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.

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.

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."

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

Court reaffirms: Sex much worse than violence - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com

Court reaffirms: Sex much worse than violence - Sex News, Sex Talk - Salon.com: Developmental psychologist James W. Prescott, formally of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, argues that there is a "preference for sexual violence over sexual pleasure in the United States." He says, "This is reflected in our acceptance of sexually explicit films that involve violence and rape, and our rejection of sexually explicit films for pleasure only (pornography)," he says. "Apparently, sex with pleasure is immoral and unacceptable, but sex with violence and pain is moral and acceptable."

'Upgrade' to a Nook, get 30 free e-books

'Upgrade' to a Nook, get 30 free e-books: Barnes & Noble is allowing anyone who currently owns an e-reader to simply show the device and buy a Nook to replace it to receive the free titles.

Diet Sodas May Contribute to Weight Gain and Diabetes Risk, Data Suggest - - TIME Healthland

Diet Sodas May Contribute to Weight Gain and Diabetes Risk, Data Suggest - - TIME Healthland: More bad news, diet soda drinkers: data presented recently at the American Diabetes Association's (ADA) Scientific Sessions suggest that diet drinks may actually contribute to weight gain and that the artificial sweeteners in them could potentially contribute Type 2 diabetes.

Books | Comics: Neal Adams overview illustrates his lasting impact | Seattle Times Newspaper

Books | Comics: Neal Adams overview illustrates his lasting impact | Seattle Times Newspaper: But those artists, while terrific, were basically cartoonists with excellent individual styles. Adams was something altogether different. He came from advertising, and was a master of the "photorealism" school. His characters had weight and texture. Instead of "spotting blacks" where convenient, his people and objects threw shadows as you'd see in real life. And all his superheroes were anatomically accurate, bursting with the kind of power you see in professional weightlifters.

Hands on with the HP TouchPad | Tablets | Macworld

Hands on with the HP TouchPad | Tablets | Macworld: I spent half an hour in a meeting, using HP’s new TouchPad tablet, before someone realized I wasn’t using an iPad. That says a lot about this product—due to be released Friday—and not just in superficial ways.

Symantec: Apple iOS offers ‘full protection,’ Google Android ‘little protection’ vs. malware attacks

Symantec: Apple iOS offers ‘full protection,’ Google Android ‘little protection’ vs. malware attacks: iOS, the mobile operating system that powers Apple's popular iPhone and iPad devices, offers better security than Android...

Mac 911: Last call for AppleWorks users

Mac 911: Last call for AppleWorks users: If you're still using AppleWorks (or know someone who is), it's time for an intervention. Here's how to convert your files to a more forward-looking form.

Pope Benedict uses his Apple iPad 2 for first tweet to launch new Vatican website (with video) – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home

Pope Benedict uses his Apple iPad 2 for first tweet to launch new Vatican website (with video) – MacDailyNews - Welcome Home: In a new video, Pope Benedict XVI uses his Apple iPad 2 to visit a new Vatican website. To launch the Vatican’s new news portal, news.va, Pope Benedict XVI sent his first tweet, “Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI.”

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon": An American summer-movie masterwork

"Transformers: Dark of the Moon": An American summer-movie masterwork: "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is too much in every direction -- too much action, too much plot, too much noise, too much destruction -- which is exactly what makes it the Wagnerian fulfillment of the American summer-movie tradition. It's a great and terrible film, in identical proportions and in all possible meanings of those words. It's got battling giant robots and hidden secrets of the American and Soviet space programs and feeble domestic comedy and random scenery-chewing shtick from an A-list supporting cast and an extreme close-up of a hot chick's bikini-clad bottom as she climbs the stairs. In 3-D! It's so massively and excessively vulgar that it doesn't just flirt with self-parody, but chews it up and spits it out, and I'm not even sure that's unintentional. In food terms, "Dark of the Moon" is like going to TGI Friday's and ordering everything on the menu and then going to Krispy Kreme and doing it again. It's not worth doing, it'll definitely make you sick and a lot of it will taste bad, but as a performance-art act of juvenile Id-fulfillment, it's magnificent.

The iPad Could Revolutionize the Comic Book Biz—or Destroy It | Magazine

The iPad Could Revolutionize the Comic Book Biz—or Destroy It | Magazine: American comic book fans live for Wednesdays. That’s the day the new issues arrive. Every major American comic book publisher uses a single distributor, Diamond, to ship boxes of their latest releases to roughly 2,200 comics retail stores across the country. The shop owners—or their minions—put that week’s crop of Batman or X-Men or Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the shelves, and then the fans arrive. A lot of them go to the same store every week, where they have a “pull list” on file, books they’ve asked to be set aside so they’ll never miss a single pulse-pounding issue. It’s a tradition.

To be more specific, it’s a dying tradition. The Wednesday crowd is the old-school audience, collectors who are willing to shell out $3 or $4 for a stapled-together pamphlet that they’ll put in a plastic bag with acid-free cardboard and store in a long white box. Those customers have been trickling away for years.

None of this would matter much at the mega-corporate level if comics were just a few hundred thousand readers and a few thousand retail stores. But North American comics have effectively become the R&D department for a whole lot of higher-stakes media, from movies and television shows to videogames and Broadway musicals. Without periodical comic books, there’s no The Walking Dead, no Thor, no The Dark Knight Rises, no Wonder Woman T-shirts or Spider-Man lunch boxes or Smallville soundtracks. The February issue of Green Lantern sold a mere 70,000 or so copies—but the franchise has also spawned a $150 million movie.

From app to meetup: A new kind of running route

From app to meetup: A new kind of running route: RunKeeper is taking a note from these other communities, but it's expanding the boundaries into the real world. The company recently launched meetups, which allow users to identify other RunKeeper runners in their communities and gather for group runs.

Arts & Letters Daily (28 Jun 2011)

Arts & Letters Daily (28 Jun 2011): Eco-ignorance. Up to 95 percent of organisms in the soil are unknown to science, and by the end of the century, one-quarter of them will wriggle off this mortal coil into oblivion... more

60GHz tech promises wireless docking, USB, HDMI | Deep Tech - CNET News

60GHz tech promises wireless docking, USB, HDMI | Deep Tech - CNET News: The technology, which uses the 60GHz band of radio spectrum and is designed to transfer as much as 7 gigabits of data per second, matches what many wired connections provide, either inside a computer chassis or through the profusion of ports that perforate laptop sides.

Rootkit Infection Requires Windows Reinstall, Says Microsoft | PCWorld

Rootkit Infection Requires Windows Reinstall, Says Microsoft | PCWorld: Malware like Popureb overwrites the hard drive's master boot record (MBR), the first sector -- sector 0 -- where code is stored to bootstrap the operating system after the computer's BIOS does its start-up checks. Because it hides on the MBR, the rootkit is effectively invisible to both the operating system and security software.

VIDEO Asteroid 2011 MD Narrowly Misses Earth - Irish Weather Online

VIDEO Asteroid 2011 MD Narrowly Misses Earth - Irish Weather Online: One of the earth’s closest encounters with an asteroid in recent years took place Monday afternoon.  But as NASA indicated in the days ahead of the ‘cosmic close call’, the encounter was so close that Earth’s gravity sharply altered the asteroid’s trajectory and prevented the space rock from impacting the planet.

2011MD, a newly discovered asteroid passed within 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of Earth.   The asteroid was only sighted for the first time last Wednesday by a robotic telescope in New Mexico, USA. The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center in Massachusetts, USA, put out an alert Thursday.

Roseburg City Council gets iPads | The News-Review - NRtoday.com

Roseburg City Council gets iPads | The News-Review - NRtoday.com: Roseburg city councilors have a new tool. Instead of flipping through 100-page packets at council meetings, they can pull out their iPads.

“We were trying to get away from the mail packets and sending out all that paper,” Councilor Tom Ryan said. “It will probably save money in the long run.”

After two councilors, Mike Baker and Ken Averett, recently tested the Apple tablet computers for two months and came back with glowing reviews, the city spent about $400 each to outfit seven councilors and the mayor with iPads, City Manager Eric Swanson said.

Four short links: 27 June 2011

Four short links: 27 June 2011: Nonetheless, Facebook has become the new millennium's AOL: keywords, grandparents, and a zealous devotion to advertising. At least Facebook doesn't send me #&#^%*ing CDs.

Self-propelled gut camera swims in your colon

Self-propelled gut camera swims in your colon: The Mermaid is a remote-controlled, self-propelled camera that can swim inside your guts to help doctors check for abnormalities.

NATO investigating possible data breach

NATO investigating possible data breach: Incident with NATO's e-Bookstore occurs after the global organization clashed publicly with online group Anonymous over the rising threat of "hacktivism."

The Beer Archaeologist | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine

The Beer Archaeologist | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine: “For the pyramids, each worker got a daily ration of four to five liters,” he says loudly, perhaps for Calagione’s benefit. “It was a source of nutrition, refreshment and reward for all the hard work. It was beer for pay. You would have had a rebellion on your hands if they’d run out. The pyramids might not have been built if there hadn’t been enough beer.”

"X-Men: First Class": Slick, dumb big-screen candy - Andrew O'Hehir, Movie Critic - Salon.com

"X-Men: First Class": Slick, dumb big-screen candy - Andrew O'Hehir, Movie Critic - Salon.com: While the whole film is professionally executed and goes down smoothly enough, the underlying stupidity of its subject matter can't help but show through in the end.

Review: Mr. Brooks's Miracle Elixir | The National Interest

Review: Mr. Brooks's Miracle Elixir | The National Interest: No longer the most successful economy—Germany’s boom shows how a quite different version of market capitalism has adapted better to globalization, while China’s experiment in turbocharged state capitalism has produced over thirty years of fast growth—Americans cannot claim to enjoy the highest living standards. Worse, U.S. decline is not only relative but also absolute. Stagnant for decades, the incomes of the American majority are now falling, or else are maintained only by taking on multiple jobs in a depressed and insecure labor market. Worse yet, there is no prospect of this process ending anytime soon.

Freud never imagined that his research into the unconscious mind would open the way to happiness. Instead, it could be used to fortify the mind against unhappiness, which the founder of psychoanalysis accepted as the normal human experience.

In stark opposition to Freud, Brooks thinks he has found in the unconscious something like a technology of human fulfillment. “The central humanistic truth,” he writes, “is that the conscious mind can influence the unconscious.”

Here as elsewhere the illusion of novelty is kept alive by a loss of memory. No one who had read and digested Adam Smith or Edmund Burke—or indeed John Maynard Keynes—could possibly imagine that the life of man would ever be carried on by unaided reason, or believe that humans were anything other than quintessentially social. Only those who have forgotten most of the Western tradition could find Brooks’s propositions arresting or in any way instructive.

For Harris, the moral quandaries of the past were the result of ignorance; now that science has revealed the “moral facts” of human nature there is little room for doubt in ethics, since knowledge can replace faith and intuition in settling disputes about the essence of human well-being.

Even now, when global markets are falling apart under the strains of sovereign bankruptcy, currency wars and resource conflicts, our rulers continue to insist that there is no alternative. Rather than making the effort—intellectual as much as political—of deciding what can be entrusted to the market and what cannot, they look for gimmicks that will serve as proxies for new thinking.

Brooks’s readers can then turn their minds from the discomforting shifts that are under way—such as the palpable erosion of public infrastructure, which leaves the United States looking more and more like the third-world countries of a few decades ago—and seek refuge in an American pastoral.

The reality has long been a succession of dodges, slogans and ephemeral “initiatives” which serve to conceal the government’s inability to control—or for that matter understand—history as it happens.

The Social Animal is an exemplar of political discourse as we know it today; the chief function is to distract attention from intractable realities, which governments and those they govern prefer not to think about.

Johann Hari: How to survive the age of distraction - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent

Johann Hari: How to survive the age of distraction - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent: It's hard to admit, but we all sense it: it is becoming almost physically harder to read books.

We have now reached that point. And here's the function that the book – the paper book that doesn't beep or flash or link or let you watch a thousand videos all at once – does for you that nothing else will. It gives you the capacity for deep, linear concentration. As Ulin puts it: "Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.... It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise."

TS Eliot called books "the still point of the turning world". He was right. It turns out, in the age of super-speed broadband, we need dead trees to have fully living minds.

Apple's videogame future | Games | Game Room | Macworld

Apple's videogame future | Games | Game Room | Macworld: With the iPad 2 (), Apple certainly has the hardware to make such a daring move. The iPad 2's technological prowess is nothing short of incredible when you consider its svelte frame; already impressive iOS titles like Infinity Blade () are given an additional layer of detail that approaches the sort of lavish imagery we're accustomed to seeing on our Xbox 360s and PS3. With the current generation of iOS gaming arguably giving the Nintendo Wii a run for its money in graphical terms, an all-new Apple "console" based on the Apple A5 ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU—which powers the iPad 2 and is expected to make its way into the next iPhone model—could easily be up to PS3/360 standard...or possibly even beyond.

Peter Falk, TV's rumpled Columbo, has died

Peter Falk, TV's rumpled Columbo, has died: Peter Falk, the stage and movie actor who became identified as the squinty, rumpled detective in "Columbo," which spanned 30 years in primetime television and established one of the most iconic characters in police work, has died. He was 83.

Nation & World | Man urinates in water, city flushes 8 million gallons | Seattle Times Newspaper

Nation & World | Man urinates in water, city flushes 8 million gallons | Seattle Times Newspaper: PORTLAND, Ore. —
Call it the big flush.

Because a 21-year-old man was caught on a security camera urinating into a city reservoir, Oregon's biggest city is sending 8 million gallons of treated drinking water down the drain.

Gene Colan Dead at the Age of 84

Gene Colan Dead at the Age of 84: A comics industry legend has passed away. Gene Colan, known best for his work on Daredevil and co-creating the character Blade, has died at the age of 84.

The world's richest are richer than before the crisis

The world's richest are richer than before the crisis: Some people have managed to recoup the losses suffered in the 2008 financial crisis -- the world's wealthiest. According to a new report, millionaires are now richer than before the meltdown.

Obama's smart oil move

Obama's smart oil move: The International Energy Agency announced Thursday that a coalition of 28 IEA member countries would "release" 60 million barrels of oil from stockpiles over the next month. The United States will do the bulk of work, contributing 30 billion barrels from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Humans Guided Evolution of Dog Barks

Humans Guided Evolution of Dog Barks: It's a question that tends to arise when a neighborhood mutt sees a cat at 3 a.m., or if you live in an apartment above someone who leaves their small, yapping dog alone all day: Why do dogs bark so much? Perhaps because humans designed them that way.

Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison to be inducted into Hall of Fame - CNN.com

Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison to be inducted into Hall of Fame - CNN.com: The award, coming 55 years after Ellison began his writing career, celebrates the achievements of a writer who has nearly done it all; collecting 10 Hugo awards, three Nebula awards, 18 Locus Poll awards, the Bradbury award, six Bram Stoker awards, the Edgar Allan Poe award and two George Melies film awards.

Ellison, 77, won't be at the ceremony and has asked author Neil Gaiman to accept the award on his behalf. Editor Gardner Dozois and artists Vincent Di Fate and Jean "Moebius" Giraud will also be honored at the weekend-long event.

Ellison, who had been extremely ill for several months, said in a telephone interview that he's in the "last stages of something."
"And I don't have a cold," he sarcastically noted.

brands-disappear-2012-247: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

brands-disappear-2012-247: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance: Brands that have stood the test of time for decades are falling by the wayside at an alarming rate. For instance, Pontiac, a major car brand since 1926, is gone, shut down by a struggling GM. Blockbuster is in the process of dismantling, after it once controlled the VHS and DVD markets. House & Garden folded after 106 years. It succumbed to the advertising downturn, a lot of competition, and the cost of paper and postage. Its demise echoed the 1972 shutdown of what is probably the most famous magazines in history — Life. That was a long time ago but serves to demonstrate that no brand is too big to fail if it is overwhelmed by competition, new inventions, costs, or poor management.

5. Sears

The parent of Sears and Kmart — Sears Holdings — is in a lot of trouble. Total revenue dropped $341 million to $9.7 billion for the quarter which closed April 30, 2011. The company had a net loss of $170 million. Sears Holdings was created by a merger of the parents of the two chains on March 24, 2005. The operation has been a disaster ever since. The path D'Ambrosio is likely to take is to consolidate two brand into one — keeping the better performing Kmart and shuttering Sears.

7. Kellogg's Corn Pops

How can that be?! I just bought five boxes! 'Round here, we gotta have our pops.

8. MySpace

MySpace, once the world's largest social network, died a long time ago. It will get buried soon.

Barney Frank and Ron Paul team up to legalize marijuana

Barney Frank and Ron Paul team up to legalize marijuana:

Ron Paul and Barney Frank have teamed up again (after their successful joint HuffPo editorial of 2010) to introduce legislation legalizing marijuana. Not decriminalizing it, but actually totally legalizing it. Wouldn't that be wild?

Kevin Kelly’s 6 Words for the Modern Internet | Epicenter | Wired.com

Kevin Kelly’s 6 Words for the Modern Internet | Epicenter | Wired.com: 2. Interacting
All of these screens are no longer just static objects to stare at – they demand our entire bodies, including our voices. Kelly retells how he watched an toddler try to interact with a photograph, obviously confused by how the image wasn’t getting bigger or smaller with a pinch of his fingers.

These days, “if it’s not interacting, it doesn’t work,” Kelly said.

Guernica / The Story of the <i>Story of O</i>

Guernica / The Story of the Story of O: Later she described her feverish writing process as “writing the way you speak in the dark to the person you love when you’ve held back the words of love for too long and they flow at last … without hesitation, without stopping, rewriting, discarding … the way one breathes, the way one dreams.”

How it went so wrong in America

How it went so wrong in America: Finally, some data from the International Monetary Fund that proves, once and for all, that red-white-and-blue-bleeding patriotic conservatives are right: America truly is an exceptional nation. From 2007-2009, the percentage increase in U.S. unemployment was more than double that of most other advanced industrial nations. In a global recession, the abysmal performance of U.S. labor markets reigned supreme.

Should filming the police get you arrested?

Should filming the police get you arrested?: Last month, I wrote a column on how police departments across the country are simultaneously employing ever-more sophisticated surveillance techniques while trying to criminalize the act of recording police officers in public spaces. This latter effort comes -- not coincidentally -- at a time when police forces are facing potential federal investigations into police brutality.

Barnes & Noble: Ebooks outsell physical books three to one

Barnes & Noble: Ebooks outsell physical books three to one: Barnes & Noble on Tuesday said it sold three times as many digital books through its website compared to physical books during the fourth fiscal quarter.