Cave News

Eliica 8 wheel electric car

The Eliica electric car was designed by a Professor at Japan's Keio University. It's just a prototype. It will never win a beauty prize. However, it’s the $250,000 building cost rather than appearance that will keep the Eliica out of production.

Eliica eight-wheeled electric
car with motor on each wheel

Professor Hiroshi Shimizu, of Japan's Keio University developed this 8 wheel electric car that accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo. It is capable of 0 to 60 in just four seconds, powered by separate 100hp motors in each of its eight wheels. It hits maximum speeds of 230 mph. More information can be found here.

Another view of the Eliica built at a cost of $250,000

Personal side note to this story: while in the military, I was stationed in Japan near Keo University. Several of us flew gas powered control-line model airplanes on the tennis courts at Keio University, which was located about midway between Tokyo and Yokohama.

Google ads prompt Christmas lights Hoax

A Lafayette, Colorado man “boasted to reporters around the world that his web site allowed strangers to turn his outdoor Christmas lights on and off”. He now says it was just an elaborate hoax. Computer specialist Alek Komarnitsky says he just wanted to spread holiday cheer.

Mr. Komarnitsky even flew in TV station KMGH's "Air Tracker 7" helicopter on the 15th of December and told the Denver ABC affiliate's audience about the 17,000 Christmas lights flashing a thousand feet below on his Colorado home. He told the TV station audience that they could log on to his web site and control his Christmas lights.

Lots of people were taken in because his web site was featured in numerous holiday stories as a result of the KMGH TV helicopter getting in on the act. Even AP fell for the story. But that’s no surprise because Associated Press has been as quick as CBS to jump into a story with both feet before checking out the accuracy.

Most of the news reports about this story missed the real reason for the hoax. Mr. Komarnitsky just wanted to increase traffic to his web site in hopes they would click on the Google “pay per click” ads. He made money from the “pay per click” ads posted on his site but says it only amounted to "pennies" for each hit on the ads. A spokesman for Google says its looking into the matter further

Komarnitsky said he decided to announce his scam to The Wall Street Journal because it had gotten "a little out of hand." KMGH TV in Denver has egg on its face and Mr. Komarnitsky has some explaining to do. The Wall Street Journal article can be found here. Click here for Fox news coverage. Denver Channel 7 KMGH original coverage on December 15 is here. The later Channel 7 KMGH “egg on face” coverage is here. The Komarnitsky’s revised web site (sans Google ads) is here.

I can attest to his claim of “pennies per click” on his Google ads. I have Google ads on this blog. In the last week this blog had 800 hits and 1,250 page views. During that time my Google ad click earnings amounted to less than one dollar. Needless to say my Google ad click earnings won’t be enough to put me in a high tax bracket.

Is your car spying on you?

If your car was made in 1999 or later chances are it could be spying on you by means of an Event Data Recorder (EDR). This is not as sophisticated as the black box on commercial aircraft. However, it can supply information about your driving habits.

The auto black box (actually it is silver) is part of the airbag deployment system. The auto industry defends this invasion or our privacy by saying this information is needed to determine if the airbag deployed properly and also to monitor acceleration and braking to improve safety and fuel economy. Whatever reason the auto industry gives, it is still an invasion of privacy.

If you own a newer car, truck or SUV, your vehicle is equipped with the EDR, event data recorder. The EDR in your car is probably located under the driver's seat, and will take a snapshot of your driving habits and patterns just prior to a collision. It is this snapshot that could ultimately become your worst enemy if you are involved in an accident.

“The instant your vehicle's computer recognizes that the air bag has deployed, the data recorder permanently locks in information about what was occurring just prior to the collision. The information can include your vehicle speed, whether you used the brakes, the engine RPM's, the gear that the transmission was in, the rate of deceleration and whether you or your passengers were wearing seat belts.”

“General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Honda and Toyota freely admit to installing these recorders, but other automakers have been less forthcoming about technology they are installing to capture driving habits and conditions.”

Defense lawyer and columnist Jordan Charness questions whether courts should be allowed to use black box information, especially when most people don't know the devices are there. "You're taking something that wasn't designed to do this job and you're using it for a completely different application," said Charness.

"The prospect that we're all under constant scrutiny has social effects and legal effects that we haven't even contemplated," said Stephen Keating of the Privacy Foundation at the University of Denver. More information here and here.

Commuter Cars: two to Tango

Tango electric commuter car
Click here for larger picture.
This little tandem two seater is the brainchild of a father son team in Spokane, Washington. It is their electric powered answer to the European Smart car. Passenger rides in rear seat.

The Tango next to a European Smart car
The Tango is only three feet three inches wide. With it’s ability to go from zero to sixty miles per hour in only four seconds it has been called a “golf cart on steroids”. A single charge can take you about 80 miles.

Solution to city parking problems
The Tango will be sold in a kit form and they will be offering a few production models slated for release in early 2005 with prices starting at around $18,700. The Commuter Cars web site can be found here.

The Tango turns heads wherever it goes

Questions to ponder - should you buy one for each foot, or put one in the back of your Escalade?

Linux Laptop computer for $498

This is a new laptop computer available from Wal-Mart - loaded with OpenOffice Suite and Linux (Linspire) operating system. The computer is called Balance and the OpenOffice Suite can import and use Microsoft Office documents from Word (.doc), Excel (.xls) and PowerPoint (.ppt).

Balance is the lowest-priced laptop currently available with an operating system and an office suite. The Wal-Mart catalog says it has a VIA C3 1-GHz processor, 128MB RAM, a 30GB hard drive, a CD-ROM drive and a 14.1-inch liquid crystal display. The software includes a built-in firewall to protect users from viruses, spam and pop-ups. Click here and here for more information about the Balance laptop.

Compare the loaded Balance computer to the cost of Microsoft Office without a computer “attached”. I used the word processor in OpenOffice to write a 75 page book with a lot of photos. OpenOffice even has a utility to convert a word processor file to PDF format.

Balance laptop with Linux and OpenOffice

I am glad to see Linux and OpenOffice getting more exposure and acceptance. More and more, people are getting tired of overpriced operating systems from Microsoft that are buggy. The worst of it is when the next version is released to correct the bugs in the previous version of Windows, we are charged a high price. And the price of Microsoft Office - forget it! I’m still using my old Office 97 when I don’t use OpenOffice.

I paid a nominal amount for OpenOffice just to have it on a CD. It can be downloaded free of charge. Microsoft, I am beginning to depend on you less all the time.

What was your first computer?

My first computer was a Radio Shack Model 4 that cost $1,200 (six months earlier it was selling for whopping $2,000 - incredible!). That was when the first IBM PC had only 16k memory on the mother board. If you wanted more memory it was an add-on.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4
We called it the Trash-80

That was back when a Virus was something you took medicine for, Spam was a can of cooked pork sold by Hormel, Ebay was just another word in Pig-Latin, Google was Barney’s last name and Yahoo was a drunken cowboy yell. For me, that was 8 computers ago and 5 Operating Systems ago. As they say, we’ve come a long way baby!

Denver Christmas lights

Click here for larger picture

Click here for larger picture

Pictures of the City-County building in Denver, Colorado taken a few years ago

Trapping the cane toads

Researchers in Australia are studying ways of controlling the population of cane toads. The cane toad is a pest that is gradually spreading across northern Australia. They are testing sounds and smells to lure toads into traps. Click here for more.

Cane toad of Australia

Is the cane toad problem in Australia on the same level as problems in the United States such as the killer bees of the southwest or maybe the kudzu plant in the southeast? Click here for more about kudzu, “the vine that ate the south”.

Honor our military this Christmas

My daughter Lori sent me the link to a very inspiring slide-show with pictures of our military in Iraq. Click here to see pictures of our heroes serving in Iraq. This slide show is a nice way to honor them this Christmas.

It takes a minute or two to appear and then a while to load, but it’s well worth the wait!

Martha Stewart: message from prison

Yahoo News reports on a Christmas message from Martha Stewart posted on her web site. In addition to complaining about prison food, she called for sentencing reform urging people to think about the women she has met in prison who are "devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family."

According to the Yahoo article, “she suggested Americans should push for reforms in federal sentencing guidelines for nonviolent first-time offenders and particularly for drug offenders, who she said would be better served by rehabilitation than prison”. Stewart feels that nonviolent first-time offenders, particularly drug offenders, would be better served by rehabilitation than prison sentences.

Martha Stewart
Stewart has accepted her sentence with very little complaint. "I have had time to think, time to write, time to exercise, time to not eat the bad food, and time to walk and contemplate the future," she said.

Stewart is about half way through her five-month prison sentence at Alderson for lying about a stock sale. Her job at the federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia has been cleaning, including sweeping, vacuuming and raking leaves. After serving her time at Alderson, she will then spend five months of house arrest confined to her home in Bedford, N.Y.

It was previously announced that Martha will host a daytime television show with a live audience which is scheduled to air next fall.