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Longer tool life, even under unfavourable conditions

The new adjustable DIHART DAH® Zero™ holders ensure maxi-mum precision concentricity in DIHART Reamax® TS reamers, even when the machine or spindle conditions are less than fa-vourable.

The modular DIHART Reamax® TS tooling system is a clearly struc-tured range of reaming heads from DIHART® , one of the brands of the KOMET GROUP®. It offers a high level of system modularity and precision. With the new adjustable DIHART DAH® Zero™ holders, concentricity problems in the machine or spindle can be easily cor-rected. Micro-precision adjustment of concentricity properties is achieved simply via four radially fitted screws. Even concentricity prob-lems that occur during a tool change can be very easily corrected, while the process settings remain stable. The adjustable holders run smoothly and without vibrating. They are now also available as stan-dard components in “Plug ‘n’ Ream” kits and are suitable for fitting to an expansion chuck or shrink chuck via a parallel shank.

For tool diameters of up to 35 millimetres, the adjustable holders mean that the balancing systems that are otherwise used can be dispensed with. With adjustable concentricity to an accuracy of < 3 ¼m, they meet the highest demands for precision and tool life.

ZIRCAR Refractory Sheet Type RSLE-57 is a low expansion high strength reinforced silica matrix composite . This remarkable material was designed for use as a high strength insulator in induction hot press applications w.
RSLE-57’s very low thermal expansion coefficient and high hot strength combine to give it thermal shock resistance not found in other structural ceramic matrix composite materials.
RSLE-57’s exhibits a very low coefficient of expansion 0.3 x 10-6 °C which provides remarkable resistance to the thermal shock up to 1200°C (2192°F) in an oxidizing atmosphere and permits its use with rapid variation in temperature in that zone. Beyond 1200°C (2192°F) it transforms into a crystalline structure, while maintaining its properties up to 1650°C (3002°F) providing that there is no significant fall in temperature. At temperatures above this the material will exhibit surface glazing.
Other unique properties of RSLE-57 are:
• A low thermal conductivity.
• An excellent electrical insulation.
• A high chemical purity.
• An excellent resistance to corrosion (from molten metal and glass)
RSLE-57 also exhibits exceptional non-wetting properties when used in contact with molten aluminum making it useful in numerous molten aluminum contact applications.
RSLE-57 is 100% organic free and contains no refractory ceramic fiber. It is readily machined to precision tolerances with conventional tooling.
You can check out our web site (www.zrci.com) for more information on this material as well as many other products we offer.
For more information please contact ZIRCAR Refractory Composites, Inc., P.O. Box 489 Florida, NY 10921 via telephone (845) 651-2200, fax (845) 651-1515 or e-mail at [email protected].

Last fall, we told you about an exciting and innovative competition to find – and fun – civic-focused web abd mobile apps in New York City.

Tonight, after an all-star panel of judges had reviewed more than 80 apps over a month-long period, a handful of winning applications were announced.

These apps include WayFinder, a resource for navigating around the city; Taxihack, a live-feed commentary on New York City taxis; Big Apple Ed, a guide to New York City schools; and seven others.

Sponsor

Judges for the competition included such media and technology luminaries as NY Tech Meetup co-founder Dawn Barber, Betaworks CEO John Borthwick, Mahalo co-founder Jason Calacanis, EDVentures Founder Esther Dyson, FirstMark Capital CEO Lawrence Lenihan, AlleyCorp co-founder Kevin Ryan, DFJ Gotham Ventures managing partner Danny Schultz, and Union Square Ventures managing general partner Fred Wilson.

The BigApps prizes also included a Popular Choice Award, which was decided by an online public vote from people around the world.

The grand prize winner for the competition, Wayfinder, is actually an Andoird app that allows users to find the nearest and best directions to New York City subway and New Jersey PATH stations. It was also selected as the Grand Prize winner for the Data Visualization Award. That team received a total of $7,500 for both prizes.

Other winning applications include:

• Actuatr, a platform that simplifies opening up data to developers;
• NYC Way, an iPhone application that bundles a variety of NYC resources for tourists and locals (also the Investor’s Choice for monetization potential and Popular Choice winner, a $5,000 prize altogether);
• PushpinWeb, a platform for public data;
• Trees Near You, an iPhone app that shows data about trees around New York City;
• UpNext 3D NYC, an interactive 3D map for exploring and discovering the city;
• Overview New York City Parks and Recreation Online, a web app for finding New York City parks; and
• Bookzee, a location-based library book search.

“We opened up the 170 datasets of City information to unleash the creativity and ingenuity of New Yorkers, and we were not disappointed,” said Mayor Bloomberg, who announced the awards at a dinner tonight. “The apps submitted offer a range of unique capabilities, many of which use the data in ways we hadn’t considered. We want New York City to stay ahead of the innovation and technology curve, and we’ll continue to capitalize on our greatest asset – New Yorkers – to make sure we do. Thank you to all of those who submitted apps, and congratulations to the winners.”

The New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications worked with around 30 agencies to provide more than 170 datasets for the competition. The data included geographic locations of all sidewalk cafés, laundry facilities, playgrounds, dog runs, city landmarks, as well as census data, extensive property valuation and assessments, the results of restaurant inspections, lists of permitted citywide events and even side parking and traffic updates.

Discuss

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While some politicians still think that it’s possible to get rid of anonymity online, the truth is a lot more complicated. Bruce Schneier has an excellent new column where he breaks down why it’s not really possible to end anonymity online, no matter how hard people try:

Imagine a magic world in which every Internet packet could be traced to its origin. Even in this world, our Internet security problems wouldn’t be solved. There’s a huge gap between proving that a packet came from a particular computer and that a packet was directed by a particular person. This is the exact problem we have with botnets, or pedophiles storing child porn on innocents’ computers. In these cases, we know the origins of the DDoS packets and the spam; they’re from legitimate machines that have been hacked. Attribution isn’t as valuable as you might think.

Implementing an Internet without anonymity is very difficult, and causes its own problems. In order to have perfect attribution, we’d need agencies — real-world organizations — to provide Internet identity credentials based on other identification systems: passports, national identity cards, driver’s licenses, whatever. Sloppier identification systems, based on things such as credit cards, are simply too easy to subvert. We have nothing that comes close to this global identification infrastructure. Moreover, centralizing information like this actually hurts security because it makes identity theft that much more profitable a crime.

And realistically, any theoretical ideal Internet would need to allow people access even without their magic credentials. People would still use the Internet at public kiosks and at friends’ houses. People would lose their magic Internet tokens just like they lose their driver’s licenses and passports today. The legitimate bypass mechanisms would allow even more ways for criminals and hackers to subvert the system.

On top of all this, the magic attribution technology doesn’t exist. Bits are bits; they don’t come with identity information attached to them. Every software system we’ve ever invented has been successfully hacked, repeatedly. We simply don’t have anywhere near the expertise to build an airtight attribution system.

And of course, this doesn’t even get into the question of why you’d want to remove anonymity. While there’s always one or two people in our comments who claim that anonymity should be ditched to make people “responsible for what they say,” that’s ridiculous. Responsibility is separate from identity, and there are times when it’s much more “responsible” for someone to be able to post something anonymously.

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On its sixth birthday, Facebook launched a host of new features as it crossed the 400-million user mark.

The most interesting of them may be its revamped search. When you type in names, it auto-completes for people who are the closest to you by social promixity — e.g. the people that you have the most mutual friends with. Not only that, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that it indexes content two degrees out in your social graph.

With the new privacy settings and more public content, search should figure increasingly prominently in the user experience as it will be able to surface more and more content over time.

There is also a new photo-uploader accessible from the front page that makes it faster and easier to post new photos to the site. There’s also a games and applications gameboard, which replaces older game notifications. We’ve covered it more in-depth here.

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Facebook just rolled out a new redesign to 80 million users tonight and the company’s vice president of product just prepped employees for potentially negative reactions by telling the story of the original news feed launch.

After the new features went live, the company showed off streams of real-time reactions to the redesign on screens around the company cafeteria at a 6th birthday party.

Some example reactions:

“The new facebook is crazy!!!!”
“I hate this new facebooks!!!!”
“WHAT HAPPENED WITH FACEBOOK?  WHAT IS IT? I AM LOOST. I DO NOT WANT NEW SIMPLIFIED PAGE!!!!~”

But Cox told Facebook employees not to worry too much about negative reactions, as he recalled the original controversial news feed launch:

“We thought — everybody is going to love this thing. It’s going to be awesome.

So we showed up one night and got the news feed ready. Back then, you just pushed a button. I think it literally said ‘Ship it.’ And the feedback started coming in. [Laughter]

It was absolutely terrible. I think we sat there for an hour and had 10,000 users writing in. Only one of them liked it.

Then we were called by security: we had leave through the back fire escape because security told us that a protest group was assembling in front of the Facebook office. It was midnight on a Monday night.”

Facebook has consistently rolled out changes several times a year to its now 400 million users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that he aimed to launch something significant once a month.

“Users do develop this kind of trust —  even though they’re can be rattled from time to time —  that generally things will be better, even if they don’t understand it immediately,” he said.

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I love this Valentine giveaway! Three lucky winners are going to receive one of these adorable Olive Meowtinis from Etsy seller k grant designs! Each set includes two jumbo olives stuffed with catnip and topped with a heart-shaped pimento. And they come served in a martini glass! How cute is that?

To enter, please leave a comment on this post. The winners will be chosen in a random drawing on February 10 and notified via email. One entry per person. This giveaway is open to readers everywhere!

Published Feb. 1, 2010
By Sara Schilling, Tri-City Herald staff writer

William Chesterfield, 19, operates a vertical milling machine in class at Columbia Basin College. Chesterfield left his home in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, in August to attend CBC’s machine technology program on a scholarship. He will lean to make tools, computer chips and other items while at CBC. After he completes the two-year program, he’ll take those skills back home to work in a power plant. Photo by Richard Dickin of the Tri-City Herald

PASCO — William Chesterfield watched through his safety goggles as a block of steel moved back and forth in a vertical milling machine, getting a fraction smaller with each pass.

The steel eventually will be transformed into a vice used to hold other material that’s being cut. But right then, it just looked like a gray block.

Still, it made Chesterfield smile. The 19-year-old left his home and family and traveled thousands of miles to learn how to operate milling machines, lathes and other equipment in Columbia Basin College’s machine technology program.

“Everyone (back home) is proud. I’m proud,” Chesterfield said.

The teen is from the U.S. Virgin Islands. He earned a scholarship out of high school that’s paying for his two years of CBC training. Once he finishes, he’ll have a job waiting at a St. Thomas power and water plant.

Chesterfield said he never imagined going to college before he got the scholarship, and especially never thought he’d end up in such a technical field.

“I never thought I’d be an engineer in my entire life. I grew up hating math,” he said.

He also never imagined he’d move to Washington. Before Chesterfield enrolled at CBC, he hadn’t heard of the Tri-Cities.

He moved here last August — his first time ever out on his own. As he learns the ins and outs of independent living — like doing the laundry and cooking dinner — he’s also learning a trade.

In the CBC class, students make models on the computer and then try their hands at the milling machines and lathes. The other day, Chesterfield used one of the machines in the shop to fashion a set of dice out of aluminum.

The 19-year-old has 32 classmates — a record number for the program.

When instructor Rob Walker took over the program a decade ago, there were nine students. The number eventually settled at between 18 and 20.

Walker said the recent surge likely is connected to the struggling economy. People are looking to gain skills that lead to steady work, and there are jobs in the Tri-Cities area for people with machine skills because of the manufacturers in town.

Plus, “the skill set is portable,” Walker said. “You can use it all over the world.”

The program accepts students each quarter, so the 30-plus enrolled now won’t all graduate at the same time. This quarter, the students come from a variety of backgrounds and are all different ages, Walker said.

There’s a father and daughter in the class and also a man from Burma, he said.

Chesterfield said he’s enjoying the Tri-Cities and likes machine technology. Both are so new to him, but that’s part of the adventure, he said.

In the CBC shop, he watched the mill move slowly back and forth over the steel.

“It’s going to take a while,” he said.

But he’s got the time and desire to learn.

Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.

Toyota just starting rolling out accelerator fixes to its dealers. The fix itself doesn’t actually seem that hard as Autoblog and Aol Autos found out at LaFontaine Toyota in Dearborn, Michigan. (Fun Fact: Ford’s HQ is in Dearborn) The process is just popping out the pedal and figuring out what size shim needs to be insert in the recalled pedal. After that, a system diagnostic is ran and the customer drives away. Hopefully the Prius’s brake software issue is just a quick fix, too.

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Still waiting on picking up the Blu-ray player? I held off too until I saw one of these deals, and picked one up a few months ago. If you’ve been holding off until after the holidays, here’s your chance to pick up a decent player for a good price.

TigerDirect.com is selling an HP BD-2000 for $117.99 with free shipping. The BD-2000 is a reasonable performer, with 1080p, and DVD upconversion. It also has BD-Live, which I haven’t found to be a huge deal, but maybe it’s something that really appeals to you. The player also has an ethernet port, one HDMI port, and component outputs. It won’t do Netflix or Hulu.

You can pick the HP BD-2000 up here.

[via Dealnews]

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One of the most recent Internet meme trends has been to launch a site of ridiculous, funny, or awkward photos of things and people that are otherwise found in everyday life. You’re probably familiar with some of them: People of Walmart, LATFH, Awkward Family Photos, Regretsy, and so on. Usually these sites become so virally popular that they end up getting book deals, but that’s not the case for one such site. Awkward Stock Photos, a site that featured some of the more questionable pictures found in stock photo databases, received a DMCA notice for the contents of its entire site, despite the fact that it removed no watermarks, linked back to the original stock photo page, and made no money off the venture.

Awkward Stock Photos (ASP) was originally born on Facebook as a give-and-take between Mark Hauge and his friends, who encouraged him to start a blog. Once he finally bit the bullet and signed up with Tumblr, ASP became an immediate hit, and Hauge started receiving hundreds of submissions from readers. An Ars reader and graphic designer himself, Hauge was familiar with how finicky some companies can be, so he made sure to try and cover his bases. Or so he thought: “I made sure to only use watermarked photos that I downloaded and re-uploaded to Tumblr (so I wasn’t hotlinking) and then linked them back to their original source,” he told Ars.

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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Felix, who would feel a lot better about his situation in life if he had one certain gadget that could do two certain things. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

I am looking for a NAS — 1TB would be good — preferably with WLAN built in, and multi-download BitTorrent capabilities are a must. I’d like a unit that doubles as a media streamer (music and videos), and while I’d prefer to stream over WiFi, I definitely need an HDMI port. If there’s an option with a display on the unit itself, I would love to know about it. Thanks for any input!

We know these multifaceted devices exist, but we also know they aren’t exactly everywhere. For those who’ve bought in, we’d love to hear about your experiences. Do you prefer yours? Are you disappointed with its performance? Don’t lead our man astray, okay?

Ask Engadget: Best NAS / media streamer combo device? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Via I Can Has Cheezburger

Despite all the negative press and sternly worded (though anemically delivered) admonitions generated by the West Wing, the Barons of Excess are still flipping the bird at the American people and plundering the company coffers. This time, the culprit is Lazard Ltd. (formerly Lazard Frères), the investment house that’s been around even longer than the Giant Vampire Squid Goldman Sachs. Lazard, to its credit, had refused to be bailed out by the American taxpayers and managed to avoid being consumed by J.P. Morgan or BoA during their feeding frenzy in 2008, but such fiscal discipline hasn’t carried over into 2010:

What should have been a profitable quarter a Lazard Ltd. turned into a surprising loss due to the investment bank paying its people big bonuses.

The firm doled out $616 million in compensation and benefits to about 2,300 employees last quarter, or more than triple the amount handed out in the same period in 2008. It was a consequence, Lazard said, of a decision to pay more bonuses in cash and accelerate some deferred cash awards from a prior year. But so great was the firm’s generosity that compensation costs overwhelmed quarterly revenues and resulted in a net loss of about $55 million for the fourth quarter. The charges also almost wiped out full-year profits.

Trés impressive, no? Seems the average bonus at Lazard was a measly $565,000. Pshaw, that’s chicken scratch! You have to hand it to this country – where else is “talent” defined as rapaciousness and greed?

Someone needs to remind Lazard’s board of directors that the company was taken public in 2005, and that they have a whole host of presumably angry shareholders to explain this grotesque loss to. And gentlemen, this hardly qualifies as an “explanation”:

“[Our compensation policies] should enhance our competitiveness and drive shareholder value,” Mr. Jacobs said, in a prepared statement. “Our goal is to grow annual compensation expense at a slower rate than revenues.”

Get the fuck outta here! It’s the company’s goal to ensure that it takes in more than it pays out? What kind of crazy accounting practice is that?

Does anyone else get the feeling that this country is quickly approaching a tipping point? This is no longer a matter of retaining the best talent, a canard so overused that it needs a hip replacement. It is simply unfettered gluttony, and the main players are starting to cannibalize each other.

And someone needs to point out to the sanctimonious D.C. remoras like John Boehner, once he’s done fellating the Wall Street fat cat donors for campaign cash, that gluttony is a sin.

Here’s another publisher publicly throwing its weight behind Apple — and against Amazon — in the e-book pricing war. Hachette Book Group says it will pursue the “agency model” for pricing its e-books: They set the retail price, and the retailer gets a 30 percent cut.

Translated into more practical terms, it means that Hachette will demand that Amazon and other retailers — but really, this is aimed at Amazon — raise the prices on their e-books from the $9.99 standard they’ve adopted. Instead, it will want them to use the $12.99-$14.99 standard for new books that Apple introduced last week along with its iPad.

Hachette is one of five publishers that participated in Apple’s (AAPL) iPad launch event last week. Macmillan, one of the other five, has spent the past week engaged in a public battle with Amazon over the pricing model. On Sunday Amazon (AMZN) said it would capitulate to Macmillan’s demands.

Macmillan and Amazon have yet to actually resolve their dispute, though, and as of Thursday night Amazon was still not selling Macmillan’s books on its electronic shelves.

In Thursday’s New York Times, Macmillan advertised one of its titles by noting that is was available “at booksellers everywhere except Amazon”. Macmillan CEO John Sargent also defended his position, again, in an open letter to his book agents.

Meanwhile, look for the other three publishers who’ve allied themselves with Apple — Pearson’s Penguin Group, News Corp.’s (NWS) HarperCollins and CBS’s (CBS) Simon & Schuster — to fall in line. On Tuesday, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said he expected to renegotiate his publisher’s deal with Amazon soon.

Again, it’s important to remember that by embracing the agency model, the publishers will actually make less per book than they do with the current version, where they sell the books at a wholesale price. But the publishers think that’s their only chance to keep the prices of e-books from plummeting, and undercutting the sales of their ink-and-paper books.

The publishers hope this strategy will help them escape the fate of the music labels, which saw their $15 CDs replaced with $1 singles. To hear a (mostly) persuasive argument about why they’re wrong, check out this blog post from David Pakman, a digital music veteran now working as a venture capitalist with Venrock.

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The folks at CatAbove have a special Valentine treat for you! The SnoozePal™ hammock is now available in a pretty Valentine heart pattern. And to sweeten the deal, use coupon code V228 when ordering at www.CatAbove.com and get 20% off now through February 28, 2010.

It’s been the quiet talk of the town for a while now, and finally, Sony’s saying something about their alleged plan to start charging for the PSN. It’s definitely something they’re “looking at.”
 
 
 
 

Gamers are used to sensational news coverage about our favorite past time, but once in a while a report lowers the dialogue to a point at which it’s hard to tell if we should be shaking our fists in anger, or laughing hysterically. Such is a recent report out of KDVR from Denver, Colorado (above). Right from the start, the report sounds perfectly fair and objective by referring to the games kids are “dying to play.” It goes on refer about the “growing” problem of child predators using game networks to find their victims.

While the report is critical of the gaming community, portraying it as a dangerous breeding ground for sexual abusers, the bigger problem here is how sensational and poorly-researched the piece is. It profiles a young female gamer who was spoken to inappropriately, but doesn’t mention the outcome of her encounter. It names the Xbox Live user who made the comment, but doesn’t check on his Live profile or cover any comment from Microsoft. It refers to an FBI report calling it the “fastest growing crime,” but doesn’t bother showing any statistics. Most egregiously, the report talks up the dangers of Xbox Live, but doesn’t do what news is meant to do: inform parents about the multiple privacy and blocking features available on every current console.

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