Comment Re:There's only one upgrade needed for Google (Score 1) 252
You don't have to suffer from envy, mate. Install the Ubiquity add-on, is nothing short of amazing.
Comment Re:Google is redefining the Internet (Score 1) 378
Great points. I'd only add that the bit about "letting an advertisement company keep the index of content" is a complete red herring. Nobody is "letting" Google do anything. They just did it and built a good commercial model around it. Who would fill the gap if "we" stopped "letting" Google keep this index? Not Yahoo or Bing or Wolfram-Alpha or whathave you, they are all commercial. And nobody in their right mind would want some government of any country overseeing it either
Comment Re:Luxury! (Score 1) 405
Thats actually quite a nifty idea. I know I would have loved to study certain subjects in some sort of open -air amphitheater or maybe even the school gardens. Things like math probably do need some more seclusion because external distractions would make it even harder to concentrate... or maybe not. It would be worth a try.
I think the single biggest issue with education these days is that everybody wants to come up with a one size fits all approach when with a little statistics and time we could probably develop a handful of different approaches that fit more different styles (without falling on the extreme of trying to give everyone personalized education).
Submission + - Global Warming's Silver Lining for the Arctic Rim
Pickens writes: "Seed Magazine reports that according to Laurence C. Smith, an Arctic scientist who has consistently sounded alarms about the approach of global warming, within 40 years the Arctic rim may be transformed by climate change into a new economic powerhouse. As the Arctic ice recedes and ecosystems extend and minerals and fossil fuels are discovered and exploited, the Arctic will become a place of “great human activity, strategic value and economic importance" and sparsely populated Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and the northern United States, the northern rim countries — or NORCs, will become formidable economic powers and migration magnets. Predictions in Smith's new book "The Earth in 2050" include: New shipping lanes will open during the summer in the Arctic, allowing Europe to realize its 500-year-old dream of direct trade between the Atlantic and the Far East, and resulting in new access to and economic development in the north; NORCs will be among the few place on Earth where crop production will likely increase due to climate change and NORCs will become the envy of the world for their reserves of fresh water, which may be sold and transported to other regions; Finally oil resources in Canada will be second only to those in Saudi Arabia, and the country's population will swell by more than 30 percent, a growth rate rivaling India's and six times faster than China's. "In many ways, the stresses that will be very apparent in other parts of the world by 2050 — like coastal inundation, water scarcity, heat waves and violent cities — will be easing or unapparent in northern places," says Smith. "The cities that are rising in these NORC countries are amazingly globalized, livable and peaceful.""
Submission + - Giant Lab Replicates Category 3 Hurricanes
Pickens writes: "The WSJ reports that a new $40 million research center built by the Institute for Business & Home Safety in Richburg, SC features a massive test chamber as tall as a six-story building that can hold nine 2,300-square-foot homes on a turntable where they can be subjected to tornado-strength winds generated by 105 giant fans to simulate a Category 3 hurricane. The goal is to improve building codes and maintenance practices in disaster-prone regions even though each large hurricane simulation costs about $100,000. The new IBHS lab will be the first to replicate hurricanes with winds channeling water through homes and ripping off roofs, doors and windows. The new facility will give insurers the ability to carefully videotape what happens as powerful winds blow over structures instead of relying on wind data from universities or computer simulations. The center will also be used to test commercial buildings, agriculture structures, tractor-trailers, wind turbines and airplanes. "We will be the only lab on the planet that can do what we do," says Julie Rochman, chief executive of IBHS. "We will just put them on a turntable and test them under a very realistic replication of natural hazard conditions." However there are still some disasters beyond the capabilities of the lab. Tsunamis, for one. "You have to have an earthquake under the seabed to cause the tsunami itself," says Joseph King. "We're not able to do it and certainly don't know anyone who can.""
Comment Re:Give us a choice! Let us pick! (Score 2, Informative) 224
The first time Firefox is started up, it should display several popular search engines in a random order, and then let the user select the one to use as a default.
It's very much like the approach that Microsoft has been forced to use in Europe, to allow the user to select the default web browser (rather than just defaulting to IE).
Seriously Ballmer, wtf? If you go aaaaall the way up to the search bar and type on the little triangle arrow thingie next to the Google search box you get a drop down menu with several other engines. There, I have magnanimously given you what evil Mozilla corporation had wrongly denied you all this years. No, don't thank me, its a comunity service.
Comment Re:Endorsement (Score 3, Informative) 412
I think you're spot-on. And so is Murdoch, kinda. At least the part about this being just a new medium in which to deliver his product. I think the way he would like to price it isn't viable in the long run but that's just me being cheap. I get free news from reputable newspapers for free in my mobile and on the papers' websites. I even get the actual dead-tree version for free with my groceries purchase so any subscription of more than a couple of dollars for something intangible and pretty much ephimeral by its very nautre won't appeal. I'm guessing a very large and increasing group of people will be on the same boat.
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 319
But in the end, light is still faster, given the tracking ability possible with future tech it is pretty realistic to take it down. Or even just simply ramping up the power of the laser to do the job much quicker.
That sounded a bit like whishful thinking to me. Missile: real, here, now.
Future tech: left as an excercise for the reader
UMG To Price New CDs Under $10 362
marmoset writes "Perhaps a decade late, Universal Music Group has decided to try out sub-$10 CD pricing in the US. 'Beginning in the second quarter and continuing through most of the year, the company's Velocity program will test lower CD prices. Single CDs will have the suggested list prices of $10, $9, $8, $7 and $6.'" CD retailers are not convinced the price cuts will work out. For one thing it depends on whether other major labels follow suit, but the article notes that "executives at the other majors were nervous about the UMG move" and "privately, some appeared annoyed."
Comment Re:Titles to "own" (Score 1) 153
No, I'm saying like many marketing parasites he's misusing language to exaggerate and mislead. "Stunning" has specific meanings that both he and you are misusing.
From your link:
2. Beautiful, pretty.
That woman is stunning!
3. Amazing
That was amazing but stunning.
Both GP and I are choosing meaning 2: "That movie is stunning!". You disagree, which is fine, but then you try to dismiss dissenting opinions with value judgments, which isn't.
and no amount of shouting down and arm waving is going to make either of us correct.
Give it a rest. You're bullshitting and you know it.
That rebuttal does not really contribute anything to the discussion. You of course are within your right to believe we are wrong (after all, I believe you are). But in turning around and going "not true!" you seem to be saying we are wrong because you dislike the point rather than because you believe it to be inaccurate.
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it can have negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
OTHO I agree with your sig completely, for whatever little it seems to be worth
Sorry for the slow reply rate, my internet access has been patchy.
Comment Re:Never should have been there (Score 1) 343
I see the point you're trying to make, but the difference between censoring a mash up of Smurfs and StarWars on YouTube and blocking access to human rights organizations is like the difference between me saying your momma is fat versus raping her.
Agreed, but they didn't find out about that post-facto. It's been widely known for years, and they kinda are in the business of information. Its very simple, you comply with the law. It has never been and it will never be optional. What was optional was for them to go into China to begin with, and that is a choice they shouldn't have made. The conditions existed and were known.
Comment Re:Can of Worms? (Score 1) 124
What if the gene pool that YOU choose to eliminate might save mankind one day?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease >Since the gene is incompletely recessive, carriers can produce a few sickled red blood cells, not enough to cause symptoms, but enough to give resistance to malaria.
Better yet, what if HE has that same gene-polluting desease? People that love the US vs THEM talk always assume they are safely and soundly part of the "US" camp. It was easy when it was whiteys vs blackies, but in almost any other realm of discrimination differences aren't as clear-cut and you can just as easly fall in the same lot as the 'unclean'. If more people understood that, there would be less bigots of any type.
Comment Re:Kick it up a notch: spokeo.com (Score 1) 171
It found me twice - once in an apartment I lived in 5 years ago, for only one year. It said I lived there 5 years. The other address is my current address, it's got my length of residence right, but has my house valued at $1M. It's worth about 12% of that. It lists my wife on the current entry, but not the old apartment, despite the fact that we were married when we lived in the apartment. My wife's data is very wrong as well, differing from my own info in areas that should be common - home value (still inflated, but not as much) & length of residence.
What you all seem to be failing to grasp here is that, it seems to be improving over time. There are several comments stating that "I was there but it wasn't like so and so". And now they have the current data. And the more other venues start coming online and putting their freely accessible data out there, the more accurate it will become over time. There is one aggregator that collects this info, another that collects that one, and in a couple of years or more people like these will superaggreate them and get the full picture. Particularly when Govt agencies are supposed to be making a lot of the info available online.
Comment Re:Titles to "own" (Score 1) 153
and it was truly stunning
It doesn't look "stunning" or "fantastic", that's just marketing drivel. It looks a little better.
What you are saying, basically, is that your opinion is more valid/correct than GP's. Which, in my opinion, is false. More so since you admit it does look better, if even a little. I too would use the words "stunning" to describe more current 3D animation in BD as compared to DVD. But its a question of taste and appreciation, and no amount of shouting down and arm waving is going to make either of us correct.
Comment Re:Converting that article from English to Chinese (Score 1) 142
This doesn't actually mean the translation is any better: all it means is that the Chinese generated by Babelfish is more easily translated back to english, perhaps because it makes even less sense in Chinese. A translation function could be conceived which is a strict, reversible bijection, so that playing this translation game would give you your original English back, word-for-word. Doesn't guarantee that the intermediate Chinese step is in any way comprehensible.
I thought your post was really interesting so I tried it myself. The following is the Spanish translation, with the bits that are off or don't make sense in italics and the way I would translate it in bold. The bits in bold parenthesis are omissions from the original translation...
"...(el) Rápido ascenso de Google para a los escalones superiores de la traducción es un recordatorio de lo que puede suceder cuando Google libera su potencia de cálculo bruta vigor a contra/sobre problemas complejos. La red de centros de datos que se construyó para búsquedas en la Web puede ser ahora, anclados al suelo juntos conjuntamente, (el) equipo más grande del mundo. Google está utilizando la máquina para empujar los límites de la tecnología de traducción.
Feeding it back it's own translation:
"... Google's rapid rise to the upper echelons of the translation is a reminder of what can happen when Google releases its brute force computing power to complex problems.'s Network data center that was built to search the web may be now, when lashed together, the world's largest computer. Google is using the machine to push the limits of translation technology
Feeding it mine (removing the italics text and adding the bold)
"... Google's rapid rise to the upper echelons of the translation is a reminder of what can happen when Google released its raw computing power against complex problems. The network of data centers that was built to search the web can now, together, (be)the world's largest computer. Google is using the machine to push the limits of translation technology.
Either is way better than what comes out of Babblefish by a mile
