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The Internet

Blekko Launches a Search Engine With Bias 133

Posted by CmdrTaco from the quite-the-name-you-got-there dept.
Pickens writes "Previous specialized search engines including Cuil, Hakia, Powerset, Clusty, and RedZ — each had a special trick, but they've all faded from memory, some after crashing in flames, some after making their founders rich. Now Rafe Needleman reports at Cnet that along comes Blekko, whose claim to fame is that you can tilt your search results in the direction you like by using a category of bias, like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' Categorization lists are applied by appending a 'slashtag.' The query, 'climate change /conservative' will give you politically slanted results, for example. 'Climate change /science' will restrict your results to hits from scientific Web sites. Blekko won't have a real, Web-wide impact unless its concept — that bias is good and more aggressive search filtering is needed — gets some traction, writes Needleman. But 'Blekko is a solid alternative to Google and Bing for anyone, and more importantly it's got great potential for researchers, librarians, journalists, or anyone who's willing to put some work into how their search engine functions in order to get better results.'"
Technology

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime 222

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-needs-me-a-break dept.
siliconbits writes with an excerpt from NY Times: "Technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas."
Image

Blender 2.49 Scripting 51

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
terrywallwork writes "A few days ago I received an email from Packt Publishing informing me of their new Blender 2.49 Scripting book. I was very interested in reading this book as there are very few Blender books that cover the scripting aspect of Blender 2.49 and Python. So I navigated my way to the packt publishing website and ordered myself the ebook version. They were having a special at the time and I ended up getting a full color ebook for less than £9. If nothing else the price is extremely impressive." Read on for the rest of terrywallwork's review.
Music

Beautifully Rendered Music Notation With HTML5 259

Posted by timothy from the pretty-printing-for-piano dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This is incredible. This guy has built a music notation engraver entirely in JavaScript, allowing for real-time music editing right in the browser. Here's a demo. The library has no external dependencies, and all the glyphs, scores, beams, ties, etc. are positioned and rendered entirely in JavaScript."
Businesses

Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180

Posted by Soulskill from the inspiring-internet-outrage-is-a-bad-business-model dept.
Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting: "EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."
Transportation

Submission + - Yemen Airbus crashes in ocean near Comoros

Submitted by pejyel
pejyel writes: PARIS (AFP) - An Airbus A330-200 operated by Yemen's state carrier Yemenia Air that took off from Paris has disappeared between Yemen and Comoros with 147 passengers on board, an airport source said.

The plane left Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday and traveled to Marseille and then Sanaa in Yemen before heading towards Moroni.

The aircraft — which was due to have landed in the capital of the Indian Ocean archipelago at 2300 GMT Monday — disappeared from radar screens, said the airport source.

A crisis task force was set up at Charles de Gaulle airport early Tuesday.

(Another Airbus A330 aircraft, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and France on June 1 with 228 people on board. There were no survivors.)

Other sources confirm the plane crashed.

Comment Re:Awesome stuff (Score 3, Informative) 107

by pejyel (#28497979) Attached to: The Video Bay, Now In Beta

I've uploaded tons of stuff to YouTube that was Ogg Theora. You're not looking hard enough.

You can upload Ogg Theora videos on Youtube, but they will be automatically transcoded to FLV and viewable only as such.

The OP obviously looks for a site that allows viewing of ogg theora videos, thus getting rid of Flash lameness.

Comment Re:The question is wrong. Let Iranians figure it o (Score 1, Informative) 541

by pejyel (#28442867) Attached to: Could We Beam Broadband Internet Into Iran?

How is Palestine a civil war? The last civil war in that area took place a couple months ago,

The Palestinian Territories, those parts in which Israel is not involved, are divided between the Hamas and the Fatah, who have been actively (and as violently as war gets) fighting each other for years already:

the administration of the territories has been contested by two rival entities, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian National Authority (with Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah in leadership) continuing to administer the West Bank. Both groups claim legitimacy over leadership of the Palestinian territories and neither recognizes the legitimacy of the other.

.

The world is not black and white. And with Google and Wikipedia at your fingers' reach, you literally have no excuse. But then your sig tells enough about you.
Software

Submission + - Answer to Adobe's Linux bash posted (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There have been past claims by Adobe and others that development on Linux is a jungle, particularly in regards to audio. However today, the author of the popular "The Sorry State of Sound in Linux" has posted a follow up showing Adobe's claims to be FUD, as well as being a good update on where OSS and ALSA are holding today, and why PulseAudio isn't a good idea.
Education

Submission + - Using math to cure jet lag (sciencecodex.com) 1

Submitted by
TaeKwonDood
TaeKwonDood writes: "Travel across time zones causes our internal time clocks to be out of sync with environmental cues. A group of researchers say they can cut jet lag in half, using nothing but a computer program that will compute the best jet lag strateg for you."

Comment Re:Disable IE? (Score 1) 474

by pejyel (#27073025) Attached to: Windows 7 Lets You Uninstall IE8

Seriously? That's absolute crap. Me installing firefox does NOT mean I want IE disabled. The EU needs to get its head out of its a**. If I want IE disabled, I'll disable it.

Where did you read that installing Firefox would automatically disable IE? Moreover, how would you disable IE if there is no way to do it?

The new feature just provides you a way to do it, without forcing you in any way to do anything. Maybe you should get your head out of your ass before posting such stupid comments (and how you got modded +5 is just beyond me).

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