“California Cool Cars” regulations renders wireless devices effectively useless.

Rely on GPS because you love traveling but have the navigational wit of “one too many drinks” college student? Or, are you the mobile workhorse, conducting interviews, phone-in meetings, etc. while in your car? That and so many more tasks that rely on wireless signals are going to see a new resistance come 2016 by a rather ridiculous law set to go live in California. The new law will require all cars sold in the golden state come 2016 to have a special coating on all windows consisting of a unique metal-oxide blend. The blend will reportedly block up to 60% of the suns rays (read: heat) from entering the car. A novel idea for sure, though do we really need this type of regulation. In their current economy, hell, the entire country’s, window glazes are a pretty low priority I would assume. Those metal oxides will work wonders not only on the sun’s rays, but also any wireless signal trying to enter your car. Those 5 bars of cell reception you get now will become as low as one or even none. A perfect example of a somewhat decent idea on paper making real life a pain. Of course, all types of “signal boosters” and “extenders” will crop up I’m sure. Here’s to hoping this glazing junk doesn’t spread to other states.

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California abandoning paper based books, getting e-frindly

When you really stop and think about a school system and how much money they spend and where (psh…who doesn’t think about that kind of stuff…), you may often find youself dumb founded on how costly and wasteful buying text books are. The markup is ridiculous and they only last a couple years at best. It is money wasted that can never be recovered. California is finally coming to there senses, mildly influenced by a god awful budget deficit to make the move to online text books. What are some of the benefits of this move to the digital frontier?

California: “Plasma/LCD TV’s use too much energy, therefore we are banning them”.

Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds.  California being the environmentally conscious state that it is, is taking a rather drastic and ridiculous step.  They are proposing banning the sale of certain “inefficient TV’s, mainly Plasma and LCD TV’s.  The strain on California’s power grid is apparently too much and they are looking for every possible means to reduce the load.  The LA Times is pushing hard the fact that LCD TV’s use 43% more power than traditional tube-style TV’s of yesteryear.  One thing the conveniently leave out of their report is that LCD TV’s, unlike the old tube TV’s, don’t look like absolute crap! (I guess they didn’t get that memo).