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What would you do, in this age of green power and greener pastures, to improve the image of the nuclear power industry?

In the interests of nuclear objectivity, I have taken it upon myself to observe some of the contestants with an artist’s eye and an espionage operative’s concern.

And what would you do if you happened to live in the country where the nuclear power industry brought you, um, Chernobyl?

However, it is hard, merely by looking at these images, to know exactly what services these women perform to benefit the nuclear cause.

No, the white smoke does not mean they have a winner.

Well, the Russians, traditionalists to the bitter end, have come up with a brainwave of a quite elevated frequency. Yes, an online beauty pageant.

(Credit: CC Kr. B)

In all, there are 200 contestants. And all have the ambition to effect world peace and work with small children.

All the same, I am expecting voting to rival that of an average week of “American Idol”.

Who, on this Thursday that seems surrounded only by woes, can resist logging on to this sumptuous contest to find the most beautiful woman working in the Russian nuclear power industry?

botchagalupe: @daveofdoom @mjasay IBM is (IMHO) still bleeding from all the acquisitions over the last 5 yrs. Even IBM would have a hard time adding SUN 10 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @botchagalupe Sun’s got nothing meaningful in the cloud yet. Is this just a media frenzy to make the deal seem attractive? 10 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom …within Sun (MySQL, Java, etc.) would survive. Glassfish? No chance. OpenStorage? Could be a good loss leader for IBM 24 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay I think the culture clash is overblown. I bet Sun would be fine with Apache-style. Plus maybe they would stop CDDL. 19 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @glynmoody Amazon APIs are overwhelmingly the dominant force. Word is Sun got scared of patent threats from AWS so went with CC. 5 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom I would not want to be a Sun employee right now. Though @botchagalupe could be right, and IBM could leave them be for a bit 12 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay Who buys all the Java-based OSS companies if Sun is gone? I don’t see IBM doing it. 22 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom I think more BigCos will see OSS startups as a way to acquire new customers. Sun wasn’t too far off w/ its "adoption" story 20 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: I think IBM cares about MySQL. The rest of the software isn’t meaningful to IBM 23 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet

Instead of our normal Open Sources podcast, Matt Asay and I decided to use Twitter (@daveofdoom and @mjasay) this morning to discuss the news surrounding the rumor that IBM is acquiring Sun.The full transcript is below for your enjoyment.

botchagalupe: @daveofdoom @mjasay 1 of IBM’s acquisition models is to leave the acquired comp alone for a few yrs. My bet is this one will go that way 16 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay What do you think about this Sun Cloud nonsense? Just cause they made an announcement, now they’re a cloud provider? 11 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

botchagalupe: @daveofdoom @mjasay of course after they put an IBM’r in charge… 12 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom Do you think IBM even cares about Sun’s open source assets? 24 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay How much of Sun staff gets whacked in that deal? IBM is bloated but Sun is over-the-top. 18 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom Mostly, I think this gives Jonathan a reason to stop hewing so hard to the "F" in FOSS.I know MySQL has had a positive influence 11 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay This wraps-up our first Open Sources Twit-cast (I hate that I used that phrase). Thanks to @botchagalupe and @glynmoody 3 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

botchagalupe: @daveofdoom Agree and disagree. They both have not really done anything yet. However, Qlayer and TSAM will have to be reconciled. 9 minutes ago from web · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom Do you think Sun’s OSS fervor would have any impact on IBM’s more buttoned-down, Apache-style approach to OSS? 20 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom re fewer BigCos to acquire OSS startups - yes,but I agree w/ @timoreilly that most will be bought by proprietary vendors, anyway 22 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

Note: the top post is the last one, so you need to read from the bottom up if you want the whole thread.

mjasay: @daveofdoom I do think Sun+IBM has the potential to limit choice, but we’re already well down that path. Real q is whether key OSS bits … 25 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay Without Sun, there is one less large company to acquire open source startups 24 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom I’m not sold on Sun’s cloud strategy, but then, I’m not sold on anyone’s 10 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay @botchagalupe I don’t see how it matters materially in next 3 years. But sooner or later it would have to be meaningful. 4 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

glynmoody: @daveofdoom interesting 4 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

mjasay: @daveofdoom @botchagalupe Will a Sun+IBM combo make any material difference to Microsoft’s dominance in the next 3 years? 7 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

cote: @botchagalupe @daveofdoom @mjasay you guys should put down the Twitter and record a podcast right now. Seriously. You can use my conf line. 4 minutes ago from twitterrific · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

daveofdoom: @mjasay I think IBM cares about MySQL. The rest of the software is not meaningful to them. 23 minutes ago from TweetDeck · Reply · View Tweet · Show ConversationHide Conversation

Though it’s unclear just how clean it would burn, Carbonscape’s biochar can also be burned as fuel.

Why would anyone want to make more coal when humans are desperately trying to get out from under the carbon dioxide mess we’ve been making since the Industrial Revolution?

The invention combines two popular environmental efforts: using biochar for carbon capture and storage (CCS), and developing alternative fuel sources from biomass.

The company’s board includes Nick Gerritsen, the director of Aquaflow Bionomic, one of the companies developing algae biodiesel; and Tim Flannery, former Harvard University professor and environmental activist known for his books “The Future Eaters” and “The Weather Makers.”

While there are issues to be worked out on carbon capture and storage (CSS), it’s seen by energy utilities and governments as a possible tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Biochar is coal made from biomass that can be buried in soil as a carbon sink or for use in farming, rather than letting decaying plants release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Whether or not the invention is scalable remains to be seen, but judging from who is involved Carbonscape’s claims seem legit.

Carbonscape, a New Zealand-based start-up, describes its invention as an industrial-sized microwave that can cook plant waste, wood waste, and “even sewage” into coal.

Carbonscape also claims that the machine captures and stores more carbon than the amount of carbon generated by the electricity needed to power it for the process.

(Credit:
Carbonscape)

A new machine dubbed the “Black Phantom” can turn biomass into manmade coal.

As reported by the Financial Times, Carbonscape’s machine turns biomass into a kind of biochar to be stored underground.

Biomass–agricultural and wood byproducts that can be used to make ethanol, or electricity directly–is considered by the EU, the U.S. and others as a possible answer to reducing oil dependence while providing a cleaner and more efficient way to produce and consume energy.

Manmade coal produced by Carbonscape’s Black Phantom machine.

No, not every student would end up using the service, but that’s the nature of a tax: sometimes you pay for others’ benefits, not yours. In fact, that’s usually the way it works.

commentary

Personally, I pay for my music, movies, and other media. But not everyone does, perhaps because they don’t want to use iTunes or a similar service, for whatever reason. A minimal tax added to students’ university fees would easily cover this, with little cost to these consumers and great benefit.

Techdirt thinks that this is a bad idea, and I disagree.

But the benefits to such a blanket tax are also clear, as I wrote back in 2003. Consumers want a convenient way to pay for content. A tax levied by the ISP is a highly efficient way to ensure that the music industry gets paid, and that consumers don’t get slowed down in their enjoyment of music.

Techdirt has some valid points, but it fails to identify the “better, more innovative business models” that would take the music industry forward, either in this article or in the others to which it refers.

It’s basically a music tax–allowing the record industry to be lazy. Someone else gets to go out and collect all this money, and hand it over to the industry to distribute (or, actually, not distribute). It effectively sets the business model of the recording industry in stone, and harms better, more innovative business models by inserting the recording industry (and not the musicians) into a role where they don’t belong.

Techdirt’s criticisms are clear:

Warner Music Group has a proposition for U.S. universities, according to Techdirt: buy a blanket license to music downloads through file-sharing services, or be sued.

Gore had a similar policy in place at last year’s RSA Security show, but several accounts, including one by CNET’s Rob Vamosi, emerged from the show. Given that most of the people attending CTIA will come bearing smartphones that allow them to blog or send Twitter updates to the outside world, a ban on press coverage was not expected to prevent the content of his talks from escaping the room.

CNET News will be in Las Vegas that week to cover CTIA, and will cover Gore’s keynote as well.

Former Vice President Al Gore will allow the press to attend his CTIA speech after all.

Former Vice President Al Gore will allow the press to cover his keynote at the
CTIA conference in April, after initially banning coverage of his speech.

(Credit:
Dan Farber/CNET Networks)

The CTIA announced Monday that Gore agreed to let the press into his April 3 keynote “due to a high degree of interest.” Gore’s talk, which is expected to focus on his work as an environmental activist rather than his role overseeing a mobile computing company as a director at Apple, was initially closed to the press but open to regular CTIA attendees.

Representatives from Apple, AT&T, and Wal-Mart all declined to comment on this report.

The blog MacRumors is reporting that new Wal-Mart training materials and advertising for the iPhone indicate that Wal-Mart will sell the 8GB version of the iPhone for $197, $2 cheaper than the price tag offered at Apple, AT&T and Best Buy stores.

Wal-Mart is already offering other hot mobile phones in its stores. Weeks after it was introduced, Wal-Mart began selling T-Mobile’s G1, the first phone to use Google’s Android mobile operating system. Wal-Mart has deeply discounted the G1, selling it for around $150, about $30 cheaper than T-Mobile’s own price of $179.

The
iPhone is coming to Wal-Mart Stores, though when and for how much is still unclear.

Maynard Um, an equity research analyst at UBS said in a research note on Monday that it would be “atypical” for Apple to sell the phone at such a low price. Instead, the company would likely add Wal-Mart and possibly Sam’s Club as another iPhone distributor.

The phones are currently available at Apple retail stores, AT&T stores and in Best Buy retailers, where the 8GB phone is sold for $199 with a two-year AT&T service contract, and 16GB phones are sold for $299 with a two-year contract.

Department managers on the East Coast also said they expect to be selling both the 8GB and 16GB versions of the phone. But they said they hadn’t been informed of pricing yet.

The first-generation iPhone, which began selling in June 2007, was a hit. But the newer, faster 3G version has been even more popular. Much of this can be attributed to the new pricing. Apple has dropped the entry level price on this product from $399 to $199. In October, Jobs said the company had already reached its 2008 goal of selling 10 million iPhones.

Four electronics department managers at Wal-Mart stores in Delaware, New Jersey, and New York said Monday that they were already training employees to sell Apple iPhones. Two department managers, who didn’t want their names used in this story, said the phones are expected to go on sale on December 28. Bloomberg News reported Sunday that a Wal-Mart employee in Stockton, Calif., expects to start selling iPhones on December 15.

Distribution through Wal-Mart, which is the largest discount retailer in the U.S., could help bring the iPhone to the masses. The chain will become only the second retailer to carry the phone. Apple struck a deal with retailer Best Buy in September. Before that, the phone was only available through Apple and AT&T stores.

Rumors have been flying around the blogosphere that Apple will sell a special 4GB version of the iPhone at Wal-Mart stores for $99. A Wal-Mart employee at a store in Milpitas, Calif., told the San Jose Mercury News for a story published Saturday that she expects to sell a 4GB version of the phone.

None of the Wal-Mart employees on the East coast interviewed for this story had heard of a 4GB model. Apple actually stopped selling a 4GB model of the original iPhone in September 2007, just two months after the iPhone had launched, because CEO Steve Jobs said that people preferred versions with larger storage capacity.

(Credit:
Apple)

Back in 1989, Berners-Lee was a software consultant working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside of Geneva, Switzerland. On March 13 of that year, he submitted a plan to management on how to better monitor the flow of research at the labs. People were coming and going at such a clip that an increasingly frustrated Berners-Lee complained that CERN was losing track of valuable project information because of the rapid turnover of personnel. It did not help matters that the place was chockablock with incompatible computers people brought with them to the office.

And as prescient as the CERN document was, not even Berners-Lee could imagine where his basic design was about to lead. To wit, part of his very modest conclusions:

So it is that on Friday, Berners-Lee and other personages involved in the development of the Web will congregate at the particle physics lab to celebrate. I can’t make the event, but from one side of the pond to the other, here’s a virtual toast to Sir Tim Berners-Lee on a job very well done.

Images: Berners-Lee and the dawn of the Web

“We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.”

History in the making: Berners-Lee's original schematic for a client/server model for a distributed hypertext system.

So he got to work on a document, which is amazing to read with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. But it would take Berners-Lee another couple of years before he could demo his idea. Even then, the realization of his theory had to wait until the middle of the 1990s when Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen popularized the notion of commercial Web browsing with Netscape.

Is it already 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee authored “Information Management: A proposal” and set the technology world on fire?

“The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use.”

“When two years is a typical length of stay, information is constantly being lost. The introduction of the new people demands a fair amount of their time and that of others before they have any idea of what goes on. The technical details of past projects are sometimes lost forever, or only recovered after a detective investigation in an emergency. Often, the information has been recorded, it just cannot be found.”

An update to Google Chrome means the browser now can head off a particular technique that previously could crash the browser.

Google fixed two lesser security issues, too. First was an issue in which typing “about:%” in the address bar could crash the computer. The problem also meant that a Web page with that text as a hyperlink could crash the browser if a user hovered the mouse pointer over the link. Second was to prevent the user’s desktop from being the default download directory to mitigate “the risk of malicious cluttering of the desktop with unwanted downloads, which can lead to executing unwanted files,” Larson said.

Larson also established a Google Chrome Releases blog for announcements and release notes relating to Chrome. The company had said earlier it was working on a way to release that information, in part after people requested such notes well after Google started automatically updating Chrome browsers without saying what exactly was in the update.

Earlier today, Google was keeping mum about a three-day-old security fix to its Chrome browser, but now the company has revealed details of two critical-risk vulnerabilities and some lesser issues it says are fixed.

(Credit:
Stephen Shankland/CNET News)

Other fixes addressed non-security issues: a JavaScript problem with Facebook; a problem suggesting search terms while using various Web sites; and some data-transer issues with the Safe Browsing mode.

The critical patches relate to buffer overrun vulnerabilities that could have let a remote attacker execute arbitrary software on a Chrome user’s computer, said Mark Larson, a Google Chrome program manager, in a mailing list posting Monday afternoon. The first patch fixed a vulnerability in handling long file names, called the SaveAs vulnerability, and the second a vulnerability in dealing with the Web site addresses displayed in Chrome’s status area when the user hovers over a link.

The woman’s name has not been released, but the court appears to have been Burnley Crown Court in Lancastershire, and the case involved child abduction and sexual assault. According to The Sun, the woman posted details of the case on Facebook and added, “I don’t know which way to go, so I’m holding a poll.” Yeah, that’s bad.

Regardless, spilling court case details on the Web certainly sounds like pretty good grounds for getting the boot.

The trial is said to have continued with 11 jurors instead of 12.

The Sun explains: “It was thought she did not use privacy settings, meaning the Facebook posts could be read by anyone.” Well, not quite. You need to be logged into Facebook in order to read anything on the site, something that occasionally gets on the nerves of the “open Web” crowd. But if the juror had no friends-only settings in place, the note could still have been pretty public.

A British woman has reportedly been kicked off a jury for posting a “note” on Facebook asking her friends what they thought of the trial.

The original source of the story is the U.K. tabloid The Sun, which is better known for trashy stories about Prince Harry’s partying habits than for sound news about social networking.

She was given the boot after the court received a tip about the posting.

(Credit:
Lindsey Turrentine, CNET Networks) Write down birthdays. Don’t rely on Facebook to remind you that your sister turns 30 next week. Jot it down on your Google Calendar or–gasp–on paper.

There’s just one problem: One Facebook addict’s self-improvement project is another Facebook fan’s snub. A sudden break from your social network–virtual or otherwise–creates a social minefield for anyone concerned with online manners. With more than 175 million active users on Facebook, at least one or two will want to “friend” you in the next 40 days. What to do?

Don't let Facebook's calendar stand in for your own brain.

Have any of your own Facebook fast suggestions? Please comment. I might even post them to Facebook–in April.

(Credit:
Lindsey Turrentine/CNET Networks) Relax about application requests. Really, you don’t need to sign up every time a friends asks you to plant a flowering pony for a cause. Most Facebook users who send inane application requests mass invite everyone they “know” and won’t notice if you don’t plant a virtual gnome garden.

It turns out I’m not the only one considering the social-networking fast. The Wall Street Journal unearthed the Facebook group “Giving up Facebook for Lent,” and a variety of similar groups filled with self-proclaimed addicts who want to test their religious mettle starting on Ash Wednesday. (That’s this Wednesday, folks–two days from now.)

I’m not Catholic, but every year when friends and family give up wine, cheese, or bad TV shows for the 40 days of Lent, I get into an ascetic spirit. I convince myself to drop, say, white flour, then decide three minutes later that all things are OK in moderation. Who really needs 40 days off croissants, anyway?

Wait, that's not what she looks like!

Here’s a simple guide for anyone wanting to go Facebook cold turkey:

Don't forget to tell your friends why you're ignoring them.

(Credit:
Lindsey Turrentine/CNET Networks) Consider changing your photo. What happens if your high school ex-best friend (the one who stole your girlfriend) tries to find you on Facebook during Lent? If you’re worried that he’ll think you’re an A-number-one jerk for not accepting his olive branch, consider replacing your profile photo with a text block that reads something like, “Off Facebook for Lent.” The downside to this technique? If you’re not religious, it may confuse people, and if you have a common name, no one will be able to confirm that you’re the Tom Smith they’re looking for. Or maybe in the case of the ex-friend, that’s a blessing.

Don't worry about ignoring application requests.

(Credit:
Lindsey Turrentine/CNET Networks) Don’t forget to turn off your Twitter forwards. Use Twitter (or some sort of microblogging service) to update your Facebook status? Even if you don’t visit Facebook.com, updating through a third party during Lent would be cheating.

But I think maybe I do need a break from Facebook. Checking Facebook first thing in the morning, all day long, and just one more time after I brush my teeth is probably not the best use of my time. My children, my marriage, and my houseplants need me more than that guy I met one summer in art school.

Set your status. This is an obvious first step in any Facebook fast. Tell all the friends who might be tempted to tag you in yet another 25 things/Album cover/Senior Year of High School meme that you really, really won’t be spending your dinner hour trying to remember what you did after prom–at least not until April.