Solo Akan Bangun Listrik Tenaga Surya Setara PLTA Gajah Mungkur

Selasa, 30/11/2010 18:45 WIB
Solo Akan Bangun Listrik Tenaga Surya Setara PLTA Gajah Mungkur
Muchus Budi R. - detikFinance

Solo - Pemerintah Kota Surakarta berencana membangun pembangkit listrik tenaga surya (PLTS) dengan kapasitas 3 megawatt. PLTS tanpa menggunakan solarsel tersebut akan digunakan untuk kebutuhan Solo Techno Park (STP). Listrik yang akan dihasilkan setara dengan PLTA yang dibangun di Waduk Gajah Mungkur Wonogiri.

"PLTS itu menggunakan alat khusus yang cara kerjanya seperti sistem seperti mesin uap. Alat itu akan menangkap pancaran radiasi matahari untuk memanaskan tabung air yang dipasang di atas atap gedung Solo Techno Park. Kalori yang dihasilkan akan digunakan untuk memutar turbin pembangkit listrik," papar Ketua Dewan Riset Daerah Kota Surakarta, BB Triyatmoko, di Surakarta, Selasa (30/11/2010).

Triyatmoko mengatakan sejak awal pihaknya memang menghindari penggunaan solar cell karena dinilai terlalu mahal. Sedangkan dengan alat yang dirancang tersebut selain biaya pengadaan yang murah, lebih ramah lingkungan dan juga mampu menghasilkan daya listrik yang cukup besar.

Listrik yang dihasilkan sebesar 3 megawatt, atau setara dengan listrik yang dihasilkan oleh pembangkit listrik tenaga air (PLTA) Waduk gajah Mungkur, Wonogiri.

"Listrik tersebut nantinya sepenuhnya akan digunakan untuk kebutuhan Solo Techno Park. Sedangkan riset pengadaan listrik itu melibatkan ahli dari Jerman dan Akademi Teknik Mesin Indonesia (ATMI) Surakarta. Pembangunan PLTS akan dimulai awal tahun depan. Proyek ini berjalan atas kerjasama Kota Surakarta dengan Kota Munich dan Moosburg di Jerman," ujar Tri.

Terpisah, Sekda Kota Surakarta, Budi Suharto, mengaku mendukung proyek tersebut direalisasikan, meskipun untuk pendanaannya masih harus dicarikan, baik dari pemerintah pusat maupun dari pihak ketiga.

"Proyek tersebut butuh dana besar, sedangkan prioritas penggunaan anggaran pada tahun depan adalah untuk pembiayaan program kesehatan, pendidikan dan perekonomian," ujarnya.

(mbr/dnl)

http://www.detikfinance.com/read/2010/11/30/184541/1506122/4/solo-akan-bangun-listrik-tenaga-surya-setara-plta-gajah-mungkur?f9911023

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

To Fight Climate Change, Clear the Air

By VEERABHADRAN RAMANATHAN and DAVID G. VICTOR

Published: November 27, 2010

AS the curtain rises tomorrow in Cancún, Mexico, on the next round of international talks on climate change, expectations are low that the delegates will agree on a new treaty to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. They were unable to do so last year in Copenhagen, and since then the negotiating positions of the biggest countries have grown even further apart.

Mikel Jaso

Related

• Op-Ed Contributor: An Almanac of Extreme Weather (November 28, 2010)

• Op-Ed Contributor: On Global Warming, Start Small(November 28, 2010)

• Times Topic: Global Warming

Yet it is still possible to make significant progress. To give these talks their best chance for success, the delegates in Cancún should move beyond their focus on long-term efforts to stop warming and take a few immediate, practical actions that could have a tangible effect on the climate in the coming decades.

The opportunity to make progress arises from the fact that global warming is caused by two separate types of pollution. One is the long-term buildup of carbon dioxide, which can remain in the atmosphere for centuries. Diplomacy has understandably focused on this problem because, without deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, there can be no permanent solution to warming.

The carbon dioxide problem is hard to fix, however, because it comes mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, which is so essential to modern life and commerce. It will take decades and trillions of dollars to convert all the world’s fossil-fuel-based energy systems to cleaner systems like nuclear, solar and wind power. In the meantime, a fast-action plan is needed.

But carbon dioxide is not the only kind of pollution that contributes to global warming. Other potent warming agents include three short-lived gases — methane, some hydrofluorocarbons and lower atmospheric ozone — and dark soot particles. The warming effect of these pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for several days to about a decade, is already about 80 percent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes. The world could easily and quickly reduce these pollutants; the technology and regulatory systems needed to do so are already in place.

Take methane, for example, which is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in causing warming. It is emitted by coal mines, landfills, rice paddies and livestock. And because it is the main ingredient in natural gas, it leaks from many older natural-gas pipelines. With relatively minor changes — for example, replacing old gas pipelines, better managing the water used in rice cultivation (so that less of the rice rots) and collecting the methane emitted by landfills — it would be possible to lower methane emissions by 40 percent. Since saved methane is a valuable fuel, some of this effort could pay for itself.

Unfortunately, the accounting systems used in climate diplomacy are cumbersome and offer relatively few incentives for countries to make much effort to control methane.

Big cuts are also possible in hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, many of which are used as refrigerants in air-conditioners and other cooling systems. The most troubling of the short-lived HFCs were invented to replace chlorofluorocarbons, refrigerants that were thinning the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, and were also a major warming agent. Chlorofluorocarbons were regulated under the Montreal Protocol starting in 1987.

The warming effect of these HFCs is at least 1,000 times that of carbon dioxide. Unless they are regulated as chlorofluorocarbons have been, their warming effect will increase substantially in the coming decades.

Shifting from HFCs to substitutes that are 100 times less potent as climate warmers could offset nearly a decade’s increase in warming that is expected from rising emissions of carbon dioxide. The delegates in Cancún would need only to ask that the Montreal Protocol take on the further authority to regulate HFCs.

From a political point of view, the most appealing greenhouse emissions to reduce are ozone and soot, because they contribute so much to local air pollution. After all, people everywhere care about the quality of the air they breathe and see — even if most of them are not yet very worried about global warming. A desire to clean up the air is a rare point of commonality between developing and industrialized nations.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan is a professor of atmospheric physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. David G. Victor, a professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of the forthcoming “Global Warming Gridlock.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 28, 2010, on page WK9 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28victor.html

OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS

To Fight Climate Change, Clear the Air

Published: November 27, 2010

Related(Page 2 of 2)

Ozone, which is formed in the lower atmosphere from carbon monoxide, methane and other gases emitted by human activity, is a particularly hazardous component of urban smog. And every year it causes tens of billions of dollars in damage to crops worldwide. So pollution restrictions that reduce ozone levels, especially in the rapidly growing polluted cities of Asia, could both clear the air and slow warming.

• Op-Ed Contributor: An Almanac of Extreme Weather (November 28, 2010)

• Op-Ed Contributor: On Global Warming, Start Small(November 28, 2010)

• Times Topic: Global Warming

Soot likewise offers an opportunity to marry local interests with the global good. A leading cause of respiratory diseases, soot is responsible for some 1.9 million deaths a year. It also melts ice and snow packs. Thus, sooty emissions from Asia, Europe and North America are helping to thin the Arctic ice. And soot from India, China and a few other countries threatens water supplies fed by the Himalayan-Tibetan glaciers.

New air pollution regulations could help reduce soot. Such laws in California have cut diesel-soot emissions in that state by half. In China and India, a program to improve power generation, filter soot from diesel engines, reduce emissions from brick-making kilns and provide more efficient cookstoves could cut the levels of soot in those regions by about two-thirds — and benefit countries downwind as well.

Reducing soot and the other short-lived pollutants would not stop global warming, but it would buy time, perhaps a few decades, for the world to put in place more costly efforts to regulate carbon dioxide. And it would help the major economies demonstrate credibility on climate change, which has been in short supply in the diplomatic talks so far.

The impasse that was evident in Copenhagen last year and is likely to reappear in Cancún arises in part from the inability of China, India, Europe and the United States to show that they are adopting practical measures to slow climate change. Agreeing on a shared strategy to curtail short-lived pollutants would be a good way for all of them to start.

Credibility is especially important for the United States. It can already offer the world much of the technology and regulatory expertise that will be needed to reduce short-lived pollutants, particularly ozone and soot. Some American efforts are under way to share these technologies, including a program to help provide better cookstoves for people in developing countries. By making such programs more visible and demonstrating that they deliver tangible results, and by establishing a realistic plan for cutting its own emissions at home, the United States could show that it is serious about addressing climate change.

For too long, overly ambitious global climate talks have focused on the aspects of global warming that are hardest to solve. A few more modest steps, with quick and measurable effects, are a better way to proceed.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan is a professor of atmospheric physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. David G. Victor, a professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of the forthcoming “Global Warming Gridlock.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 28, 2010, on page WK9 of the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28victor.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2

Hunters may have delivered fatal blow to mammoths

AP – In this photo taken Oct. 23, 2010 Russian scientist Sergey Zimov talks about mammoth bones he has collected …

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press – Sun Nov 28, 12:02 am ET

CHERSKY, Russia – During the last Ice Age, shaggy mammoths, woolly rhinos and bison lumbered across northern Siberia. Then, about 10,000 years ago — in the span of a geological heartbeat, or a few hundred years — the last of them disappeared.

Many scientists believe a dramatic shift in climate drove these giant grazers to extinction.

But two scientists who live year-round in the frigid Siberian plains say that man _either for food, fuel or fun — hunted the animals to extinction.

Paleontologists have been squabbling for decades over how these animals met their sudden demise. The most persuasive theories say it was humanity and nature: Dramatically warming temperatures caused a changing habitat and brought a migration of men armed with deep-piercing spears.

No one knows for sure what set off global warming back then — perhaps solar activity or a slight shift in the Earth's orbit. But, in an echo of the global warming debate today, Sergey Zimov, director of the internationally funded Northeast Science Station, and his son Nikita say man was the real agent of change.

For the Siberian grasses to provide nutrition in winter, they needed to be grazed in summer to produce fresh shoots in autumn. The hooves of millions of reindeer, elk and moose as well as the larger beasts also trampled choking moss, while their waste promoted the blossoming of summer meadows.

As the ice retreated at the end of the Pleistocene era — the final millennia of a 1.8 million yearlong epoch — it cleared the way for man's expansion into previously inaccessible lands, like this area bordering the East Siberia Sea.

Northeastern Siberia, today one of the coldest and most formidable spots on the globe, was dry and free of glaciers. The ground grew thick with fine layers of dust and decaying plant life, generating rich pastures during the brief summers.

When humans arrived they hunted not only for food, but for the fat that kept the northern animals insulated against the subzero cold, which the hunters burned for fuel, say the scientists. They may also have killed for prestige or for sport, in the same way buffalo were heedlessly felled in the American Old West, sometimes from the window of passing trains.

The wholesale slaughter allowed the summer fodder to dry up and destroy the winter supply, they say.

"We don't look at animals just as animals. We look at them as a system, with vegetation and the whole ecosystem," said the younger Zimov. "You don't need to kill all the animals to kill an ecosystem."

During the transition from the ice age to the modern climate, global temperatures rose 5 degrees Celsius, or 9 Fahrenheit. But in Siberia's northeast the temperature soared 7 degrees, or nearly 13F, in just three years, the elder Zimov said.

The theory of human overkill is much disputed. Advocates of climate theory say the warm wet weather that accompanied the rapid melting of glaciers spawned birch forests that overwhelmed the habitats of the bulky grass eaters.

Adrian Lister, of the paleontology department of London's Natural History Museum, said humans may have delivered the final blow, but rapid global warming was primarily responsible for the mammoth's extinction. It brought an abrupt change in vegetation that squeezed a dwindling number of mammoths into isolated pockets, where hunters could pick off the last herds, he said.

People "couldn't have done the whole job," he told AP Television News.

Mammoths once ranged from Russia and northern China to Europe and most of North America, but their numbers began to shrink about 30,000 years ago. By the time the Pleistocene era ended they remained only in northern Siberia, Lister said.

As in millennia past, Sergey Zimov believes hunting is a problem today.

"I believe it's possible to increase the density of herbivores in our territory 100 times," says Zimov, who keeps a 6-foot-long yellow-brown tusk of an 18-year-old female in a corner of his living room. "I say let's stop the poaching. Let's give freedom for animals."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101128/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_mammoth_extinction

Jumat, 26/11/2010 17:21 WIB

Memanfaatkan Suhu Dingin untuk Pengobatan

Vera Farah Bararah - detikHealth

Amy Moore (Foto: the sun)

North Carolina, Bagi sebagian besar orang berada dalam suhu dingin tidaklah menyenangkan. Tapi dalam dunia kedokteran, suhu sangat dingin bisa menjadi penyelamat untuk kondisi sakit kepala hingga masalah jantung.

Dalam beberapa kasus penggunaan suhu dingin yang ekstrem bisa membunuh pasien. Namun pada kasus Amy Moore (38 tahun), menempatkan pasien di atas es bisa memberikan waktu yang berharga untuk menyelamatkan hidupnya.

Ibu dua anak ini mencatat sejarah medis saat ia berhasil diselamatkan dengan menggunakan alat super dingin setelah jantungnya berhenti mendadak. Dengan tidak adanya pilihan lain, petugas medis mendinginkan tubuhnya dengan selimut es dan menyuntikkan suntikan pembekuan (freezing injection).

Kondisi ini menempatkan otaknya pada posisi 'stand-by' dan memberikan waktu bagi dokter untuk melakukan operasi dan membuat jantungnya memompa kembali. Dalam kasus ekstrem tubuh didinginkan dari suhu normal 37 derajat celsius menjadi 18 derajat celsius.

"Kami menawarkan hal tersebut karena tidak memiliki pilihan lain dan ternyata hasilnya terbukti sangat efektif," ujar Dr Joe Rossi dari University of North Carolina Hospital, seperti dikutip dari The Sun, Jumat (26/11/2010)

Kondisi dingin yang ekstrem akan mencegah pembusukan otak dan organ tubuh lainnya, sehingga memungkinkan lebih banyak waktu untuk melakukan operasi dalam kasus yang mana mesin pendukung kehidupan tidak dapat digunakan lagi. Setelahnya tubuh pasien dihangatkan kembali dan jantung di restart dengan alat defibrillator.

"Pada kondisi tersebut pasien tidak bisa dibedakan dengan seseorang yang sebenarnya sudah mati," ujar Dr Keving Fong dari University College London.

Manfaat pengobatan suhu rendah atau terkadang disebut dengan cryotheraphy juga bisa muncul dalam kondisi lain, seperti mengobati sakit, nyeri, cedera pada atlet olahraga dan bahkan perawatan kanker.

Berikut adalah beberapa contoh pemanfaatan suhu dingin lainnya, yaitu:

Sakit kepala migrain
Dokter dari University of Illinois di Chicago melakukan uji paket es ini terhadap 45 penderita migrain. Dr Lawrence Robbins menemukan pasien memiliki kesempatan 50-50 lebih baik dengan menempatkan kompres es di kepala selama 3 menit.

Ketika migrain menyerang, pembuluh darah di kepala akan membesar dan menjadi bengkak dengan darah sehingga menyebabkan tekanan yang sakit di saraf daerah tersebut. Diperkirakan penempatan es dapat membatasi pelebaran pembuluh darah.

Terapi pembekuan untuk olahragawan
Kamar krioterapi (kriotheraphy chamber) biasanya disebut dengan Champney's health spa di Tring, Hertfordshire, mungkin bisa menjadi cara pengobatan dengan suhu rendah. Para bintang olahraga membiarkan berada di sana untuk menghilangkan rasa sakit dan nyeri selama pelatihan.

Pengguna akan dikenakan suhu yang sangat rendah selama 3 menit untuk merangsang darah dan sistem saraf pusat. Para ahli dari Clevelend Clinic di Ohio menuturkan hal ini bisa membantu menghasilkan perubahan hormon yang dapat meningkatkan perbaikan otot.

Pengobatan stroke (Super-cooling)
Ada bukti yang menunjukkan pendinginan cepat bisa mengurangi dampak buruk dari stroke. Peneliti dari Amerika menguji perangkat kecil yang diletakkan dalam sebuah vena pusat yang mendinginkan darah mengalir dalam pasien stroke. Diharapkan otak akan terlindungi dengan pendinginan tersebut.

Topi dingin untuk melindungi rambut selama terapi kanker
Pasien yang melakukan kemoterapi akan diberikan topi ini untuk membantu menghentikan rambut rontok. Topi ini berisi gel dingin atau menggunakan cairan pendingin yang mengurangi aliran darah ke kulit kepala dan menyelamatkan folikel rambut dari kerusakan akibat bahan kimia.

(ver/ir)

http://www.detikhealth.com/read/2010/11/26/172122/1503513/766/memanfaatkan-suhu-dingin-untuk-pengobatan?l993306763

Great gobblin' gadgets! Our top 10 tech turkeys

By Doug Gross, CNN November 25, 2010 -- Updated 1454 GMT (2254 HKT) | Filed under: Innovation

From the Apple Newton to the Segway to the LaserDisc, bad or unsuccessful products soon become turkeys in the tech world.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Pre-Black Friday, we look at the Tech Turkey gadgets and services that didn't pan out
  
• Some were ahead of their time, others just bad ideas from folks accustomed to good one
  
• Apple Newton was portable touchscreen computer in 1993 -- but for $1,000
  
• Segway, satellite radio are still around and could still surge

RELATED TOPICS

• Consumer Electronics
• Marketing Campaigns
• Personal Computers

(CNN) -- Ahh, Thanksgiving -- a time to reflect on all that is good in our lives and express our gratitude for it. And, of course, for snarky journalists to take seasonal advantage of the word "turkey."

Between bird-and-gravy-induced naps, many of us will spend Thursday pondering the array of new gadgets expected to go on sale on Black Friday (and Cyber Monday).

But, first, let's pause to reflect upon those less fortunate -- the tech turkeys that won't be on anyone's shopping list.

Some of these turkeys are still flapping. And, who knows? One or two of them might surprise us all and one day take flight. (Stretched that metaphor until it just about snapped, huh?).

Some of these disappointments, to be fair, were great ideas that flew high for a time. Others were one-off clunkers from folks (Apple, anyone?) whom we can usually count on for tasty tech.

As Thomas Edison said, sometimes failing is just a way to cross the 10,000 things that don't work off your list.

But enough being fair. It's turkey time:

LaserDisc

Ah, the early '80s. Those of us who remember them can recall, if we try really hard, that brief window when we were sure LaserDiscs were going to be the future of home video.

To be sure, videotapes were a confusing mess back then. The Betamax format wouldn't be long for this world, and surely the same universe that brought us "Star Wars" and "Flash Gordon" would bring us a futuristic-feeling way to watch them.

But the discs were a foot wide, making them clunky and heavy. They scratched easily. And, like old-fashioned LP albums, they usually needed to be flipped to watch a whole movie.

The discs had a decent run in Japan and other Asian countries. But in the United States and Europe, consumers opted to save their money and keep blowing on their VHS tapes when they wouldn't play.

Apple Newton

Apple's primitive Newton tablet was ahead of its time.

Think Apple never gets it wrong? Think again.

The darlings of the technology world had a string of misses in the 1990s before rocking back to the top with the iPod.

OK, see if this sounds familiar: a computer that's small enough to carry around, has an interactive touchscreen, lets you get messages and runs apps.

Sadly for Steve Jobs and co., the world wasn't ready for the Apple Newton in 1993. That's when the company (in all fairness, pretty accurately) predicted such devices would be the future of computing.

Its $1,000 price, too-big-for-a-pocket size and spotty interface -- you pecked on the screen with a pen-like stylus -- soon doomed the Newton.

Let's all have a moment of silence, then pull out our tablet computers and tap out a touchscreen epitaph.

Google Wave

OK, we expect this one to fall into the Thomas Edison category.

Google routinely likes to poke at boundaries by encouraging employees to whip up new products to test. Sometimes, they work. Often they don't.

Wave did -- well -- it did something. Like allow people to communicate and collaborate. It was big and ambitious and promised to change how we use the Web. But in the end, too few people actually understood what they were supposed to be doing (even with an 80-minute explainer video).

Google, which released Wave in 2009, finally announced it was pulling the plug in August. But don't be surprised if some of the app's infrastructure resurfaces

Segway

Segways are kind of cool in an eco-friendly, geeky sort of way.

But, with apologies to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and his polo-playing buddies, the self-balancing personal vehicle just hasn't caught on.

About 6,000 of them were sold in 2003, when they were released, and it took six years for sales to hit the 50,000 mark. (For a handy technology-world comparison, Apple's iPad sold more than twice that many in one day). A 2006 recall to fix a software glitch didn't help.

At this point, who's got more than $6,000 for a vehicle that, despite its advanced technology, falls somewhere between a motor scooter and walking in terms of efficiency?

For our part, we hope Segway, which was sold to a British company this year, sticks around. After all, how else will Justin Bieber escape his adoring but kind-of-scary fans?

Microsoft KIN

Microsoft's KIN phones were yanked off the market after two months.

Ouch.

Microsoft didn't become the kings of personal computing for nothing. They get a lot of things right.

But, wow, what were they thinking with the KIN?

Marketed to teens and tweens, the Kin One and Kin Two seemed to aim for the social, "cool" quotient of the iPhone without much of its computing heft.

They didn't run outside apps and their data plans were comparable in price to the iPhone and other more advanced smartphones. In truth, it felt like the Microsoft mobile team's hearts were already with the Windows Phone 7 by the time the KINs hit the market in April.

Less than two months (and by some accounts less than 10,000 sales) later, the KIN was no more -- making it one of the shortest-lived efforts in the short history of the smartphone.

Pets.com

Speaking of shopping, is there any better example of early 2000s dotcom bust than this online retailer?

Pets.com had everything going for it, except a valid reason why pet owners would flock to buy stuff for their furry family members, sight unseen, on the internet.

For the most part, this turkey is here to represent the legions of dotcom busts from that era. But none of the others had an awesome sock puppet spokesman who reached the highest pinnacle of the advertising world -- a Super Bowl commercial.

Founded in 1998, Pets.com raised $82.5 million in its initial public offering. When it went belly-up in 2000, it was valued at $6.4 million,with stock shares bottoming out at 22 cents.

Final insult? Type pets.com into your browser now and it feeds to the website for PetSmart, the old-fashioned, brick-and-mortar chain that bought the domain name.

Alas, if only they'd tanked a decade later, maybe there would have been a federal bailout to keep them afloat.

TwitterPeek

Sorry, Peek.

We've picked on this device before, but it's just so hard to figure out what its makers were thinking.

TwitterPeek is a $199 gadget that basically does one thing. It lets you post and read Twitter messages while on the go.

Kind of like every smartphone in the world. Which you can buy for the same price if not less.

It's a safe bet that most folks who care enough about their tweets to need access to them everywhere also own a smartphone. A true turkey.

Atari Jaguar

Atari's Jaguar gaming system was eclipsed by the Nintendo 64.

Might as well go out with a roar.

In the '80s, before ultimately succumbing to "The Blade Runner Curse," Atari was the king of home video-gaming.

In 1993, the company was ready to strike back at other emerging systems like the Sega Genesis with a souped-up (for the time) 64-bit system that would be more powerful and look better than the competition.

An aggressive marketing campaign followed and the system was released to positive reviews.

But developers apparently thought it was hard to create games for, and it flailed with a lack of strong new titles.

Two years later, a little system called the Nintendo 64 hit the market. You know the rest.

It's hard to blame Atari for this one. But it's as good a chance as any to fondly recall the last gasp of a gaming giant.

HD-DVD

This one could have gone either way.

Up until 2008, Blu-ray and HD-DVD were neck-and-neck in the battle over which format would become the leader in high-definition home entertainment. Both had their supporters, but production companies couldn't justify the cost of rolling out their movies for two different formats.

If a couple of video production companies had swung the other way, we could be calling Blu-ray the tech turkey here.

But they didn't.

Toshiba finally gave up on HD-DVD in 2008, after Warner Brothers and Netflix announced they would no longer support the format. When Wal-Mart said it was going Blu-ray only, it was the kiss of death.

Ironically, some tech observers now wonder whether Blu-ray will be doomed by movies and other content streamed from the Web.

Virtual reality

Remember when we were on the verge of living high-tech virtual lives?

When optic sensors, VR helmets and power gloves were supposed to have us living in "The Matrix?" Or at least on the Holodeck?

Turns out, the promises were a little ahead of their time.

"The technology of the 1980s was not mature enough," says Stephen Ellis, who continues hacking away at virtual reality at NASA's Ames Research Center.

The main effect of commercial VR-tech that's rolled out since then has largely been making the user want to throw up.

But don't give up on this turkey just yet. Experts like Ellis say advancing technology means a virtual existence may still be in the offing.

Until then, you've always got your Second Life avatar to keep you entertained.

So those are the 10 tech gobblers we came up with this Thanksgiving. After your nap, tell us which ones we left out, or which alleged turkeys you think deserve a pardon from this list.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/25/tech.turkeys/index.html?hpt=C2