Claustrophobic Net Neutrality in Space

Lyle, Al, and Miles talk with listeners.

The FCC's New Plan for Broadband

“The FCC was told fairly bluntly it doesn’t have the power to mandate net neutrality. So! Time for a new plan.”

Net Neutrality Numbers Don't Add Up

“Who paid for this report? A telecom lobbying firm called Mobile Future 5, which sports a weird hodgepodge of member organizations, including Alligator Planet, Climate Cartoons, Goomzee, and the League of United Latin American Citizens. But the most recognizable name on the list is AT&T. Color me surprised.”

Why America's Telecom System Stinks

“In France, Internet access generally costs $33 a month, provides 20Mbps fixed broadband to the home, and includes unlimited local and long-distance calling to 70 countries, plus HDTV and even wireless voice and data access through cooperative agreements. That’s about what AT&T charges just for the 3G data plan on an iPhone in the United States. France also has open network legislation in place. Yeah, that’s right: France. (Désolé.)”

What's in a name? Fly world is abuzz

The star subject of genetic research — the Drosophila melanogaster fruitfly — may lose its name.

Family Stuck with $18,000 Phone Bill

“Bob and Mary St. Germain say they can’t believe it. Four years after their son, Bryan, used his cellphone to connect to the Internet, the couple is still trying to fight the bill: a nearly $18,000 tab from Verizon.”

Mac OS X Snow Leopard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mac OS X v10.6 is intended to be a release aimed to refine the existing feature set, expand the technological capabilities of the operating system, and improve application efficiency. Many of the changes involve how the system works in the background and are not intended to be seen by the user. For example….

Stanford's CS 193P iPhone Application Development

The class that Lyle is taking at Stanford for free – you can do it too!

Biological classification - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Biological classification, or scientific classification in biology, is a method by which biologists group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species.

Change Default Search in Firefox | Firefox Facts

Tired of having Google as the default search engine in Firefox? Maybe it is another search engine’s turn to be on top?! If you feel the urge to dethrone Google as the default search engine for your Firefox search box – this is how you can get it done:

In your address bar, type in: “about:config”

Inside of the filter search box, type in:

browser.search.defaultenginename

Double click that entry (or right click and choose “Modify”) and then type in the name of the search engine you wish to have as the default search engine. It must be one that you already have installed and also make sure you type in the name correctly.

Now if you type in “Yahoo”, restart Firefox and when your browser comes back up you will see the red Yahoo “Y” and Yahoo as your default search engine.

Welcome To The International Space Station!

This is a video tour of the International Space Station. I think this is something everyone should see. A rare glimpse into a spaceship in space!

USB Tube Clock

USB LED Tube Clock displays time with hour, minute and second. Each digit ‘glow’ in a single transparent tube.

Knights Templar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici), commonly known as the Knights Templar or the Order of the Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers), were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders.3 The organization existed for approximately two centuries in the Middle Ages.

Google Translate

Entry point for Google translate.

The Best Translation Program Yet

A German scientist has developed one of the first translation programs suitable for everyday use. Sheer computing power gives the Google software surprisingly good results — perhaps the best yet seen created by a machine.

It’s a good sign when the creator of a piece of software ends up using it. On a recent trip to Japan, Franz Och, who doesn’t speak Japanese, was able to decipher restaurant menus and even read local news — using his mobile phone, which provided him with the translations within seconds.

Och spent the last six years developing Google Translate, a translation program, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, “and so far I’ve never really used it myself,” Och admits. But then the 38-year-old research scientist has a change of heart and adds, “I am very happy with what we have achieved.”

Och, a German citizen, is the behind-the-scenes star of a segment of the software industry that has taken on a challenge no less daunting than tearing down global language barriers. In his job at Google, Och wrestles with multi-clause sentences, the subjunctive and auxiliary verbs, to produce a result that is an affront for any linguist. His machine translation program is based on sheer computing power, not linguistic know-how.