Archive for December, 2007
Fed to Offer Emergency Loans to Banks for as “Long as Necessary”
December 22nd, 2007Via: Bloomberg: The Federal Reserve will conduct biweekly emergency auctions of loans as “long as necessary” as part of a global attempt by central bankers to restore faith in the money markets. The Fed and European Central Bank loaned $30 billion in 35- day funds today at an interest rate of 4.67 percent, 2 basis […]
FBI Prepares Vast Biometrics Database
December 22nd, 2007I have a running hypotheses that the plan is to physically track each individual’s position on the ground, at all times. In AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance, I speculated that the mobile phone data might be the way that it is being done. Well, there’s no need to speculate about what They want […]
GAO Says Government Failed Yet Another Financial Audit
December 21st, 2007Yeah, but the Government gets high marks in transferring public wealth to a small number of private, blood soaked hands. Besides the atrocities, does that count for anything? Via: Government Executive: For the 11th straight year, the federal government failed its financial audit, GAO announced Monday, in a widely anticipated finding that Comptroller General David […]
IBM Building Metaverse
December 21st, 2007I like the Snow Crash world more than the tech. Stephenson got it right: grim burbclaves, corporate statelets, private armies, and toxic, polluted urban wastelands. Is it sci-fi or is it just outside your window? This Wikipedia description of the Snow Crash setting is pretty good: The story takes place in Los Angeles, in the […]
Stanford’s Nanowire Battery Holds 10 Times the Charge of Existing Lithium Ion Batteries
December 21st, 2007The new ExxonMobil battery needs some competition. Ha Via: Stanford: Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices. The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, […]
EU Mandates Electronic IDs for Sheep and Goats
December 21st, 2007Beta testing the program for applications on two legged creatures. Via: Register: The European Union has pledged to make life easier for both farmers and putative messiahs by ensuring that goats and sheep will in future be identified electronically. The council of ministers has set December 31, 2009 as “the obligatory implementation date for the […]
Lakota Withdraw from Treaties, Declare Independence from U.S.
December 21st, 2007Via: USA Today: The Lakota Sioux Indians, whose ancestors include Sitting Bull, Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from all treaties their forefathers signed with the U.S. government and have declared their independence. A delegation delivered the news to the State Department earlier this week. Portions of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and […]
WordPress Upgrade Broke Things on the Sidebar
December 20th, 2007You may notice plain text zeros after each entry in the Support and Visit blogrolls on the right. Nope, there hasn’t been an order of magnitude increase in income overnight. I upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1 and that weirdness started happening. Rather than rolling the whole show back, I’m going to try to fix the damn […]
One in Five Expect to Borrow to Heat Homes This Winter
December 20th, 2007Via: Yahoo Finance: For perhaps as many as 27 million American adults, keeping warm this winter will mean borrowing money and 20 million will use credit cards to be able to afford their heating bills, according to a CreditCards.com poll. Nearly 12 percent of Americans say they will need to borrow money to pay winter […]
Fire Breaks Out on White House Grounds
December 20th, 2007Satire on what was lost in the fire. Via: New York Times: A two-alarm fire broke out on the White House grounds Wednesday morning, sending 1,000 federal workers scurrying for safety and damaging Vice President Dick Cheney’s ceremonial suite in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the West Wing. Mr. Cheney […]
