IRTTech Blog

From Wired: Wikipedia is a place where anyone start an argument without even logging in. It is the largest and most comprehensive collection of arguments in human history, incorporating spats and vendettas on disparate subjects. As an unexpected side effect, is that it's also a good place to find about all the characters from Battlestar: Galactica.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bill Gates holds a 25.5-percent stake in Pacific Ethanol Inc., resulting from a private transaction with the maker of corn-based fuel, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Gates acquired 5.25 million shares convertible preferred stock on April 13 for $16 per share, the filing said. Those shares are convertible to 10.5 million shares of common stock.

Gates acquired 5.25 million shares convertible preferred stock on April 13 for $16 per share, according to SEC filing.

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By a 34-22 vote, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee rejected a Democratic-backed Net neutrality amendment that also enjoyed support from Internet and software companies including Microsoft, Amazon.com and Google.

"I'm concerned about e-mails being blocked from advocacy groups, of all sides," said Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat who supported the amendment. "I'm concerned about start-ups that may be shut down."

While efforts to rewrite telecommunications laws often languish in obscurity, advocacy groups and corporations have raised public alarms about the section of the 34-page bill pertaining to Net neutrality (also called network neutrality).

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Live.com Shopping launched today (official blog post), and all I see is a big message saying they don’t support Firefox. It doesn’t work with Safari or Opera either (same Firefox error message for all non IE browsers). The entire Mac audience has been shut out of Live Shopping. I’ll fire up my Windows machine to test it out later.

In general, Microsoft has been good about supporting Firefox for its new live.com products. Live Shopping should have been delayed until it supported Firefox, too. Most bloggers and journalists use a Mac and/or Firefox and this audience was just completely alienated from Live Shopping.

Ian McAllister, the Program Manager for Windows Live Shopping, has more.


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Samsung's solid-state disk drives are clear pointers to the way ahead, so it was with more than a little interest that we checked out a laptop equipped with flash memory instead of spinning platters at CeBIT.

— Samsung has developed a higher-capacity version of its solid-state disk (SSD), a flash-memory based replacement for hard-disk drives, and is showing it at the CeBIT trade show in Hanover, Germany, this week.

The drive packs 32GB of flash memory into a case the same size as a 1.8in, hard-disk drive. That capacity is double the 16GB of a prototype device announced by Samsung last year and was made possible by the continuing miniaturization of flash-memory chip technology.

At CeBIT the solid-state disk is being demonstrated inside a Samsung laptop computer. Because the SSD is the same size and shape as the computer's hard drive it was relatively easy to replace the hard drive with the SSD, said Yun Mini, a spokeswoman for Samsung.

The SSD technology has three major benefits over hard drives, said Yun. The first is that data access is faster. This could be seen when the SSD-based laptop was booted up alongside the same model machine with a standard hard drive. The desktop appeared on the screen of the SSD laptop in about 18 seconds while the hard drive-based computer took about 31 seconds to reach the same point.


Another benefit will be less power consumption.

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Imagine paying $16/gallon for gas. BP launched a new high octane fuel in the U.K. that costs nearly 20 pounds in Britain. Being a high performance fuel it's meant for sports car that will likely swill it like a drunken sailor.

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"Facebook is now allowing new users from corporate networks, in addition to high school and college students..." "...only certain companies are currently supported." You can suggest a New Network for your own company at

http://www.facebook.com/help.php?tab=newnetwork&network_type=3

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