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Is the End of Unlimited Internet Near?

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:04:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Get ready to say goodbye to unlimited Internet access.

Comcast Corp., the nation's second-largest Internet service provider, says it would set an official limit on the amount of data subscribers can download and upload each month.

Last week, Comcast -- the second-largest Internet service provider in the country -- announced that starting Oct. 1 it would officially set a threshold for monthly Internet usage.

In an online announcement, the service provider said that although it already contacts residential customers who use excessive amounts of bandwidth, it had never provided a specific limit. Now, Comcast said it will amend its user agreement to say that users will be allowed 250 gigabytes of monthly usage.

The company emphasizes that its cap is generous and will only affect about 1 percent of its 14.4 million customers. Experts say these customers might include heavy gamers and those who use a significant amount of bandwidth for creating or uploading video.

Tags: end, unlimited, internet

A wandering mind able to project themselves into imaginary situations - can do important work'..

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:07:08 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: ...scientists are learning - and may even be essential
"Einstein, for instance, was notorious for his wandering mind ".

Clip Source: www.boston.com

A wandering mind can do important work, scientists are learning - and may even be essential

In a culture obsessed with efficiency, daydreaming is derided as a lazy habit or a lack of discipline, the kind of thinking we rely on when we don't really want to think. It's a sign of procrastination, not productivity, something to be put away with your flip-flops and hammock as summer draws to a close.

In recent years, however, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They've demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind - so fundamental, in fact, that it's often referred to as our "default" mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections.

If your mind didn't wander, then you'd be largely shackled to whatever you are doing right now," says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California,

'Autonomous' Helicopters Teach Themselves To Fly

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:05:05 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Stanford computer scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system that enables robotic helicopters to teach themselves to fly difficult stunts by watching other helicopters perform the same maneuvers.

The result is an autonomous helicopter than can perform a complete airshow of complex tricks on its own.

The stunts are "by far the most difficult aerobatic maneuvers flown by any computer controlled helicopter,"

The dazzling airshow is an important demonstration of "apprenticeship learning," in which robots learn by observing an expert, rather than by having software engineers peck away at their keyboards in an attempt to write instructions from scratch.

Tags: ai

Bwaaaaaahaaaahaaahaaaaa...!

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:23:04 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: Speak it, brother!

Clip Source: voices.washingtonpost.com

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain's presidential bid,

"This election is not about issues," said Davis.

Tags: the republican party is officially bankrupt

No Time to Think (As We May)

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:46:52 GMT

clipped by: Djiezes

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

No Time to Think

[Video]

March, 5 2008

Vannevar Bush's 1945 article, "As We May Think," has been much celebrated as a central inspiration for the development of hypertext and the World Wide Web. Less attention, however, has been paid to Bush's motivation for imagining a new generation of information technologies; it was his hope that more powerful tools, by automating the routine aspects of information processing, would leave researchers and other professionals more time for creative thought. But now, more than sixty years later, it seems clear that the opposite has happened, that the use of the new technologies has contributed to an accelerated mode of working and living that leaves us less to think, not more. In this talk I will explore how this state of affairs has come about and what we can do about it.

Tags: david levy, levy, vannevar bush, thinking, creativity, knowledge, technology, science, video, google

what lives in a 'lost world' five kilometres beneath the Caribbean?.

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:41:24 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, are set to explore the world's deepest undersea volcanoes and find out what lives in a 'lost world' five kilometres beneath the Caribbean.

The team of researchers led by Dr Jon Copley has been awarded £462,000 by the Natural Environment Research Council to explore the Cayman Trough, which lies between Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. This rift in the Caribbean seafloor plunges to a depth of more than 5000 metres below sea level. It contains the world's deepest chain of undersea volcanoes, which have yet to be explored.

"The deep ocean is the largest ecosystem on our planet, so we need to understand its patterns of life," says Dr Copley. "Deep-sea exploration has also given us new cancer treatments and better fibre-optic cables for the internet, both thanks to deep-sea creatures."

"The Cayman Trough may be a 'lost world' that will give us the missing piece in a global puzzle of deep-sea life,"

One hundred tesla without self-destructing

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:40:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Why would anyone need a magnet that strong? Greg Boebinger, director of the Magnet Lab, says that this magnetic field strength is the only way to test the properties of newly discovered high-temperature superconductors like iron oxyarsenide, which may improve the performance of MRI machines and high-voltage power lines while lowering their cost. A 100‑T magnet would also let you conduct certain zero-gravity experiments without traveling into space and let you develop magnetic propulsion systems that could eventually replace those that burn rocket fuel.

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

World's Most Powerful Magnet Under Construction By Willie D. Jones

First Published September 2008

Magnetic Moment: Engineers are readying a supercooled, record-setting 100-tesla magnet at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The magnet will have to withstand forces equivalent to 200 sticks of dynamite.

Multiply the magnetic field strength of a refrigerator magnet by 2 million and you'll be in the ballpark of the strength of the magnet that researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, based near Florida State University in Tallahassee, are trying to create. When completed later this year, the pulsed electromagnet, located at the lab's facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, will reach 100 tesla, the holy grail of magnetic field strength. And in another first, if all goes according to plan it will reach that level—about 67 times as high as a typical MRI—without blowing itself to smithereens.

Tags: tesla, magnet, physics

Think Yourself Healthy by Appreciating the Exercise You Already Do

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:47:48 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: To illustrate with just one of the outcomes they measured, the average weight of those in the intervention group reduced from 145.5 lbs to 143.72 lbs. Over the same period the control group showed no significant change. For those of you working metric-style that's 66.14 kg down to 65.33 kg.

That's like dropping a bag of sugar. In four weeks. With no additional exercise.

Clip Source: www.spring.org.uk

How strong do you think the link is between mind and body?

For example, is it possible to think yourself fitter without doing any additional exercise, but by simply better appreciating how much exercise you already do? A recent experiment by Alia Crum and Professor Ellen Langer of Harvard University suggests the incredible answer is yes.

Dr Ben Goldacre

describes the study which was carried out on hotel attendants who were informed how much exercise they were already doing as a regular part of their job. Here's Ben's conclusion:

"...amazingly, despite no change in actual exercise levels, in the intervention group, simply being told about the value of what they were already doing caused a significant change for the better on every single one of the objective health measures recorded: weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure."

Tags: psycology, body, mind

Google Chrome is here

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:15:27 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

Clip Source: googleblog.blogspot.com

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

Tags: google chrome, browser, opensource

Gene linked to commitment-phobia

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:40:08 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: commitment-phobia, everybody has it..

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Men with a common gene variation for "bonding" hormone report more marital strife

There’s news for women who want a man who bonds instead of a James Bond: Scientists have identified a common genetic variation that appears to weaken a man’s ability to emotionally attach to one partner.

The study, to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to try to examine whether a hormone that encourages monogamy in animals plays a similar role in male humans. Before getting ideas about a DNA-fidelity test, though, women should consider that the study wasn’t designed to determine how much — or even whether — the gene in question is responsible for monogamy in humans.

“We can’t with any accuracy predict effects on behavior,” says Hasse Walum of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “A lot of different things determine how happy you will be in a relationship.”

But women can now wonder, “What about his vasopressin 1a receptor subtype?”

Tags: genetics, commitment-phobia

Ain't it the Truth...

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:00:06 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: Black and white in America.

Clip Source: firstread.msnbc.msn.com

I found this on the net...pass it around...it's soooo true. "Only in Republican America would a black man with a law degree from Harvard, 12 years in politics, four years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and manager of one of the most impressively flawless and forward thinking presidential campaigns ever not be ready for the presidency while a white female evangelical with 19 months in national politics and a bachelors in journalism is considered "ready on day one." so true.

Why Firefox, Not Internet Explorer, Is Chrome's Real Target

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:19:08 GMT

clipped by: Brian Caulfield
clipper's remarks: Smart analysis -- and, as always, some good dirt -- from Valleywag's Owen Thomas.

Clip Source: valleywag.com

The infighting between the browser maker and the search engine shows the limits of open source's "sharing is caring" ideology. Open-source projects can be just as political as proprietary code — and as vulnerable to twisting for corporate priorities. The bottom line of Google Chrome's creation? The bottom line. Google was worried that Firefox was making too much money, and Mozilla was getting too independent. Mozilla had to be stopped — and the true Firefox believers at Google had to be cajoled into doing Larry and Sergey's dirty work.

Tags: chrome, internet, explorer, firefox, mozilla