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A miracle material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars.Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.
Scientists are working to discover new applications for the substance, ranging from the next generation of tennis rackets to super-insulated space suits for a manned mission to Mars.
In case anyone had any doubts. From the Washington Post.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, under political siege for his handling of the U.S. attorney firings and other issues, is to get expanded powers to hasten death penalty cases under regulations being developed by the Justice Department.The rules would give Gonzales the authority to approve "fast-track" procedures by states in death penalty cases, enabling them to carry out sentences more speedily and with fewer opportunities for appeal if those states provide adequate representation for capital defendants.
Steven Colbert had a guy who spent 26 years in prison before he was freed based on DNA evidence. It is truly astonishing that the Republicans want to "hasten death penalty cases" give that the Innocence Project reports that:
[Since 1992], 205 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 15 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 12 years in prison before exoneration and release.
I love my iPhone and wouldn't switch, but it really is a beta product. Without a real sync feature, the iPhone is almost totally useless as a business device.
Sync is as much a part of the UI as the flick and pinch. I assume that the Leopard launch will change this, but the fundamental code of the iPhone sync is absolutely terrible. The developers should be fired.
For example:
1. It's not smart enough to know that I didn't sync any bookmarks since my last sync, so it adds minutes - literally minutes - to a full sync. This happens with calendars and contacts as well.
2. There is no incremental "fast sync". If I change a meeting from 2 pm to 2:30pm and the iPhone is connected, the change should happen instantaneously.
3. Some crazy process named "SyncServer" is now taking over my computer. Every few minutes I check Activity Monitor when my Mac's fan starts to go crazy, and without fail SyncServer is using 99% to 100% of my CPU resources. I don't know if this is directly related to the iPhone sync, but it sure feels like it started happening again when I got my iPhone.
The Apple sync team should be fired and they should re-write the code from scratch.
