tagged w/ Technology News
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Plan has been compared to the annual TED conferences.
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deane
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3 days ago
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Kyle from TheTechnoFiles.com reviews the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play
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News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch frequently tweets about how web pirates are destroying the entertainment business by stealing its content and preventing studios from making a profit. But a report by Floor64's Michael Masnick, released by the Computer and Communications Industry Association, shows the opposite is true: The entertainment industry is not being killed by the world wide web. In fact, it's exploding: "Through a decade of economic and technological upheaval, the entertainment industry grew 50 percent while consumers increased spending on entertainment," claims the report.News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch frequently tweets about how web pirates are destroying... more
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PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites; they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.” The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year. That’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.
This piece includes a video about SOPA.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/stop-sopa-protect-your-online-rights/PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is... more
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Brace Yourselves: The great Reddit blackout of 2012 is nigh. The site's administrators announced that they would shut down the website on Wednesday, January 18, 2012 from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM EST. The Daily Blender will be joining in the fight. Will you join with all of us? Stop American Censorship.Brace Yourselves: The great Reddit blackout of 2012 is nigh. The site's... more
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Apple has posted this video of the tribute to Steven P. Jobs, which took place last week at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California. The event, “A Celebration of Steve’s Life,” was held to commemorate Mr. Jobs, who died this month after battling pancreatic cancer.
The video begins with Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, who shared thoughts of Mr. Jobs’s work at Apple over the years and noted that no one in attendance would be working at Apple if it wasn’t for Mr. Jobs. “There is one more thing he leaves us; he leaves us with each other,” Mr. Cook said. “Other than his family, Apple would be his finest creation.” Mr. Cook also said the last piece of advice Mr. Jobs gave him was “to never ask what he would do; just do what’s right.”
Following Mr. Cook’s speech, Al Gore, the former Vice President and an Apple board member, spoke. Some of Mr. Jobs’s favorite musicians played at the event. Norah Jones sang the Bob Dylan song “Forever Young.” The British band Coldplay performed “Fix You” and “Yellow,” while thousands of Apple employees listened and helped celebrate the co-founder’s life.
This piece includes photographs and the full video of the commemoration.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/24/a-celebration-of-steves-life/Apple has posted this video of the tribute to Steven P. Jobs, which took place last... more
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Explanation: The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its way out to Pluto. Famous for its Great Red Spot, Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud bands, visible through even modest sized telescopes. The above image, horizontally compressed, was taken in 2007 near Jupiter's terminator and shows the Jovian giant's wide diversity of cloud patterns. On the far left are clouds closest to Jupiter's South Pole. Here turbulent whirlpools and swirls are seen in a dark region, dubbed a belt, that rings the planet. Even light colored regions, called zones, show tremendous structure, complete with complex wave patterns. The energy that drives these waves surely comes from below. New Horizons is the fastest space probe ever launched, has now passed the orbits of Saturn and Uranus and is on track to reach Pluto in 2015.
http://t.co/oAps6GpUExplanation: The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its... more
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Google plans on to Close Google Buzz
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The death of Steve Jobs not only has huge cross industry impact, but represent a loss to the entire world of a great visionary and someone who help changed the world as we know it forever.The death of Steve Jobs not only has huge cross industry impact, but represent a loss... more
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NEW DELHI —
India introduced a cheap tablet computer Wednesday, saying it would deliver modern technology to the countryside to help lift villagers out of poverty.
The computer, called Aakash, or "sky" in Hindi, is the latest in a series of "world's cheapest" innovations in India that include a 100,000 rupee ($2,040) compact Nano car, a 750 rupee ($15) water purifier and $2,000 open-heart surgery.
Developer Datawind is selling the tablets to the government for about $45 each, and subsidies will reduce that to $35 for students and teachers. In comparison, the cheapest Apple iPad tablet costs $499, while the recently announced Kindle Fire will sell for $199.
Datawind says it can make about 100,000 units a month at the moment, not nearly enough to meet India's hope of getting its 220 million children online.
Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal called the announcement a message to all children of the world.
"This is not just for us. This is for all of you who are disempowered," he said. "This is for all those who live on the fringes of society."
Despite a burgeoning tech industry and decades of robust economic growth, there are still hundreds of thousands of Indians with no electricity, let alone access to computers and information that could help farmers improve yields, business startups reach clients, or students qualify for university.
The launch - attended by hundreds of students, some selected to help train others across the country in the tablet's use - followed five years of efforts to design a $10 computer that could bridge the country's vast digital divide.
"People laughed, people called us lunatics," ministry official N.K. Sinha said. "They said we are taking the nation for a ride."
Although the $10 goal wasn't achieved, the Aakash has a color screen and provides word processing, Web browsing and video conferencing. The Android 2.2-based device has two USB ports and 256 megabytes of RAM. Despite hopes for a solar-powered version - important for India's energy-starved hinterlands - no such option is currently available.
Both Sibal and Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli called for competition to improve the product and drive prices down further.
"The intent is to start a price war. Let it start," Tuli said, inviting others to do the job better and break technological ground - while still making a commercially viable product.
As for the $10 goal, "let's dream and go in that direction. Let's start with that target and see what happens," he said.
The students Wednesday were well-briefed on the goal of providing tablets for the poor, although most in attendance already had access to computers at home or in their schools.
"A person learns quite fast when they have a computer at home," said Shashank Kumar, 21, a computer engineering student from Jodhpur, Bihar, who was one of five people selected in his northern state to travel to villages and demonstrate the device. "In just a few years people can even become hackers."
India, after raising literacy to about 78 percent from 12 percent when British rule ended, is now focusing on higher education with a 2020 goal of 30 percent enrollment. Today, only 7 percent of Indians graduate from high school.
"To every child in India I carry this message. Aim for the sky and beyond. There is nothing holding you back," Sibal said before distributing about 650 of the tablets to the students.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2016410788_apasindiasupercheapcomputer.html?cmpid=2628NEW DELHI —
India introduced a cheap tablet computer Wednesday, saying it... more
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Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s Co-Founder and visionary, who helped usher in the era of personal computers and led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday at the age of 56. Mr. Jobs had waged a long and public struggle with cancer, remaining the face of the company even as he underwent treatment. He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer. After leaving, he was still engaged in the company’s affairs, negotiating with another Silicon Valley executive only weeks earlier.
“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company in August. “Unfortunately, that day has come.” By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and a wide range of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet.
This piece includes a number of photographs, a documentary and a short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-rebel-icon-and-genius/Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s Co-Founder and visionary, who helped usher in the era of... more
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Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s Co-Founder, Former-CEO and visionary, who helped usher in the era of personal computers and led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday at the age of 56. The death was announced by Apple Computers, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage. Mr. Jobs had waged a long and public struggle with cancer, remaining the face of the company even as he underwent treatment.
He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer. After leaving, he was still engaged in the company’s affairs, negotiating with another Silicon Valley executive only weeks earlier.
“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company in August. “Unfortunately, that day has come.” By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and a wide range of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet.
This piece includes a number of photographs, a photo-gallery and three videos.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/steven-p-jobs-apple’s-co-founder-former-ceo-and-visionary-dies-at-56/Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s Co-Founder, Former-CEO and visionary, who helped usher... more
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Sigh
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/steve-jobs-apple-ceo-dies/story?id=14383813
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German industrial and engineering conglomerate Siemens is to withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry.
The move is a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March, chief executive Peter Loescher said.
He told Spiegel magazine it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".
"The chapter for us is closed," he said, announcing that the firm will no longer build nuclear power stations.
Mr Loescher also gave his backing to the German government's planned switch to renewable energy sources, calling it a "project of the century" and claiming Berlin's target of reaching 35% renewable energy by 2020 was achievable.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced at the end of May that all of the country's 17 nuclear reactors would be shut down by 2022.
Prior to the Fukushima disaster, nuclear power accounted for 23% of electricity production in Germany.
The decision marked a complete U-turn by the chancellor, who only in September 2010 had announced that the life of existing nuclear plants would be extended by an average of 12 years.German industrial and engineering conglomerate Siemens is to withdraw entirely from... more
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Wetdog
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5 months ago
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> A quibble began with Apple Computer pushed out a refresh of Final Cut X, which had its debut in the Mac App Store. Almost immediately after being released, Final Cut X recevied some harsh critcism with some well known FCP users claiming the X version was lackluster and limiting.
CFP10 costs 299.99, additions for multimedi and users ,,
Motion 5 will add an estra 49.99 and Compressor 5 is also an extra $49.99
The process to obtain FCP7 into your system is such that it requires contacting Apple Support/Sales, they basically ask if you have FCPX and when you say Yes, and ask to get FCP7, you will be directed to do a Sadirecd hula dance which will ex, spell the Hi-Tech
low usage CFPX, this will purify your sytem and allow FCP7 to work .
Good Luck FCP7 Users! Don't forget to Thank Apple for Giving CFP7 Back as an Option, it may take a multitude of hours to install, but anything for the software a Post Producer as come to know and use.> A quibble began with Apple Computer pushed out a refresh of Final Cut X,... more
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By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, August 21st, 2011 -- 4:54 pm
WASHINGTON — US conglomerate General Electric is seeking permission to build a $1 billion plant for uranium enrichment by laser, a process which has raised proliferation fears, The New York Times said Sunday.
After testing the enrichment process for two years, GE has asked the US government to approve its plans for a massive facility in North Carolina that could produce reactor fuel by the ton, the report said, citing GE officials.
"We are currently optimizing the design," Christopher Monetta, president of Global Laser Enrichment, a subsidiary operated by GE and Japan's Hitachi, said in an interview with the newspaper.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to deliver its decision on whether to issue a commercial license for the complex by next year, the report said.
Uranium enrichment can be used to produce both the fuel for a nuclear reactor and the fissile material for an atomic warhead. New technologies are seen as potentially dangerous as they make it easier to build a bomb.
Monetta said the plant could enrich enough uranium each year to fuel up to 60 large reactors -- in theory, enough to power 42 million homes, or a third of all homes in the United States.
Donald Kerr, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who was recently briefed on GE's advance, said laser enrichment "appears to be close to a real industrial process" and a genuine technological breakthrough.
But critics say the technology could be co-opted by rogue states such as Iran or terror groups and used in the covert production of weapons, as it would be more difficult to detect small laser-equipped facilities.
"We're on the verge of a new route to the bomb," Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised former US president Bill Clinton and now teaches at Princeton University, told the Times.
"We should have learned enough by now to do an assessment before we let this kind of thing out."
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/21/laser-technique-to-enrich-uranium-raises-proliferation-fears/
Image courtesy of Flickr Commons.
"A person would think that this kind of info would remain Hush Hush, especially when you bring Nuclear Proliferation into the mix"By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, August 21st, 2011 -- 4:54 pm
WASHINGTON —... more
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KB723
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6 months ago
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An article by Bianca Bosker, a contributor to Huffington Post, First Posted: 7/27/11 12:23 PM ET Updated: 7/27/11 12:53 PM ET http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27/randi-zuckerberg-anonymity-online_n_910892.html
"Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s marketing director, has a fix for cyberbullying: stop people from doing anything online without their names attached.
Facebook requires all members to use their real names and email addresses when joining the social network -- a policy that has been difficult at times to enforce, as the prevalence of spam accounts or profiles assigned to people’s pets suggest.
Zuckerberg, who is Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, argued that putting an end to anonymity online could help curb bullying and harassment on the web.
“I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away,” she said during a panel discussion on social media hosted Tuesday evening by Marie Claire magazine. “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors........”
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Comments from Buckeye_Bill on the article in question:
This will piss off a whole lot of trolls and those who wish to post some of the most obnoxious comments and expect to get away with it by using the subterfuge of anonymity! I dare say that this would stop many of the ad hominem attacks that infect site after site of those who hide behind a facade to keep others from knowing who they really are! Perchance this could cut down on a lot of "clones" that roam the "intertubes" or someone who has multiple screen names to use as an attack on one particular thread or article.
What is your impression of this possibility to come? Are you for or against opening yourself up to the whole, entire World Wide Web for either acclaim or ridicule? For all to see the why, what, where, when and most especially who you are!
The "lines are open"..........fire away!
Ring, ring..."And we have our first caller! So, what's your name, caller?" LOL!An article by Bianca Bosker, a contributor to Huffington Post, First Posted: 7/27/11... more
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As senior US officials warn that cyber attacks on vital systems would be considered "acts of war" eliciting a real world military response, one professor at the National Defence University surmises that battles of the future might be fought by guys hunched over keyboards in dark basements, rather than strapping lads toting M-16s.
In light of recent cyber attacks on Google apparently launched from China, online tensions - the possible precursors to outright conflict - have been spreading from chat rooms, to Gmail accounts and into the meeting rooms of military decision makers in recent weeks.
"We operate in five domains: air, land, sea, outer space and cyberspace," says Dan Kuehl, a professor of information operations at the National Defence University in Washington. "An ever increasing amount of what we do has dependencies on cyberspace; a guy typing on a computer is one of the new faces of war," Kuehl told Al Jazeera, stressing that he is not speaking for the US government or his elite military university.
"A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said recently.
Read this article and more at english.aljazeera.net.
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What do you think? Will there be a cyberwar in the near future? What would a cyber-war look like in every day life? I think of Tron when I hear the term "cyberwar," but that's just me.As senior US officials warn that cyber attacks on vital systems would be considered... more
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On April 27, Greg Mello--a tall, intense man whose natural state is vague dishevelment--was in court, watching his witness annihilate (at least in Mello’s view) the US Department of Energy’s case.
Mello is the Harvard-educated co-founder and executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear disarmament advocacy organization based in Albuquerque, but with a concerted focus on the activities of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Last year, LASG sued to stop the construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) project, a new facility at LANL designed to process--and possibly produce--plutonium-based nuclear warheads.
On this particular Wednesday, Mello’s lawyer had called Frank von Hippel, a nuclear physicist and Princeton professor, to testify against the facility--essentially a costly, heavily fortified nuclear warhead processing facility situated over a geologic fault zone (see sidebar: “Price Point”).
In his prepared testimony, Von Hippel argued the need for new warheads “has vanished”; the earthquake hazard is now “much larger” than previously thought; the last full environmental assessment of the project--completed eight years ago--is insufficient for a project whose cost has swollen from $350 million to more than $3 billion.
All of this, Von Hippel says, amounts to a more fundamental question: Does New Mexico really need to be researching and building new nuclear weapons?
Mello doesn’t think so--but says the political momentum isn’t on his side.
“New Mexico is viewed as a place with a compliant government, where nuclear contractors can get federal money,” Mello explains. “There’s no private sector demand for most of this stuff, and a great deal of it could never be licensed or permitted.”
Even so, the CMRR facility--along with its budget--has expanded virtually unheeded since it was first proposed in 1999.
“It’s terrifying,” Mello says. “It’s frightening for New Mexico, both in itself and because of what it’s not: renewable energy; investment in our housing and building stock, our infrastructure, our schools. A very tiny group of people have captured an outsize amount of attention from a political elite and are setting far too much of our agenda.”
Greg Mello of Los Alamos Study Group is challenging the lab's new plutonium facility.
Within Santa Fe, Mello’s view is relatively common. At the LASG meetings and study sessions he hosts in the basement of a local church, attendees are routinely knowledgeable to the point of expertise. And in addition to various environmental protection and renewable energy groups, Santa Fe also hosts two other nuclear disarmament organizations, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico.
Southern New Mexico, though, is a different story. There, lawmakers and academics extol the virtues not only of nuclear research and development, but they also court uranium processing plants and waste disposal facilities with gusto--and, in some cases, financial incentives.
In fact, the morning of Von Hippel’s testimony, a collection of public officials, scientists and executives had gathered in a conference room in Hobbs, some 350 miles south of Santa Fe. They were discussing New Mexico’s future as a focal point for the new nuclear age, in which economies rely increasingly on nuclear power and entire processing industries spring up around the “uranium fuel cycle,” which begins with mining and ends with waste disposal. Every stage of that process can be monetized--and nearly every stage has commercial operations in New Mexico.
“The state currently has a stake in a lot of aspects of this cycle--the mining, the enrichment, the storage,” Mat Lueras, vice president for corporate development at Uranium Resources Inc., a mining outfit that owns 183,000 acres of uranium mineral rights in New Mexico, tells SFR. Because of that, Lueras says, URI has “seen widespread local and state support from New Mexico politicians” for its efforts to restart uranium mining.
To Daniel Fine, a research associate at New Mexico Tech and at the Center for Energy Policy in Hobbs,
such enthusiasm is simply an acknowledgment of the inevitable.
“Nuclear energy, worldwide and in the United States, has a very strong future,” Fine says. “Twenty percent of our electricity is nuclear. There’s potential planning for 50 percent more.”
In Fine’s view, New Mexico’s role in that future remains to be determined. But given what’s already here, and the gradual buildup of a nuclear fuel cycle complex in the state’s southeastern counties, a nuclear future may indeed be unavoidable. Take the beginning of the fuel cycle, for instance.
“New Mexico,” Fine says, “is the Saudi Arabia of uranium.”
Daniel Fine of New Mexico Tech predicts a bright future for nuclear energy.
New Mexico had its first exposure to the nuclear industry in 1943, with the founding of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Two years later, near Alamogordo, LANL scientists conducted the Trinity test with a prototype of the atomic bombs that, less than a month later, would raze Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sandia National Laboratories, the Albuquerque lab charged with turning LANL’s nuclear weapons concepts into deployable missiles, was founded in 1949.
While the labs were located near northern New Mexico’s population centers, less populous areas of the state became nuclear hubs in their own right. In southern New Mexico, a huge swath of desert scrubland became the White Sands Proving Groundsnow the White Sands Missile Rangefor nuclear weapons testing. In far western New Mexico, on the outskirts of the Navajo Nation, uranium mines sprang up in the 1950s.
Since the US government promised to buy all mined uranium, it was good business, and northwest New Mexico’s mining industry boomed for close to two decades with relatively little oversight. But in the 1970s, reports of elevated levels of radon, a radioactive element that can cause cancer, began to surface and so began what Fine calls “the sad chapter” of widespread radioactive contamination from New Mexico’s uranium mines.
“[Uranium] mining, from the 1950s to the early 1970s, was very high risk, and the methods then did expose uranium miners to radioactivity,” Fine says.On April 27, Greg Mello--a tall, intense man whose natural state is vague... more
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Source: Detroit Free Press
Michigan will get $200 million to upgrade rail lines and a share of another $336 million for new high-performance trains and other equipment to build a high-speed rail network between Detroit and Chicago, the Obama administration announced today.
The federal government is awarding $2 billion to expand high-speed rail nationwide, money that Florida turned back earlier this year, and Michigan was one of 24 states competing for the funding. The U.S. Department of Transportation said 15 states and Amtrak will receive money for 22 high-speed intercity passenger rail projects that the government said will connect 80% of Americans to high-speed rail in 25 years.
“These projects will put thousands of Americans to work, save hundreds of thousands of hours for American travelers every year, and boost U.S. manufacturing by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in next-generation, American-made locomotives and railcars,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement.
Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20110509/NEWS05/110509013/... |topnews|text|FRONTPAGESource: Detroit Free Press
Michigan will get $200 million to upgrade rail lines and... more
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KB723
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