administrator

Carbon nanotubes capture greenhouse gases, desalinate water

Carbon nanotech has been applied to everything from boat construction to windshields and now, with a licensing agreement from Livermore Lab, a Hayward, Calif., company will apply it to water desalination and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The National Nuclear Security Administration's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has licensed a new carbon nanotube technology to its spinoff company Porifera. The company will develop permeable membranes for CO2 sequestration, water desalination, and other liquid-based separations based on discoveries made at Livermore.

The technology integrates carbon nanotubes into polymer membranes, increasing the flux of carbon dioxide capture by two orders of … Read more

The psychology of healthcare reform

The House has passed the first comprehensive reform package of the health insurance industry in decades, which is now up for debate in the Senate. This is a highly complex issue, but there are some quite basic reasons why it's so difficult to accomplish significant reform, and in part these have to do with psychological responses to change and uncertainty. 

A few years ago I was fortunate to work with a couple of organizational consultants, and they introduced me to the concept of NICs and PUFs. These funny sounding acronyms give insight into why health care reform is … Read more

Get ranked now

The key to attracting traffic to your Web site is a high ranking by the major search engines, which deliver more hits than any other means. Attracting the attention of search sites usually means paying a consultant or other outside expert for the service. Fortunately, there's a less expensive option: SEO Administrator by FlamingoSoft. It can help get your Web site noticed. It's a search engine optimization (SEO) package that provides all the tools you need to optimize your Web site for maximum visibility and traffic. Its ranking monitoring tool checks major search engines and displays the most … Read more

The 404 449: Where we're not gonna sweat it

Back in April of 2008 BJ (before Justin), motivational speaker James Arthur Ray guest-hosted The 404 Podcast and Jeff, Wilson, and Randall spoke to him about how to grow your own meat--no lie. Anyway, the show left a sour taste in The 404's collective mouth, and more than a year later it turns out that Mr. Ray is a big phony, not unlike Balloon Boy Sr.

Turns out that three people died in Arizona at a spiritual retreat "sweat lodge" organized by the self-appointed guru. It's a very sad story, and our hearts go out to the families of the victims. And James? Shame on you.

Oh, and surprise! The personal information you put up on the Internet is no longer private. According to this Wired Danger Room blog, a branch of the CIA has begun heavily investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that monitors social media, including blog posts, Internet forums, online videos, radio reports, and so on. Luckily, Facebook is currently immune to such companies due to its closed architecture, but Twitter, Amazon, and YouTube are all fair game.

This report is definitely worth reading, but we're not surprised. Actually, we thought there was already a system set up to spy on our Web activities: it's called GOOGLE, and it's not doing such a great job at keeping our information private. The company is under suspicion of accidentally posting transcribed voice mails from its Google Voice service. Although this issue might actually concern me if my entire voice mail box weren't filled with concerned messages from my mother...

We're doing three Beck's Beer Audio Drafts this week to make up for the one we skipped last Friday due to Wilson's absence, and Wilson's pick for today is Works Progress Administration, a country outfit comprised of some of the most recognizable names in country music, including Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket, Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek, and Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

The songs of the day are called "Good as Ever" and "Always Have My Love," and although Jeff and I aren't huge fans of the country music genre, we can definitely appreciate the musical talent of this supergroup, and Wilson chimes in to explain the difference between country-pop, country-rock, and a million other sub-genres. The band is currently on a West Coast Tour, so be sure to check out the WPA Web site for more details.

EPISODE 449 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video

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Intuitive desktop manager

My Simple Desktop Office Edition is an easy-to-use program that allows users to control access to certain computer functions. You don't have to be an IT expert to keep employees from accessing things that they shouldn't; My Simple Desktop is so intuitive that just about anyone could use it.

The program's interface is simple and easy to understand. Setting restrictions is as simple as clicking check boxes for the features you want to disable. Want to hide the taskbar or disable the Start menu, or restrict access to the Control Panel or certain drives? Check the appropriate … Read more

White House unveils cloud computing initiative

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a far-reaching and long-term cloud computing policy intended to cut costs on infrastructure and reduce the environmental impact of government computing systems.

Speaking at NASA's Ames Research Center here, federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled the administration's first formal efforts to roll out a broad system designed to leverage existing infrastructure and in the process, slash federal spending on information technology, especially expensive data centers.

According to Kundra, the federal government today has an IT budget of $76 billion, of which more than $19 billion is spent on infrastructure alone. … Read more

Jailed SF network administrator faces fewer charges

A judge has dismissed most of the charges against a former San Francisco network administrator accused of hijacking the city's computer network he designed and maintained.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy on Friday tossed three tampering charges against Terry Childs, while preserving a lone charge of denying city authorities access to the network, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle. Childs, who has been in custody since July 2008, had worked at San Francisco's Department of Telecommunication Information Services for five years. Childs, 44, is being held on $5 million bail.

Childs had formerly … Read more

White House pulls e-mail for 'fishy' reports

On August 4, White House aide Macon Phillips announced the launch of flag@whitehouse.gov, which encouraged Americans to report "fishy" information related to the Obama health care proposal. Phillips' announcement was titled "Facts Are Stubborn Things."

Well, so is public opinion, as the White House acknowledged on Monday by quietly pulling the plug on the flag@whitehouse.gov e-mail address.

Messages sent there are now bounced back with this response:

<flag@whitehouse.gov>: host mailhub-wh2.whitehouse.gov[63.161.169.140] said: 550 5.2.1 <flag@whitehouse.gov>... The email … Read more

Restore a lost administrator account in Vista

A reader named Eric found himself locked out of his Vista administrator accounts:

"Somehow, my account and my son's accounts were downgraded to standard user on his new computer using Vista Home 32-bit. I cannot seem to log in to make any changes to the accounts now. It prompts me to enter a password but no password box is available to type it in. How can I log in to change my account back to administrator?"

In a post last year, I described how to enable Vista's hidden administrator account and password-protect XP's default administrator … Read more