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How To Never Bust Through Your Smartphone’s Data Cap Again [Data Caps]

bill — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:51:33 +0000

I was curious whether this Gizmodo article, How To Never Bust Through Your Smartphone’s Data Cap Again [Data Caps], would come up with the idea I came up with, turn your 2G/3G/4G data access off. Since most of my awake hours is spent in two places where I have Wi-Fi access the lack of over the air data access should not be much of a problem to me. This also explains why I did it. How can I go over my 200 MB limit when most of my data transfers should be over Wi-Fi? This problem seems to be occurring every month now.

Where are the green jobs?

bill — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:24:19 +0000

Talk about unintended consequences!

According to The Hill, wind executives are engaging in a lobbying-flurry on Capitol Hill this week, going after the “Buy American” agenda that Senator Chuck Schumer is pushing with regard to renewable power projects funded with stimulus grants. Schumer has become somewhat agitated to learn that most (79%) of the US stimulus money spent on renewable energy has gone overseas creating manufacturing jobs abroad, but creating little but taxpayer debt here in the U.S.

The Hill quotes Donald Furman, senior vice president with Iberdrola Renewables as admitting that Schumer’s buy-American plan “will cause my company not to build the number of projects that it was going to build simply because we can’t get the equipment that would satisfy the requirement.”

This admission is only surprising because it was made in public. Anyone who knows that China’s labor rate is under $1.00 per hour, and that China holds 95% of the rare earth elements needed to produce most renewable energy systems could have told you that manufacturing of renewable equipment is going to happen mostly in China.

U.S. Wind Industry: Turbine Construction Won’t be Domestic
Kenneth P. Green
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 06:00:58 GMT

Brazilian Blackout Traced to Sooty Insulators, Not Hackers

bill — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:01:06 +0000

I saw the 60 Minutes program on Sunday and I was a little skeptical over the intelligence claims. As an engineer who worked closely with process control engineers at a chemical plant there are some significant challenges in sabotaging control systems when you have local access. Sabotaging a control system via the internet is an even greater challenge. I think that sooty insulators is a more likely answer although I agree every one should be wary.

The CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes breaks the remarkable news that a massive 2007 electrical blackout in Brazil was caused by computer hackers. But the electric utility involved denies a hack attack. It should know — it was fined over $3 million for failing to maintain the high-voltage insulators that actually caused the blackout.

Brazilian Blackout Traced to Sooty Insulators, Not Hackers
Marcelo Soares
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:15:00 GMT