Category: News

There’s been some talk of having the government bail out newspapers or somehow fundamentally support newspapers. Of course, for good reason, that scares a lot of people who believe that news organizations (not just newspapers, mind you) play an important role in acting as a government corruption watchdog. So it’s interesting to see a new study that found that the more government support the press gets, the less they covered government scandals. Of course, this is a correlation — so it’s entirely possible that governments that support the press are simply less corrupt and less prone to scandal. However, the study did look at the timing of gov’t funding as compared to press coverage which suggests that there might be a causal relationship, as the lower incidence of press coverage for gov’t scandals tended to lag funding slightly. There are still some questions, but this certainly suggests that if you believe news organizations are important in holding government accountable, pushing for gov’t support may not be a good idea.

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Homebrew coder maRk2512 has released a new version of Stone Age, a homebrew game remake of the classic Amiga game for the Nintendo DS. The latest upda…

With so many organizations trying to use copyright and trademark law to take content offline, the EFF is announcing the launch of its new Takedown Hall Of Shame, highlighting “the most egregious examples of takedown abuse.” You’ll recognize the names on the list — as every one of them we’ve written about here. Who knows if this will cause lawyers to think twice before issuing bogus takedowns (I doubt it), but at least it should shine some light on how widely copyright and trademark law are abused to stifle speech.

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A few weeks back, I wrote about the impending release of several of the MechWarrior 4 games. The release was supposed to be timed with the 25th anniversary of the Battletech games. While it was not released in time due to the quintessential problem of free projects (real life financial demands imposing themselves on the dev team), MekTek.net has not reneged on their promise of releasing the games for free. Meanwhile, they’ve redesigned their site and released an open beta version of their Assault Tech 1: Battletech project.

Details—and a video link of the downloadable PC game—after the jump.

Mektek.net surely has gotten an overhaul yesterday — the site now has a brand new interface; it even shows a short animation clip of a Vulture (if memory serves). It also has a link to its YouTube channel.

>>>MekTek.net

>>>Battletech – MechWarrior 4 downloadable full version free FPS PC game release update: MekTek post #1

>>>Battletech – MechWarrior 4 downloadable full version free FPS PC game release update: MekTek post #2

>>>See my review of the demo version of Battletech – MechWarrior 4 downloadable full version free FPS PC game HERE

>>>More downloadable full version free FPS PC games HERE

Earlier this month, BBC Audiobooks America started an audiobook project based on Twitter messages where Neil Gaiman kicked off an exquisite corpse process of stringing together about 1,000 Tweets to forge a storyline. Dozens of Twitter users contributed tweets to be edited into a coherent plot that will be released as a free audiobook download. From this publicity stunt, an approximately 50-page book (or 2-hr audiobook, actually) has been created from Gaiman’s fans. And presumably, the collection of tweets could also be remixed and edited — and improved — to possibly gain further participation from Gaiman (who contributed the first line of the story and will read aloud the completed audiobook) and the attention of any number of other authors. It’s not exactly a brand-new idea to compose a story in this way, but it’s a very interesting way to advertise and connect with fans to whet their appetites for more content to come (and even pay for).

However, the crowdsourcing aspect of this particular audiobook has been criticized in detail for exhibiting the worst of literary clichés as well as a meandering plot with too many characters and unresolved arcs. But generalizing this crowd’s apparently unsatisfying result to all possible collaborative-author processes seems a bit disingenuous. Perhaps it’s one of my pet peeves, but the schadenfreude surrounding crowdsourced works that aren’t “as good as Shakespeare” seems to focus too much on some artificial failure, and not the potential or the realized successes. Maybe fiction isn’t the best target for collaborative authorship, but the suggestion that collaborative writing won’t ever work for good storytelling is far from proven. In fact, many popular stories (TV shows, etc) are written by teams of authors. (So the question could be posed: where does the optimal number of authors arise?) Conversely, the overwhelming number of unsuccessful stories written by single authors should not discourage writers from working alone, either. Bad stories happen.

The real triumph of this crowdwork is that this experiment engaged with its audience and promoted Gaiman and BBCAA for future works. From the BBC’s perspective, a ton of content was generated largely for free, and a promotional audiobook was created in just a few days. Had the BBC commissioned a single author to compose a similar work, there wouldn’t be any guarantees of a compelling book in the end. And working with a single author might require more complex licensing rights and royalties. So crowdsourcing this project sounds like an advertising coup — generating a promotion appropriately disguised as free content. It’s not Shakespeare, but it’s a whole lot better than a banner ad, right?

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Sony has announced that the God of War Collection has officially gone gold and is now   scheduled for shipping  on November 17. The ac…

Every month or so, someone reads my recommendations for vegans, checks out some vegan multivitamins, and then writes me asking about the high levels (many times the RDA) of some individual vitamins in many of the vegan multivitamins.

While I’m not aware that taking B vitamins and vitamin C in the amounts found in typical vegan multis poses any sort of health problem, I thought it might interest readers to hear what supplements I take.

For vitamin B12 and calcium, I drink about 1 to 1.5 glasses of fortified soymilk each day. In the past, I have taken a Trader Joe’s 500 mg calcium / 250 mg magnesium/ 7.5 zinc supplement on days I didn’t drink enough soymilk; but lately I’ve been taking it every day. I also take a 1,000 mcg B12 supplement about once a week.

For vitamin D, I try to sit out in the sun for 20 minutes each day (10 minutes facing the sun, 10 minutes facing away). I save any reading that I can do away from the computer for this time each day. I normally get a lot of sun on the weekends. During the dead of winter, I have a vitamin D lamp that I sit in front of for about 10 minutes a day. Vitamin D2 supplements should be fine – I don’t think every vegan needs to run out and get a vitamin D lamp for the winter. I tend to suffer from (self-diagnosed) seasonal affective disorder, so I like the lamp. Until a year ago, I was living in Sacramento where there was plenty of sun throughout the year, but now that I live in Oakland, which can be a lot more cloudy, I have found that I need more light during the winter.

For iodine, I take a 225 mcg supplement every few days. I pop one when I realize that I haven’t in awhile.

For omega-3s, I am a bit of an anomaly, and do not strictly adhere to my own recommendations. Around 2002, I had my prothrombin time tested just to see where it was. Prothrombin time is a measure of how fast your blood clots. Being a vegan, I wanted to make sure I was getting enough omega-3 and that my blood wasn’t clotting too fast. Well, it turned out that it was actually clotting too slowly (but not by much). I had been taking 1 tsp of flaxseed per day for some time (a couple years). I’m not sure if that was related, but I decided to stop supplementing as omega-3s slow blood-clotting time. I have had my prothrombin time tested a few times since then and it is always just a tiny bit slower than normal. So for omega-3s, I will take a DHA tablet once in awhile, but by no means on a daily basis as I recommend for other vegans. I do eat canola oil regularly, which has omega-3s, but not nearly as much as flaxseed oil.

I drink about 4 oz of carrot juice a day to make sure I’m getting beta-carotene.

And that’s it. I hope I haven’t raised more questions than I’ve answered!

I don’t know how you could forget, considering we’ve been posting Droid updates just about every day, but according to our calculations, tomorrow is October 28th: the day Droid drops. Now, we don’t expect the Droid to set the mobile world on its head exactly, but we’re pretty sure that it’s going to be the premiere Android device — until the next premiere device comes out.

While there are still debates over proposals for a federal shield law to protect journalists from having to reveal sources, California already has a shield law for journalists, but what good does it do if authorities totally ignore it. It seems that may have happened in the case of TMZ’s Harvey Levin and the Los Angeles County Sheriff obtaining Levin’s phone records in trying to track down who leaked information about actor Mel Gibson’s arrest. Levin is pointing out that this does, in fact, appear to violate both state and federal law and is apparently working with lawyers over this. While the Sheriff’s department says it spoke with a prosecutor and got a judge’s approval to get the records, it’s difficult to see how that fits with California’s shield law.

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We were just hit up by a new Verizon connect and it looks like the LG Chocolate Touch is on the horizon. We’re told that retail stores should be receiving stock within the next two weeks, which makes sense since it was featured in Verizon’s Holiday Lineup list. In case you missed the details, the Chocolate Touch will pack a 3.2 megapixel camera, EV-DO Rev. 0 (they couldn’t get with the times and get Rev. A?), Visual Voicemail and VZ Navigator. We’re not sure how we feel about the design, especially with LG offerings like the BL20 and BL40, you’d think this fresh new touch screen wouldn’t look like it was designed in the late 90s. It also looks like it’s packing the same tired OS which will look even more dead once Droid/s hit the scene, but with the right pricing we think this could do well with those who aren’t looking for full-featured smartphones. Hit the jump for a shot of the back.

Even cameras with mechanical shutters, it seems, aren’t immune to sensor carryover issues. It seems that when you’re doing that famous 8FPS continuous shooting, it’s possible under certain circumstances that a ghost image will be present in the next image shot. Canon says it’s “barely noticeable,” but someone must have noticed anyway because they’re having to issue a fix. It doesn’t occur in single shots or movies; I’m guessing it’s just a timing issue where the sensor isn’t completely reset before the new exposure begins.

Here’s Canon’s statement:

In images captured by continuous shooting, and under certain conditions, barely noticeable traces of the immediately preceding frame may be visible. This phenomenon is not noticeable in an image with optimal exposure. The phenomenon may become more noticeable if a retouching process such as level compensation is applied to emphasize the image.

A fix should be here soon, I’d guess within a day or two. In the meantime, those of you with 7Ds should try to replicate it! It sounds kinda cool. I get an effect like that when I’m doing a flash+long exposure and a second flash goes off in the background. It looks crazy as hell. The 7D bug should be nothing like that, but hey.

[via CameraTown]

2009Oct27: AUS$150 billion worth of Australian property is at risk from rising sea levels and more frequent storms due to climate change, according to a report from the House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts (Guardian.co.uk).

Reference: Guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/27/rising-sea-levels-australia-beaches

Read the House Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water, Environment and the Arts report http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ccwea/coastalzone/report.htm#chapters

Image Description: Four Mile Beach, Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia. Photo by Malcolmj, 2004Nov12. Image Location: Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Port_douglas_qld_australia.jpg Image Permission: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

We just got a BFG Deimos in today, and it is big, shiny, and competing against Alienware’s M17x. So far, I can tell you that it’s a bit lighter then the Alienware, but (unscientifically speaking) about equal as far as speed. We’ll be doing a full review in the upcoming weeks, but I wanted to share some pictures and first impressions with you today.

BFG is new to the laptop world, and it kind of shows. The box was very basic, without all the pointless extras that some manufacturers include. I’m fine with that, I don’t particularly feel a need to have a BFG hat or mouse pad. I’m here for the gaming performance.

The machine looks good. And it’s not ridiculously heavy like certain other gaming laptops. It’s still huge, but not in an overwhelming way. More importantly, everything works. Sure, there’s isn’t any gimmicky “facial recognition,” but that hardly ever works right anyway. First impression is a solid machine with enough bling to keep me happy. I have to admit, I’m a sucker for blue LEDs.

So I’ve fired up my Steam account, I’m downloading some machine-melting games, and looking forward to putting this thing through its paces. As always, I’ll ask: any particular questions about the machine? Anything you’d like me to take a look at in particular in the full review? Also, if you like the look so far, keep in mind you can get 10% off the price if you pre-order by this Friday.

The article reviewed here is ‘Implicit and Explicit Aspects of Sequence Learning in Presymptomatic Huntington’s Disease’ by Ghilardi and colleagues and freely available here. In the abstract, the authors conclude

‘These results suggest that both explicit and implicit aspects of sequence learning may be impaired before the onset of motor symptoms. However, when attentional demands decrease, explicit, but not implicit, learning may improve‘

Thus the authors compare and contrast implict and explicit learning in Huntington’s Disease (HD) for a very specific task. The study revolves around a sequencing task and some assumptions. The assumptions are that in this case, implicit and explicit learning can be demarcated according to different elements of the response to the task. Thus for instance they argue that as learning proceeds, the movements become more efficient, saving energy and that this occurs implicitly. They also argue that the number of anticipatory movements in the task is a proxy for explicit learning. However it could be argued that there can be an overlap. Thus the subject could tire of the movements involved in the task and consciously seek to perform these actions more efficiently. Further these actions could be accompanied by an internal dialogue which could almost certainly be considered an explicit form of learning or it could occur non-verbally where the subject nevertheless attends to this goal. Similarly for the initial period of learning the task involves consideration of the sequence of events but here too it could be asked ‘does the learning take place consciously’ (the same could, I think, be asked of this example where the question could be asked  ‘is this chimp consciously or explicitly aware of what he is doing?’). In effect then, it might be reasonable to ask if implicit or explict learning are continuous rather than discrete functions or even if this characterisation is task specific such that it might not be possible to generalise from single tasks.

The researchers have considered a large number of variables which are given in tables 2 and 3. Interestingly they mention that there is a ‘post-hoc analysis’ and a null hypothesis is not clearly stated although the authors do discuss their interpretation of the different components of the task response. The researchers have corrected for the multiple comparisons by using Bonferrini corrections. On the tasks, the subjects with presymptomatic HD (the number of CAG repeats averaged 41. The greater the number the greater is the risk of conversion) performed significantly worse on the implicit and explicit learning components of the tasks as interpreted by the researchers. My initial impression was that the explicit task involved sequencing and might under Baddeley’s model of working memory be attributed to the central executive. There would be expected to be executive dysfunction if the frontal-subcortical loops are affected by the disease process which is seen in HD. The only question here is whether or not there is interruption of the frontal-subcortical loops as this is prefmanifest HD. The researchers also found that if they reduced the complexity of the task there was no significant difference between the premanifest HD subjects and the controls on the ‘explicit learning’ but there was a significant difference on the ‘implicit learning’ task.

The researchers discuss their results and comment on the possible involvement of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and a number of other pathways. They also suggest that implicit memory involves primary motor cortex and supplementary motor areas but it is also interesting to note that the cerebellum is thought to play a significant role in this type of learning for motor tasks. I would be interested to see a larger replication study with clearly delineated primary outcome measures and a range of tasks examining both implicit and explicit memory.

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Clay Shirky points us to a letter sent by the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to the Justice Department suggesting that a book price war between Amazon and Wal-Mart is potentially illegal. What they appear to be saying — as Shirky also noted — is that lower prices are a bad thing:

While on the surface it may seem that these lower
prices will encourage more reading and a greater sharing of ideas in the culture,
the reality is quite the opposite. Consider this quote from Mr. Grisham’s agent,
David Gernert, that appeared in the New York Times:

“If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10,
publishing as we know it is over. If you can buy Stephen King’s new novel
or John Grisham’s ‘Ford County’ for $10, why would you buy a brilliant first
novel for $25? I think we underestimate the effect to which extremely discounted
best sellers take the consumer’s attention away from emerging writers.”

Basically the booksellers are saying they can’t compete in the marketplace. That may be true, but if it’s not actually harming consumers, what is the problem? There is no rule that says books must cost $25. If companies can figure out how to sell books for less, in ways that work for their bottom line, then what’s wrong with that?

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By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

Come November 1, Amazon’s Web Services division will be lowering the per-hour prices for all of its current five instance types (AMIs), while adding two new AMI types on the high-end, according to a multitude of announcements from Amazon today. At the new high end of the scale will be a “quadruple extra-large” AMI with 68.4 GB of dedicated RAM, and the virtual computing power of a 1 GHz, 26-core Intel Xeon processor (albeit a 2007 model).

The new high-end instances won’t come cheap — they’ll carry a premium of $2.40 per instance-hour for Linux editions, and $2.88 per instance-hour for Windows Server 2003. The previous high-end AMI, still called “extra large,” had been priced at nearly one-third that amount.

However, revenue from the new super-high-end will help drive down prices for everyone else, starting November 1. At that time, the per-hour price for the smallest and cheapest instance available, running generic Linux, will be reduced by 15% to $0.085 per hour. Windows Server instances will be trimmed a bit, but not by as much percentage-wise — the “extra large” price, for instance, will drop only 4¢ to $0.96 per hour.

The price cuts come as Amazon looks to offer more competitive buildouts, for customers that continue to prefer to deploy entire machine instances — rather than just applications, such as Salesforce.com and Microsoft offer — in the cloud, administered using everyday software. Already Amazon has been offering pre-configured AMIs with Microsoft SQL Server (at about a 10% premium per-hour), and IBM DB2 (somewhat higher at $0.38 per hour). Now Amazon is committing to offering its own brand of database server, called Amazon RDS, in lower-priced instances that will compete with its SQL Server, Oracle, and DB2 instances, using MySQL as the underlying engine.

“For customers whose applications require relational storage, but want to reduce the time spent on database management, Amazon RDS automates common administrative tasks to reduce complexity and total cost of ownership,” reads a statement from Amazon AWS to Betanews this afternoon. “Amazon RDS automatically backs up a customer’s database and maintains the database software, allowing customers to spend more time on application development. With the native database access Amazon RDS provides, customers get the programmatic familiarity, tooling and application compatibility of a traditional RDBMS. Customers also benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with a Relational Database Instance via a single API call.”

Customers will still be expected to maintain their own databases, Amazon’s statement tells us, although instancing in the cloud will enable them to re-provision resources as necessary on a more granular basis. Multiple statements today managed to make mince meat of Amazon’s quoted rates for transfer, but a blog post this afternoon managed to straighten the matter out: RDS customers will be charged 10¢ per gigabyte per month for storage, and another 10¢ per month for every one million I/O requests. Bandwidth charges should then be the same as for Amazon’s existing, non-relational SimpleDB instances: The first gigabyte of data in or out is free, then fees rise to 10¢ per gigabyte in and 17¢ per gigabyte out, declining to 10¢ per gigabyte out after 150 TB.

This will not be the first appearance of MySQL on Amazon’s cloud; the commercial MySQL Enterprise has been available under Sun Microsystems’ branding since this time last year.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009