This month has been super exciting looking into Google’s operation. InformationWeek has covered several articles showing Google’s effort to become more transparent.

By far one of the coolest videos to hit YouTube (which Google owns) was their walkthrough of one ultra efficient Google data center. Never have I seen anything like it. Shipping containers holding servers? Who would have thought? Google, that’s who. Watch the video at the bottom of this post.

Today Google shocked me again with the patent they filed for floating data centers. InformationWeek broke this story too.

Google on Thursday was granted a patent for its floating data center design, an idea that the company filed to protect on Feb. 26, 2007.

The patent describes techniques for designing a data center located on a ship, platform, or on shore that use the tidal motion of the sea to generate electricity and seawater for equipment cooling.

Google is considering floating data centers because of the practical problems it faces in trying to locate data centers on coastal land, where real estate is typically expensive and where inexpensive electricity and high-bandwidth connections may not be available. A floating data center would also presumably enjoy freedom from property taxes.

One word describes this idea, Awesome.

A Wired areticle this month really got my heckles raised talking about Engineered Obsolescence in America’s Technology. A book they mention in the article is a must read, Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves.

Design Products Woot Style

An idea I’ve had for a very long time would be a business that specifically designs products Woot.com style. Start with just one product, say a blender and engineer it to last forever, then sell just that product until it takes off and makes the company financially stable enough to continue.

Simple Tech that Lasts Forever

Yes, you read that right, use modern technology and the art of simplicity to design a device that will literally run forever. Sure, dropping it, or running gravel through the machine would tear it up, maybe, but under normal wear and tear it should not stop in our lifetime.

Break it, and Buy it. Buy it, and it will Break!

Businesses figured out that by engineering products to break, they guaranteed themselves repeat business and product turnover. This new company, lets call it Forever Inc. would have no such compulsions. Before the Forever Blender sales started to decline they would begin engineering their next Forever product, like a Forever Toaster, Forever Lawnmower, or Forever Coffee Pot.

Forever Inc. is working for you.

The idea behind Forever Inc. is that they plan to kill each market they enter. Sales of the Forever Blender, and proceeding products, would spike as people realized they would last forever, then after “every household” had a Forever Blender, sales would decrease. But who cares? At this point the founders of the company, their employees and shareholders would all be very wealthy, America would have a phenomenal product, Forever.

Keep the Forever products coming… Forever!

As Forever Blender sales tapered off, Forever Inc. would release their next Forever product. The Blender sales would continue for some time afterward, even if not at the same level.

Companies around the would would hate this company and strive to see them destroyed, but with the power of crowd sourcing and the grass roots power of the internet behind Forever Inc. the people would prop them up, defending this benevolent company that finally gave them what they wanted, a product Engineered to Last Forever!

Use My Idea and start Forever Inc.

ForeverInc.com and ForeverProducts.com is already taken, but that should not stop you from starting this company. As I explained in this is an Idea Blog and I would love to see people use my ideas.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Lifehacker.com pointed to a blog I had not encountered before today, Divine Caroline.com. They had a phenomenal post detailing 18 Uses for Vodka.

Personally, I loathe alcohol, abhor it’s use internally, but these 18 points are all great when a cheap bottle costs less than $10 and the uses detailed cover hundreds of dollars worth of other products.

Here are a few of the 18 points I pulled out. Number Seven is the funniest.

2. To clean the caulking around bathtubs and showers, fill a trigger-spray bottle with vodka, spray the caulking, let set five minutes and wash clean. The alcohol in the vodka kills mold and mildew.

3. Clean jewelry. Soak the jewelry in vodka for five minutes, then rinse, and dry.

5. Remove the glue left behind by a bumper sticker. Rub the glue with a soft, clean cloth soaked with vodka

6. Prolong the life of razors by filling a cup with vodka and letting your safety razor blade soak in the alcohol after shaving. The vodka disinfects the blade and prevents rusting.

7. Spray vodka on vomit stains, scrub with a brush, then blot dry. ( I left this one in because it’s ironic. Drink the Vodka, then clean up your vomit with it! )

8. Using a cotton ball, apply vodka to your face as an astringent to cleanse the skin and tighten pores.

9. Add a jigger of vodka to a 12-ounce bottle of shampoo. The alcohol cleanses the scalp, removes toxins from hair, and stimulates the growth of healthy hair.

10. Fill a sixteen-ounce trigger-spray bottle and spray bees or wasps to kill them.

14. To cure foot odor, wash your feet with vodka.

16. Pour vodka over an area affected with poison ivy to remove the urushiol oil from your skin.

The subject of today’s post is a derivative of a Mao Tse-Tung quote, or Mao Zedong, the famous Chinese Communist leader, in his Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, or as it was known in the west, The Little Red Book.

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. - Mao Tse-Tung

DownsizeDC.org, an organization I recently joined posted a great article showing the very real different between Voluntary Cooperation and Government Violence.

Privatization is the only way.

As a staunch minimalist and a devout capitalist, DownsizeDC’s post rings deep within me. The government has shown time and time again they are completely incapable of being fiscally responsible and they have no business being involved in business ventures.

If not for the threat of government violence — of arrest, incarceration, and the loss of all your property — how would you choose to spend your money. Would you rather . . .

• Give money to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or Habitat for Humanity?
• Contribute to government foreign aid projects, or Doctors Without Borders?
• Rely on the FDA for safe food and drugs, or the Underwriter’s Laboratory?
• Deliver your mail through the post office, or Fed Ex and UPS?
• Contribute money directly to research clinics, or filter it through the National Institutes of Health?
• Receive treatment in a V.A. Hospital, or a private one?
• Give 15% of your income to Social Security, or use that money to buy annuities from a diverse portfolio of insurance companies?
• Continue paying taxes to a ponzi-scheme Medicare program that must eventually cut benefits and ration your health care, or pile-up those funds in a tax-free, interest bearing Health Savings Account?
• Contribute money to local charities to change and improve the lives of the poor, or to a food stamp program that merely maintains people in their poverty?

Now, I don’t want to go into to much detail, but please read the article, and join DownsizeDC if you agree.

InformationWeek normally posts great content, but today Ed Hansberry and I are about to have words.

It took a number of years for people to get religious about wearing seatbelts. Some have enough common sense to put them on and others had to get tickets. It is the same with holding a cell phone while driving. It needs to be a ticketable offense.

When are we going to stop legislating stupidity?

If someone is stupid enough to have an accident while not wearing their seatbelt and talking on the phone, Charles says LET THEM!

If they harm someone else because of their stupidity, then they had better have insurance and that person will receive reparations.

People, wake up and stop giving up your FREEDOM because of your FEAR!

You’ve seen the delicious, juicy burger on the TV. What does it look like when you order it at the restaurant?

Look at the difference between the Ad and Realtity.

See the following foods in Advertisement and Reality:

1. McDonald’s McSkillet burrito
2. Wendy’s Chicken Club
3. McDonald’s Sausage Breakfast Burrito
4. Burger King Enormous Omelet Sandwich
5. Arby’s Beef ‘n’ Cheddar
6. KFC Famous Bowl
7. Subway six-inch turkey breast and ham sub
8. Wendy’s Southwest Taco Salad
9. Burger King sausage, egg, and cheese croissant
10. McDonald’s Big Mac
11. Taco Bell Nachos Bell Grande
12. McDonald’s Filet O Fish Sandwich
13. Burger King Whopper
14. McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin
15. Click to See All

Who would have thought of an internet enabled vehicle that senses other vehicles, and more? Oh yeah, I did!

Read my take on Car’s Driving themselves.

My main points were:

1. Why Don’t We Have Self Driving Cars Now?
2. Computer’s Could Drive Better than Any Human
3. Humans Can Only Concentrate On So Much. Computer’s Are Unlimited.
4. Computers Are Networked, So Shall Our Cars Be

InformationWeek posted an article showing off Segway’s new P.U.M.A. Even though the name sure reminds me of my favorite machinima program, Red vs. Blue.

This serves as the introduction of the Warthog; Grif suggests calling it a Puma, as he does not think it looks much like a warthog.

The InformationWeek article has a statement from Mr. Larry Burns himself, the Vice President of Research and Development for General Motors:

“Imagine small, nimble electric vehicles that know where other moving objects are and avoid running into them. Now, connect these vehicles in an Internet-like web and you can greatly enhance the ability of people to move through cities, find places to park, and connect to their social and business networks,” Larry Burns, GM’s VP of R&D and strategic planning, said in a statement.

Larry, were you inside my head, or did you just read my blog post?

Alright, Enough Arrogance

I’m done airing my grievances. Besides, if someone finally creates a self driving car then I am going to be so excited, I won’t care who came up with the idea, I just want one!

This new Segway P.U.M.A. while very exciting, is not much of a step forward for us Mid-West dwellers, where a trip to Wal-Mart is 10 miles. However, if the technology is being developed then there is no reason it cannot take over an SUV later.

An Internet Enabled, Self Driving, Hummer H1 Alpha

These diesel behemoths are the apple of my eye, and my dream vehicle. While you may want to argue that I’m a planet killing psychopath, I counter with Golden Fuel Systems right here in Missouri! Your gas “saving” Prius cannot stand up to my vegetable oil burning H1. Moreover, an electric conversion for a 40 mile commute in a Hummer would not be difficult as the vehicle is perfectly setup for this sort of retro-fit!

Trusting a Computer to Drive?

I addressed this in my own article I mentioned above, check it out!

Let me know what you think in the comments.

I searched my own site and noticed that Indexed has never been mentioned. That is simply a travesty!

First, a quick explanation of what Indexed is. Indexed is a blog which posts graphic representations of ideas, like below. Pie charts, line graphs, and more are hilarious and sad.

Being the curious person this blogger is, the following Indexed post struck a strong cord.

I do not get paid to write about, or for, InformationWeek magazine. They just happen to have great articles which warrant comment on my part. However, if they have an affiliate program, I would be very interested!

Today’s InformationWeek Daily, their email newsletter, talked about one misconception surrounding Open Source software. The article, Warning: Bad Men In Black Hats! addresses the idea that Open Source is more vulnerable to attack than closed source/proprietary software because anyone can look at the code of the application.

• With open source, everyone can see the code. Therefore anyone can use it maliciously to hack you.
• With proprietary software, very few people can see the code. Therefore the number of people who can use it maliciously to hack you is that much smaller.
• Wrong!

I won’t steal the whole article from their site, and you should subscribe to the great newsletter.

The main point is bag guys are going to get source code for proprietary software if they want it bad enough. Just like a burglar is going to get into your house if they really want to. Security is essentially just steps to make access more difficult for a malicious person.

Security is not something you can apply from the top down but something that has to be baked into what you’re doing from the bottom up (or inside out, as it were).

If you are interested in Home Security, check out my post about Arming My Home.

After only 186 posts on EllisBenus.com I figured out what kind of blog this needs to be.

If you are a fellow blogger, then you have read at least a dozen articles about focusing your blog, or picking a niche to write about. Until now, I’ve never had any idea what my blog was about. There has never been an overarching theme or consistent post type which I wrote.

EllisBenus.com Is Now an Idea Blog

In October 2007 I wrote a post that went without being noticed or acted upon. The name of that post was Get Famous by Sharing all your Ideas. Over 2 years ago I said this was going to be an idea blog, and I somehow forgot about it. Go figure, it was just another one of my ideas!

What Is An Idea Blog?

Great question! As I shared in October, tons of ideas assail me everyday. Whether they are money making ideas or just small experiments, I cannot act upon all of them.

Here, at EllisBenus.com, I want to unload the burden of these ideas upon the crowd. If anyone decides to run with one of the ideas published here, Go For It! Just share it with us here. It would be truly enjoyable seeing how something I envisioned came to pass.

My First Post as an Idea Blogger

As a young(er) man, 24, I have started paying more attention to politics and the world around me. A large part of that has to due with taxes and starting my own business several years ago. Unfortunately, I am deeply troubled by what I see.

Since I have only recently started attempting to get involved, it’s been frustrating to figure out how to do so.

Starting a Political Blog

I would really like to start a Political Blog which, instead of being about politics, world & national events, etc… it would instead cover one person’s journey from absolute political ignorance to an informed and involved political citizen of the United State of America.

The blog would start off with Post #1, “I want to get more involved” and hopefully take everyone step-by-step through the process of learning, researching, speaking, sharing, contacting, and becoming involved in politics.

This does not necessarily mean becoming a politician, but merely one informed and active voter.

Thank you for your time.

The whole idea of a blog is to share, so please do in the Comments.
If you decide to start a beginners journey political blog, please let me know and I would love to link to your new site!