Southwest Virginia Blogs

Thursday night's meeting between Virginia Tech's newly formed Taskforce on Race and the Institution and students was devoid of the contentiousness of the meeting last spring that led to its creation.

Members of the task force posed questions about the racial climate on campus during a two-hour session. Students discussed everything from social isolation to classroom segregation created by some professors to the way they felt when seeing few minorities during campus tours.

One criticism of the task force came from Tech student Devin Stone, who asked for transparency from the task force and questioned if its meetings would be open to the public. Wayne Scales, a Tech engineering professor who is chair of the task force said the meetings would not be open to the public, insisting he wasn't trying to hide anything.

Black Box Voting has a step by step explanation, with detailed pictures, of how to alter a Diebold electronic voting machine in four minutes flat, including defeating two "security" features. The process is undetectable, and you can easily alter vote counts in the machine, and it would be impossible to trace because the machine does not provide auditable paper records.

Your tax dollars at work. Hanging chads are starting to look pretty good, since you can at least see them.

Black Box Voting has a step by step explanation, with detailed pictures, of how to alter a Diebold electronic voting machine in four minutes flat, including defeating two "security" features. The process is undetectable, and you can easily alter vote counts in the machine, and it would be impossible to trace because the machine does not provide auditable paper records.

Your tax dollars at work. Hanging chads are starting to look pretty good, since you can at least see them.

I have become pretty jaded about new gadgets. Most of them represent technology in search of a problem, and I just don't need anything else that requires batteries, a charger, a dock, and that weighs me down in airports. But a new Bluetooth watch is actually pretty interesting. The watch will talk wirelessly to some models of cellphones. If you get a phone call, instead of having to fish your phone out of your pocket or bag, this watch will vibrate, and it will show the Caller ID information on the watch display. A button on the side of the watch will let you silence the call and send the caller to your voicemail. This would be particularly nice during meetings, where you may not want to appear rude by fumbling with the phone.

I have become pretty jaded about new gadgets. Most of them represent technology in search of a problem, and I just don't need anything else that requires batteries, a charger, a dock, and that weighs me down in airports. But a new Bluetooth watch is actually pretty interesting. The watch will talk wirelessly to some models of cellphones. If you get a phone call, instead of having to fish your phone out of your pocket or bag, this watch will vibrate, and it will show the Caller ID information on the watch display. A button on the side of the watch will let you silence the call and send the caller to your voicemail. This would be particularly nice during meetings, where you may not want to appear rude by fumbling with the phone.

As I wrote recently, a lot of my readers just think that the whole Space Economy thing is a litte goofy. But Virgin Galactic has rolled out images of its new sub-orbital space ship, and is already booking seats. Two hundred thousand dollars gets you a two and one half hour trip to the edge of space--about 68 miles above the earth. Pasengers will be weightless long enough to get queasy and/or enjoy the view; the ship will have plenty of windows. Test flights of the system will begin in 2008, and passengers will be lifting off in 2009. And New Mexico's Space Economy is roaring along, and the whole state's economy is being lifted--no pun intended.

As I wrote recently, a lot of my readers just think that the whole Space Economy thing is a litte goofy. But Virgin Galactic has rolled out images of its new sub-orbital space ship, and is already booking seats. Two hundred thousand dollars gets you a two and one half hour trip to the edge of space--about 68 miles above the earth. Pasengers will be weightless long enough to get queasy and/or enjoy the view; the ship will have plenty of windows. Test flights of the system will begin in 2008, and passengers will be lifting off in 2009. And New Mexico's Space Economy is roaring along, and the whole state's economy is being lifted--no pun intended.

Just as the cellphone companies are about to start marketing Web sites with the .mobi domain name, ESPN announces that they are dumping their mobile phone service, which came bundled with lots of sports content. It turns out that few people are interested in watching sports on a two inch screen. That's the problem with cellphones; they are phones, not televisions, and just taking content that works with other devices and shrinking the picture does not always work. And it begs the question: What on earth are the cellphone companies thinking with the .mobi domain? Don't they read the news?

Just as the cellphone companies are about to start marketing Web sites with the .mobi domain name, ESPN announces that they are dumping their mobile phone service, which came bundled with lots of sports content. It turns out that few people are interested in watching sports on a two inch screen. That's the problem with cellphones; they are phones, not televisions, and just taking content that works with other devices and shrinking the picture does not always work. And it begs the question: What on earth are the cellphone companies thinking with the .mobi domain? Don't they read the news?