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My December 2007 Editorial praising the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program (see Negroponte’s Miss is a Hit)  raised some very important questions from readers about whether pushing computers and Wi-Fi networks on people who don’t even have enough to eat at home was the most appropriate use of scarce aid funds. Given the hard facts that 1.2 billion of our fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth live on $1 a day or less, and 800 million people are going hungry, what level of priorit...

Texting has taken a long time to become fashionable in North America. (Do fashionable and long time create an oxymoron?) It has to be eight years since I saw my nephews and nieces texting in the UK, furiously clicking away at a much lower cost than using voice circuits. When their phones did run out of coverage time, they would have to run down to the corner shop to buy a time-refreshed card.Whether the “language” of texting originated across the Atlantic – and I presume it did...

When it comes to motor sports, contemporary kids think of NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, but I come from a generation where Formula One open-wheel racing was king, and Jim Clark and Tazio Nuvolari were racing icons. Ah, those were the days. Gasoline at 18 cents a gallon fueled our dreams.I digress. Though I haven't followed F1 racing since my youthful treks to Watkins Glen every autumn for the genre's US venue, I am aware that technology's impact on racing cars today is every bit as pervasive as its...

Like many places in the world, water quality is an issue here in northern New England. Our ocean beaches and rivers are a source of tourist revenue and recreation for locals, so we have town Conservation Commission volunteers taking water samples a few times every week, trying to pinpoint sources of pollution into our streams and onto our seashore.The water samples are sent to a local lab for analysis, then plans of action are drawn up. Oftentimes, a strategy for abatement involves a homeowner, ...

My first hands-on experience with Soviet-era engineering was in 1978. The company I was working for had a large contract for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, connecting all the sites with video from all the other sites (23, if I remember correctly), so a commentator at one site could watch all the events taking place. As I have observed before, we got paid before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan when the Games, under American pressure (and the then love of Osama Bin Laden), ended up being a rather ...

I was reviewing a book this week (An Analog Electronics Companion: Basic Circuit Design for Engineers and Scientists, by Scott Hamilton) and it reminded me, very forcefully, why it was that I wanted to be an engineer.Far from being one of those people who go to college to “find themselves” and start on one track and then move to another, I knew from age maybe 11 that I wanted to be an electronics engineer and that I wanted to work in the BBC. At that age I was taking TVs apart &ndash...

A former employer once demanded that I scrap my timeworn landline telephone and fax. He insisted that I convert my home office to VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and PC-hosted faxing. The cost savings would be substantial, he promised, reminding me that he was footing the bills.Indicating to my boss that Internet service in my neck of the woods wasn't entirely satisfactory and reliable, I declined, and he ultimately agreed. Thankfully I'm still a POTS (plain old telephone system) user. I dig...

Regardless of who wins the quadrennial slow-motion train wreck we call the US presidential election this November (2008), any responsible leader is going to have to bring our energy policy in line with the environmental and economic realities that we’ve spent the last eight years desperately trying to ignore. If there is any good news here, it’s that the private sector has been awake nights thinking about these matters and has lots of very useful information ready to share with a lea...

Back in the days when the city of Sunnyvale (in the Bay area) was full of defense contractors in hundreds of specialty buildings - some with hidden rooms, some with strangely equipped basements, others with tunnels that connected buildings together and also led on to military base areas - there were also lots of Soviet spies. They hung around the area’s lounges, in particular, and they must have garnered a lot of after-work chatter because their bosses kept paying their bar bills. It was a...

There’s an adage that says if you want to know what's going on, follow the money. A good way to do that is to go to the Maplight web site. Maplight provides a unique window into the connection between money and politics. It provides figures on campaign contributions, and matches those donations with how elected folks in Washington vote.Here's one example: The telecom industry gave, on average, $10,600 to members of the House of Representatives who voted no, as opposed to just $7,000 to mem...