Get ready for the Microbial Fuel Cell. From F2 Network, “Scientists have developed a device that generates electricity from human waste.The Microbial Fuel Cell devised by American researchers at Pennsylvania State University uses bacteria to break down waste, liberating electrons in the process. Normally the electrons would power respiratory reactions in the bacterial cells and be combined with oxygen molecules. But the MFC wrestles the electrons away from the bacteria and uses them to power a circuit.”

Now that’s what we call forward thinking. According to Reuters, “When Netflix launched in 1999, some ‘digerati’ were surprised to find that while they could select movies they wanted to see on the Internet, they would have to wait for their selections to arrive by mail. Netflix built a good business on the back of postal workers, collecting $272 million in revenue last year by delivering DVDs to 1.5 million subscribers. The rapidly growing online service added another 445,000 subscribers last quarter and now boasts 1.9 million customers.

“But next year Netflix plans to begin offering movies for download via the Internet, a business model that has felled many entrepreneurs in recent years. Hollywood movie studios continue to be in quandary over just how big a business movie downloading on the Web can be. “Hastings said he anticipates his service will have 5 million members paying $22 a month by 2006.”

Or you could just go to MovieLink right now.

Count Us Out Dept: Maybe it’s just us, but what is wrong with clock speed? Intel has been trying to abolish it for years, and yet it just announced another confusing numerical scheme. What gives?

Technology Review put it best: “”Initially at least, consumers might have a harder time deciphering the processor names than they did comparing clock speeds. Intel warns explicitly against using the numbers, which will be phased in between May and July, to compare processors in different families. ‘710 is not better than 510 simply because 7 is greater than 5,’ a company statement says. But over time, Intel says, “these processor numbers will allow end customers to intelligently and accurately distinguish among individual processors by taking into account a broader set of features that contribute to the overall user experience.’”

-The earth is approx. 4.8 Billion years old.
-We’re predicting global warming on 160 years of data.
-There is no planetary mother goddess anthropomorphic thing.
-There are more trees in America today than there were 100 years ago.
-If we all drove electric cars, the damage to the ecology caused by the tens of thousands of used batteries each year and the needs of the electrical generating plants used to charge those batteries would, arguably, be deadlier than what out fossil fuel cars are now doing.
-According to the UK Sunday Telegraph in 1998, the World Health Organization completed a multi-year medical study on the effects of passive smoking. It couldn’t find any, except that it was stinky and made stuff yellow. (Cigarette smoke is a gaseous solid. As such, it adheres to the first surface it contacts that has a lower temperature than it does itself.) We’re all still waiting for that study to be released. Fortunately, no one is holding their breaths.
-SUVs should be banned and so should bullet proof vests. We should encourage people to use softer, slower moving bullets instead.

Reminds Us of the 80’s but Not in a Good Way Dept: PC World, had this to say about a potential DRAM price hike, “A three-month rally in memory prices is causing discomfort among PC makers and may lead to cuts in the amount of DRAM shipped with some low-end PCs if prices continue upward, industry observers say. If memory prices rise too much, PC makers will be faced with a choice of reducing the amount of memory in some systems or raising PC prices.”

But don’t manufacturers want to raise prices on low-end machines? Hmmmmm…

According to Extreme Tech: “Via Technologies Inc. has teamed up with Yamashita Systems Co. Ltd. to develop what the companies claim is the first lead-free motherboard. In traditional manufacturing processes, lead is used to attach the chip to the motherboard through tiny solder balls on the underside of the package, according to Via. With Via’s’s lead-free manufacturing technologies, the solder balls now consist of a tin, silver and copper composite. Eliminating lead allows boards to disposed of without the fear that the toxic lead will creep into groundwater.”

Do we even need to say that it’s about time somebody got the lead out?!

USB devices keeps getting more and more strange, but this one takes the cake. The first-ever MP3 player and Flash drive unit embedded in an illegal Winnie the Pooh Bear.

We can say more, but let’s leave it at this, why only a 1.1 USB interface? A Pooh bear should be USB 2.0 at least, don’t you think?

Blue-Laser DVD technology will not only increase storage capacity over a red laser’s 4.7 GBs, but a blu-ray disc will hold a whopping 25GBs and can be made of paper. Sony, Philips, Hitachi and Samsung are jointly developing this technology, which means it will take five times as long to actually hit the streets, but we like the 51% paper disc idea because they remind us of those scratchy 45s they used to print on the backs of cereal boxes.