BIG X

Ford shifts focus from hybrids to biofuels

2006-07-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

In a sharp shift of strategy, Ford Motor plans to focus less on hybrid technology and more on a wider range of alternatives to traditional gasoline-powered engines, Ford Chief Executive Bill Ford told employees of the automaker.
Ford backed away from a commitment made last fall to build production capacity for 250,000 hybrid vehicles by the end of the decade, calling that goal "too narrow" in a company-wide e-mail message to the automaker's employees on Wednesday. The No. 2 U.S. automaker released the e-mail to media on Thursday.
Ford, which has faced criticism for lacking a consistent vision for its product development strategy, had heavily promoted its commitment to hybrid technology. Hybrids run on a combination of gasoline and electricity.

PayPal president's exit prompts eBay management shake-up

2006-07-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

Online marketplace eBay on Thursday announced a shake-up of senior management. Jeff Jordan, president of online payment service unit PayPal, plans to leave the company. Longtime eBay executive Rajiv Dutta, currently president of Internet telephone-calling service Skype, will replace Jordan.
Alex Kazim, now vice president of products for Skype, will replace Dutta and report to Skype CEO and founder Niklas Zennstrom. eBay said Jordan is leaving to spend more time with his family.

Finally Here!!

2006-07-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted in a while because my wife and I have been back and fourth from the hospital anticipating the birth of our third son. And Finally on July 2, 2006 he was born and my wife did real well and he came fast. So anyway back to business as usual. . . . .

Congress mulls slew ofNet-sex rules

2006-06-27T16:47:00.000-07:00

I found this article on Cnet.com, and it was real interesting to see how the government is cracking down on child pornography.
Congress mulls slew of Net-sex rules
By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: June 27, 2006, 1:11 PM PDT
TalkBack E-mail Print
When it comes to topics conducive to political speechifying, few compare to the volatile mix of the Internet, sex and children.
At a hearing before the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, politicians served up a dizzying slew of suggestions about what kind of new federal laws should be enacted.
High Impact
What's new:
A Capitol Hill hearing on ways to protect children online yields a range of ideas, from Web blocking to "search and destroy bots."
Bottom line:
The specter of child pornography that's easily accessible on the Web has politicians scrambling for ways to put a stop to the smut. What actually gets enacted, and what effect it would have on legitimate businesses, remains to be seen.
More stories on this topic

The ideas were all over the map, and most were new. Only one or two have actually been turned into formal legislation so far, but politicians are vowing to take action in the very near future.
A child exploitation law is "one of the highest priority issues not just before this subcommittee, but the full committee," said Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee. "It is my intention to...see if we can't develop very quickly a comprehensive piece of anti-child-pornography legislation."
Following is a roundup of some of the proposals for new federal laws, rules or regulations that would target American businesses--if, that is, various members of Congress get their way.
Forcibly blocking off-color Web sites: Rep. Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, lauded a U.K. approach that involves compiling a list of illicit Web sites and using it to cordon off access to them. Internet providers should, Stupak said, block "American predators from using U.S.-based platforms to access child pornography at any site worldwide."
Eavesdropping on what Americans are doing online: Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, suggested surveillance might do the trick. "One issue that keeps recurring is how these companies are monitoring communications that might reveal the contents are child pornography," she suggested.
Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, sounded a similar tone without endorsing the eavesdropping plan: "I don't think that people who are raping 2-year-old children on the Internet have any right to privacy."
Anticipating data retentionNet companies pledge porn crackdown
As Congress considers forcing Internet providers to snoop on their customers, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo say they have a better plan.
Making certain hyperlinks illegal: One antigambling bill in Congress a few years ago would have required companies to delete hyperlinks to offshore gambling sites. Now the idea is resurfacing. "Who's able to link to which site...and how we filter that out" is key, said Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican. "Some ISPs are better than others."
Recording which customer is assigned which Internet Protocol address: Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the oversight subcommittee, said he wanted to learn "about Internet service providers' retention policies for IP addresses in particular." In one case, Whitfield warned, police could not find who had been assigned a "3-day-old IP address from an Internet service provider. That is unacceptable." (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been pushing for this as well.)
Dispatching "search and destroy" bots: The idea of disrupting peer-to-peer networks surfaced in 2002 in the House of Representatives, and Sen. Orrin Hatch said a year later that copyright holders should be allowed to remotely destroy the computers of music pirates. Now Rep. Walden has revived that idea, proposing that search and destroy bots be launched to scour the Internet for illicit content.
"If you could search for different things, you might be able to search for a known image, identify it and destroy it," Walden suggested. He dubbed the idea "technologically scan and destroy."
Restricting naughty Webcams: Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of a consumer protection subcommittee, cited a New York Times article about an adolescent boy who charged customers to watch him perform erotic acts in front of his Web cam. "We've heard about one Web site that had 140,000 images of adolescents from their Web cam," Stearns said. We need "to do whatever we can in our power to protect the innocent."
Recording e-mail correspondents and Web pages visited: "Amazingly, even though we require telephone companies to keep records of telephone calls for 18 months...there is no federal law for Internet communications and there is no industry standard," said DeGette, the Colorado Democrat. "This is hindering investigations."
DeGette has been a leading proponent in the House of Representatives of data retention and already drafted legislation making it mandatory for Internet providers and Web sites.
Taking aim at search engines: Search engines were accused of selling sponsored links that relate to sex and minors. "I have serious concerns about the adequacy of efforts by the search engine providers," said Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat. Google was singled out for selling racy ads tied to the search term "pre-teen."
Rep. Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican, complained that Google fought a subpoena from the Justice Department in court and had a culture of liberalism. "Do you want to be known as the company where teenagers can have access to teen pornography and where your clients can go into child pornographic sites, feeling as they'll be protected and that information will not be given to the government?" Pickering said. (For its part, Google says it has a "zero-tolerance policy on child pornography." Nicole Wong, its associate general counsel, said that Google's system had blocked only "preteen" and it now recognized the hyphen.)
Letting government bureaucrats rate chat rooms: Video games and movies have ratings, so why not chat rooms, Rep. Stearns proposed. "Should chat rooms be set up with some sort of controls from the Federal Trade Commission, or should software be developed to categorize?" Stearns suggested. "Should manufacturers of computers provide that software? Sort of like a V-chip in a TV. You'd have this software program...that way it would be automatic."
Permitting the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to send subpoenas to Internet providers: This idea came from Gerard Lewis, Comcast's deputy general counsel and chief privacy officer, who testified at the hearing. NCMEC already receives federal tax dollars to forward reports of child exploitation to police. But the concept was shot down by DeGette, who said: "I don't think it would work."
In other news:
· Congress yearns to swat smut
· Microsoft eases piracy checks
· Photo: When tech gets bulletproof
· News.com Extra: The digital dilemma vexing big media
· Video: Microsoft's vision for 'unified messaging'
Stupak said, however, that he wanted to give NCMEC the power to require Internet providers to preserve records in specific cases--a move that would effectively make it a quasi police agency. A 1996 federal law called the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act currently requires Internet providers to retain any "record" in their possession for 90 days "upon the request of a governmental entity." (Also on Tuesday, Comcast said it would retain customer records for 180 days, up from 30 days.)
Targeting peer-to-peer networks: Politicians have been talking about enacting new laws targeting P2P networks since early 2003. Now it may happen. Government reports have talked about finding child pornography on P2P networks, and Stupak said he wants to find a way to pull the plug. "How to stop the peer to peer?" Stupak said. "I'd be interested in some suggestions...We have to find a way to block the peer to peer from person to person."
Granting Internet censorship power to federal bureaucrats: Under the current U.S. legal system, only a judge can decide what's legally obscene or pornographic. In addition, the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a law that criminalized any computer-generated sex image that "appears to be" of a minor--which makes deciding what's legal and not even more tricky.
But Barton said the judicial process takes too long to rule in prosecutions of child pornography. "Why is it not possible to immediately terminate that site?" Barton said. "You have to have some agency of the government definitively say that is child pornography. Once that's established, why can't we immediately cut off that site? (That would avoid) waiting for a court to go out and convict the people operating the site."

Wi-Fi cell phones will hit it big

2006-06-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

Wi-Fi, which offers wireless Ethernet connections over a few hundred feet, is widely used by consumers to connect their PCs and certain handheld devices to the Internet. But until very recently Wi-Fi has been absent from the world of cell phones.
Cellular service providers initially saw Wi-Fi as a threat to sales of cellular data services like weather reports and stock quotes. But this perception is changing as service providers acknowledge the marketabilty of phones capable of handling both cellular and Wi-Fi signals.More than 20 Wi-Fi-enabled models are either already on the market or will be released soon. Some of these new phones will be products of collaboration between cellular carriers and companies that offer voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, which allow transmission of voice and data over the Internet.Motorola, for example, announced a partnership with eBay's VoIP provider Skype early last year. If all goes as expected, customers with Wi-Fi-enabled cell phones would have the option of using Skype's service in place of a landline service as long as they are within range of a Wi-Fi signal. Once out of Wi-Fi range, they could then operate the same phone on cellular technology.

Smart Cards with Built-In Fingerprint Scanners

2006-06-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Paper-thin fingerprint scanners could soon make cell phones, USB memory, and credit cards more secure. The new scanners, developed by Nanoident Technologies, a startup based in Linz, Austria, detect patterns and blood content in the tissue within the finger. This makes them much harder to fool than ordinary fingerprint readers, which measure only the ridges and contours of fingerprints. The scanners combine information from the surface of the finger -- the fingerprint -- and the underlying tissue and blood. This deeper information is obtained by illuminating the finger with different wavelengths of light, some reflecting off the surface, and others, toward the red end of the color spectrum, penetrating deeper, allowing the scanner to extract data from beneath the skin. Combining information about the tissue structure, which is unique to each person, with conventional fingerprint data improves the accuracy of the scanner. The company’s sensors are more than 99 percent accurate, while conventional fingerprint detectors are inaccurate for around three percent of the population.

BLU-RAY technology

2006-06-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

It's finally here! Samsung has released the first High Definition DVD player with 1080 resolution. The DVD player is supposed to show a picture as good as having a high def tv, so I can only imagine what it would look like if you had both. It is said to deliver 7.1 channels of surround sound and 5 times the resolution of regular DVD's. With the DVD's for this system starting at $25, and it it also said that the system enhances your old DVD's. This all sounds like a dream, but it comes with a hefty price tag of $999.99 ! In november hardcore gamers can get the PS3 which come with the BLu-ray technology for $600.00, which is still steep but you can kill two birds with one stone by getting the game and the DVD player:P

Cellphones, an accessories?

2006-06-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else notice that cellphone are becoming part of our daily wear accessories? Or have you noticed how much money you can spend on customizing your phone? People are actually starting to "try on" phones to match outfits as well as their personalities. This doesn't come without a price, with some people spending thosands of dollars to personalize their phones. Up 11% from 2004, wireless revenues have topped $113 billion dollars in revenue. The U.s. is still behind Japan in terms of cellphone usage and technology. So can you imagine how much money we, as the U.s> will spend when our technology finally catches up?

Long Long time!

2006-06-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Its been a long tome since I posted anything. Thanx for being so patient. Oh yeah to check out pics of me and my fam, go to my MYSPACE PAGE and leave some comments to let me know that you've been :)

Children get wired into tech earlier

2006-06-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

Studies show that childern in the U.s. are using video games, cellphones, and MP3 players by age 7 - which is about six month's earlier than a year ago. But are the overuse of these activities causing health promblems among todays youth? Here's a link to some of the health problems children are suffering from around the world. AJC

HP is cooling computers with tiny jet engines

2006-06-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

This is an article I found that I thoght was real interesting if you have ever noticed how much heat your home computer has accummulated. Technology ReviewThe computer servers that fill huge data centers are producing more heat with every new generation of processors. It's a problem that's sending engineers on a search for cooling fans that are both small enough to fit inside ever-smaller server chassis and powerful enough to dispel increasing amounts of heat. At Hewlett-Packard, they've found one answer in an unexpected place: model jet airplanes.
To cool its next generation of commercial servers, the company is using electric-ducted fans (EDFs), originally developed by model airplane hobbyists to power radio-controlled jets. Essentially propellers in a box, the fans run so fast and produce so much air pressure that they should be able to provide the cooling needs for the next several generations of HP servers, according to Wade Vinson, an engineer in the company's Industry Standard Server Group.
In an electric-ducted fan, which is the most popular form of radio-controlled jet motor, the fan's blades are placed inside a tube, or "duct." Because the blades are shorter than typical propeller blades, they spin faster, thereby creating more thrust. Furthermore, the duct reduces noise and prevents air vortices from forming around the tips of the blades -- which saps the thrust produced by traditional propellers.

Grand Theft Auto

2006-06-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

The maker of the best-selling "Grand Theft Auto" videogame series settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Thursday over a complaint that the company hid sexual explicit content in its "San Andreas" title last year. The game was released with an "M" rating (Mature 17+). But, the game actually included secret character nudity and graphic sex scenes that could be unlocked by installing a small modification, or "mod," file. The FTC said that Take-Two violated the law when it obtained the more lenient rating -- rather than an AO (Adults Only) -- even though it knew of the hidden content. Grand Theft Auto

MSDN Wiki

2006-06-11T05:20:00.000-07:00

Microsoft went live this week with MSDN Wiki, a new site inviting developers to contribute their own tips and code examples to run alongside Microsoft's official Visual Studio and .Net Framework documentation. But unlike one of the most famous wikis, Wikipedia, which invites anyone to edit text without registering and logging in with the site. MSDN Wiki requires content contributors to sign in with a Microsoft Passport or Windows Live ID, and it isn't yet letting contributors amend the main body of its documentation. Here's the link CRN

AGL:More Jobs Lost?

2006-06-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

Atlant Gas Light plans on outsources its call center to Bangalore, India. So now if you call you will hear an Indian voice on the other line. This will lose Georgia 140 jobs. The ousorcing will allow AGL to pay less for full-time employees to handle calls and cut down on the turnover rate. Once again the U.S. is losing jobs to cheaper labor. Soon there won't be any jobs left and the whole nation will be moving oversea's.

What's going on with these rappers!

2006-06-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Atlanta rap group the youngbloods and there 12 man crew were arrested on thursday in coweta county for possesion of half a pound of green and two guns. The crazy part of this story is that the main reason they got pulled over is because the tour bus they were on had expired Florida tags. When they got pulled over, an officer could smell burning green as soon as the let down there window. You would think by now these rappers would have sense enough to make a check list before the go anywhere. The cops are already looking for a reason to arrest people as it is.

New post

2006-06-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

It's been a minute since my last post, and to start it off I would like to wish my parents a happy anniversary today 06/04/06. I love y'all, without y'all there would be no me :P Now down to some business, what is going on with the youth of today all last week I heard about robberies, and kids geeting shot. These kids need to understand that if you continue to live too fast you'll eventually die real young.

Converting gas into energy gold

2006-05-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

I was just flippin' through some web pages when I came upon a story on CNN that say that here in Atlanta Georgia they are looking into trying to use the gases that are coming off the many landfields and use them as an alternate fuel source. here is a link to the full story: Energy Gold. Its interesting to see what alternatives that are out there that we really don't think to use.

2006-05-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

The PlayStation 3 will sport some hefty multimedia features, such as video chat, Internet access, digital photo viewing, and digital audio and video. Speaking of video, Sony Computer Entertainment's chief technical officer Masa Chatani was on hand to show off the PS3's panoramic video functions. Since the console has two HD outputs, it is can be hooked up to two side-by-side HDTVs to projecting video in a 32:9 extra-widescreen format (like having Cinemascope in your living room). Like a gigantic version of the Nintendo DS, the dual digital outputs also allow for an extended game display, with the action on one screen and either game information or video chat on the second.
Out of the box, the PS3 will have the capability to support seven Bluetooth controllers, which can be used for nearly 24 hours before they require charging. Later, pictures of the controllers themselves were released, showing their almost boomerang-like shape. It will also have six USB slots for peripherals: four up front and two in the back. As rumored, it will also have Wi-Fi connectivity to the PSP, which can be used as a remote screen and/or controller.

New to Blogging!!!

2006-05-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name Is Xavier McGhee and I am currently a student at Mercer University. I'm 24 and a father of three boys with one (a Boy) on the way. On this blog, which is my first I just want to have fun and show my opinions on things that I'm interested in. Which is everything from new technology products to old school cars.

1969 Caprice

2006-05-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

I'm currently fixing up a four door version of this classic car, but I want mine as flawless as this one looks.