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Comment Re:remember that raise you didn't get? (Score 1) 469

by Gingernads (#40664737) Attached to: US "the Enemy" Says Dotcom Judge
"We live in a global economy, and I would hate to have to revert back to only a local economy." The corporations live in a global economy. The summary talks about criminalising those who work around region codes. Region codes are there specifically to thwart people trying to benefit from a global economy. You will pay the price the corporations want you to pay based on where you live, while they surf the world's lowest cost economies for their benefits. I appreciate this benefits their shareholders, who are usually the same people getting the shaft from region codes and the like. Wouldn't it be better if those same shareholders could see the bigger picture and benefits to everyone of not locking down local markets.

Comment Re: epitome of globalization (Score 1) 141

by Gingernads (#40057177) Attached to: Jaguar and Land Rover Angle For Production In China
Near where I live there is a new Mini that parks next to a Volvo, I just had to photograph the comparison: http://bit.ly/L7Yq7Q As a lover of the original Mini, it's shocking just how far they have strayed from the template whilst still having the cheek to call it a Mini. BMW missed a trick, they really should have re-launched the Maxi.
NASA

What To Do About an Asteroid That Has a 1 In 625 Chance of Hitting Us In 2040? 412

Posted by Soulskill from the ignore-it-until-2039-and-then-panic dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "The asteroid 2011 AG5 is 140 meters across: football-stadium-sized. Its orbit isn't nailed down well enough to say yet, but using what's currently known, there's a 1 in 625 chance it will impact the Earth in 2040. It's behind the Sun until September 2013, and more observations taken then will probably reduce the odds of impact to something close to 0. But does it make sense to wait until then to start investigating a mission to deflect it away our planet? Astronomers are debating this right now, and what they conclude may pave the way for how we deal with an asteroid threat in the future."
Books

Math Textbooks a Textbook Example of Bad Textbooks 446

Posted by samzenpus from the bottom-of-the-barrel dept.
theodp writes "Over at Salon, Annie Keeghan does an Upton Sinclair number on the math textbook industry. In recent years, Keeghan explains, math has become the subject du jour due to government initiatives and efforts to raise the rankings of lagging U.S. students. But with state and local budgets constrained, math textbook publishers competing for fewer available dollars are rushing their products to market before their competitors, resulting in product that in many instances is inherently, tragically flawed. Keeghan writes: 'There may be a reason you can't figure out some of those math problems in your son or daughter's math text and it might have nothing at all to do with you. That math homework you're trying to help your child muddle through might include problems with no possible solution. It could be that key information or steps are missing, that the problem involves a concept your child hasn't yet been introduced to, or that the math problem is structurally unsound for a host of other reasons.' The comments on Keeghan's article are also an eye-opener — here's a sample: 'Sales and marketing budgets are astronomical because the expenses pay off more than investments in product. Sadly, most teachers are not curriculum experts and are swayed by the surface pitches. Teachers make the decisions, but are not the users (students) nor are they spending their own money. As a result, products that make their lives easier and that come with free meals and gifts are the most successful.' So, can open source or competitions build better math textbooks?"
Chrome

Chrome Users Are Best With Numbers, IE Users Worst 203

Posted by Soulskill from the reopening-a-can-of-worms dept.
New submitter dr_blurb writes "After reading about last year's hoax report 'Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage' I realized I was in fact already running a real live experiment measuring number skills: a site were you can solve Calcudoku number puzzles. I analyzed two years' worth of data, consisting of over 1 million solved puzzles. This included puzzles solved 'against the clock,' of three different sizes. For each size, Chrome users were the fastest solvers, Firefox users came second, and IE users were the slowest. The number of abandoned puzzles (started but never finished) was also significantly higher for IE users. Analysis shows that the differences are statistically significant: in other words, they did not happen by chance. I put up more details and some graphs, and also wrote a paper about it (PDF)."
Media

Tapeheads and the Quiet Return of VHS 446

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the what-won't-hipsters-do-next dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Joshua Phillips writes that something was lost when videos went from magnetic tape and plastic, to plastic discs, and now to digital streams as browsing aisles is no more and the once-great video shops slowly board up their windows across the country. Future generations may know little of the days when buying a movie meant you owned it even if the Internet went down and when getting a movie meant you had to scour aisles of boxes in search of one whose cover art called back a story that echoed your interests. Josh Johnson, one of the filmmakers behind the upcoming documentary 'Rewind This!' hopes to tell the story of how and why home video came about, and how it changed our culture giving B movies and films that didn't make the silver screen their own chance to shine. 'Essentially, the rental market expanded, because of voracious consumer demand, into non-blockbuster, off-Hollywood video content which would never have had a theatrical life otherwise,' says Palmer. While researching the documentary Palmer found something interesting: there is a resurgence taking place of people going back to VHS because a massive number of films are 'trapped on VHS' with 30 and 40 percent of films released on VHS never to be seen again on any other format. 'Most of the true VHS fanatics are children of the 1980s,' says Palmer. 'Whether they are motivated by a sense of nostalgia or prefer the format for the grainy aesthetic qualities of magnetic tape or some other reason entirely unknown, each tapehead is unique like a snowflake.'"
Idle

Spider Silk Cape Goes On Display 96

Posted by samzenpus from the 1-million-thread-count dept.
fangmcgee writes "Before anyone asks, no, it's not bulletproof. But that doesn't mean that the glistening yellow cape—the world's largest garment made entirely from spider silk—isn't a massive feat of engineering to be marveled. Now on public display for the first time at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the textile gets its unearthly gleam from the undyed filaments of the golden orb spider, a species of arachnid commonly found in Madagascar."
The Military

Navy May Use Mine-Detecting Dolphins In the Straight of Hormuz 204

Posted by Soulskill from the more-effective-than-mutated-sea-bass dept.
New submitter cervesaebraciator writes "The Atlantic Wire reports that the Navy has a tested solution to the possible mining of the Strait of Hormuz. The Navy has 80 dolphins in San Diego Bay trained to use their own sonar to detect mines. When they find the mines, the dolphins drop an acoustic transponder nearby, so that human divers might return to defuse it. Retired Adm. Tim Keating cannot say, however, whether the dolphins will be used in the Straight." The Obama administration has reportedly warned Iran that closing the Strait would provoke an American response.
User Journal

Journal Journal: First thoughts: Star Wars - The Old Republic 6

Journal by RogueyWon
I wasn't going to play Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have umpteen other games to play, plus I'm in the process of actually trying to buy a house, sorting out some fairly substantial family issues and having problems with mad neighbours. A new MMO was the last thing I needed. And yet, here I am, with a level 29 Jedi Shadow (tank spec).
United Kingdom

Submission + - Brits Overcharging Gadgets, Wasting Electricity wo (itproportal.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Electricity worth £134million is wasted every year due to overcharging of gadgets such as laptop computers and mobile phones, a new study has revealed. The study shed light into the fact how 20 percent of householders in the UK leave their mobile phones plugged in even when the battery is full, as they do not wish to run out of battery-life while outdoors. Worse even, 10 percent of the participants in the study admitted that they were simply too lazy to pull the plug despite knowing that it costs them money. The study shows that nine out of every 10 owners keep their devices on permanent charge, unaware of the fact that how damaging it could eventually turn out to be. According to the study, the most overcharged devices are laptop computers, mobile phones as well as iPods.
Input Devices

MIT's New Camera Can Take 1 Trillion Frames Per Second 197

Posted by timothy from the need-a-really-big-sd-card dept.
First time accepted submitter probain writes "MIT has made a camera that can take trillion frames per second! With this high speed capability, they can actually see the movement of photons of light across a scene or object. This is just mind-boggling." ExtremeTech has a nice video of the system, too. What would you like to see slowed down to such a degree?
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Discouraging Playstation Vita Details (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Sony's new handheld gaming system, the Playstation Vita, launches in Japan in two weeks, and the latest report from Andriasang has some interesting details, including Sony's decision to go with proprietary memory cards. Sony says this is both for security reasons and to ensure a consistent experience for all users, but that 'doesn't explain why they're charging such enormous sums for these cards,' says blogger Peter Smith. 'The caveat here is that we haven't seen official pricing for the cards, but game retailer Gamestop lists them at $120 (!!) for a 32 GB card, $70 for a 16GB, $45 for 8 GB and $30 for a 4 GB.'"

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