Conservative Musings

Vulnerable Lawmakers Vote No

It's been noted that many of those who voted 'no' to the House bailout plan were those in a vulnerable district.  Consider a few things about this vote:

• Nancy Pelosi's speech prior to the vote suggests Republicans are out to mess all of this up.
• John Yarmuth is a Democrat.
• John Yarmuth voted 'no'.

Considering that Yarmuth is surely no Republican messing things up, I'd say he's running scared about his chances in November.  And I thought our fair representative followed Pelosi's lead.

John Yarmuth and 94 of his Democratic buddies voted no.  I'd say a few are actually listening to their people back home.

-Colonel Steve

Live Blogging of Debate

Some of the ones live blogging tonite are Ann Althouse, Jason Pye, and Ed Morrissey.  I'll may be putting my 2 cents in occasionally, but these guys will be up to the task.

-Colonel Steve

Tech Requests

I know I sure can relate to yesterday's Dilbert:

OK, so maybe I don't have a girlfriend (outside of Lady Colonel).  But I sure have enough relatives asking the same type questions she did.  Any other techies out there getting similar requests?

-Colonel Steve

Latest Netflix Offering

Netflix is now offering a TV top box to watch movies on TV.  This is designed as an extension of their instant watch offering, that streams movies and tv shows to your computer.

As much as I love watching the instant offering from Netflix, I am going to have to seriously consider picking up one.  At $99.99, I consider it a bargain.  Although Netflix does not offer instant watching of real recent movies, I still consider it a very good competitor to cable's offerings.  Probably because I already use it alot.

-Colonel Steve

New Circuits

First transistors.  Now memristors. 

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have developed a circuit element similar to a transistor.  This particular element takes advantage of an idea that was once only a theory.  It was thought that somehow, circuits could remember the charge they had, even when the power was turned off.

The researchers were able to find ways to do this.  It's thought this memristor technology will one day replace we now know as flash memory.

Cool.

-Colonel Steve

Robotics and War

There has been many a technology that got it's start thru developments requested and needed by the military.  Consider the very Internet you are reading this on, originating as the Department of Defense ARPANET project.  Or the future advances that could come from such events like the DARPA challenge, developing autonomous vehicles.

A British company is developing "robobugs" for use in front line surveillance.  These little guys would swarm in and check things out before any people enter the area.

Cool!

-Colonel Steve

A Plug for Lexmark

The Courier-Journal is reporting that Best Buy is dropping Lexmark from their product offerings.  I was disappointed to hear that, and not just because Lexmark is a Kentucky company.  I recently purchased a Lexmark E250dn laser printer through Best Buy Business.  This was a bit of a risky move on my part because I've always been happy with HP -- but that may be because my company was footing the bill.  When it came to spending my own limited bucks I couldn't pay top dollar for HP and I had a specific feature set in mind:

• laser -- I have an HP ink-jet but it's slow and I don't need to print color all that much
• network-ready -- I need to print from multiple machines on the network
• duplex-capable -- Saves paper (obligatory Earth-Day mention)

The Lexmark E250dn fit the bill and it seemed more home-office friendly (and cheaper) than the nearest HP, so I bought it.  The printer has been all that it was advertised to be.  It is fast and the print quality is good.  There are drivers for both linux and windows.  I am a very happy customer. 

It's a shame Best Buy is turning its back on a quality product.  If the printer industry does consolidate around HP and Canon, as the article suggests, that will be bad for consumers.  HP prices are already high -- what will they be with limited competition?

--Red

Driverless Cars?

First, we have the autonomous vehicles in the DARPA challenge.  Now we have GM both announcing a driver-less car in a decade and also demonstrating their "robo-car".

Wow!  We've gone from cars turning on their lights, windshield wipers, and responding to voice commands right on up to driving themselves.  I know some who forget to turn on their lights in rental cars because their own cars lights come on automatically.  Next, they'll have more than their lights on auto-pilot!

-Colonel Steve

What is THE Most Important Invention of the 20th Century?

Some folks might say the television.  Others might say air conditioning.  Or radio.  Many other inventions may also come to mind.

But I say, like Computerworld states, that the transistor was that most important invention.  Think about it.  That desktop or laptop you are reading this on....just how big would it be without tiny transistors?  That iPod or MP3 player would have to be really lugged around in a suitcase.

So much today depends on electronics that would have been impossible without that single invention.  Sure, it's been fine tuned and significantly shrunk from the original one that was the size of your palm.  But it's made today's life more productive, safer, and more enjoyable.

This Sunday marks the 60th birthday of that invention.  Happy birthday, transistor!

-Colonel Steve

Big Fix Rollout for Windows Vista

After saying in March that Vista is so high quality that fixes will dribble out, Microsoft has now released the 47-page document spelling out the changes in Vista Service Pack 1.  Granted, some of the updates are for required routine changes, like the Venezuela timezone change courtesy of Hugo Chavez's "revolution".  But 47 pages?  This isn't even all that might be included when it's finalized.

So much for progress.

(HT: Information Week).

-Colonel Steve