Off Topic: Telecom More Than Triples Far North XT Rural Download Speed
April 8th, 2011On 8 April, early AM hours NZ time, I noticed that my Telecom XT connection was running much faster than usual:
Rural Far North New Zealand Telecom XT Speeds
Woh. That’s interesting!
I’ve been using Telecom XT “out here” since November 2009 and the link was always throttled back to a maximum of 1.3 Mbits/sec up and down. Since this morning, I’m getting around 4.4Mbits/sec down with the same 1.3Mbits/sec up. That’s almost as fast as the cable modem connection I had back around 2003 in the U.S.! (That cable modem link is one of about three things I miss about the U.S.; Mexican food restaurants and Amazon free shipping are the other two.)
I’ve seen this type of speed (and much faster) over XT in urban areas, but never out here. Even with five bars and line of site to the tower, 1.3Mbits up/down was the max due to Telecom throttling the link.
I wonder if Telecom is experimenting with future configurations for the Rural Broadband Initiative…
The goal of the RBI is to allow 80% of rural households to have access to a 5Mbits/sec connection to the Internet. So, it’s an interesting coincidence that this thing is now running within 600kbits of the mark. I’m not sure what they have specified for the upstream minimum on for rural users, but I think it’s 1Mbit/sec.
I have some extremely cynical ideas about what’s happening here, and my guess is that the speed on this thing is going to be throttled back down again, but I’m just going to try to smell the roses for now.
Are you a rural XT user? Has your connection speed increased dramatically? I’d be curious to know.
General: U.S. May Consider Troops in Libya
April 8th, 2011Mmm hmm.
Via: CBS News:
The United States may consider sending troops into Libya with a possible international ground force that could aid the rebels, according to the general who led the military mission until NATO took over.
Army Gen. Carter Ham also told lawmakers Thursday that added American participation would not be ideal, and ground troops could erode the international coalition and make it more difficult to get Arab support for operations in Libya.
Ham said the operation was largely stalemated now and was more likely to remain that way since America has transferred control to NATO.
Japan: After Latest Earthquake, Multiple Nuclear Plants Have Lost External Power and Are Operating on Emergency Backup Generators
April 7th, 2011Update: Emergency Backup Systems Operating at Nuclear Facilities
Via: Forbes:
NHK says power cuts are occurring at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Pref., although radiation levels around the plant remain unchanged so far.
At 12:23 a.m. the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an arm of the Japanese government, began holding an emergency press conference. An official said external sources of electricity have been cut to both the Higashi-Dori nuclear power plant in Aomori Pref., in northern Japan and the Rokkasho nuclear recycling plant, which I wrote in the latest issue of Forbes magazine . Both plants are reportedly operating normally via on-site emergency generators.
—End Update—
Via: Forbes:
Several other nuclear power plants in the area have lost external power and are relying on backup generators, said a spokesman for the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) at a press conference currently in progress.
Shortage of Japanese Parts Puts U.S. Economy at Risk
April 7th, 2011Via: Yahoo – Daily Ticker:
The devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last month is slowly starting to have a bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing.
Toyota announced Monday that its North American plants would likely have to close later this month due to supply disruptions in Japan. Honda, Nissan and Ford have already announced temporary plant shutdowns and Chrysler could be next in line.
But the impact of Japan’s disaster on U.S. manufacturing has been vastly underestimated and goes far beyond the auto and electronics industries, says Alan Tonelson, research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council and author of Race to the Bottom.
A new report by the Council found that “many of the highest rates of dependence on Japan are found in non-electronics capital goods sectors — industrial machinery and components vital to high-value production throughout the domestic U.S. manufacturing base.”
…
“If you go to most small- and medium-sized factories in this country in particular, you are going to see a wealth of foreign made machine tools many of which are coming from Japan,” Tonelson tells Aaron in the accompanying interview. “[Therefore] if we have supply chain disruptions due to the Japanese earthquake … that is likely to affect much of the advanced high-value manufacturing sector because these machine tools and bearings and forgings, etc. are such an integral of advanced manufacturing today.”
Georgian Woman Looking for Scrap Copper Cuts Off Web Access to Whole of Armenia
April 7th, 2011Via: Guardian:
An elderly Georgian woman was scavenging for copper to sell as scrap when she accidentally sliced through an underground cable and cut off internet services to all of neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on Wednesday.
The woman, 75, had been digging for the metal not far from the capital Tbilisi when her spade damaged the fibre-optic cable on 28 March.
As Georgia provides 90% of Armenia’s internet, the woman’s unwitting sabotage had catastrophic consequences. Web users in the nation of 3.2 million people were left twiddling their thumbs for up to five hours as the country’s main internet providers – ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa – were prevented from supplying their normal service. Television pictures showed reporters at a news agency in the capital Yerevan staring glumly at blank screens.
Large parts of Georgia and some areas of Azerbaijan were also affected.
“It was a 75-year-old woman who was digging for copper in the ground so that she could sell it for scrap,” said a spokesman for Georgia’s interior ministry said yesterday.
Research Credit: gatorcountry
Drugs for Moral Improvement?
April 7th, 2011
Via: The Age:
Researchers have become interested in developing biomedical technologies capable of intervening in the biological processes that affect moral behaviour and moral thinking, says a Wellcome Trust research fellow at Oxford University’s Uehiro Centre, Dr Tom Douglas. He is a co-author of Enhancing Human Capacities, published this week.
“Drugs that affect our moral thinking and behaviour already exist but we tend not to think of them in that way,” he says. “[Prozac] lowers aggression and bitterness against environment and so could be said to make people more agreeable. Or oxytocin, the so-called love hormone … increases feelings of social bonding and empathy while reducing anxiety. Scientists will develop more of these drugs and create new ways of taking drugs we already know about.”
…
Kahane does not advocate putting morality drugs in the water supply but does suggest that if administered widely, they might help humanity tackle global issues.
“Relating to the plight of people on the other side of the world or of future generations is not in our nature,” he says. “This new body of drugs could make possible feelings of global affiliation and of abstract empathy for future generations.”
Research Credit: Dang
Israel: Oil Shale
April 7th, 2011Via: Energy Tribune:
Harold Vinegar, the former chief scientist of Royal Dutch Shell, has devised an ambitious plan that would, if successful, turn Israel into one of the world’s leading oil producers. Now chief scientist for Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI), Vinegar maintains that the 238 sq km Shefla Basin holds the world’s second largest shale deposits outside the United States, from which around 250 billion barrels of oil – about the same as Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, could be extractable. IEI estimates the marginal cost of production at between US$35 and US$40 per barrel. That, says Vinegar, would be cheaper than the US$60 or so per barrel it would cost to extract crude oil in more hospitable locations such as the Arctic, and even favourably with the US$30-US$40 in Brazilian deepwater.
IEI, owned by the American telecom giant IDT Corp, anticipates starting commercial production by 2020, producing 50,000 barrels a day initially. While that figure is a fraction of the 270,000 barrels per day Israel currently consumes, Vinegar maintains it is a further key step toward achieving energy independence. Vinegar proposes thermal recovery for Israeli shale oil.
The IEI shale oil project has already attracted serious interest from investors. In November last year, Jacob Rothschild and media mogul Rupert Murdoch bought an $11million stake in Genie Oil and Gas, the division of IDC that is the parent company of IEI. Genie’s advisory board also includes former vice-president Dick Cheney and hedge fund investor Michael Steinhardt. But it seems development funding is likely to be no bar to the Shefla project. Vinegar states, “Funding is not needed for the pilot and demonstration, although once we are getting 50,000 barrels per day, we would want to have a partner. We have been approached by all the majors.”
PORTUGAL NEEDS EMERGENCY BAILOUT
April 7th, 2011Via: Washington Post:
Portugal asked for a bailout from Europe’s trillion-dollar rescue fund Wednesday, becoming the third European nation in a year to need outside financial help to overcome a crisis driven by high public debt, weak banks and slow growth.
The request to the European Commission came as Portuguese officials acknowledged that escalating borrowing costs and a political deadlock in the country had put it at risk of being unable to raise the funds it needs to keep its government operating.
No amount was specified in the notice sent by outgoing Prime Minister Jose Socrates that the country intends to tap an emergency fund established by the European Union last year to help Greece. The fund has also been used by Ireland.
European officials and outside analysts have estimated the figure to be as much as $100 billion.
Screen Based Public Education
April 7th, 2011Public education in the U.S. is a weapon of mass mental destruction that has resulted in a sort of national lobotomy. Increasingly, the screens are being used to deliver the payload with greater efficiency.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.”
Mr. Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher.
Mr. Hamilton, 18, is among the expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through Grade 12 — more than one million in the United States, by one estimate — taking online courses.
Advocates of such courses say they allow schools to offer not only makeup courses, the fastest-growing area, but also a richer menu of electives and Advanced Placement classes when there are not enough students to fill a classroom.
But critics say online education is really driven by a desire to spend less on teachers and buildings, especially as state and local budget crises force deep cuts to education. They note that there is no sound research showing that online courses at the K-12 level are comparable to face-to-face learning.
Research Credit: ottilie
Fukushima: Dealing with Highly Radioactive Water Could Take Decades, Cost Tens of Billions of Dollars
April 7th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown.
Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with the millions of gallons of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant.
The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping down through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste.
No one is sure how to get rid of it safely.
“There is nothing like this, on this scale, that we have ever attempted to do before,” says Robert Alvarez, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department.
Japanese officials estimate that they already have accumulated about 15 million gallons of highly radioactive water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons are being added every day as the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to feed coolant into the leaky structures.
Ultimately, the high-level radioactive substances in the water will have to be safely stored, processed and solidified, a job that experts say will almost certainly have to be handled on a specially designed industrial complex. The process of cleaning up the water could take many years, even decades, to complete. The cost could run into the tens of billions of dollars.
