Brian Gongol
We're continuing our experiment with putting real-time show updates on Twitter.
Technology certainly helps make our lives better in a lot of ways, but sometimes its abuse can make big problems even bigger -- like the way in which a French options trader appears to have lost $7.2 billion in a combination of bad speculating and computer hacking.
If you've wondered how the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD format war would shake out, it looks like Blu-Ray is going to be the winner.
It has been absurdly cold lately, but not in a way that's all that different from historic terms. The state climatologist says we've been lulled into softness by the last five or six years, which have been unusually mild.
The big fire at the Monte Carlo casino in Las Vegas yesterday serves as a reminder of just how far we've progressed. Compared to the catastrophic MGM Grand fire in Las Vegas almost 30 years ago, we've seen dramatic improvements in fire-resistant construction and building codes, firefighting techniques and equipment, and even the ways (like cell phones and Internet-enabled PDAs) in which we can immediately get and send information in an emergency. Even widespread 911 service is a relatively recent phenomenon, and Enhanced 911 isn't even a full ten years old yet.
Speaking of emergencies, it looks like we're going to be lucky next week when an asteroid passes close to Earth.
It looks like some city employees in Washington, DC have a problem with surfing for pornography on work time. The worst offender was visiting a new page, on average, once every 2.5 minutes every single work day of the year.
Will the contact lens of the future let you see the news right in front of you without a screen, or keep tabs on health indicators like your blood sugar? It's possible.
A new micro-laptop called the Eee PC is out, offering users a two-pound computer good for Internet surfing and basic computing tasks. It's not going to heal the Mac-PC divide, but it's good to see new entrants in the computer market.
Keywords in this show:
asteroids •
Blu-Ray •
building codes •
climate •
cold •
contact lenses •
emergencies •
Eee PC •
firefighting •
fire protection •
hacking •
HD-DVD •
laptops •
Las Vegas •
MGM Grand fire (1980) •
micro-laptops •
Monte Carlo casino fire (2008) •
911 service •
options trading •
technology •
Twitter •
Washington, DC •
weather •
workplace