish woman

By Eideard Saturday August 27, 2011

37 Comments

The wedding of Inna Zyskind and Pavel Kogan last week was one of the happiest days of their lives.

Friends and family watched as they exchanged vows and rings under a canopy in their quirky designer outfits. Then more than 1,000 guests attended an open-air festival in Tel Aviv, with street performers and musicians, partying long into the night.

The couple’s only regret is that their marriage is not legally recognised in Israel. In fact, it was organised by activist groups as part of a colourful protest against religious restrictions on who can marry.

Inna, who was born in Russia, was able to move here and become an Israeli citizen under the state’s law of return for Jews. But she is not recognised as truly Jewish by Israel’s orthodox rabbinical establishment. And in Israel, only religious marriages, not civil ones, are allowed…

“This was our demonstration,” says Pavel. “We’re secular people. We want to break the religious monopoly over this part of our life in Israel. We should be allowed a civil wedding…”

Good thing we needn’t worry about theocracy here in the good old USA.

Why It’s Time To Kill The Electric Car Fantasy

By Uncle Dave Saturday August 27, 2011

116 Comments

This excerpt is only a small part of a fascinating, hard-hitting analysis of why the current state of batteries and the paucity of some materials needed to make them make replacing gas-powered cars with electric vehicles worldwide an impractical pipe dream at best.

The following comparisons assume that a new car with an internal combustion engine will use 400 gallons of fuel for 12,000 miles of annual driving. For the sake of simplicity, they assume a total of 96 kWh of batteries are available to reduce societal fuel consumption. The numbers are easily scalable.

* 96 kWh of batteries would be enough for a fleet of 64 Prius-class hybrids that will each save 160 gallons of fuel per year and generate a societal fuel savings of 10,240 gallons per year;
* 96 kWh of batteries would be enough for a fleet of six Volt-class plug-in hybrids that will each save 300 gallons of fuel per year and generate a societal fuel savings of 1,800 gallons per year; and
* 96 kWh of batteries would be enough for a fleet of four Leaf class electric vehicles that will each save 400 gallons of fuel per year and generate a societal fuel savings of 1,600 gallons per year.

This example highlights the fundamental flaw in all vehicle electrification schemes. When batteries are used to recover and reuse braking energy that would otherwise be wasted, a single kWh of capacity can save up to 107 gallons of fuel per year. When batteries are used as fuel tank replacements, a single kWh of capacity can only save 19 gallons of fuel per year and most of the fuel savings at the vehicle level will be offset by increased fuel consumption in power plants.

Using batteries to enable energy efficiency technologies like recuperative braking is sensible conservation.

Using batteries as fuel tank replacements is a zero-sum game that consumes huge quantities of metals for the sole purpose of substituting electricity for oil. Since roughly 45% of domestic electric power is from coal fired plants and that percentage will decline very slowly, the only rational conclusion is that electric drive is unconscionable waste and pollution masquerading as conservation.

Justice Department SWAT TEAM Busts Gibson Guitar. WHY??

By John C Dvorak Friday August 26, 2011

50 Comments

Another attack on American business by our own government.

Steve Jobs

By Uncle Dave Friday August 26, 2011

77 Comments

It’s been a couple of days. Millions of words written, stock bought and sold, and now your turn to have your say on this. Anybody think he, as board chairman, won’t still have a major say in design? And sorry pedro (our resident Apple hater), your devil hasn’t left the building, he has just moved offices.

House from Movie “UP” Built in Utah

By Marc Perkel Friday August 26, 2011

10 Comments

No Agenda Show #333
Lions Stood Still

By John C Dvorak Thursday August 25, 2011

8 Comments

Executive Producers: Bryan Raley, Alan Thompson,
Michael Kearns, Oscar Nadal, Richard Hyde,
Robert Claeson, Scott Hankel
Associate Executive Producer: Scott Hankel
Executive Producers and 333 Club members: Bryan Raley,
Alan Thompson, Michael Kearns, Oscar Nadal,
Richard Hyde, Robert Claeson, Scott Hankel

Art By: Thoren

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Panda-monium Reigns in Flagstaff, Arizona

By Eideard Thursday August 25, 2011

20 Comments

A wave of “panda-monium” has swept through a northern Arizona city thanks to a mischievous street sign hacker who warned motorists of a “ROGUE PANDA ON RAMPAGE.”

State transportation officials said Tuesday that a person was able to post the hoax warning by hacking into an electronic message board in Flagstaff, Arizona, over the weekend.

Rest easy, though. Authorities said the city is safe from pandas, if not from jokesters…

“Someone had to know what they were doing to go in and change the message,” said Mackenzie Kirby, an Arizona Department of Transportation spokeswoman. “It’s not easy.”

Kirby joked that there had been no sightings of any rogue pandas in the community, but she has been sent several photoshopped images via email of the cuddly creatures tooled up for trouble.

Arizona’s governor will call for increasing border security with Sichuan.

Drunks on the Street

By John C Dvorak Wednesday August 24, 2011

25 Comments

You have to wonder why this does not happen more often.

Oracle Wants An End To Open Source

By Uncle Dave Wednesday August 24, 2011

60 Comments

And this helps us how…

In its legal struggle with Google (GOOG), Oracle (ORCL) is arguing for a new understanding of copyright that would make all software, even open source, de-facto proprietary.

As FossPatents reports, Oracle is arguing that Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and program names, even subroutine names, should have the same copyright protection as the underlying code. And that such protection should be absolute.

In other words, Oracle could not only claim copyright over the mySQL database, but over the interfaces that connect it to other programs, and the names of the routines within the program.

This would make interoperability – a key to tying software together – impossible without the express permission and (perhaps payment to) the copyright holder. And that permission could be withheld, or taken back, at the copyright holder’s whim.
[…]
In essence, all software would become proprietary, to the copyright holder, which could absolutely control everything done in its name – its whole ecosystem – vetoing any connection to current software for the length of the copyright term, which can now mean a century or more.

Here Comes the Next Roadblock from the Republican Confederacy

By Eideard Wednesday August 24, 2011

109 Comments

Another Republican the Kool Aid Party hates

If the debt-ceiling showdown made your blood boil, if the shutdown of air-traffic-control work related to the airline-ticket tax drove you crazy, then you should unplug your TV and power down your computer in late September, as the deadline for extension of the federal gasoline tax draws near.

…A sizable chunk of Republicans, led by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona, want to abolish the tax that pays for the federal highway program and replace the whole system with one overseen by individual states.

This insurgency, inspired by the Tea Party, reflects flawed thinking on economics, transportation policy and even American history.

Like many other excise taxes, the federal highway tax comes up for periodic renewal, which is usually noncontroversial. But not this time. If Congress doesn’t act to renew the tax by Sept. 30, gas stations all over the country have to stop collecting it; the highway trust fund will never get the money; and new work on federal highway projects will come screeching to a halt.

A delay of just 10 days in renewing the tax would mean the permanent loss of $1 billion in highway funding (and layoffs for thousands of workers). Longer delays would measurably increase the national unemployment rate.

…Tea Partiers and their allies on this issue haven’t given up the fight over ending the tax; if they can’t abolish it outright just yet, they’ll push to allow states to opt out.

RTFA. More details, info, Congressional ennui.