Umar Kalim writes "Analysts have been studying the effects of the fibre outage throughout the Mediterranean in terms of network performance, by examining the changes in packet losses, latencies and throughput. We initially discussed the outage yesterday. 'It is interesting that some countries such as Pakistan were mainly unaffected, despite the impact on neighboring countries such as India. This contrasts dramatically to the situation in June - July 2005, when due to a fibre cut of SEAMEWE3 off Karachi, Pakistan lost all terrestrial Internet connectivity which resulted, in many cases, in a complete 12 day outage of services. This is a tribute to the increased redundancy of international fibre connectivity installed for Pakistan in the last few years.'"
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's authorities have started culling poultry in the northern part of the country due to bird flu suspicions and a district has been put under quarantine, broadcaster Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 11:16 am
DHAKA (Reuters) - Bird flu has spread to three more districts of Bangladesh, the livestock department said on Sunday, taking the number of affected districts to more than half of the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 11:07 am
By Andrew Liszewski Everyone has a different idea of what ‘roughing it’ really means. And if your definition includes frozen drinks, milkshakes or other blended treats then this Coleman battery... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 9:48 am
Roland Piquepaille writes "On February 8, 2008, about 100 UC Berkeley students will participate in the Mobile Century experiment, using GPS mobile phones as traffic sensors. During the whole day, these students carrying the GPS-equipped Nokia N95 will drive along a 10-mile stretch of I-880 between Hayward and Fremont, California. 'The phones will store the vehicles' speed and position information every 3 seconds. These measurements will be sent wirelessly to a server for real-time processing.' As more and more cellphones are GPS-equipped, the traffic engineering community, which currently monitors traffic using mostly fixed sensors such as cameras and loop detectors, is tempted to use our phones to get real-time information about traffic."
Internet search engine Google has reinforced fears of a recession in the United States after disappointing fourth-quarter profits and sales figures. The technology... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 9:11 am
A U.S. mobile phone retailer that sells software to unlock iPhones isn't surprised that more than a million of them seem to have "disappeared." And it thinks it knows where they are. Information Week... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:55 am
With Apple already having penetrated the European market in Germany, France, and the UK, it makes sense that Apple start casting a wider iPhone-net in Europe . [via intomobile ] Rumored country... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:38 am
When Michael profiled the Gizmo Project in July 2005, he noted that it had more features than Skype, but lacked instant messaging. The one time Skype competitor has become the Jaiku to Twitter, having... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:09 am
SCIENTISTS have grown the world's first cry-free onion - without the nasty vapour that stings your eyes. The New Zealand team have switched off the mechanism that releases the chemicals. They say the new onions are tastier but it could be 10 years before they are in the shops. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By Andi Atwater, The Wichita Eagle, Kan. Feb. 3--Will the doctor be in? Physician training programs in Wichita may be jeopardized if the state doesn't help pay for them, but the changes causing the financial crisis aren't necessarily a bad thing, local medical officials say. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
In an interview, veteran Emmy-winning actress Ann B. Davis reminisced about her days on the set of the 1970's TV sitcom, The Brady Bunch. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By Art Lander Jr., The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky. Feb. 3--Hikers planning a trip this year can mix work with play if they take part in an American Hiking Society Volunteer Vacation. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By JEFF E SCHAPIRO Gov. Timothy M. Kaine says revenues are dropping further because of the shaky economy, likely requiring a bigger drawdown from the state's rainy-day fund. "Things are not tracking the way one would want," Secretary of Finance Jody M. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By La Crosse Tribune, Wis. Feb. 3--Qualified nonprofit organizations can apply for special program grants through four different funds at the La Crosse Community Foundation. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By Christina M. Woods, The Wichita Eagle, Kan. Feb. 3--Questions about legislative proposals aimed at illegal immigrants kicked off a forum Saturday featuring members of the south-central Kansas legislative delegation. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By Darryl Enriquez, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Feb. 3--WAUKESHA -- The city's largest recent development -- the Shoppes at Fox River -- is within the federal clean-air standard for vehicular air pollution and likely will receive an air-quality permit from the state. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
A MAN has been accused of sneaking into a church to look at porn in a nun's computer. Police worker Thomas G. Findler, of Hamilton, New Jersey, had been using the church at night. (c) 2008 Sunday Mail; Glasgow (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
By Andrew D. Smith, The Dallas Morning News Feb. 3--Shae Sneed never watched much video online -- until the writers' strike left traditional television a wasteland of repeats. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
FOR those of us on the Internet bandwagon, there's such a constant, loopy din -- so much back-patting and self-congratulation, so many rosy forecasts, that even if there were dissenting voices, you wouldn't... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 8:00 am
Here is a summary of this week's posts on ReadWriteWeb. Reminder to PR people and startups: If you would like ReadWriteWeb to consider covering your product, you should email tips@readwriteweb.com... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 7:45 am
Want to play a MOG (multiplayer online game) passively while surfing the web all day? Then you’ll like PMOG, the first game developed by California and UK-based GameLayers. PMOG, which is currently... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 7:35 am
An anonymous reader writes "Starting on Thursday, January 31st, Time Warner subscribers in Texas starting experiencing connectivity issues to the iTunes store to the point where the service wasn't usable. General internet traffic issues haven't coincided with these problems, and many folks have reported that the store works as normal when they head to the nearest mega-bookstore and use their ISP instead. Time Warner has announced that they're going to begin trials of tiered pricing in one local Texas market, but I'll be darn sure to switch my provider if I hear the slightest hint of destination/content based tiers instead of bandwidth tiers."
NETANYA, Israel, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE: CEL) (the "Company") announced that further to its announcement of January 27,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 6:07 am
The Byelorussian Hatter writes "Wired, presumably bored to death of Cellphones, Zunes, MairBook Nacs and what-have-you, looks back at the elegant inventions of a less civilized age. 'The Turk was a chess player concealed in a table packed with cogs and gears, contrived to give the appearance of a mighty chess-playing machine. Atop the table, an articulated automaton would be seen to make the moves determined by the master within. One of the 18th and 19th century's many illustrious hoaxes, the Turk is perhaps the greatest gadget that wasn't.'"
Every morning, the cage doors swing open and 34 orangutan orphans climb into the outstretched arms of their human mothers. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 5:00 am
By Paul Greaves South West Water is winning its battle to stabilise high water bills, the company has said. At a meeting of the Consumer Council for Water, the company said its 25-year plan to improve service should ease the burden on customers. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Feb 2008 | 5:00 am
Rock legend Eric Clapton is to play at Harewood House, Leeds, on Sunday, June 29. The 18-time Grammy award-winning artist, whose career spans five decades, ranks as one of the most successful touring musicians of all time. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Feb 2008 | 5:00 am
By The Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - For all the millions the presidential campaigns have spent, it still comes down to this: Ask people what they think of Hillary Rodham Clinton and they say female and feminist. For Barack Obama, it's inexperience. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Feb 2008 | 5:00 am
By The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street capped a week of big gains with another sizable advance Friday after investors set aside anxiety over news that the economy lost jobs last month and focused on Microsoft Corp.'s bid for Internet company Yahoo Inc. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Feb 2008 | 5:00 am
Lochaber College's University of the Highlands & Islands connection is staging a ceilidh dance tonight. It is taking place in Fort William Shinty Clubhouse from 8pm until midnight. Music is by Andrew MacDonald & Friends, and admission is by pounds5 ticket. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Feb 2008 | 5:00 am
Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once its flowed on the internet.
This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports -- that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.
Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?
I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:
When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.
Link to "Better Than Free." Can't wait for the book.
Here's a snip from the latest post on Kevin Kelly 's Technium blog: Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 3:44 am
(TrendHunter.com) Scientists have created sperm from a female embryonic stem cell, leaving our male futures, for lack of a better word, lonely. The accomplishment come from the University of Newcastle... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 3:41 am
(TrendHunter.com) Scientists have created sperm from a female embryonic stem cell, leaving our male futures, for lack of a better word, lonely. The accomplishment come from the University of Newcastle... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 3:41 am
SAN FRANCISCO In moving to buy Yahoo, Microsoft may be firing the final shot of yesterdays war. That one was over Internet search advertising, a booming category in which both Microsoft and Yahoo were... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 3:36 am
prostoalex writes "The bionic arm project sponsored by DARPA is nearing completion, and might undergo clinical trials. 'The arm has motor control fine enough for test subjects to pluck chocolate-covered coffee beans one by one, pick up a power drill, unlock a door, and shake a hand. Six preconfigured grip settings make this possible, with names like chuck grip, key grip, and power grip. The different grips are shortcuts for the main operations humans perform daily.'"
Photographer Dave Bullock visited the Navy's SPAWAR site in San Diego (man, I used to drive by the building every day when I lived and worked in that town!). Wired News has published a gallery of pics with a brief account:
The Navy's MDARS-E is an armed robot that can track anything that moves. Told that I was the target, the unmanned vehicle trained its guns on me and ordered, "Stay where you are," in an intimidating robot voice. And yes, it was frightening.
Photographer Dave Bullock visited the Navy's SPAWAR site in San Diego (man, I used to drive by the building every day when I lived and worked in that town!). Wired News has published a gallery... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 2:43 am
p1234 writes "India and the US plan to cooperate in the exploration and use of outer space. India's first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-1, is scheduled to be launched later this year. This is the culmination of long-term planning on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from India's moon mission, Nair said a probe of Mars by India was very much on the agenda.'Our scientific community would like to see what new things we can find. It is not just for the sake of sending a probe to Mars. Yes, we have an agenda by 2012, by then we should have a Mars mission.'"
It's flesh-eating, drug resistant and highly contagious - USA300 is a deadly strain of MRSA that has been identified in San Francisco. But is this new superbug the nightmare public health hazard it's feared... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 12:10 am
An alternative biometric solution now claims to be more effective because it uses something inside the body: finger vein patterns Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 12:08 am
Biotechnology checks for bipolar depression and schizophrenia will soon be sold over the web, despite warnings from leading psychologists Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 3 Feb 2008 | 12:08 am
theodp writes "For 200 members of the Immanuel Bible Church and their friends, the annual Super Bowl party is over thanks to the NFL, which explained that airing NFL games at churches on large-screen TV sets violates the NFL copyright. Federal copyright law includes an exemption for sports bars, according to NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy, but churches are out of luck. Churchgoers who aren't averse to a little drinking-and-driving still have the opportunity to see the game together in public on a screen bigger than 55 inches."
People's dreams became more vivid after the September 11 2001 terrorist attack on New York, a study has found. The findings suggest virtually everyone who witnessed the Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 2 Feb 2008 | 10:47 pm
LarryBoy writes "Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) alpha 4 was released Friday and Ars Technica has a look at what's new in the latest builds of Hardy Heron. 'Although many of the significant architectural features like PulseAudio and GIO are still in transitional stages and aren't fully functional yet, Ubuntu 8.04 alpha 4 is still very impressive. I'm a big fan of D-Bus and I'm very pleased to see it being adopted throughout the entire desktop stack in core components.'"
Hugh Pickens writes "CBC News has up an article by Peace Corps volunteer Heidi Vogt, a women who served in the small village of Gono in Mali five years ago and remembers letters dictated and hand-carried by donkey cart or bicycle to the next town. Vogt recently returned to see the changes that cellphone communications have made in a village that still doesn't have electricity or decent drinking water. 'Gono's elders say the phones can keep them in touch with their village diaspora,' writes Vogt. 'Villagers depend on far-off relatives to send money in time of crisis — if someone is sick, if a house has caught fire, if there's been too little or too much rain and the harvest is poor. There's a new sense of connection to a larger world. In a village where most people can't read or write, they can now communicate directly with far-off relatives.'"
CAPTURING heat-trapping emissions from coal-fire power plants is on nearly every climate experts menu for a planet whose inhabitants all want a plugged-in lifestyle. So there was much enthusiasm five... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 2 Feb 2008 | 8:35 pm
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. THE Bonny Doon Garden Company, a downtown flower kiosk here, had signs posted all around it last week for Valentines Day, but the sales pitch wasnt just about romance. A bucket held... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 2 Feb 2008 | 8:35 pm
mrogers writes "A journalism student in Afghanistan has been sentenced to death by a Sharia court for downloading and sharing a report criticizing the treatment of women in some Islamic countries. The student was accused of blasphemy and tried without representation. According to Reporters Without Borders, sixty people are currently in jail worldwide for criticizing governments online, fifty of them in China, but this may be the first time someone has been sentenced to death for using the internet. Internet censorship is on the rise worldwide, according to The OpenNet Initiative."
Amazon begins selling storage, computing power and other behind-the-scenes data center services. Its new web services may keep the company strong if an economic downturn hits retailers.
Lawgeek (who's just quit his job to become a university prof) posts a roundup of students' how-to-cheat YouTube videos. The best one is definitely the guy who scans the label off a Coke bottle, replaces the nutritional information with cheaty stuff, prints it, and glues it around a bottle (presumes that your teacher lets you bring Coke into class -- I suppose this works best in schools where Coke has struck a deal requiring their products to be available at all times and in all places.)
When I was a kid, we were obsessed with figuring out methods for cheating -- far more so than with actual cheating itself. We used binary encoding to sneak in long lists of numbers, stitching them up the outer seams of our jeans or cuffs -- a stitch for 1, no stitch for 0 -- that we could read by fingertip. After we learned the resistor color-coding scheme, we started to shave pencils and then decorate them with colored bands that actually contained the same lists of numbers. We tried -- and failed -- to produce a decent tapping code for interactive cheating, though this is certainly possible. One exciting failure was a light-based semaphore wherein the conspirators would flash reflected discs of light up on the wall over the teacher's head using our watch-faces.
The kids in these videos are awfully sanguine about their teachers' YouTube cluelessness. I'm relatively certain that the adorable little English moppet pictured here has never actually succeeded in using his cheat, as it relies on your teachers allowing you to keep playing cards on your desk during the exam. This is surely a purely theoretical cheat.
Link
HOW often have you wasted time searching through page after page of e-mail messages, Web sites, notes, news feeds and YouTube videos on your computer, trying to find an important item? If the answer is... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 2 Feb 2008 | 6:36 pm
SAN FRANCISCO FOR decades, Silicon Valley has been the land of eternal optimism and high anxiety, traits that pitch into overdrive anytime a seismic business event washes across the corporate and entrepreneurial... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 2 Feb 2008 | 6:36 pm
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says he plans on pursuing the MoveOn vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton even though the group has endorsed her rival Barack Obama.
The Rogue Columnist blog has a thought-provoking entry on reasons that the newspaper industry is reeling and teetering -- it's not just "the Internet exists," but rather a set of things the industry did wrong, continues to do wrong, and should fix if the newspapers are to emerge from the net with still-beating hearts:
The biggest problem, of course, had nothing to do with the newsrooms. It was the collapse of an unsustainable business model. Simply put, the model involved sending miniskirted saleswomen out to sell ads at confiscatory rates to lecherous old car dealers and appliance-store owners. Protecting these profits, whether from national, local or classified ads, became the central focus of newspaper bosses. These areas were the most vulnerable to new competitors. But the condition of the industry by the 1990s – risk averse, promising unrealistic margins, losing its best talent, ignoring ideas outside its preconceived notions – left it unable to meet these threats.
The "What I Killed Today" blog keeps track of the sick and injured animals a veterinary worker euthanizes each day. The blogger says, "I work with a lot of injured wildlife. Also not wild animals that are just in a lot of pain. Sometimes I have to euthanize them. I decided to record each animal I euthanize here." This is depressing, of course, but moving, too, as with entries like:
a 13-year-old basset hound in kidney failure. she was so kind and licked my face as i carried her in from the car for the owner. he was a sweet old man with tears in his eyes. i fed her an entire bag of treats and she kept eating ferociously even after the injection. her chewing slowed down and then she was gone.
A group of students at an "Interactive Art Director" course at Hyper Island in Sweden have produced a pitch-perfect "educational film" about their field; the short's a great little homage to the golden age of industrial films.
Link
(Thanks, Fabio!)
