“I have challenged regulators, business professionals and utility companies in Iowa to work toward achieving 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2010, which will require the addition of more than 500 megawatts of renewable energy facilities,” Vilsack said. “I am pleased that MidAmerican is taking a leadership role in that effort.”

Now that just plain rocks. It's nice to see some good news these days.

MidAmerican to build Largest Wind Farm in the World

The Sound of Things to Come
By MARSHALL SELLA

No one ever notices what's going on at a Radio Shack. Outside a lonely branch of the electronics store, on a government-issue San Diego day in a strip mall where no one is noticing much of anything, a bluff man with thinning, ginger hair and preternaturally white teeth is standing on the pavement, slowly waving a square metal plate toward people strolling in the distance. ''Watch that lady over there,'' he says, unable to conceal his boyish pride for the gadget in his giant hand. ''This is really cool.''

Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. ''Look at that,'' Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. ''She doesn't know what hit her.''

Norris is demonstrating something called HyperSonic Sound (HSS). The aluminum plate is connected to a CD player and an odd amplifier -- actually, a very odd and very new amplifier -- that directs sound much as a laser beam directs light. Over the past few years, mainly in secret, he has shown the device to more than 300 major companies, and it has slackened a lot of jaws. In December, the editors of Popular Science magazine bestowed upon HSS its grand prize for new inventions of 2002, choosing it over the ferociously hyped Segway scooter. It is no exaggeration to say that HSS represents the first revolution in acoustics since the loudspeaker was invented 78 years ago -- and perhaps only the second since pilgrims used ''whispering tubes'' to convey their dour messages.

The Sound of Things to Come

A great report from the CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) that analyzed behaviors that increase the chance of receiving spam. This is a PDF file that's worth reading through. The bottom line: don't post your email address on a website.

Why Am I Getting All This Spam?

] This guide is the first in a series on the Art of Video
] Capture, Clean-up, and Compression.

Ars Technica: Guide to Video Capturing - Page 1 - (03/2003)

] When was the last time you used a pay phone?

ah, the days of hacking COCOTS and other pay phone booths may be reappearing.

Pumping Life Into the Pay Phone

] "Afghanistan is officially planting its flag in
] cyberspace, gaining full legal and technical control of
] the '.af' Internet domain," the organization said.
]
] "For Afghanistan, this is like reclaiming part of our
] sovereignty," Communications Minister Mohammad Moassom
] Stanakzai said in a statement on Sunday.

Wired News: Afghan Internet Domain Launches

One dead fly with one microprocessor implanted into the fly body. The chip is a fully operational web server on the internet, and enables online viewers to enter and exit the fly corpse.

Small web server mounted on a dead fly!

Google. It's not just for making yourself seem smarter than all the other 1Us3rS.

Net Hacker Tool du Jour: Google

] BERKELEY, Calif.--Attempts to protect copyrighted
] material have strayed from their original purpose, say
] lawyers, technologists and academics, but few can agree
] on the solution.
]
] Speaking Friday at a University of California at Berkeley
] conference on the law and policy of digital rights
] management, experts from all circles seem to agree that
] more is going wrong than right with the current approach
] to protecting digital content. Moreover, they argue that
] current laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
] (DMCA)--which makes cracking copyright protections
] illegal, even when otherwise acceptable under other
] laws--are serving the extremes, not the mainstream
] populace.

Experts: Copyright law hurts technology | CNET News.com

I have found that this cut up engine has some interesting properties. Properties which were probably not forseen or intended by the authors.

Use a mouse to drop a Requirements Document, as written by, say, a member of the Sales staff into the upper box. Then visit the CPAN site, grab a couple of relevant Perl modules and drop them into the bottom box. Activate the 'Cut It Up' button, grab the results, drop it in to your source code file and fire up the Perl interpreter. Voila! you now have a well structured Perl program which conforms to spec.

Sometimes you will have to try it a couple of times. It seems to work with Bugzilla reports, too. It doesn't seem to work with lisp since it has trouble keeping the parentheses balanced properly.

grazulis - william s. burroughs - cutup machine