Archive for the ‘North Carolina’ tag

Hurricane Earl weakens but still powerful as it smacks US

The last ferry left for the mainland and coastal residents hunkered down at home as Hurricane Earl closed in with 110 mph (177 kph) winds Thursday on North Carolina’s dangerously exposed Outer Banks.

Hurricane Earl takes aim at US East Coast

Powerful Hurricane Earl bore down on the US East Coast on Thursday on a path toward North Carolina’s barrier islands, which it was expected to lash with dangerous winds and pounding surf.

East Coast Braces for Hurricane Earl

Hurricane Earl is forcing evacuations along North Carolina’s barrier islands as officials prepare for the worst.

Evacuations start in North Carolina as US braces for Hurricane Earl

Thousands of people evacuated North Carolina’s barrier islands on Wednesday as Hurricane Earl threatened to pound the US east coast with heavy winds and rough seas.

Hurricane Earl to sideswipe US Atlantic Coast

HATTERAS ISLAND, N.C – Looming Hurricane Earl forced vacationers and some residents off North Carolina’s barrier islands on Wednesday, churning up dangerous swells and prompting storm alerts along the US east coast.

How a stolen capacitor formula ended up costing Dell $300m (Guardian)

Though the American company had nothing to do with the industrial espionage in China in 2002 that led to faulty components, it paid the price with millions of faulty PCsIs the green capacitor faulty? Photo by hr.icio on Flickr. Some rights reservedDell sold millions of computers between 2003 and 2005 that had faulty components – specifically, capacitors, according to documents unsealed in a case being heard in the federal court in North Carolina.In an article in the New York Times, Ashlee Vance writes about the problems that Dell faced – and how it tried to prevent them becoming more widely known: Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk. Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute.The documents do sound fascinating – though so far the only one from the case that that has made it onto the wider web from the case is this one – which is simply a list of documents that are no longer sealed. (The case is being heard at the Federal District Court in North Carolina.)In 2005, Dell announced that it was taking a $300m charge to cover the cost of fixing and/or replacing the faulty machines.The NYT then argues that The documents chronicling the failure of the PCs also help explain the decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies. Perhaps more than any other company, Dell fought to lower the price of computers.That may be true – but it’s not the whole story. Dell ran afoul, quite without realising it, of one of the most fascinating pieces of industrial espionage of recent times: the theft of a formula for making the electrolyte to go into capacitors from a Japanese company, which got taken to China, and then onto Taiwan – but somewhere, got messed up.How do I know? Because I wrote about it seven years ago: A scientist steals a secret formula for an electrical product from his Japanese employer and takes it to China. Then it is stolen again and turns up in Taiwan. But something goes wrong – and thousands, perhaps millions, of computers and electrical goods in the West begin to burn out or explode.It sounds like the plot of a thriller, but it’s reality. Thousands of computers have failed and nobody is sure how many more products might go wrong because their capacitors – essential components to control the power supply – were made with faulty materials.In 2001, a scientist – name still unknown – left Rubycon Corporation Japan to go and work for the Luminous Town Electric company in China. Both companies made (among other things) electrolytic capacitors, which are usually used in power circuits. At the LTE Company, the scientist made a copy of the electrolyte – the chemical that goes inside the capacitors and enhances its capacitative properties.Later that year, the scientist’s staff defected to Taiwan, taking with them a copy of the electrolyte formula so they could set up their own company. Taiwan supplies 30 per cent of the world’s electrolytic capacitors and most of the big PC manufacturers get their machines assembled in Taiwan. But the defectors mis-copied the formula. After a few hours of operation, the electrolyte would leak hydrogen gas, before bursting the metal body of the capacitor. The electrolyte would then leak its brownish filling and could cause a fire.IBM confessed to having a problem – and so too, privately, did Dell at the time. But that was before it began selling millions of machines which had a consistent problem: the capacitors weren’t up to scratch.Because according to the NYT story, the problem that kept cropping up with those machines was, indeed, the capacitors. The problems affecting the Dell computers stemmed from an industrywide encounter with bad capacitors produced by Asian PC component suppliers. Capacitors are found on computer motherboards, playing a crucial role in the flow of current across the hardware. They are not meant to pop and leak fluid, but that is exactly what was happening earlier this decade, causing computers made by Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and others to break.Passive Component Industry Magazine (passive components are things like capacitors and resistors) wrote about this in September 2002, though it didn’t know then quite how bad things would get. As Dell’s experience showed, it could get very bad indeed.Back in 2003, Dennis Zogbi, president of Paumanok Publications, an expert on the market for passive components, told me that the problem is that People want Western quality at Chinese prices, he said. Well, you can’t have both.The story continued well after that, though, with sites such as Badcaps staying on the back of manufacturers including Apple which had had the faulty components. Wikipedia refers to the capacitor plague – and though it does seem to have gone into remittance now, Chris Passalacqua, owner of Badcaps, suggests, They didn’t discover this until it was too late and they had manufactured and distributed literally MILLIONS of these flawed capacitors. However, it’s been going on way too long to simply blame on an industrial espionage boo-boo in my humble opinion, as this problem is still extremely common, and hasn’t slowed down. Personally, I think it all boils down to shoddy components that are manufactured by shoddy component makers.And that’s where we circle back to Dell’s problems. The NYT said that The documents chronicling the failure of the PCs also help explain the decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies. Perhaps more than any other company, Dell fought to lower the price of computers. And that’s certainly true: for years, Dell led because it could undercut rivals, and kept pushing the price down.But price and quality control are always in conflict – and in the end that seems to have done for Dell. While other companies had the capacitor problem too, they didn’t suffer it as long as Dell appears to have. So it was partly something Dell couldn’t have expected to have control over, namely the electrolyte formula in the capacitors in the motherboards and/or power supplies – but also partly something Dell could have acted on, which was the repeated failure of those capacitors. Meanwhile, if anyone does have a Pacer account and wants to repost those court documents, please link them below.DellCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

More than 9,000 golfers register for U.S. Open (Reuters)

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Tiger Woods heads a list of 9,000-plus golfers who have registered for entry to the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, officials said on Thursday.

I’m not best in world, but not far off, says Westwood (Reuters)

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Lee Westwood has never been one to blow his own trumpet, so he was pleased to have an opportunity on Tuesday to clarify a recent comment in which he appeared to claim he was the world’s best golfer.

Armed man arrested at US airport as Obama departs

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (AP) — An armed man spotted at a North Carolina airport parking lot just after President Barack Obama’s airliner departed told an officer he wanted to see the president and had a car equipped with police gear, including a …

Obama and evangelist Billy Graham share a prayer (Yahoo – Most Recommended)

AP – President Barack Obama made a pilgrimage Sunday to Billy Graham’s mountainside home, concluding his North Carolina vacation with his first meeting with the ailing evangelist who has counseled commanders in chief since Dwight Eisenhower.

It’s Amazon Versus the Taxman in North Carolina

Amazon is fighting back against what it calls an invasive inquiry from the state of North Carolina. The retail giant has filed a lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s demand that it hand over the names and addresses of every state resident who purchased items on the site since 2003 in order to collect income taxes.

Drug addicts being paid to get sterilised

Drug addicts in the US are being paid to get sterilised so that thousands of children are “saved from growing up within a damaged environment,” a media report has said.

American charity organisation, Project Prevention, in North Carolina state, has stopped more than 3,500 drink and drug addicts from having children by paying them up to &pound200 to seek permanent forms of contraception such as

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Dixon leads UCLA past NC State 74-54 in 1st round (Sify)

Jasmine Dixon and UCLA were just too tough for North Carolina State to handle.

No. 8 seed UCLA beats No. 9 seed NC State 74-54 in first round of NCAA women’s tournament (Sify)

No. 8 seed UCLA beats No. 9 seed North Carolina State 74-54 in first round of NCAA women’s tournament.

Time Warner apologises for showing porn on kids’ channel

Time Warner Cable has issued an apology to thousands of viewers in North Carolina after a “technical” glitch caused the Playboy Channel to be screened on two children’s television channels.

Georgia Tech beats NC State 57-54 in ACC semifinal (Sify)

Derrick Favors had 17 points and eight rebounds, and Georgia Tech held off North Carolina State 57-54 on Saturday to reach the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship game.

TeleNav – Insight into GPS Use

Telenav has researched what people are using their service for – where people are going, what they are looking for and how they are battling traffic. The data was collected anonymously from their applications and on-phone navigation system. What’s the most searched for Point of Interest? Which city needs to re-route around traffic? What’s the most searched for food?

The data is fun to look through and it’s not a surprise to see the results – like Pizza being the most popular search for food, WalMart being the most popular Point of Interest searched for, and maybe not a big surprise that Los Angeles is figuring out how to get around traffic most frequently. The data is a fun read.

More on TeleNav and their navigation solutions at Telenav

Full press release after the jump…

TeleNav, one of the largest navigation services providers with more than 13 million subscribers, today released usage data* that suggests users depend on GPS navigation for much more than getting from point A to point B. The data indicates that while customers in various cities depend on some GPS features more than others, when it comes to searching out nearby businesses on the road, drivers across the country seem to be in agreement on their favorites.

An analysis of searches conducted by TeleNav users in December 2009 indicated that Wal-Mart topped the list as the number one U.S. business TeleNav customers sought out while using their GPS service. Starbucks took a close second, proving Americans’ obsession with morning lattes and mochaccinos is still quite strong. Two more large retailers, Target and Best Buy, took the third and fourth spots respectively, while Bank of America rounded out the top five most searched destinations in the country.

TeleNav data from all GPS point of interest (POI) searches for the entire 2009 year indicates that drivers living in or visiting some U.S. cities need more assistance locating local hotspots than in others. Los Angeles took the number one position as the city where most GPS searches occurred in 2009. The Dallas/Ft. Worth area followed in a close second, indicating that while things may be bigger in Texas, it doesn’t always mean they’re easier to find. Chicago, Houston and Atlanta, respectively, rounded out the top five U.S. cities where most GPS searches took place.

TeleNav’s GPS search data also sheds some light on the cuisine preferences of American drivers. Search data from December 2009 showed that pizza is the top food item searched for by customers using TeleNav’s GPS applications. Residents of Chicago led the way in GPS searches for pizza while residents of New York City were most likely to search for the nation’s second preferred cuisine type, Chinese food. Rounding out the top five of America’s most searched food types are burgers, American food and Mexican food, respectively.

“Every month our users are conducting millions of searches while using GPS navigation applications. This data provides a very interesting look into the locations people across the country are searching for while on the road,” said Sal Dhanani, co-founder and vice president, products and marketing for TeleNav. “In addition to searches, our customers are relying on our products to complete millions of trips each month. The data we’ve collected from these trips has helped us identify the features that are most relied on by our users and provides an intriguing look into how GPS usage differs across the country.”

While users in every state depended on GPS guidance to travel, TeleNav’s usage data for the entire 2009 year indicates that residents of Maryland were the most frequent users of GPS guidance, using the technology for twice as many trips per month than the national average. Completing the top five areas with residents relying heavily on GPS navigation to guide them are the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, North Carolina and California.

Traffic remains an issue that many American drivers deal with on a daily basis. To help ease the stress of traffic, TeleNav provides users with real-time traffic information and the option to route around traffic incidents. As one of the nation’s most traffic-plagued cities, it may not be surprising that TeleNav users in Los Angeles chose to use GPS navigation to re-route around traffic more than any other city in the nation. Other top five cities where drivers preferred to use GPS to get around traffic instead of sitting in gridlock included Washington D.C., New York City, Chicago and Atlanta, respectively.

Because TeleNav products are connected, users receive real-time information such as searching for gas stations based on current prices. Data from December 2009 indicates that residents of Phoenix may be the most cost conscious drivers in America, as residents of that city averaged more Gas by Price searches than any other city. In a close second, residents of San Antonio were also looking to save a buck at the pump through Gas by Price searches. Cleveland, Detroit and Jacksonville, respectively, rounded out the top five cities with such economical drivers.

For more information, additional GPS usage rankings and downloadable graphics, visit www.telenav.com/about/pr-national-gps-usage

* National GPS usage data was collected anonymously from users of TeleNav GPS navigation products.

Towson routs UNC-Wilmington 91-74 in CAA tourney (Sify)

RaShawn Polk scored 14 of his season-high 20 points in the first half and Towson routed North Carolina-Wilmington 91-74 on Friday in the quarterfinals of the Colonial Athletic Association tournament.

February 11: Overman Committee

The Overman Committee was a special subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary chaired by North Carolina Democrat Lee Slater Overman. Between September 1918 and June 1919, it investigated German and Bolshevik elements in the United States. It was an early forerunner of the better known House Un-American Activities Committee, and represented the first congressional committee investigation into communism. The Committee was originally tasked with investigating pro-German sentiments in the American liquor industry. After World War I ended in November 1918 and the German threat lessened, it turned its attention to communist Bolshevism. Bolshevism had appeared as a threat during the Red Scare of 1919–20 after the Russian Revolution in 1917 saw the Bolsheviks take power in Russia. The Committee’s hearings into Bolshevik propaganda, conducted from February 11 to March 10, 1919, helped foster an image of communism as a threat to America. The Committee’s final report was released in June 1919. It reported on German propaganda, Bolshevism, and other “un-American activities” in the United States and on likely effects of communism’s implementation in the United States. It described German, but not communist, propaganda efforts. The Committee’s report and hearings were instrumental in fostering anti-Bolshevik opinion. (more…)

IBM Will Inch Up Heat in New Data Center

IBM has opened a football field-size data center in North Carolina it says will rely heavily on outside air for cooling as it turns up the heat inside, gradually.