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Friday, July 29, 2011

Migrate Time Machine backup to new Mac in Lion

Migrate Time Machine backup to new Mac in Lion: One of the unsung features of Lion is the ability to migrate a Time Machine backup from an old Mac to a new one.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Marvel Wins Copyrights Over Kirby Heirs

Marvel Wins Copyrights Over Kirby Heirs: In a summary judgment, New York federal judge Colleen McMahon denied that any copyrights to the Marvel Universe of characters every belonged to Jack Kirby as the work he did in the 1960s was firmly work for hire.

The Big Crunch: Physicists Make Time End

The Big Crunch: Physicists Make Time End: The same researchers who used exotic substances called metamaterials to make a benchtop Big Bang have mimicked the end of time, also known as the Big Crunch.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Nebula looks to democratize cloud computing with open source hardware

Nebula looks to democratize cloud computing with open source hardware: "As people face this industrial revolution of big data, they can't use Oracle anymore," said Kemp in an interview at OSCON. "It doesn't scale. We want to be the platform that enables that. We really believe that, if all of this stuff will achieve its potential, in being open, it will reshape the core of computing. We really think there's this new paradigm of computing where people are building on top of infrastructure services instead of infrastructure."

Celebrating 30 years of MS-DOS

Celebrating 30 years of MS-DOS: On this day in 1981, Microsoft bought what was to become MS-DOS from Seattle Computer Products. What are your favorite MS-DOS memories?

IBM celebrates 50 years with the Selectric typewriter

IBM celebrates 50 years with the Selectric typewriter: The Selectric is still considered one of the most dramatic improvements in the typewriter space, thanks to its "golf ball" head.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

The omnipotence of Al Qaeda and meaninglessness of "Terrorism" - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: Al Qaeda is always to blame, even when it isn't, even when it's allegedly the work of a Nordic, Muslim-hating, right-wing European nationalist.  Of course, before Al Qaeda, nobody ever thought to detonate bombs in government buildings or go on indiscriminate, politically motivated shooting rampages.  The NYT speculates that amonium nitrate fertilizer may have been used to make the bomb because the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, owned a farming-related business and thus could have access to that material; of course nobody would have ever thought of using that substance to make a massive bomb had it not been for Al Qaeda.  So all this proves once again what a menacing threat radical Islam is.

Meanwhile, in the world of reality, of 294 Terrorist attacks attempted or executed on European soil in 2009 as counted by the EU, a grand total of one -- 1 out of 294 -- was perpetrated by "Islamists."

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

"Captain America": A patriotic surprise from the comic-book past

"Captain America": A patriotic surprise from the comic-book past:

Maybe we've just reached the midpoint of a sweltering summer, when Popsicles start to seem like the apex of the culinary arts. Maybe I've been beaten down to bargain-basement expectations by a season of relentless superhero-action spectacles. Maybe I passed out after the air conditioning failed during the New York press screening of "Captain America: The First Avenger," and what I'm remembering is just the collective hallucination of a bunch of movie geeks locked in a 90-degree sweat box on 42nd Street. Be that as it may, "Captain America" is exactly what the third week of July needed: a curiously fun, surprisingly imaginative and unashamedly old-fashioned yarn of skulduggery and adventure.


How to install Lion over Leopard

How to install Lion over Leopard: Installing Lion officially requires that you have Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) installed, but there are situations in which you may have a valid Snow Leopard license but want to go directly from Leopard (OS X 10.5) to Lion. It turns out there are several ways to do so.

Lenovo Outs The ThinkPad Tablet, An Android Tablet You Might Actually Want | TechCrunch

Lenovo Outs The ThinkPad Tablet, An Android Tablet You Might Actually Want | TechCrunch: The ThinkPad tablet is like a legitimate dream tablet. It has nearly everything a person would want in a Honeycomb tab: an affordable digitizer pen, 2GB of cloud storage, a ton of built-in 3rd party apps, and a 1280×800, 16:10 IPS screen covered with Gorilla Glass. There’s an SD card slot, dual cameras, mini HDMI out, USB 2.0 host, micro USB port, and a SIM card slot. Lenovo states the Tegra 2-powered tab can run with WiFi enabled for 8 hours.

The ThinkPad Tablet is built for enterprise and so security and encryption are throughout the whole system including SD card encryption, lost device disablement and anti-theft software. The tablet ships with McAfee and features layered data security. All this amounts to a tablet with proper data protection whether the owner needs it or not.

At Grandpa Twain's knee by Stefan Beck - The New Criterion

At Grandpa Twain's knee by Stefan Beck - The New Criterion: Keillor is a realist about it: “Samuel L. Clemens was a cheerful promoter of himself, and . . . the old man liked to dress up as Mark Twain in a fresh white suit and take a Sunday morning stroll up Fifth Avenue.” The Autobiography, which also appears at first glance to be the work of an old man shoring himself up against age and unhappiness, is, Keillor says, a “fraud on the order of the Duke and the Dauphin in their Shakespearean romp, and bravo to Samuel Clemens, still able to catch the public’s attention a century after he expired.” To the contrary, bravo to Keillor. “Here is a powerful argument for writers’ burning their papers,” he quips. The inferior humorist stands revealed.

This approaches an ideal way to think about Twain’s account of himself, but I must confess a twinge of confusion. Last I checked, “narcissism” refers to an exaggerated or unearned sense of achievement. Yet here we have Twain the greatest comedian of all time; Twain who created a “distinct American sense of self”; Twain who, Trombley tells us, beat the average American male life expectancy by twenty-seven years; Twain who “managed to cross the Atlantic 29 times, completed an around-the-world lecture tour at age fifty-nine, [wrote] more than 50,000 letters, scores of short stories, some 3,000 newspaper and magazine articles and more than thirty books.” To paraphrase the clergyman’s son in one of Twain’s anecdotes, “Please, won’t you, for Christ’s sake, let the man strut?”

Apple unveils first Thunderbolt display for $999 | The Digital Home - CNET News

Apple unveils first Thunderbolt display for $999 | The Digital Home - CNET News: "Thunderbolt I/O technology gives you two channels on the same connector with 10 Gbps of throughput in both directions," Apple writes on its Thunderbolt page. "That makes Thunderbolt ultrafast and ultraflexible. You can move data to and from peripherals up to 20 times faster than with USB 2.0 and up to 12 times faster than with FireWire 800. You also have more than enough bandwidth to daisy-chain multiple high-speed devices without using a hub or switch."

July 20, 1969: One Small Step ... One Giant Leap ...

July 20, 1969: One Small Step ... One Giant Leap ...: NASA's Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to set foot on the lunar surface, realizing humanity's age-old dream.

Apple releases Safari 5.1 for Snow Leopard, Windows

Apple releases Safari 5.1 for Snow Leopard, Windows: Safari 5.1 ships as part of Lion, but it's also now available as a free download for those on Snow Leopard and Windows.

OS X Lion: The Complete Macworld Review

OS X Lion: The Complete Macworld Review: Combine the influx of new Mac users with Apple's development of iOS, and you get Lion, the most significant upgrade to OS X since its debut more than ten years ago. Can one OS please both Mac vets and novices? Jason Snell has the review.

Apple updates MacBook Air, Mac Mini

Apple updates MacBook Air, Mac Mini: Hand-in-hand with the release of the OSX Lion operating system update, Apple has some new hardware components as well.

Mac OS X Lion pounces

Mac OS X Lion pounces: Apple's upgrade to its OS X operating system, with more than 250 new features, is available in the Mac App Store for $29.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Lion Launches Tomorrow, July 20, On Mac App Store

Lion Launches Tomorrow, July 20, On Mac App Store: In his introductory statement during the Q3 earnings call today, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer disclosed that OS X Lion will be released on the Mac App Store tomorrow, July 20.

Apple Reports Record-Breaking Q3 2011: $7.31 Billion Profit on $28.57 Billion in Revenue

Apple Reports Record-Breaking Q3 2011: $7.31 Billion Profit on $28.57 Billion in Revenue: "We're thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

‘Supergods,’ by Grant Morrison - Review - NYTimes.com

‘Supergods,’ by Grant Morrison - Review - NYTimes.com: If anyone should be up to the task of rediscovering the magical essence that has inspired nearly 75 years’ worth of superhero storytelling, it is Grant Morrison, a Scottish comics writer and author of “Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God From Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human.”

Alongside genre-redefining talents like Frank Miller (the writer and illustrator of “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns”) and Alan Moore (the writer of “Watchmen”), Mr. Morrison, 51, is one of several revered comics figures who, beginning in the late 1980s, dragged the medium into the modern day.

In his own work Mr. Morrison has brought a mythological and metaphysical approach to superheroes. His wonderfully imaginative mini-series, “All-Star Superman,” originally released by DC Comics from 2005 to 2008, regarded the Man of Steel as a 21st-century Hercules, performing trials on a cosmic scale for the wonderment of his mortal admirers. His “Final Crisis,” however, was a rambling, baffling attempt to construct a unifying narrative for DC (and to include seemingly every character in that publisher’s pantheon). It created a lot of question marks in the thought bubbles above readers’ heads.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Solar-Charged Nanotube Fuel May Replace Batteries

Solar-Charged Nanotube Fuel May Replace Batteries: A new type of solar thermal fuel that's affordable, rechargeable, thermally stable, and more energy-dense than lithium-ion batteries may be at hand, if researchers have their way. Driving the proposed technology are organic compounds and the ever-popular carbon nanotube.



Emerging languages show off programming's experimental side

Emerging languages show off programming's experimental side: Alex Payne: I'm constantly surprised at the popularity and success of Objective-C. Almost everyone I know tells the same story about Objective-C: they started learning it and they hated it. They thought it was the worst of C and the worst of dynamic languages. And then eventually, they learned to love it.

Amazon unveils Kindle Textbook Rental

Amazon unveils Kindle Textbook Rental: Amazon on Monday launched Kindle Textbook Rental, which allows customers to save money on textbook ebooks by renting them from the Kindle Store, instead of buying them outright.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Discovering the joys of river voyages

Discovering the joys of river voyages: A wise Winnie the Pooh reflected: "If you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known."

Is there any better natural metaphor for life and the flux of time than these moving collections of water droplets inexorably drawn by gravity to join the immensity of the sea? Doing our best to make sense of the world, we give waterways names and treat them as if they are permanent, but traveling on a river breaks this spell.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Cut-rate Apple: iPhones for nine bucks, iPads for 70? | Apple - CNET News

Cut-rate Apple: iPhones for nine bucks, iPads for 70? | Apple - CNET News: As gadget blog electronista informs us, AT&T has dropped the price of a refurbished iPhone 3GS to a mere $9.

And imagine my surprise when I discovered that the iPad--the iPad 2 no less--could be had for a mere 70 smackers. At Sears. Wow.

Alas, the iPad price, as Business Insider makes clear, was a mistake, and the lucky few who jumped on the "deal" and speedily ordered one online, won't be getting the devices after all. Not at that price anyway--they'll have to plunk down $744.99.

Friday, July 15, 2011

As Twitter turns 5, it delivers 350 billion tweets per day

As Twitter turns 5, it delivers 350 billion tweets per day: Twitter launched its microblogging service five years ago today and the company is marking the occasion by doling out some impressive usage stats.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Search Engines Change How Memory Works

Search Engines Change How Memory Works: Thanks to search engines, most simple facts don't need to be remembered. They can be accessed with a few keystrokes, plucked from ubiquitous server-stored external memory -- and that may be changing how our own memories are maintained.



Why Netflix Wants You to ‘Just Say No’ to DVDs | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Why Netflix Wants You to ‘Just Say No’ to DVDs | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: Now Netflix’s goal is to push digital even harder by enticing customers to opt for the streaming plan. Instead of Netflix’s former plan — 10 bucks per month for all-you-can-stream online movies and endless DVDs by mail — the services have been split into two separate plans, ultimately making the streaming service more attractive to customers. For unlimited movie streaming service, you’ll pay eight bucks a month. For unlimited DVDs, you’ll pay eight bucks a month. So if you still want both, it’ll cost you $16 a month total.

Therefore, the incentive for customers who want more bang for their buck — i.e. more movies per month — rests in the streaming plan. If you go the DVD route, you’re only allowed one DVD out at a time. That means waiting for days before you get another flick.

And that’s exactly what Netflix wants.

“They’re driving people away from the model that’s no longer cost-effective for them,” Forrester analyst James McQuivey told Wired.com.

Why files need to die

Why files need to die: Clinging to outdated concepts stifles innovation. Consider the QWERTY keyboard. It was designed 133 years ago to slow down typists who were causing typewriter hammers to jam. The last typewriter factory in the world closed last month, and yet even the shiny new iPad 2 still uses the same layout. Creative alternatives like Dvorak and more recently Swype still struggle to compete with this deeply ingrained idea of how a keyboard should look.

First Demonstration Of Time Cloaking  - Technology Review

First Demonstration Of Time Cloaking  - Technology Review: Time cloaking is possible because of a kind of duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory. In particular, the diffraction of a beam of light in space is mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium. In other words, diffraction and dispersion are symmetric in spacetime.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

For Netflix, there's a way out of pricing mess | Media Maverick - CNET News

For Netflix, there's a way out of pricing mess | Media Maverick - CNET News: And that's why the backlash has been so extreme. Many of the company's 23 million subscribers are outraged over the money issue and they're just plain disappointed in the way Netflix is behaving. Dumping a 60-percent price increase on customers and casually announcing the move in a blog post without warning isn't what Netflix is supposed to be about. There's no doubt that Netflix's brand is suffering. Good will and trust is being drained, and quickly.

Genome Revolution Is Skipping Nonwhites

Genome Revolution Is Skipping Nonwhites: The gold standards of modern genomics research are based almost exclusively on people of European ancestry. Unless that changes, most of humanity could miss out on the genomic revolution.

The new "Let them eat cake!"

The new "Let them eat cake!": In the midst of this prole-crushing economic emergency engineered by wealthy speculators and their political puppets, we now find ourselves watching those same modern-day Marie Antoinettes at once celebrating their station and begging for sympathy as if they were the real casualties of the decade-long economic slowdown they created.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - Trailer

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - Trailer:







  Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - Trailer

Sherlock Holmes has always been the smartest man in the room...until now. There is a new criminal mastermind at large--Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris)--and not only is he Holmes' intellectual equal, but his capacity for evil, coupled with a complete lack of conscience, may actually give him an advantage over the renowned detective.
Directed by: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris, Eddie Marsan, Stephen Fry, Gilles Lellouche

EA acquires PopCap Games for digital push

EA acquires PopCap Games for digital push: The game developer will pay PopCap $650 million, plus $100 million in stock, as well as multi-year earn-outs.

Baby’s Musical Hands Is a Magical App | GeekDad | Wired.com

Baby’s Musical Hands Is a Magical App | GeekDad | Wired.com: Sawyer needed two demonstrations, one with me tapping my fingers randomly and the other with me tapping his tiny hand against the glass. What did he do next?

He. Went. To. Town!

He would finger-tap, tap, tap. And then he would palm-smack, smack, smack. After every short burst of noise and animation, he’d look at me or my wife with the biggest grin before turning his attention back to the app. With apologies to Dr. Seuss:

He played it in his pen, and he played it in the car.

He played it on my lap, like a little rock star.

For Athletes' Peak Performance, Age Is Everything

For Athletes' Peak Performance, Age Is Everything: French researchers have found that athletes' peak performance actually follows a rigid physiological law. Generally, most enter their athletic prime somewhere between 20 and 30, before undergoing an "irreversible" decline. (They even pinpoint when chess grandmasters start going over the hill.)



Pandora dumps Adobe Flash for HTML5; takes cues from Apple iPad

Pandora dumps Adobe Flash for HTML5; takes cues from Apple iPad: Pandora on Tuesday unveiled a redesign of its website built around...



Monday, July 11, 2011

Rupert Murdoch's bad month continues - War Room - Salon.com

Rupert Murdoch's bad month continues - War Room - Salon.com: Things have gotten bad enough that Fox Business and even Fox News has grudgingly covered the scandal. News Corp.'s planned BSkyB takeover is suddenly in trouble, News International head Rebekah Brooks is personally implicated in the reported on Brown's son, people are speculating that News Corp. may get out of the UK business entirely, son James Murdoch may actually face criminal charges, and Billy Bragg has written a pretty good topical song about the entire scandal. (The refrain references the longtime Liverpool boycott of The Sun over its coverage of the Hillsborough stadium disaster.)

Scientists warn of new super-strain of gonorrhea

Scientists warn of new super-strain of gonorrhea:

The world's most common sexually transmitted infection has just gotten a little bit scarier. An international group of scientists announced yesterday that they have identified a new, drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea in Japan. Experts warn that the development represents a "possible precursor to a global health scare." 




Download Previously Purchased Songs, Apps, and Books

Download Previously Purchased Songs, Apps, and Books: You can download previously purchased music, books, and apps to your devices or computer -- regardless of which one you used to buy it -- with iTunes in the Cloud beta. In iTunes 10.3, you'll find a new Purchased link in the Quick Links section of the iTunes Store. Click it to access the Purchased page, where you can navigate among your music, app, and book purchases. On the right, you'll see a tab that lets you choose between All, which displays your complete purchase history for that category, and Not In My Library, which lets you find items you've purchased but don't have in your computer's library. Click the iCloud Download button next to each item to download them one by one, or click the iCloud Download All button at the bottom.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

How many devices can a smartphone, tablet replace? | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News

How many devices can a smartphone, tablet replace? | Nanotech - The Circuits Blog - CNET News: It is almost axiomatic now to say that smartphones have become the digital equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife. And like that venerable knife, a smartphone fits in your pocket and goes with you anywhere. That combination of instant accessibility and utility means it replaces the standalone digital and video camera in many instances.

"Millennium People": J.G. Ballard's last hurrah

"Millennium People": J.G. Ballard's last hurrah: In this, his last novel, the darkly comic "Millennium People," J.G. Ballard returns to many of the themes that have established him as one of the 20th century's principal chroniclers of modernity as dystopia. Throughout his career Ballard, who died in 2009, wrote many different variations on the same theme: A random act of violence propels a somewhat affectless protagonist into a violent pathology lurking just under the tissue-thin layer of postmodern civilization. As in "Crash" (1973) and "Concrete Island" (1974), the car parks, housing estates, motorways and suburban sprawl of London in "Millennium People" form a psychological geography. At its center, Heathrow Airport -- a recurrent setting for Ballard -- exerts its subtly malevolent pull on the bored lives and violent dreams of the alienated middle class.

Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Accepted Medical Purpose

Federal Government Rules Marijuana Has No Accepted Medical Purpose: The federal government ruled on Friday that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should remain in the same class of drugs as heroin.

The decision comes nearly nine years after marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify the drug to take into account the growing body of research conducted across the globe that proves it's effective in treating certain diseases, reports The Los Angeles Times.

The paper spoke to advocates who criticized the ruling but are pleased that the government has finally responded, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Researchers reprogram brain cells into heart cells

Researchers reprogram brain cells into heart cells: Penn researchers are the first to directly convert a non-heart cell type into a heart cell via RNA transfer, managing to change both a brain cell and a skin cell into a heart cell.

Inmates at San Quentin State Prison learn integrity through tennis - Tennis - SI.com

Inmates at San Quentin State Prison learn integrity through tennis - Tennis - SI.com: I've played tennis in countless venues and in what I thought was every imaginable setting. The dusty red clay courts in Paris, immaculate grass outside of London, Ivan Lendl's backyard U.S. Open replica court, numerous stuffy clubs and decrepit public courts with weeds growing through the cracks in the surface. But until recently I had never associated the sport with concertina wire, constant loud alarms and tower guards with rifles.

Ironically, it was a group of convicted felons who were perhaps the best-behaved and most ethical group of competitors I have ever witnessed.

Alt Text: Lazy Fingers Good, Lazy Minds Bad | Underwire | Wired.com

Alt Text: Lazy Fingers Good, Lazy Minds Bad | Underwire | Wired.com: The former group includes some of our prehistoric ancestors who said, “Why should I have to get up close to a bison to kill it?” and invented the atlatl. The latter group includes a bunch of jerks who decided to let everyone else kill the bison rather than learn this newfangled atlatl device, and then chowed down on bison haunch while calling everyone else a lazy sod.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

July 7, 1936: Get a Grip &#151 Phillips Screws Up the Toolbox | This Day In Tech | Wired.com

July 7, 1936: Get a Grip — Phillips Screws Up the Toolbox | This Day In Tech | Wired.com: Phillips was a Portland, Oregon, businessman who invented something to solve a problem that few home-repair folk or do-it-yourselfers even knew existed. In those days, if you wanted to drive a screw into a hole, you just grabbed the right-size slotted screwdriver and did the deed.

"Batman: Year One" Trailer Debuts

"Batman: Year One" Trailer Debuts: Warner Bros. has released the official trailer for "Batman: Year One," the animated adaptation of the acclaimed 1987 storyline by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Rupert Murdoch's international house of bad journalism

Rupert Murdoch's international house of bad journalism: News of the World is a British Sunday tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch since 1969. It, along with the daily Sun, is where Murdoch perfected the salacious tabloid format he'd eventually import to America, where it found much more success as a television station. The basic formula hasn't changed: rabid right-wing politics, sexy girls, constant bellowing outrage, celebrity scandal and a general disregard for journalistic ethics. That News Corp culture -- prizing scoops above all else, from basic human decency to, sometimes, truth itself -- is what has led to the "phone hacking" scandal that now consumes the U.K. The News of the World, it turns out, had a long-standing practice of breaking into the voicemails of newsworthy figures, from celebrities to the victims of horrific crimes.

Analyst: Apple iPhone to launch on Sprint in U.S. by Christmas – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home

Analyst: Apple iPhone to launch on Sprint in U.S. by Christmas – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home: “Add Sprint-Nextel to the growing list of U.S. carriers that will offer the iPhone,” Ed Sutherland reports for Cult of Mac.

“The carrier is likely to gain the Apple handset by Christmas and it could be a big-seller, one analyst tells investors Wednesday,” Sutherland reports. “The key is Sprint will be the last remaining U.S. carrier with an unlimited data plan after Verizon is expected to go to metered pricing Thursday.”

Get your Mac ready for Lion | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld

Get your Mac ready for Lion | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld: To install Lion, you need a Mac with a minimum of 2GB of RAM and one of the following Intel processors: Intel Core 2 Duo, i3, i5, i7, or Xeon—early Intel-based Macs with Core Solo or Core Duo processors aren’t eligible. You can determine your Mac's processor and the amount of installed RAM by choosing About This Mac from the Apple menu and looking at the Processor and Memory lines, respectively.

Facebook unveils video chatting, thanks to Skype | The Digital Home - CNET News

Facebook unveils video chatting, thanks to Skype | The Digital Home - CNET News: Facebook and Skype have inked a deal that will bring video chatting to the world's largest social network.

The final nail in the supply side coffin - How the World Works - Salon.com

The final nail in the supply side coffin - How the World Works - Salon.com: Ever since Ronald Reagan first attempted to make supply-side economics a reality and proceeded to inaugurate an era of persistent government deficits and growing income inequality, it has become harder and harder to make the trickle-down argument with a straight face. But we've never seen anything quite like the disaster that's playing out right now.

Wages are moribund, unemployment is stuck at 9 percent, and the corporate bottom line is doing just fine. You could be excused for thinking that if ever there was time to put the stake through supply-side economics, it would be now. Wall Street and big corporations are doing just fine, but absolutely nothing is trickling down. And yet Republicans are still pushing the same old song and dance, passionately holding the entire creditworthiness of the United States hostage in return for even lower taxes on corporations, adamantly refusing to countenance even the slightest revenue increase to help cushion the hard times for the Americans who are getting a raw deal out of the current recovery.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Apple’s revolutionary iPad creates the paperless cockpit

Apple’s revolutionary iPad creates the paperless cockpit: Apple's iPad allows pilots to quickly and nimbly access information...

‘The iPad allows pilots to quickly and nimbly access information,’ said Jim Freeman, a pilot and director of flight standards at Alaska Airlines, which has given iPads to all its pilots. ‘When you need to a make a decision in the cockpit, three to four minutes fumbling with paper is an eternity.’

Report: Google to rebrand Blogger, Picasa

Report: Google to rebrand Blogger, Picasa: Google wants to respectively rename the services Google Blogs and Google Photos, according to a Mashable report.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Wimbledon leaving NBC, may head to ESPN (AP)

Wimbledon leaving NBC, may head to ESPN (AP): Wimbledon is leaving NBC after 43 years and appears headed to ESPN. NBC said in a statement Sunday that "while we would have liked to have continued our relationship, we were simply outbid." A person with knowledge of the negotiations confirmed that ESPN was working on a contract with the All England Club to televise all of the Grand Slam tournament.

To fight iPad, HP reaches for Russell Brand | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

To fight iPad, HP reaches for Russell Brand | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: If that doesn't quite work, you could release a good product, call it the TouchPad, and tell people that the iPad isn't your competition at all because you're really after the enterprise customer.
Just in case that doesn't convince everyone, reach for one more resort: make them laugh.
I am grateful to the Silicon Alley Insider for revealing that HP has, indeed, gone for the laughs. HP, which has managed to create one or two very good ads in its time, has reached for Russell Brand to make a series of short videos, each one about a different aspect of its new, non-iPad-competing tablet.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

IBM's Phase Change Memory 100 times faster than flash

IBM's Phase Change Memory 100 times faster than flash: Phase Change Memory (PCM) technology--one of the new forms of faster, smaller, and denser memory chips destined to replace flash--has been on the table for a...

Friday, July 1, 2011

Elixir of life discovered on Easter Island - Telegraph

Elixir of life discovered on Easter Island - Telegraph: Rapamycin, which has been nicknamed the “forever young” drug, was created from a chemical found in the soil on Easter Island, one of the most remote places on Earth and 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.
It was used in experiments on children suffering from Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), a rare genetic condition in which ageing is hyper-accelerated and sufferers die of “old age” at around 12 years.
HGPS causes a dangerous process whereby a protein called progerin builds up in every cell of the body, causing them to age prematurely.
Rapamycin cleaned the cells of progerin, which swept away the defects and left healthy cells.

Exclusive: Stream Brian Eno's New Album, <cite>Drums Between the Bells<cite>

Exclusive: Stream Brian Eno's New Album, Drums Between the Bells: Through an exclusive arrangement between Wired.com and Warp Records, you can stream Brian Eno's new album in its entirety right now. Drums Between the Bells goes on sale July 5.

He's Hot, He's Sexy, He's Dead: Rolling Stone's 1981 Jim Morrison Cover Story | Rolling Stone Music

He's Hot, He's Sexy, He's Dead: Rolling Stone's 1981 Jim Morrison Cover Story | Rolling Stone Music: When Kelly arrived at her Long Island home that afternoon, her mother confronted her with the picture, "Is this the animal you're going out with?" she asked.

Kelly glanced at the picture and laughed. "Mom, that's Jim Morrison. From the Doors. A band," she said, tripping upstairs to her room. "And he's dead anyway," Kelly continued as her mother stood in the door-way, still waving the picture.

Mick Jagger's New Group SuperHeavy Unveils Music | Billboard.com

Mick Jagger's New Group SuperHeavy Unveils Music | Billboard.com: Details about the Mick Jagger-Dave Stewart supergroup SuperHeavy have been released slowly and the first public introduction of the music was almost as cagey. Jagger, Stewart, soul singer Joss Stone, reggae artist Damian Marley and film composer A.R. Rahman gathered to speak about the making of the album after about half of it was played -- no song titles provided --  Thursday (June 30) afternoon at the Jim Henson Studios in Los Angeles. Their chat emphasized the unique nature of the project and the random way in which the music, a multi-cultural free-for-all at the start, came together.