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OCAU News |
For everyone out there living underneath a rock, the Democratic candidate Barack Obama yesterday became the first African American President of the United States. (Agg edit: that's president elect. :) )
But what does an Obama presidency mean for green tech? Obama's energy plan, detailed fully earlier this year, is ambitious. It calls for a $150 billion investment in clean technologies over 10 years, aggressive targets for greenhouse emission reductions, and programs to promote energy efficiency, low-carbon biofuels, and renewable energies.
But far more important news is coming out of the election: Ted Stevens may retain his seat. In Alaska US Senator Ted Stevens has been around seemingly forever but a conviction, as a nice October Surprise would change all of that - right? In the lower forty-eight we await the Alaska Senate race results and the big question on everyone's minds, "Did Ted Stevens Win Election?" If you're wondering who Ted Stevens is, this video should clear it up.
CNN incorporated holograms into its election coverage...except they didn't. The CNN anchors were not really speaking to three-dimensional projected images, but rather empty space, Kreuzer said. The images were simply added to what viewers saw on their screens at home, in much the same way computer-generated special effects are added to movies. Kreuzer said the images were tomograms, which are images that are captured from all sides, reconstructed by computers, then displayed on screen. Holograms, on the other hand, are projected into space. CNN officials could not be reached for comment.
Also, yesterday's election allowed for Twitter, Digg and Youtube to obliterate several records. It was a high-voltage day for the Internet. I only have stats for a few sites, but rest assured that records were broken all over the place. Personally, I can't remember more than a few minutes (when I went to vote, e.g.) when I didn't have my laptop open, the better to surf around furiously with.
Digg also have a dialogg with the former next president of the United States and environmental activist Al Gore. Digg founder Kevin Rose is interviewing former Vice President & Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore! From now until 9:00am PST / 12:00pm EST Nov. 6th, you can submit and Digg up questions to decide which questions will be asked. The Digg Dialogg will premiere on Friday, Nov. 7th at 7:00pm PST / 10:00pm EST on Current TV and be posted here at 8:00pm PST / 11:00pm EST.
On the environment, the entire face of the renewable energy industry is about to be changed. Solar breakthroughs are relatively commonplace. However, typically they are iterative -- small increases by a percent or two in efficiency. Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have invented a new solar cell that is anything but iterative as it blows away past offerings by a large margin; something RPI calls a "game-changer" for the solar business.
If you thought people were getting annoyed over the election, you ain't seen nothing yet. Now that the elections are finally over, let's focus on something even more contentious: the holy war over operating systems. I've gotten a lot of responses regarding my Halloween post on Microsoft's "I'm a PC" marketing campaign and Windows 7. Some good, some bad, and some plug-ugly.
Today also marks the end of an era. Microsoft operating systems almost never actually die, preferring instead to fade away into the mists of antiquity, but as of November 1, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is finally, officially, totally dead at the age of 15 (though we can bump that backwards if you prefer to count from the original Windows 3.0).
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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