Wednesday, February 15, 2006

news 2-15-06

no time to color code today, just guess at what is mine and what is not



it runs in the family:
Genetic Clue Pursued in Families Struck by Bird Flu By Alan Sipress Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, February 15, 2006; Page A14 BANDUNG, Indonesia -- Buenah's teenage daughter lay sprawled on a hospital bed, under observation for bird flu. In an adjacent room, her haggard husband was sitting wrapped in a gray blanket, also under treatment for the virus. Her two other children had already died from it.  



one day i will have the courage to follow my hunches.....
Investors Are Tilting Toward Windmills  By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH Published: February 15, 2006 It's hard to be in a business where you literally — as well as figuratively — are tilting at windmills. But that business may have just gotten its biggest tail wind yet. When President Bush called last month for more effort in alternative energies, a business that last year attracted only about $7 billion in investment nationwide, the 300 engineers and financiers at GE Energy Financial Services were already in the game. But that does not mean they were not happy that the White House acknowledged the sector. "The president's speech changed zero for us; it was simply a recognition of what we already knew," said David L. Calhoun, vice chairman of GE Infrastructure, the group that includes both turbine manufacture and energy financing. For now, wind energy is the only profit star in G.E.'s alternative energy galaxy, and both the finance and equipment sides of the company know they are gambling when it comes to solar and other fledgling technologies. Still, analysts applaud their decision to move on them.




speaking of my hunches.... follow the dead communities.... buy them up..... turn them into something new and living and exciting and unusual..... sell them for crap-loads of money:
Inner Suburbs Fall Through the Cracks Study Says Cities, Exurbs Get the Help By D'Vera Cohn Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 15, 2006; Page A01  The nation's inner suburbs, including those around Washington, face critical challenges from aging neighborhoods and growing numbers of poor, elderly and immigrant residents, according to a report to be released today. In some cases, it says, the fate of those communities could undermine their regions. Washington's suburbs are dealing with those issues better than most, said researchers at the Brookings Institution, citing Arlington County's policy of promoting dense development near Metro stops as a national model for how to stay vibrant. The nation's "first suburbs," which began drawing people out of big cities in large numbers half a century ago, now have deteriorating roads, commercial strips and housing. Those problems, coupled with demographic changes, mean that the communities "are staring down a looming set of challenges that threaten their overall stability," according to the report.



How to download trailers from the Apple site WITHOUT Quicktime PRO


  1. Go to http://www.apple.com/trailers/ and select your trailer. Let's say you choose http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/missionimpossibleiii/hd/
  2. On most trailer pages there are different sizes of the same trailer, so let's say in this case we want to download the "480p" version of this trailer.
  3. In Internet Explorer click 'View' then select 'Source'.
  4. In the source code look for the following section...

     param value="http://movies.apple.com/movies/paramount/mission_impossible_3/mission_impossible_3-sb_480p.mov
  5. Copy the "href" url and using a download manager, (i recommend http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/), download this file to your desktop.
  6. In some cases this file MAY be the actual trailer, but more often than not this file is merely a pointer to the actual trailer so...
  7. Open this mov file in notepad and you should see something like this...

    moov rmra trmda 6rdrf url "mission_impossible_3-sb_h480p.mov rmdr rmqu
     rmvc qtim
  8. See the other MOV link? Copy this and add this to the href link above to give you
    http://movies.apple.com/movies/paramount/mission_impossible_3/mission_impossible_3-sb_h480p.mov
  9. VOILA! You can now download the full trailer using this link in your download manager WITHOUT THE NEED FOR QUICKTIME PRO.




THROWIES:
Developed by the Graffiti Research Lab a division of the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab, LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood. A Throwie consists of a lithium battery, a 10mm diffused LED and a rare-earth magnet taped together. Throw it up high and in quantity to impress your friends and city officials.



AH.... but can it do a weeks worth of laundry at once(no):

UK student's WashDryIron does just that Posted Feb 15th 2006 7:00AM by Evan Blass Filed under: Household While the brains at Whirlpool, Samsung, GE, and the like have been toiling for years to improve upon the staid washer/dryer combo ("now with nanofilters!"), it took a UK college student to design a new laundry solution that actually succeeds in saving the owner significant time/labor. Oliver Blackwell of Devon came up with the creative-but-awfully-named WashDryIron, which performs all three titular functions in one machine without the need for operator intervention, for his final project at the University of Plymouth. Rather than tossing your clothes into the machine a la traditional washers, each item is attached to a hanger in one of several independently-controllable compartments, where they are washed and air-dried right where they hang. This method supposedly eliminates color runs, shrinking, and wrinkles, and also allows different fabric types to be washed at the same time. Blackwell will be showing off a prototype at next month's Ideal Home Show, where he hopes to impress some of those same manufacturers who have thus far failed to come up with something this innovative.

http://tinyurl.com/abbfx




now this sounds cool..... kind snow crash cool:

US, Canadian Olympic skiers get skintight armor Posted Feb 14th 2006 2:58PM by Marc Perton Filed under: Wearables Some American and Canadian skiers competing in the Olympics have a secret weapon: a flexible form of "body armor" that's molded to the shape of their bodies and hardens on impact. The material, known as d3o, and developed by scientists working with skiwear maker Spyder, contains a proprietary polymer that has "strain rate flexibility." While normally flexible, sudden impact hardens the molecules of the material, making it as protective as the traditional arm and leg guards worn in slalom runs. The developers envision expanding d30's uses to other purposes, including protection for military and police personnel. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have any plans for a material that can protect Bode Miller from himself.

http://tinyurl.com/bnb9y


and the science article:


US and Canadian skiers get smart armour
  • 16:52 14 February 2006
  • NewScientist.com news service
  • Will Knight

A futuristic flexible material that instantly hardens into armour upon impact will protect US and Canadian skiers from injury on the slalom runs at this year's Winter Olympics. The lightweight bendable material, known as d3o, can be worn under normal ski clothing. It will provide protection for US and Canadian skiers taking part in slalom and giant slalom races in Turin, Italy. Skiers normally have to wear bulky arm and leg guards to protect themselves from poles placed along the slalom run. Skiwear company Spyder, based in Colorado, US, developed racing suits incorporating d3o along the shins and forearms and offered members of the US and Canadian Olympic alpine ski teams the chance to try them out several months ago. "Now they love it and won't ski without it," claims Richard Palmer, CEO of UK-based d3o Labs, which developed the material. Although the exact chemical ingredients of d3o are a commercial secret, Palmer says the material is synthesised by mixing together a viscose fluid and a polymer. Following synthesis, liquid d3o is poured into a mould that matches the shape of the body part it will protect. Brief impact The resulting material exhibits a material property called "strain rate sensitivity". Under normal conditions the molecules within the material are weakly bound and can move past each with ease, making the material flexible. But the shock of sudden deformation causes the chemical bonds to strengthen and the moving molecules to lock, turning the material into a more solid, protective shield. In laboratory testing, d3o-guards provided as much protection as most conventional protective materials, its makers claim. But Phil Green, research director at d3o Labs, says it is difficult to precisely measure the material's properties because the hardening effect only last as long as the impact itself. However, Green believes it may be possible to alter the properties of d3o for new applications. "There are certainly opportunities to dabble with the chemistry and enhance the effect," he told New Scientist. The ultimate goal is "flexible ballistic protection", he says. Another potential application may be sound-proofing. The propagation of sound waves should generate a similar strain to an impact, so it may be feasible to create a material that becomes more sound proof in response to increasing noise. "It could have some very interesting, unexplored properties," Green says.

http://tinyurl.com/dem6x




Very cool way to 'redraw' a picture with words:

http://tinyurl.com/83vmf

and a tool to do it:

http://tinyurl.com/8b8d7


And a MYTH ON FEDORA how-to

http://tinyurl.com/8z2xe


Internet Data Mining for Investment Analysis
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 15, @08:31AM from the real-time-economic-snapshot dept. CaroKann writes "Reuters is reporting on a Wall Street investment research company, Majestic Research, that is using web crawling techniques to track business performance. Instead of attempting to estimate business conditions by talking to company management, or pounding the pavement visiting stores, this company uses data mining systems to collect real-time sales data and other information on companies that have a web presence. Using this data, Majestic attempts to estimate company earnings more accurately than traditional research outfits."



Cellphone Could Crack RFID Tags
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday February 15, @04:34AM from the let-the-wardriving-begin dept. diverge_s writes "Adi Shamir of RSA is at it again. This time pointing out flaws in RFID systems. From the article: 'I haven't tested all RFID tags, but we did test the biggest brand and it is totally unprotected,' Shamir said. Using this approach, 'a cellphone has all the ingredients you need to conduct an attack and compromise all the RFID tags in the vicinity.'"




Real Warriors Trained In Virtual Worlds
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 14, @05:55PM from the new-meaning-to-weekend-warrior dept. The Washington Post has a piece looking at the U.S. military's increased reliance on gaming for training the next generation of soldiers. From the article: "'The technology in games has facilitated a revolution in the art of warfare,' says David Bartlett, the former chief of operations at the Defense Modeling and Simulation Office, a high-level office within the Defense Department and the focal point for computer-generated training at the Pentagon. 'When the time came for [a solider in training] to fire his weapon, he was ready to do that. And capable of doing that. His experience leading up to that time, through on-the-ground training and playing 'Halo' and whatever else, enabled him to execute. His situation awareness was up. He knew what he had to do. He had done it before -- or something like it up to that point.'"



10 Best S/F Films That Never Existed
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 14, @05:19PM from the lament-the-loss-of-these-films dept. Jamie mentioned (via a Metafilter discussion) a great article entitled The 10 Best Sci-Fi Films that Never Existed. From the piece: "There was a movie that perfectly captured the Douglas Adams experience, the combination of bitter sarcasm and sharp imagination, the droll British wit and whale-exploding slapstick that infused his novels. And that movie was Shaun of the Dead. That movie was not, unfortunately, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a movie that floated around Hollywood for about 20 years before it finally appeared in theaters as a flat, lifeless, americanized lump that was mostly hated by people who liked the book and loathed by people who hated the book. "



Now I remember when there was a chain of stores (name escapes me) that had all the merchandise on the floor to be looked at and played with, you filled out a forma dn they brought it to you from the back.... this sounds kind of like that except it gets mailed to you:

The temporary physical Virtual Store (link to this article) February 14, 2006 We’ve been hearing about the virtual store for many years now, with the hype growing to a crescendo during the first coming of the internet, and peaking just before the tech wreck. Since then, e-commerce has been growing steadily towards inevitable dominance at some point in the distant future. A spectacular initiative from American department store retailing institution J. C. Penney yesterday might cause everybody to rethink how e-commerce and the future of retailing might unfold though. The company will construct a 15, 000-square-foot physical manifestation of the virtual store at One Times Square on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway, New York. In our humble opinion, the opening of this temporary virtual store from March 3-26, in which shoppers can purchase the company's full range of merchandise at interactive kiosks, marks a significant development in the history of retail. We believe that traveling virtual superstores could be a part of retailing’s future.

http://tinyurl.com/a9dwf




Tailor-printed shoes will offer a perfect fit
  • 15 February 2006
  • From New Scientist Print Edition
  • Duncan Graham-Rowe

A MANUFACTURING process that can print you a pair of bespoke shoes could put an end to ill-fitting footwear and help usher in an era of mass customisation. The tailored shoes are built layer by layer using a form of rapid 3D printing called selective laser sintering, in which a laser fuses together particles of a nylon-based material (New Scientist, 4 June 2005, p 26). Initially the system will be used to make shoes for professional sportspeople such as British Premiership soccer players, says Greg Lever-O'Keefe, creative director and co-founder of Prior 2 Lever (P2L), the London-based company launching the service in April. The aim is then to take the process to the high street, where shops could print you a pair of bespoke shoes in just a few hours.

http://tinyurl.com/8f8yf





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