With all the talk of green energy alternatives, our greatest hope for energy is no longer drilling holes for oil or decapitating mountains for “clean coal”. Yes, solar, wind, wave, geo-thermal, conservation and recycling are all critical. But there is a larger need. A voracious appetite for energy that will require large output facilities. Traditional nuclear is not the answer. The poison seed we are planting in the desert will be our 10,000 year legacy. A legacy being made worse by importing other nations nuclear waste. The hope for mankind’s energy needs in the twenty-first century is controlled thermonuclear fusion and at $3.9 billion (GAO est.) that is exactly what the NIF is build to do.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the world’s largest laser. It was built with the goal of studying the conditions needed to create controlled nuclear fusion on earth (the process our sun uses to generate energy). It is hoped that humanity is finally on the verge of unlocking the secrets of galactic grade power. This would provide clean, limitless energy for all. At least that is the hope. The steps necessary to get here have been herculean. On May 29th, 2009 we opened the star power business.
“The facility was dedicated today (May 29) at a ceremony attended by numerous state and national officials.”World’s largest laser opens | May 29th, 2009 By Andy Evangelista physorg.com
Creating star energy in a controlled environment with nuclear fusion can be seen as the opposite process that takes place in nuclear fission (for fission, think Three Mile Island and Hiroshima). In fission the nucleus of an atom is split into pieces, with fusion we are joining atomic nuclei together. Both are accompanied by the release of energy (nuclear fusion is used in the hydrogen bomb).
Controlling and sustaining the reaction (thermonuclear ignition) to harness as a power source has been the challenge of nuclear fusion. Once ignition is achieved, the NIF will generate more energy that is required to maintain its operation. A lot more. The path to ignition experiments are scheduled to begin in 2010.
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Anyone with an email account can attest to getting spam or unwanted email messages but a new report from Symantec illustrates just how bad the problem has become. 90.4 percent (1 in 1.11) of global email is now spam.
“Spammers seem to be working a little bit harder these days, according to Symantec, which reported Tuesday that unsolicited e-mail made up 90.4 percent of messages on corporate networks last month.
That represents a 5.1 percent increase over last month’s numbers, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. For years, spam has made up somewhere between 80 percent and 95 percent of all e-mail on the Internet.
Symantec reported that nearly 58 percent of spam is now coming from so-called botnets –networks of hacked computers that can be misused by criminals to steal financial information, launch attacks or send spam. The worst of the spamming botnets — called Donbot — generates 18.2 percent of all spam, according to Symantec.” 90 percent of e-mail is spam, Symantec says, May. 26, 2009 computerworld.com
Download the full MessageLabs Intelligence May 2009 report (pdf).
The Decibel iPhone 3G application from Gadget Frontier transforms your iPhone into a portable decibel meter. Decibel features an analog meter and digital display with peak, average and max in one clean interface. Having used Decibel it appears to be very accurate (probably due do the excellent microphone in the iPhone 3G). The Gadget Frontier website states:
“Even though we have tested Decibel with professional grade equipment with very good results, this application is for recreational use only. iPhone 3G is recommended since it has a better performing microphone than the first generation iPhone.”
Decibel was featured in the BBC show Panorama – The World’s longest running investigative TV show on April 20! The host Quentin Letts use Decibel on his iPhone to measure decibel levels in regards to UK’s health and safety regulations. Check it out on BBC (10 minutes into the show)!
Available now from the iTunes App Store for ¢.99, it is an excellent backup for any audio professional in the field and certainly more than adequate for the rest of us. View the video review by thedigitallifestyle.tv below.
Note that the iPod Touch doesn’t have a built in microphone. To use Decibel with the iPod Touch will require an iPhone headset or plug-in microphone.
The Decibel App for the iPhone and iPhone 3G (Recommended) is available in Paid Version for (¢.99) from the App Store.
About the iPhone
Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again. Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone. Courtesy, Apple.com
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