Technology
clock | October 14, 2008Or so says this BBC article:
A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulates centres in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The researchers say this might even help to counter-act the age-related physiological changes that cause the brain to slow down.
gregladen | October 13, 2008The SpamMimic web application is available for free use and ...will allow you to encode to your choice of generic SPAM, weakly-encrypted SPAM, fake PGP SPAM and fake Russian SPAM. ... If someone's looking for dirt on you, they'll always go for the encrypted PGP ( or GPG) emails you have (assuming they contain valuable information), but they'll never check the tons of garbage SPAM you have sitting in your email box. They'll breeze right past that, assuming it's the typical garbage that SPAM typically is, and your encoded messages will remain safe and undetected.
Details and link to this new…
gregladen | October 11, 2008A robotic suit named "HAL" (will they never learn???) will become available for 2,200 monthly rental in Japan. It is actually a brain-directed mobility assistance device.
The 22-pound (10-kilogram) battery-operated computer system is belted to the waist. It captures the brain signals and relays them to mechanical leg braces strapped to the thighs and knees, which then provide robotic assistance to people as they walk.
Wikipedia reduces its server complexity by moving all services to one Ubuntu distro. According to computerworld:
In a few months, Wikipedia will finish a major…
gregladen | October 8, 2008It is well known that the Space Industry fuels innovation in the wrist watch industry, Porn industry funds and fuels the internet, and the Gaming industry drives all important hardware and software innovations.
So let's look at one of these relationships more closely:
clock | October 8, 2008From SCONC:
Tuesday, Oct. 14
7 p.m.
Science Cafe Durham (aka Periodic Tables): The Invisibility Cloak
Steve Cummer of Duke's Pratt School of Engineering discusses acoustic materials that might hide a submarine or improve an auditorium's performance. Broad Street Café, 1116 Broad Street, Durham. www.ncmls.org/periodictables
pontiff | October 7, 2008A priceless new email feature for gmail: Mail Goggles:
Sometimes I send messages I shouldn't send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we're launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.
When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve…
clock | October 6, 2008Jennifer Ouelette and Julianne Dalcanton chat about space, physics and science education:
Science Saturday: Our Humongous Sky:
Julianne lays claim to a comet (14:18)
The scientific sensibility infiltrates television (05:03)
Woes and wonders of the Hubble Space Telescope (08:38)
How astronauts prepare to go into space (09:00)
Jennifer defends corpse museums (04:15)
The right way to teach science to kids (04:12)
gregladen | October 6, 2008The fastest, most efficient file manager in Linux is the set of GNU tools including ls, cp, and so on. But if you want a graphical user interface, you pay a cost in overhead. Considering how important file management is, and how easy it is to screw it up, a good GUI is probably worth the overhead. For Gnome users, Nautilus does the job well, with all the bells and whistles. KDE has its own version and I'm sure everybody who uses it loves it.
But, new fangled file managers also tend to get bloated with features over time. I've been thinking of creating a couple of my own file managers…
razib | October 5, 2008I was checking out videos on NBC's Saturday Night Live website, and I got this error:
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Db_Adapter_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[08004] [1040] Too many connections' in /var/www/common/classes/Zend/Db/Adapter/Pdo/Abstract.php:131 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/common/classes/Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php(271): Zend_Db_Adapter_Pdo_Abstract->_connect() #1 /var/www/common/classes/Nbcu/Asset.php(15): Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->getConnection() #2 /var/www/common/classes/Nbcu/Controller/Scet/Video.php(11): Nbcu_Asset->__construct() #3 /var/www/www.nbc.com/…
gregladen | October 5, 2008Hardware has gotten faster and more powerful, but the damn computers do not boot up any faster than they used to. Well, maybe a little, but not enough. Meanwhile, the primary system people use, Windows, has become increasingly bloated. As a result, it is very difficult, as it always has been, to flip on your laptop to do a quick check of email, the traffic for your commute, weather, etc. In fact, the easiest way to do this today is to fire up your iTouch or your cell phone!
Well, according to LinuxDevices.com, Dell has come up with a kick-butt solution to this problem. They are…
gregladen | October 4, 2008In a recent election in the District of Columbia, an extra 1,500 votes were added to the vote count that were never cast. Apparently, these votes were caused by static electricity. Or something.
New measures are being taken to make sure irregularities in September's D.C. Primary vote don't happen in November. Officials at the D.C. Board of Elections say they now know what caused 1,500 extra votes to appear in the count.
326 people voted at the Reeves Center precinct on primary election day in September. Their votes were captured on a computer cartridge, but the Board of Elections says…
revere | October 4, 2008I'm on record here as being very optimistic about the younger generation. Perhaps it's conceit. They remind me of us (sixties era and even before). Still, there is no shortage of older folks who are condemned to repeat history by bemonaing how the young 'uns have gone to the dogs. And the world is going to hell in a handbasket with them. Academics are just as prone to this nonsense as anyone and in 2006 the mainstream media, enablers of whatever conventional wisdom floats their way, were talking about how sociologists were revealing that people were increasingly isolated ("bowling alone")…
clock | October 3, 2008Can You Heal Me Now?
While many Americans view cell phones as indispensable to their social and professional lives, more and more Africans are finding cell phones to be indispensable to good health. In sub-Saharan villages, for example, mobile phones are playing a key role in health care delivery, says Dr. Fay Cobb Payton, an associate professor of information systems and technology in the NC State College of Management.
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"The pervasive use of mobile technology surprised me," she says, noting cellular towers have arrived in many parts of Africa before land lines. "The…