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The Internet

People Were More Likely To Google Themselves This Year 160

Ponca City, We Love You writes "More than twice as many Americans googled themselves in 2006 than five years previous — and many are googling their friends and romantic interests as well, according to a report released ecently by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The survey shows that the percentage of US adult Internet users who have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine has more than doubled in the past five years (pdf) from 22 percent in August, 2001 to 47 percent in December, 2006. Only 3 percent of internet self-googlers say they Google themselves regularly, 22 percent say 'every once in a while,' and three-quarters say they have googled themselves once or twice. The original report, 'Digital Footprints,' contains many more interesting observations (pdf)."
Software

First Look At Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 531

DaMan writes "ZDNet takes Firefox 3.0 beta 2 for a spin and draws some conclusions that should be sweet music to Mozilla's ears. "Beta 2 feels snappier and far more responsive than beta 1 (or Firefox 2.0 for that matter) and I can feel the difference on all the systems that I've tried it on — from a lowly Sempron system to my quad-core monsters. No matter what you want doing — opening a new tab, moving tabs, opening up Find, zooming in and out of the page, bookmarking — it all happens swiftly and smoothly. What surprises me about the Firefox 3.0 beta is how many memory leaks that Mozilla have fixed. Complaints of memory leaks with Firefox 2.0 were met with an attitude of "Leaks? What leaks?" Considering that there have been more than 300 leaks plugged, it's obvious that past versions leaked like sieves.""

Comment Re:Predicting? How about controlling? (Score 1) 114

As one of those researchers seeking that more complete understanding, I can tell you that we're finding out that things are a whole lot more complex than expected. We're just discovering the physical processes that force some of the vital parts of the hurricane vortex. Rainbands are still a topic of active research and things like concentric (secondary) eyewalls are just beginning to have the spotlights turned on them. (Interestingly, there was a lull in hurricane research from about 1985 to 1995 (coincident with the tail end of the quiet Atlantic period). The field has exploded in popularity in the last ten years, though, thanks to some terrific new data sources and technological advances (computing, instrumentation like radar, satellite).)

Truthfully, and this is my humble informed opinion... controllable weather modification is still several decades away, at best. And that sort of stuff will be individual thunderstorm modification. I don't think the technology to even produce a significant, predictable change to something as powerful as the hurricane vortex is here yet.

It's definitely interesting stuff to think about, though.

-Jellisky

Comment Re:New Scientist article (Score 1) 241

Read this in New Scientist over the weekend. Link here (but you need to be a subscriber)
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/mg1892541 1.100
Very interesting article, with several possible explanations.
If you're not a subscriber, you can read the full text as the last article on this page:

http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/friendly/signs _20060302_friendly.html

It is indeed very interesting.

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