Geek Quote of the Day
The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
- - Andrew Brown
The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
1698
Thomas Savery patents the first steam engine.
1858
The Donati Comet was first seen and named after its discoverer.
1875
While Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson are working on Edison’s “harmonic telegraph,” they stumble upon the inspiration that will eventually lead to the creation of the first telephone. In the transmitter room, Watson produces a twang while trying to free a reed that had been wound too tightly to the pole of its electromagnet. Bell, working in the receiving room, hears the twang and realizes that his dream of speech transmission must be possible, because the complex overtones and timbre of the twang he had just heard bore a striking similarity to the sound of the human voice.
1889
A hydroelectric power plant generates alternating current electricity available to consumers for the first time. A thirteen mile power line links the Willamette Falls Electric Co. power plant to Portland, Oregon. Two 300hp Stilwell & Bierce waterwheels together drove a single phase, 720 kilowatt generator. It isn’t the first hydroelectric power plant. Another one had been demonstrated in Appleton, Wisconsin, on September 30, 1882 with a small dynamo. It is the use of alternating current that makes this station significant because it makes it possible to transmit power over great distances.
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A Mission Statement is a dense slab of words that a large organization produces when it needs to establish that its workers are not just sitting around downloading Internet porn.
5 Things to Know About The Pirate Bay Sale – The sale of The Pirate Bay to a Swedish software company, which plans to revamp the site and launch a new business model to compensate rights holders, has most everyone in the P2P community scratching their heads today.
16 Bitchin’ commands and shortcuts for Twitter – Everyone’s favorite social engine has a surprising range of search line commands.
How to Crack a Wi-Fi Network’s WEP Password with BackTrack – You already know that if you want to lock down your Wi-Fi network, you should opt for WPA encryption because WEP is easy to crack. But did you know how easy? Take a look.
How to Create the Ultimate Gaming Laptop Setup – As with any passion, you’re not satisfied with a mediocre setup. Some people pimp out their cars, other obsess over knickknacks, why shouldn’t you treat your passion with the same respect? Here are several tips on creating the ultimate gaming setup.
Readability – This amazing little script makes read articles on the web more enjoyable by removing all the clutter from webpages. It is a must if you read newspapers online with any frequency. It’s project page is over at Google Code.
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…and in the information age, that may be all a person could ask for.
Source: Ashleyniblock
1874
After much preparation at home and abroad, the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoological gardens in the United States opens to the public with several hundred native and exotic specimens on the grounds of Solitude, the last estate in the area owned by the Penn family, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was originally chartered by the Pennsylvania state legislature on March 21, 1859 as the Zoological Society of Philadelphia whose core purpose is to oversee “the purchase and collection of living wild and other animals” and “for the instruction and recreation of the people.” Rumors of a civil war make it a difficult time for private undertakings, and delayed the opening. In 1875, this zoo will become the first US zoo to exhibit a male Indian rhinoceros.
1881
The first international telephone call is made between Calais, Maine in the United States and St. Stephen, New Brunswick in Canada.
1886
The first Linotype machine to be put into commercial use in the US is installed at the Tribune newspaper in New York City. It will be immediately successful. By the end of 1886, a dozen of the machine will be put to use by the Tribune. Within a decade, thousands of Linotype machines will be in use around the world. With a Linotype machine one keyboard operator can cast a line of type at a time, doing the work of the three men required to hand-set the type of other printing presses. It is because the machine sets type one line at a time that Whitelaw Reid, the editor of the New York Tribune, gave the Linotype its name. The machine was invented, patented, and improve by Ottmar Mergenthaler.
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6 Gorgeous Twitter Visualizations – Mashable takes a look at ways to graphically visualize the Twittersphere.
How to drive a Model T – Henry Ford Estate volunteer, Ed Hebb describes the intricacies of driving the ubiquitous Model T. Produced for the Henry Ford Estate’s “Centennial of the Model T ” celebration.
Inside the World’s Greatest Keyboard – PC World salutes the greatest keyboard EVER made, the IBM Model-M, the standard by which all other keyboards must be judged. (Check the Flickr photos.)
Never reboot Ubuntu Again – Ksplice Uptrack is a new service that lets you effortlessly keep your systems up to date and secure, without rebooting.
Top 10 Firefox 3.5 Features – Firefox 3.5 is a pretty substantial update to the popular open-source browser, and it’s just around the corner. See what features, fixes, and clever new tools are worth getting excited about in the next big release.
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2042: The Battle is Coming by Frederick Ransom Gray
Tate Publishing. (ISBN-13: 978-1606965443) Paperback. Length: 284pp
Everyone fights. Few survive… In 2042: The Battle is Coming, brilliant bio-chemical discoveries elevate the Dark Forces of Evil (DFOE) to superpower status. Emperor Vuunderjahr’s relentless pursuit of global domination leads him to a systematic enslavement and dehumanization of the world’s population. Only three wayward field operatives remain active from the once-prominent Free World. The agents unexpectedly join allegiance with wacky rebels, known as Beaters. Their mission: vanquish Dr. Vuunderjahr and the DFOE empire, thereby restoring freedoms to a lost world. Meanwhile, they’re all too familiar with the realization that The Battle is Coming.
Hazards by Mike Resnick
Subterranean. (ISBN-13: 978-1596062306) Hardcover. Length: 280pp
After his Adventures in Africa, his Exploits in Asia, and his Encounters in Europe, everyone’s favorite man of the cloth, the irrepressible Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, is back to tell you about the Hazards he encounters in South America. They include the terrifying Island of Annoyed Souls, the discovery of the Lost Continent of Moo (spelled correctly for a change), a battle with safari ants that even Charlton Heston wouldn’t want any part of, and a pair of Bird Girls who live in matching Chartreuse Mansions.
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1879
The first electric company in the US to produce and sell electricity California Electric Light Company is established in San Francisco, California.
1905
Albert Einstein publishes the article “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies“, wherein he introduces the concept of special relativity.
1908
At around 7:15am, northwest of Lake Baikal, Russia, a huge fireball nearly as bright as the Sun is seen crossing the sky. Minutes later, there is a huge flash and a shock wave felt up to 400 miles (650km) away. Over Tunguska, a meteorite traveling at over 60,000mph (25km per second) penetrates Earth’s atmosphere, heats to about 10,000°C, and detonates 3 to 4 miles (6 to 10km) above the ground. The blast releases the energy of 10-50 Megatons of TNT, destroying 830 square miles (2,150 sq km) of forest (approximately 80 million trees) and leaving no trace of life. The Tunguska rock came out of the Taurid Meteor storm that crosses Earth’s orbit twice a year. Read more about The Tunguska Event.
1930
The first US broadcast to be transmitted globally takes place, using a series of short-wave radio relays with only a one-eighth of a second delay. The broadcast, a live oration from Clyde D. Wagoner, originates at station W2XAD in Schenectady, New York.
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A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who… plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.