gore

SAN FRANCISCO--When he started making his new film "Rango," director Gore Verbinski knew he wanted it to look and feel much like many of the Westerns it evokes: gritty, dirty, and sweaty.

"He wanted to be able to smell the breath of the characters," said Kevin Martel, the film's associate animation supervisor. "The feeling was that if you were to take a deep breath, you'd inhale all that dust and dirt, and you'd probably start coughing."

All joking aside, creating the look of a traditional Western was one of the biggest … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Bill Clinton is scheduled to speak at a computer security conference here on Friday, but you may not hear much about what he has to say: the former president has suddenly grown shy of journalists.

Signs popped up today at the RSA Conference inside the Moscone Center announcing: "Due to contract restrictions, anyone wearing a press badge will not be allowed into Friday afternoon's keynote sessions."

Clinton is scheduled to deliver the 1 p.m. "closing keynote" that day. He charges as much as $350,000 per speech, according to a CNN.com article. … Read more

Former vice president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was "not a good policy," weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on December 31.

Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year according to the International Energy Industry, which said biofuels worldwide received more subsidies than any other form of renewable energy.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for [U.S.] first-generation ethanol," said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

"First-generation ethanol, I think, was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small," he said "It's hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

He explained his own support for the original program on his presidential ambitions.

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president."

U.S. ethanol is made by extracting sugar from corn, an energy-intensive process. The U.S. ethanol industry will consume about 41 percent of the U.S. corn crop this year, or 15 percent of the global corn crop, according to Goldman Sachs analysts.

A food-versus-fuel debate erupted in 2008, in the wake of record food prices, where the biofuel industry was criticized for helping stoke food prices. … Read more

CUPERTINO, Calif.--The presence of one of the world's pre-eminent environmentalists at Apple's shareholder meeting Thursday was the subject of much of the morning's pointed discussion.

As expected, Apple's attitude on environmental and sustainability issues was one of the main concerns of the stockholders present Thursday, followed closely by the company's immense pile of cash. But early harsh comments about former Vice President Al Gore's record set the tone.

Gore was seated in the first row, along with his six fellow board members, in Apple's Town Hall auditorium as several stockholders took turns … Read more

SAN MATEO, Calif.--Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore hopes that America's next-generation power grid will be a lot like the Internet. Or at least that's the plan.

How close we get to that goal depends on what happens in the next five years, Gore said in a speech here on Thursday evening at blog VentureBeat's GreenBeat conference, where he outlined many of the challenges the United States faces in upgrading its power grid. Along the way, he made comparisons to how the advent of the so-called smart grid will enable the kind of solutions and business innovation that the Internet brought during the 1990s.

"The analogy to the Internet is quite an exact one. Not completely exact, but it's very relevant for lots of reasons. We are moving inexorably toward a widely distributed energy generation and storage model. We are still locked into the old centralized energy generation model," Gore said. "The rapid development of new generations of new smart storage systems are going to make a tremendous difference in connection with the smart grids." Those systems are designed to enable easier storage of unused electricity for peak times, when supplying it to large groups of customers can be difficult and more expensive.

Gore also foresees an entirely new set of devices and instruments to help utilities and consumers control and monitor usage--technology and business models that may not yet have been imagined. "(It's) much the same way the Internet made it possible to see this generation of Internet-ready devices that did not even exist before the Internet began to build out," Gore said.… Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Al Gore, a self-described "wanna-be geek," is on the road talking about solutions to multiple problems.

The former vice president gave a speech at the First Parish Cambridge Unitarian Universalist church here on Saturday to promote his latest book, "Our Choice." Whereas "An Inconvenient Truth" documented the reasons for global warming, his latest book is focused almost entirely on ways to address climate change, Gore said.

But don't expect only a discussion of solar, wind and biofuels. In outlining the contents of "Our Choice" on Saturday, Gore said he … Read more

NEW YORK--According to former Vice President Al Gore, the importance of sustainability doesn't just apply to the environment. It also is key to the future of advertising.

"It really comes out of the environment, but in my opinion the key theme of this century really is sustainability," Gore said. "This theme of environmental sustainability has become a part of our culture, it's a part of our discourse, and I'm very optimistic that it will soon be a part of our policy."

Addressing the crowd of advertisers and online-media types at the Digital Content NewFront … Read more

With Wilson at the auto expo in town, our good friend Kenley Bradstreet from "Heavy & Flow" joins us today on the show. We chat about Gore Verbinski's decision to make BioShock over another pirates movie and how that'll either be the best or worst thing he's ever done.

Justin then enlightens us about the logistical issues with sending feces through the United States Postal Service and how it isn't exactly a crime. First thing you'll want to do with the new OnStar system in the event of a car accident is Twitter about it as the service has found its way to the on-board vehicle communication system.

Next Kenley tells us about The Transcendent Man, Ray Kurzweil, and how he used to come visit the Bradstreet home on major holidays. Finally, we touch on some tech no-nos, a few tech-inspired faux pas (can you even pluralize that?) that we're all guilty of.

Make sure you keep sending in those stories of survival for a chance to win Tom Avery's incredible book, "To the End of the Earth". Leave us an email (the404 [at] cnet [dot] com or call in @ 866-404-CNET).

LAS VEGAS--Former Vice President Al Gore sought to link the democratic effects of information sharing with the growth of the wireless industry as the solution to all of life's problems.

Well, perhaps not all of life's problems. But in his address to CTIA 2009 attendees on the final day of the show, Gore made the case that previous revolutions in communications technology--such as the printing press and the radio--have dramatically improved access to information that has made the world more scientifically advanced and productive, and that modern wireless technology is capable of doing the same thing over time.… Read more