maandag 23 augustus 2010
Ferg’s “Playge Rat” 12″ Figure (Onsale Info)
Ferg’s “Playge Rat” 12″ Figure (Onsale Info): "
Man, Ferg getting into the 12″ figure game is really going to hurt my wallet, this thing rules. The first version of his “Playge Rat” is 12″ tall, includes a ton of accessories, has a push-button action-tongue, was made in an edition of 150, and will be $140 shipped worldwide. It goes up today (Monday, August 23rd) at 12pm Central Time. Visit Playge.net.
"
Man, Ferg getting into the 12″ figure game is really going to hurt my wallet, this thing rules. The first version of his “Playge Rat” is 12″ tall, includes a ton of accessories, has a push-button action-tongue, was made in an edition of 150, and will be $140 shipped worldwide. It goes up today (Monday, August 23rd) at 12pm Central Time. Visit Playge.net.
"
donderdag 12 augustus 2010
Scientists Develop Brain-Microchip Bridge
Scientists Develop Brain-Microchip Bridge: "dreampod writes 'Canadian scientists have developed a microchip capable of monitoring the electrical and chemical communication channels between individual neurons. This is the first time scientists have been able to monitor the interaction between brain cells on such a precise and subtle level. In addition to providing the ability to see more easily the impact of drugs on various mental disorders during testing, this provides one of the first fundamental steps towards real mind-machine interface.'
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"
woensdag 11 augustus 2010
Japan takes vending machines to their logical, 47-inch touchscreen extreme
Japan takes vending machines to their logical, 47-inch touchscreen extreme: "
Time for us to admit another entrant into the hall of unnecessary, but cool inventions. Installed at Tokyo's Shinagawa Station yesterday, this latest spin on the vending machine dispenses with those silly windows unto what you're buying and furnishes its user with a 47-inch touch panel from which to make his (or her) selection. An embedded camera will recognize your gender and age, allowing the machine to recommend a beverage suitable to whatever stereotype is attached to your particular circumstances. And don't worry, it'll store your purchasing history too, so you can be freaked out by tailored ads every time you use it. 500 more of these WiMAX-equipped units are planned to be installed in and around Tokyo over the next two years, with operating company JR East expecting them to tally up 30 percent more sales than their analog brethren. More bling equals higher revenue? Sounds about right.
[Thanks, Kyle]
Nikkei, Impress | Email this | Comments"
Time for us to admit another entrant into the hall of unnecessary, but cool inventions. Installed at Tokyo's Shinagawa Station yesterday, this latest spin on the vending machine dispenses with those silly windows unto what you're buying and furnishes its user with a 47-inch touch panel from which to make his (or her) selection. An embedded camera will recognize your gender and age, allowing the machine to recommend a beverage suitable to whatever stereotype is attached to your particular circumstances. And don't worry, it'll store your purchasing history too, so you can be freaked out by tailored ads every time you use it. 500 more of these WiMAX-equipped units are planned to be installed in and around Tokyo over the next two years, with operating company JR East expecting them to tally up 30 percent more sales than their analog brethren. More bling equals higher revenue? Sounds about right.
[Thanks, Kyle]
Japan takes vending machines to their logical, 47-inch touchscreen extreme originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Nikkei, Impress | Email this | Comments"
dinsdag 10 augustus 2010
Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution"
Google CEO Schmidt: "People Aren't Ready for the Technology Revolution": "
Eric Schmidt spoke at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe today and dropped some serious rhetorical bombs. 'There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003,' Schmidt said, 'but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them.'
The Techonomy conference is a gathering of people from around the globe seeking to use technology to solve the world's big problems. Schmidt spoke there today and said that people need to get ready for major technology disruption, fast.
The bulk of what's contributing to this explosion of data, Schmidt says, is user generated content. From that content, far more prediction than we've seen today is possible and will be a factor in the future.
In addition to predicting personal behavior, diseases and other crises will become predictable as well, Schmidt said.
On the misuse of information for criminal or anti-social purposes:
'The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.'
How's that all sound to you? Realistic? Frightening? A combination of both?
The upside? 'In our lifetimes,' Schmidt says, 'we'll go from a small number of people having access to information, to 5 billion people having all the world's knowledge in their native language.' That is truly incredible.
But in a loss of privacy, in the hyper-proliferation of predictive technologies, is there a cost in terms of free will? Maybe not, but it certainly seems an appropriate subject of debate.
Discuss
"
Eric Schmidt spoke at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe today and dropped some serious rhetorical bombs. 'There was 5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003,' Schmidt said, 'but that much information is now created every 2 days, and the pace is increasing...People aren't ready for the technology revolution that's going to happen to them.' The Techonomy conference is a gathering of people from around the globe seeking to use technology to solve the world's big problems. Schmidt spoke there today and said that people need to get ready for major technology disruption, fast.
The bulk of what's contributing to this explosion of data, Schmidt says, is user generated content. From that content, far more prediction than we've seen today is possible and will be a factor in the future.
'If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence,' Schmidt said, 'we can predict where you are going to go.'
'If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence,' Schmidt said, 'we can predict where you are going to go.''Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos! People will find it's very useful to have devices that remember what you want to do, because you forgot...But society isn't ready for questions that will be raised as result of user-generated content.'
In addition to predicting personal behavior, diseases and other crises will become predictable as well, Schmidt said.
On the misuse of information for criminal or anti-social purposes:
'The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.'
How's that all sound to you? Realistic? Frightening? A combination of both?
The upside? 'In our lifetimes,' Schmidt says, 'we'll go from a small number of people having access to information, to 5 billion people having all the world's knowledge in their native language.' That is truly incredible.
But in a loss of privacy, in the hyper-proliferation of predictive technologies, is there a cost in terms of free will? Maybe not, but it certainly seems an appropriate subject of debate.
Discuss
"
y-cruncher - A Multi-Threaded Pi Program
y-cruncher - A Multi-Threaded Pi Program
to crunch Pi or Golden ratio or whatever, to an unlimited number of digits. If you have the time and PC power.
It worked on my PC:
Validation Version: 1.1
Program: y-cruncher - Gamma to the eXtReMe!!! ( www.numberworld.org )
Copyright 2008-2010 Alexander J. Yee ( a-yee@northwestern.edu )
User: None Specified - You can edit this in "Username.txt".
Processor(s): AMD Phenom(tm) 9500 Quad-Core Processor
Logical Cores: 4
Physical Memory: 3,218,882,560 bytes ( 3.00 GB )
CPU Frequency: 2,210,661,044 Hz
Program Version: 0.5.4 Build 9148 (fix 1) (x86 SSE3 - Windows)
Constant: Pi
Algorithm: Chudnovsky Formula
Decimal Digits: 50,000,000
Hexadecimal Digits: 41,524,102
Threading Mode: 4 threads
Computation Mode: Ram Only
Swap Disks: 0
Working Memory: 288 MB
Start Date: Tue Aug 10 15:08:04 2010
End Date: Tue Aug 10 15:09:16 2010
Computation Time: 61.509 seconds
Total Time: 71.733 seconds
CPU Utilization: 337.46 %
Multi-core Efficiency: 84.36 %
Last Digits:
4127897300 0153683630 8346732220 0943329365 1632962502 : 49,999,950
5130045796 0464561703 2424263071 4554183801 7945652654 : 50,000,000
Timer Sanity Check: Passed
Frequency Sanity Check: Passed
ECC Recovered Errors: 0
Checkpoint From: None
----
Checksum: 6ec406fb55c3126c1aba4e79319bdeb37d28aac9e478b4c110a5bf3bee36cd4d
to crunch Pi or Golden ratio or whatever, to an unlimited number of digits. If you have the time and PC power.
It worked on my PC:
Validation Version: 1.1
Program: y-cruncher - Gamma to the eXtReMe!!! ( www.numberworld.org )
Copyright 2008-2010 Alexander J. Yee ( a-yee@northwestern.edu )
User: None Specified - You can edit this in "Username.txt".
Processor(s): AMD Phenom(tm) 9500 Quad-Core Processor
Logical Cores: 4
Physical Memory: 3,218,882,560 bytes ( 3.00 GB )
CPU Frequency: 2,210,661,044 Hz
Program Version: 0.5.4 Build 9148 (fix 1) (x86 SSE3 - Windows)
Constant: Pi
Algorithm: Chudnovsky Formula
Decimal Digits: 50,000,000
Hexadecimal Digits: 41,524,102
Threading Mode: 4 threads
Computation Mode: Ram Only
Swap Disks: 0
Working Memory: 288 MB
Start Date: Tue Aug 10 15:08:04 2010
End Date: Tue Aug 10 15:09:16 2010
Computation Time: 61.509 seconds
Total Time: 71.733 seconds
CPU Utilization: 337.46 %
Multi-core Efficiency: 84.36 %
Last Digits:
4127897300 0153683630 8346732220 0943329365 1632962502 : 49,999,950
5130045796 0464561703 2424263071 4554183801 7945652654 : 50,000,000
Timer Sanity Check: Passed
Frequency Sanity Check: Passed
ECC Recovered Errors: 0
Checkpoint From: None
----
Checksum: 6ec406fb55c3126c1aba4e79319bdeb37d28aac9e478b4c110a5bf3bee36cd4d
China To Build Ginormous Buses That Cars Can Drive Under
China To Build Ginormous Buses That Cars Can Drive Under: "
This cunning project by Shenzhen Huashi Future Car-Parking Equipment actually makes sense.
The idea is to make use of the space between regular-size cars and bridges, thus saving construction costs as well as minimizing congestion impact by allowing cars to drive underneath these jumbo buses. Enjoy the Chinese demo video accompanying the article.
"
This cunning project by Shenzhen Huashi Future Car-Parking Equipment actually makes sense.
The idea is to make use of the space between regular-size cars and bridges, thus saving construction costs as well as minimizing congestion impact by allowing cars to drive underneath these jumbo buses. Enjoy the Chinese demo video accompanying the article.
"
'Priceless collection' in Russia was never registered so is therefore worthless and does not officially exist, say developers
'Priceless collection' in Russia was never registered so is therefore worthless and does not officially exist, say developers: "In 1926, Nikolai Vavilov founded the world's first modern seedbank, and amassed a collection which today contains over 90% unique varieties of plant, contained in no other collection in existence. For his opposition to Lysenkoism he died in prison, and several of his colleagues famously starved to death instead of eating their specimens during the Siege of Leningrad. Now the Pavlovsk seedbank facility has been seized by the Federal Agency for Public Estate Management, and pending a court ruling will be demolished - contents and all - to build a housing development. The collection cannot be moved in time because it is a working seedbank of living plants.
"
maandag 9 augustus 2010
rocket powered helicopter
One of the more, um, unusual designs to emerge in the ongoing pursuit of personal flying machines combines two awesome ideas we don’t see often enough: Rocket and helicopter.
As menacing as the combination might sound, the Dragonfly is rather tame. It’s super-simple to fly and uses two small but powerful hydrogen peroxide motors mounted at the tips of the rotor. The engines are small, just 8 inches long 1.5 pounds apiece. But don’t be fooled by their diminutive size. This baby will top out at 100 knots if you’re really pushing it.
“Each engine is equivalent to 102 horsepower,” says Ricardo Cavalcanti, the man marketing the latest iteration of an idea that’s been bouncing around since the 1950s. “So 204 horsepower to move a unit that is only 230 pounds.”
And the exhaust? Water vapor.
As menacing as the combination might sound, the Dragonfly is rather tame. It’s super-simple to fly and uses two small but powerful hydrogen peroxide motors mounted at the tips of the rotor. The engines are small, just 8 inches long 1.5 pounds apiece. But don’t be fooled by their diminutive size. This baby will top out at 100 knots if you’re really pushing it.
“Each engine is equivalent to 102 horsepower,” says Ricardo Cavalcanti, the man marketing the latest iteration of an idea that’s been bouncing around since the 1950s. “So 204 horsepower to move a unit that is only 230 pounds.”
And the exhaust? Water vapor.
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