Home Hydrogen Fueling Station

A company in the UK has developed a hydrogen home refueling station that is capable of refueling cars from…erm…home. The unit they have developed is capable of producing enough fuel that will last the average car 40 km or 25 miles. Might not sound like much, but considering this is the first unit developed that is small (and presumably safe) enough to be used at home it is a step in the right direction.

Now this is an innovation I would really like to see work; granted the 40km is not a lot, but increasing this capacity would give you enough to maybe make the commute or short journeys and also reduce the dependency on oil and oil companies. However, I wonder how long it will be before the large oil companies will ‘disappear’ the company that developed it.

• BBC News

…and they did

Eurocrats in Brussels approved the law that essentially, depending on the way you interpret it, forces ISPs to enforce copyright laws…

The disputed text, which some are claiming is deliberately concealed within impenetrable legalese, states that national regulators - such as the UK’s Ofcom - must promote “cooperation” between access providers and those “interested in the protection and promotion of lawful content”.

• The Register

Escaping Burma

Just when I was getting the feeling that journalists were getting “soft” and not concentrating on reporting real stories I found this on the BBC. A story like this is truly a story, which I why I also listen to the From Our Own Correspondent on BBC World. This is what journalism is all about and I hope that the BBC will continue to pursue the truth…

My photo had apparently been circulated to every military checkpoint. My name was being scoured for among all the records of foreigners travelling around the country. My crime, as they saw it, was to report on the cyclone that devastated the Irrawaddy Delta claiming thousands of lives.

• BBC News

When windmills go bad

If Nuclear power plants go wrong then we’d really know/not know (depending on proximity) about it. So wind turbines are safe even when they go wrong, and assuming you are in the right place, you get good video too…

Story: jp.dk

British Justice? What justice?

The Times is running a story that just horrifies me. If anyone even thinks that Britain is an open, non-secretive society, where justice in honoured, the courts are fair and the social services are there to help people, think again. This is a brave article considering the alleged implications of even writing about it…

British justice: a family ruined
A chilling example of our secret State where a mother and child are forced into hiding

• The Times
• Digg

High Def format wars

Yawn. As long as I can play my DVDs I really don’t give a stuff. The fact that the technology/movie industry is moving to yet another format so the collection of DVDs becomes outdated (so they can make more money) is a pretty terrible idea and (hopefully) not too many people will fall for this.

But anyway. There are a number of stories floating around about this great conspiracy idea that Microsoft are stoking up the format wars so that the big M can set themselves up as a HD movie distributor using online downloads. This would imply (if true) the MS is setting themselves up as being the “iTunes” of the HD movies, at the same time keeping movie bosses happy because there would be new user-contracts that mean you no longer have hard copies of movies and they will own what you do with it (new age DRM).

The downsides. HD-DVD and Blu Ray discs can hold 25GB/50GB of data. This means that a HD movie will be at least 20GB (to remain high def). If MS wants people to download HD movies and they even compress the files (reduce quality), the actual size of the movie will still be in GigaBytes. So first off, you will need a large hard drive to store just a few movies. Then you will need to have a decent enough internet connection to have any chance of downloading it (assuming there are no problems with download). Then you still will not actually own a physical copy of the movie - it will take generations to get over the idea of owning something tactile, plus the golden turd being that these downloaded movies will have DRM (haven’t anyone in the entertainment industry figured out that we, the people who buy their tat, want DRM free formats).

By the time everyone gets a Microsoft box to download movies, or hardware that will take such formats and play with no problems, or gets a fast enough hard drive, or just meets the minimum requirements, everyone will have either a HD-DVD or Blu-ray player. So lets file this under the heading “conspiracy - not well thought out”.

• The Inq

Times Atlas

Whilst I am not a great believer in pinning the blame for everything on global warming, the new imagery in the Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World is interesting from the point of viewing changes in the natural world. It is all too easy to simply look at the Aral sea, for example, and say with total certainty the shrinking water levels is only to do with global warming. How do you factor in bad resource management, for example, or the diminishing supply of water to the lake. But these arguments aside, the atlas imagery is interesting to view the changing world.

• The Times

World News round-up

• Japan - unpopular swimming pools empty out
• Germany- Shortage of gummi-bears prompts calls for climate change
• Germany- price of chocolate going up, apocalypse has started
• Dubai - $1.5 Million yacht doesn’t float
• UK - Stab proof clothing in UK schools

Iraq - Inside the surge

The Guardian is running a photographic and video documentary about US Marines in Anbar province, Iraq. This is a very well created documentary, blending photographs and documentary video about the Marines and their day-to-day life. My one “criticism” is that the video does not seem to be downloadable to something like iPod.

Inside the Surge, part 2

Zensur

Zensur

I am getting to the point that I no longer want to have anything to do with Yahoo! and Yahoo! associated website simply because they appear to be joining the disturbingly expanding group that opposes freedoms of speech and expression.

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