kingston writes ""As I say to my students 'if you had to have brain surgery would you prefer someone who has been through medical school, trained and researched in the field, or the student next to you who has read Wikipedia'?" So says Deakin University associate professor of information systems, Sharman Lichtenstein, who believes Wikipedia, where anyone can edit a page entry, is fostering a climate of blind trust among people seeking information. Professor Lichtenstein says the reliance by students on Wikipedia for finding information, and acceptance of the practice by teachers and academics, was "crowding out" valuable knowledge and creating a generation unable to source "credible expert" views even if desired. "People are unwittingly trusting the information they find on Wikipedia, yet experience has shown it can be wrong, incomplete, biased, or misleading," she said. "Parents and teachers think it is [okay], but it is a light-weight model of knowledge and people don't know about the underlying model of how it operates.""
Cognitive Dissident writes "Intellectual property thuggery is not restricted to the IT and entertainment industries. The May 2008 edition of Vanity Fair carries a major feature article on the mafiaa-like tactics of Monsanto in its pursuit of total domination of various facets of agribusiness. First in GM seeds with its 'Roundup Ready' crops designed to sell more of its Roundup herbicide, and more recently in milk production with rBGH designed to squeeze more milk out of individual cows, Monsanto has been resorting to increasingly over-the-top tactics to prevent what it sees as infringement or misrepresentation of its biotechnology. As with other forms of IP tyranny, the point is not really to help the public but to consolidate corporate power. Quotes: 'Some compare Monsanto's hard-line approach to Microsoft's zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto's seeds can't even do that.' and '"I don't know of a company that chooses to sue its own customer base," says Joseph Mendelson, of the Center for Food Safety. "It's a very bizarre business strategy." But it's one that Monsanto manages to get away with, because increasingly it's the dominant vendor in town.' Sound familiar?"
UK bomb disposal experts detonated a huge, 1,500 pound WWII German mine at Bridgwater Bay, Somerset yesterday. The explosion was awesomely awesome, as can be seen here. Remember, Hong Kong Disneyland... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:44 am
UK bomb disposal experts detonated a huge, 1,500 pound WWII German mine at Bridgwater Bay, Somerset yesterday. The explosion was awesomely awesome, as can be seen here.
China is to implement a plan to improve air quality in Beijing for this summer's Olympic Games which will see factories shut down and construction halted, the Beijing environmental bureau... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:39 am
One of our portfolio companies, Covestor, is looking for a key senior level hire, responsible for all product management and development of the Covestor.com service. Lead Product Manager -... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:34 am
The Dow Chemical Company announces the selection of ChemPoint.com as their exclusive United States distributor for Dowtherm™ synthetic organic thermal fluids and Syltherm1 thermal fluids. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Text of report by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency) [By reporters Yang Jinzhi and Liu Dan: "Zhang Rongkun and Chen Liangyu of the Shanghai Social Security Fund Case Sentenced to Punishment One the Another"] Shanghai, 13 Apr (Xinhua) - Last week, the judgments on Zhang Rongkun and Chen Liangyu, main parties involved in the Shanghai Social Security Fund case, were pronounced one after the other at a court of the first instance. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Elizabeth Weise SAN FRANCISCO -- Six activists, including a Siberian who fought to protect the region's largest freshwater lake and a pop star from Mozambique whose songs urge villagers to wash their hands, will be awarded this year's Goldman Environmental prizes today. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Apr. 14--Tucson-based Materials and Electrochemical Research Corp. was awarded a $70,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of a program supporting research that helps protect the environment. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Erin Castaneda, Journal-World, Lawrence, Kan. Apr. 14--Small changes can make a big difference when it comes to protecting the environment. That's what the city of Lawrence wants people to learn during the eighth annual Earth Day Celebration on Saturday. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Text of report by staff reporter headlined "Factions in Kurram Agency agree to cease-fire" published by Pakistani newspaper Dawn website on 14 April Islamabad, 13 April: The government on Sunday [13 April] expressed hope that the law and order situation would improve in the Kurram Agency by Monday after tribal elders of the two rival sects agreed to cease-fire and hand over their positions and bunkers to the Frontier Constabulary. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Steve Vantreese, The Paducah Sun, Ky. Apr. 14--Anyone familiar with Land Between the Lakes plans to shape thousands of acres of the public area into savannah-like oak and grasslands habitat recognizes that it is a really big project. Good or bad? That depends on who you ask. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Steve Vantreese, The Paducah Sun, Ky. Apr. 14--An extra soggy late winter and early spring has been a minor inconvenience toward developments in the Land Between the Lakes' Oak-Grasslands Project, the biggest habitat manipulation in the history of the huge public area. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C. Apr. 14--In a state not exactly swamped by good news lately, there's been an excellent development along the low-lying land on the Alligator River in far northeastern North Carolina. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
IBM has launched a water-cooled supercomputer that it claims can knock 40% off power consumption. The Power 575's design incorporates water-chilled copper plates above each of its Power6 microprocessors to remove heat from the electronics. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Systems software provider Phoenix has agreed to acquire the computer diagnostics and PC update technology company Touchstone Software for $18m to strengthen its web-based service delivery capabilities. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Ventura County Star, Calif. Apr. 14--Two men in their 20s stole a man's laptop computer as he worked on it outside the Vons grocery store at 5688 Telephone Road in Ventura Saturday afternoon, police said. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Avocent Corporation (NASDAQ: AVCT), today announced digital KVM and USB matrix switching for the Emerge(R) ECMS4000 extender and Emerge DM2000 desktop manager products. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Text of report by independent German news magazine Der Spiegel website on 14 April [Unattributed report: "Protectors of the Constitution Want To Monitor Internet Hubs"] In the future, the protectors of the constitution authorities will not only put under surveillance individual computer hard drives, but they will also monitor Internet hubs. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
BEIJING, April 14 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- Baidu.com, Inc. , the leading Chinese language Internet search provider, today announced that it will report its financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2008, after the U.S. market closes on April 24, 2008. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Tony Batt By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - Regulations to enforce an Internet gambling ban would be blocked under a bill introduced this week by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Winchester Center offers food, music The food and music of Italy will be paired Sunday at the Winchester Cultural Center, 3130 S. McLeod Drive. Chef Timothy Welc will provide a cooking demonstration beginning at noon. Trio Bella Nota will perform at 2 p.m. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Electron Interactive, Inc. is announcing today that it has completed the acquisition of the Internet domain name Storage.com in the first of a series of major domains acquisitions the Internet firm is planning to make. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
By Ventura County Star, Calif. Apr. 14--The United Methodist Men of the Camarillo United Methodist Church plans its semiannual yard sale May 10. The sale, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., is free to the public. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Apr 2008 | 11:00 am
Nobody has time to listen to all the music that is released, so there are publications that filter the flood before it reaches the mainstream. At one time, New Musical Express and Rolling Stone magazine... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 10:43 am
For my Guardian column this week, I put a price on my blog: * * * Some people think I’m nuts for blogging when I could be doing real work (as if writing newspaper columns were the only real work)... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 10:38 am
One problem I’ve had with much discussion about the future of news lately is that it’s too press-centric. It focuses on the press as if it were at the center of the world, as if it owned news,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 10:37 am
One of several articles featured in a special report in Economist entitled Our nomadic future". Homo mobilis Sherry Turkle, the psychologist at MIT who studies the nexus between people and gadgets,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 10:23 am
There is an upside to the credit crunch: Less mail... Mortgage and home equity direct mail down (Source) Credit card direct mail declines continue into 2008 (Source) And this is with a mere recession... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 10:12 am
By Andrew Liszewski When a friend comes up and subtly offers you a mint or piece of gum, it's unfortunately too late to avoid the embarrassment of bad breath. But with this Etiquette Checker you'll never... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 10:01 am
At an event last week, Disney head Robert Iger talked about technology providing new ways to tell stories. I came home and found a link from Springwise to this intriguing project at Penguin, the publishers... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 9:56 am
Adobe AIR is a fantastic piece of software that allows you to run web applications on your desktop. You need to down the Adobe AIR client which runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Then you need the person... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 9:47 am
By Andrew Liszewski I'm probably the last person on Earth you'd want to consult when it comes to the science of hugs, but apparently your heart will actually sync itself to the heartbeat of someone you've... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 9:42 am
TOKYO (Reuters) - Carlyle-controlled Japanese handy-phone firm Willcom Inc rolled out the world's first phones featuring Intel Corp's Centrino Atom microprocessors, as it fights for new... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 9:38 am
jeronimo989 writes "A customer of mine has a small shop and asked me to look for an electronic cash register. One of the requirements is to retrieve the sales data from the cash register in some accessible format so he can import it in the software of his choice (which happens to be OpenOffice), either by downloading the data on a Flash card, connecting a laptop via USB, or even via a direct modem connection. As far as the cash register itself is concerned, he doesn't need anything too fancy; any 'entry level' machine for small businesses is probably OK (as long as it keeps an electronic journal, of course). Which options do we have? Are there cash register manufacturers out there that allow accessing the sales data directly in an open format? Does anyone here have experience with setting up a link between a cash register and PC, preferably using free/open source solutions?"
LANHAM, Md., April 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Integral Systems, Inc., (Nasdaq: ISYS) today announced that it will release its results for the second quarter of fiscal... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:50 am
LAS VEGAS, April 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Limelight Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: LLNW) is showcasing content delivery solutions at the National Association of Broadcasters Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:40 am
SAN MATEO, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Underscoring its position as the leading online destination for quality international and independent entertainment, Jaman.com Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:35 am
LAS VEGAS, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Conference today, Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), the world's leading programmable Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:32 am
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Extreme Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR) today announced Widget Central, a new online resource that facilitates the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:31 am
LAS VEGAS, April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- At the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Conference today, Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), the world's leading programmable Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:31 am
CHANGZHOU, China, April 14 /Xinhua-PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) ("Trina Solar" or the "Company"), a leading integrated ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:30 am
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), the world's leading provider of programmable solutions, today announced the availability of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:30 am
The last two years have seen an exponential increase in the rate of gene discovery, thanks in large part to the advancements in so-called genotyping chip technology. These small glass or silicon platforms... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 7:00 am
Philip M. Parker has written some sophisticated software for auto-assembling books about various technical subjects, and has "written" more than 200,000 of them. He claims he's going to do romance novels next:
Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).
But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author. Mr. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one. ..
And he is laying the groundwork for romance novels generated by new algorithms. “I’ve already set it up,” he said. “There are only so many body parts.”
Perusing a work like the outlook for bathmat sales in India, a reader would be hard pressed to find an actual sentence that was “written” by the computer. If you were to open a book, you would find a title page, a detailed table of contents, and many, many pages of graphics with introductory boilerplate that is adjusted for the content and genre.
1sockchuck writes "Undersea telecom cable operator Reliance Globalcom was able to use satellite images to identify two ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place, damaging submarine cables and knocking Middle East nations offline in early February. The company used satellite images to study the movements of the two ships, and shared the information with officials in Dubai, who impounded the two vessels. The NANOG list has a discussion of where Reliance might have obtained satellite images to provide that level of detail. Google News links more coverage of the developments."
Neil Berkett, the new CEO of Virgin Media (my ISP at home in London, along with BT) has announced that he considers Net Neutrality to be "a load of bollocks" and he's promised to put any website or service that won't pay Virgin a premium to reach its customers into the "Internet bus lane."
As a Virgin customer, I'm not paying to see those services that bribe Virgin to reach me, I'm paying to reach the entire web, whichever bits I think are useful, as quickly as Virgin can deliver them.
Theoretically, I'm locked into a Virgin plan for another six months, but as far as I'm concerned, they've just announced that they're violating the agreement by announcing that the services I can reach will be systematically slowed down unless they pay Virgin extra. That means that we're now null and void. I'll be calling to cancel today.
Who's with me?
In an interview with the Royal Television Society’s Television magazine, far from covering up their intentions, Virgin Media’s new incoming CEO Neil Berkett - who joined the Virgin Media Board just a few days ago - has launched an attack on the ideas and principles behind net neutrality.
“This net neutrality thing is a load of bollocks,” he said, adding that Virgin is already in the process of doing deals to speed up the traffic of certain media providers.
Shepard Fairey (OBEY) has designed a pair of covers for the new Penguin editions of Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. They're absolute knockouts, and just in time: these books need to be read today.
Link
(via MeFi)
Etsy seller Edmdesigns sells a wide variety of steampunky and clockpunky junque, from cufflinks to tie-tacks to rings to pendants, at reasonable prices
Link
A new digital book-browsing tool is to make the full works of about 500 authors, including Sebastian Faulks, available to read and search online. By Jemima Kiss Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 5:52 am
Wave the baton too slowly and the orchestra arrayed on the screen plays the "William Tell Overture" at a crawl. Wave it too fast and the music gallops away. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 4:07 am
Numerous readers noted the proposal by the Australian government for legislation to allow employers to snoop on employees' email and IM conversations. This is being proposed in the name of protecting the infrastructure from terrorism. The attorney-general cited the Estonian cyber-attacks as a reason why such employer monitoring is necessary in Australia — never mind that the attacks were perpetrated by a lone 20-year-old and not by a foreign government or terrorist. The law permitting intelligence agencies to snoop on citizens without permission expires this June, leading to the government's urgency to extend and expand it. The chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia said, "These new powers will facilitate fishing expeditions into employees' emails and computer use rather than being used to protect critical infrastructure. I'm talking about corporate eavesdropping and witch-hunts... If an employer wanted to [sack] someone, they could use these powers."
Salesforce.com Inc.'s online software service is becoming a showcase for Google Inc.'s e-mail and other widely used applications, deepening a relationship that has spurred speculation Google eventually... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 4:04 am
John A. Wheeler, a visionary physicist and teacher who helped invent the theory of nuclear fission, gave black holes their name and argued about the nature of reality with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 3:36 am
siddster notes an account up at Wired of research indicating that brain scanners can see your decisions before you make them. "In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them... Caveats remain, holding open the door for free will... The experiment may not reflect the mental dynamics of other, more complicated decisions... Also, the predictions were not completely accurate. Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision."
Now that so many Lab readers have brilliantly mastered the Monty Hall Problem discussed in my Findings column, I've got several new problems for you. (If you're not yet clear on the original one, you can... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 1:36 am
The Mr. Smith probability problem still seems to be confusing some Lab readers despite the explanation yesterday from Craig Fox. So let me offer a couple of variations of it, which were provided by Richard... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 1:36 am
The three problems posted yesterday involving Mr. Smith and Monty Hall confused some readers, but certainly not all. Mike Scott was the first to get all three answers correct; Harris gave a nicely thorough... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 14 Apr 2008 | 1:36 am
jamax writes "Russia plans to build an orbital plant for the production of spacecraft (link to sketchy Google translation of the Russian original) that are too big to build planetside, or are just too bulky to fire into orbit once built. Presumably these are the ships we would fly to the Moon and Mars. Plans seem to be rather sparse at the moment, with the tentative construction date set for 2020, after the ISS is scheduled for decommissioning."
Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is "A Load of Bollocks". Anyone here been shaken down by their Internet Service Provider? "The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality 'a load of bollocks' and claiming he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others... If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"
DigitAl56K writes "The Washington Post reports that 'The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon' and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has said that 'Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement.' Initially, it appears that the administration plans to leverage conventional satellites for domestic surveillance purposes. Congress last October delayed launch of the DHS office that would coordinate law-enforcement requests for satellite and other technical data, and demanded answers to legal questions about the program. The administration supplied answers that some Congress members characterized as inadequate and appears determined to go ahead anyway."
An anonymous reader writes "African Americans spend more money and time playing video games than whites, yet only 2% of game developers are black. This past week, MTV's Multiplayer blog interviewed five black game industry professionals for their perspective on race in the industry. Intelligent Gamer summarizes and highlights portions of this lengthy series of interviews."
Fans of Windows XP are reacting to Microsoft's plan to retire the six-year-old operating system by papering the internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions. They trumpet Windows XP's superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch received lukewarm reviews.
Governors and leading experts on global warming will attend a conference this week at Yale University to review state programs and develop a strategy to combat global climate change.
A 14-year-old boy comes up with his own science-based fantasy card combat game, Elementeo, which is is based on a 121-card deck of chemical elements, compounds and catalysts. Each card has an explanation of the element or compound's uses and chemical properties.
Mark Rayner's hosting a photoshopping contest wherein contestants are invited to shop science fiction products and services into vintage ads. A magical combination.
Link
A promising new cancer treatment that appears to be 100 percent effective for many cancers — with no toxic side effects — is getting closer to human trials.
Scientists using brain scanners prove a long-standing theory that your brain makes decisions long before you are aware of them -- as much as seven seconds before.
