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  • Photo for Today – Battlefield Palette

    Battlefield Palette at the British Museum
    There’s a description of the palette at the British Museum’s website

    Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

  • Photo: Dr Hawass inside the Osiris shaft

    drhawass.com

    The photo is on the above page. Here’s the caption.

    Dr. Hawass stands in the Osiris Shaft. During his excavations of the Osiris Shaft in 1999, Dr. Hawass found the remains of four pillars surrounded by a wall. Inside the pillared area was part of a large, granite sarcophagus with the lid thrown off. This discovery reflected the words of Herodotus when he said that Khufu was buried inside a granite sarcophagus and there was water near Khufu’s pyramid. People have always wondered about these words, but no one ever discovered the exact location. Even Herodotus admitted that he never saw the burial with his own eyes, because he was never able to go down into the shaft; he must have based his writing on the words of guides. (Photo: SCA)
    Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

  • Polk Automotive Loyalty Winners Announced

    Automotive information provider Polk announced during one of the 2010 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) events the winners of its 14th Annual Automotive Loyalty Awards. For this edition, four new awards were presented, as well as three new ethnic loyalty awards.

    The manufacturer which got it all is Toyota, who outdone GM and received the Overall Loyalty to Manufacturer award, a prize given based on he manufacturer’s ability to retain previous customers (for Toyota, the fact that … (read more)

  • Ovi Store Now Available On Nokia N900 Phones [Nokia]

    Good news, N900 owners—all three of you—as Nokia’s Ovi Store is now available for download thanks to a firmware update. Don’t get too drunk on your apps downloading frenzy, now. [Nokia Conversations]







  • In First Week, Google May Have Sold 20,000 Nexus One Phones

    When I spoke with Google’s mobile boss, Andy Rubin, he said that Google would be happy to sell about 150,000 Nexus One devices. That number, he said would be enough for the Google Phone to get in-front of a majority of American phone buyers who might want to take a look at it. Well, let’s just say a fraction of the job might be done. According to Flurry, a San Francisco-based mobile application analytics company, the company may have sold about 20,500 units of the Nexus One, which if you read my review is the best Android phone on the market.

    In the past, Flurry has been fairly accurate in giving guesstimates on first week sales, thanks to its relationships with 10,000 app developers. They estimate that the “Nexus One was outsold by Droid by more than 12 times, myTouch 3G by 3 times and iPhone 3GS by a staggering 80 times.” Of course, Google didn’t spend a lot of money on marketing — that isn’t part of the plan — as Rubin explained to me.

    Cannibalization may also be playing a role as the Nexus One competes against the myTouch 3G for any new T-Mobile customer. In effect, sales are now split between the two handsets. And while Google, in an effort to avoid channel conflict with T-Mobile, appears to have set the direct-to-consumer price for the handset at over $500 dollars, the high price point combined with the fact that the handset is only considered an “evolutionary” improvement over previous Android devices, indicates that Google did not take the steps to maximize first week sales. (Flurry Press Release)

    firstweeklaunch.png I think 20,500 Nexus Ones sold might be a tad on the high side, considering Google has been giving away the phone to its employees and has seeded the market with giveaways. Regardless, it would be interesting to see how Google carries on pushing this device in the coming months. The company is experiencing a backlash over customer service issues and more recently about confusion about service cancellation charges.

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  • Red Bull Oust Bortolotti from Junior Team

    Although he seemed as one of the most promising racers currently part of Red Bull’s young driver development programme, Italian 20-year old Mirko Bortolotti must have done something wrong in recent days, or else nobody could explain why he was suddenly ousted by the Red Bull programme.

    Until a few days ago, Bortolotti was seen as a potential replacement for Spanish driver Jaime Alguersuari in the Toro Rosso lineup for the 2010 Formula One championsip. Now, according to Turun Sanomat correspon… (read more)

  • Google Considers Leaving China If China Will Not Allow Uncensored Search

    Did not see this one coming at all. Four years ago, there was tremendous attention paid to Google’s announcement that it was offering a search engine in China, which would censor results in accordance with Chinese law. This resulted in a massive amount of criticism directed at Google, and Google’s PR response was quite weak, with waffling explanations. The company did eventually make a reasonable (to some) argument that it hoped it could effect more change from within the system, by doing things like alerting users to the fact that results were censored. However, many were still quite critical of Google’s position, even as most people assumed that Google felt it had to do this just to get access to the lucrative Chinese market.

    But in a surprising blog post discussing an online attack that tried to access a bunch of Gmail accounts of people seen as activists for human rights in China, Google also announced that it found the situation in China to be untenable and it would no longer censor results in China (it’s at the very end — talk about burying the lede):


    These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

    I have to admit that my first thought is that there’s something much bigger happening behind the scenes to lead to this. I doubt that this decision came out of some hackers trying to access Gmail accounts. The real question is what China does now — and whether either side is bluffing?

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  • 2011 Mustang GT to Make Hip-Hop Debut Alongside Nelly

    Cool cars and hip-hop music are already an image we’ve got used to over the past years, so the news that Grammy Award-winning artist Nelly will include the 2011 Mustang 5.0-liter V-8 in his upcoming album’s artwork is no surprise for us. The album, set to launch this spring, will feature a 2011 Mustang GT customized by DUB Magazine.

    "I don’t care where you grew up, everyone knows the Mustang. At some point, you’ve had a conversation about a Mustang – and it was probably one about you wan… (read more)

  • Saab CEO and Board Replaced

    Saab has just made another step towards its full closure after General Motors named Stephen Taylor and Peter Torngren as wind-down supervisors of Saab, thus replacing both CEO Jan Ake Jonsson and the company’s entire board. Additionally, General Motors also emphasized in a statement that it is willing to listen to any offers for Saab, although it has already started the winding down process.

    "As stated previously, the wind-down process is expected to take several months, and will ensure … (read more)

  • France Warns Renault on Turkey Move

    Following last week’s rumors surrounding a possible shift in the production of some Renault models from France to Turkey, the French government reacted and warned the carmaker not to proceed with its plans if they are to lead to local job losses.

    "Renault is not just any ordinary company – the state holds 15% and we are not going to be spectators because this is a company that has received a lot of assistance during the crisis," employment minister Laurent Wauquiez told RTL radio, … (read more)

  • Did The Nexus One Sell Just 20,000 Units In Its First Week? [Google]

    Google’s pushing the Nexus One hard, but could people be holding out for Apple to show its hand in June? 20,000 sales is 230,000 less than the Droid, and 1.580m less than the iPhone 3GS. [Mobile-Ent]







  • Chrysler Group Receives Diversity Leadership Award

    The 14th Annual Urban Wheels Awards held in Detroit in conjunction with NAIAS 2010 honored diversity in the automotive industry yesterday, and Chrysler Group was one of those awarded. The company received the Diversity Leadership Award, while the 2010 Ram Heavy Duty truck was honored as a "Finalist" for Urban Truck of the Year.

    "Despite many challenges, Chrysler Group has maintained a leadership commitment to promote diversity throughout our business enterprise," Fred M. D… (read more)

  • Front Loaders or top loaders.. What do you think are the best?

    This is not a poll thread merely a post about peoples preferences in Washer / Dryers.

    We currently have a Bosch 1000 Max front loader washer. It’s been brilliant and tough not a problem in 4 years and it still works like a trouper.

    We also have a Fisher and Paykel clothes drier, the auto one that detects when the clothes are dry (depending on preferences) and have had no problems ever and it’s around the same age as the Bosch. I love the fact I can just chuck in a wet load of clothes and the thing does everything for you. Set and forget including creaseguard which is great for the husbands business shirts. Zero Ironing.

    *yay*

    mx

  • Google’s Nexus One phone sells a mere 20,000 in its first week

    flurry nexus oneThe Google Nexus One sold an estimated 20,000 units in its first week, according to market analytics firm Flurry.

    Although the Nexus One received a lot of buzz as Google’s own entry into the Android phone business, the sales number isn’t that impressive. We’ll see if Google actually confirms or disputes this number.

    Flurry monitors the usage of more than 10,000 developer applications on iPhone and Android platforms. It tracks over 25 million end user sessions per month. From that, it was able to figure out the first week sales for the Nexus One as well as prior phone launches such as the myTouch 3G, Droid, and iPhone 3GS. The iPhone 3GS sold more than a million units over the first three days of sales in June, 2009. The Droid, an Android phone built by Motorola and launched in November, sold 250,000 units in its first week, more than 12 times as much as the Nexus One.

    The Nexus One may seem like a dud. It has gotten good reviews for features such as Google Voice and Google Maps. But Flurry notes that it hasn’t lived up to the early expectations, and distribution, pricing, and marketing have not been aggressive.  While Verizon spent $100 million marketing the Droid, Google sold its device directly to consumers via its own web site. Google also launched after the holidays.

    T-Mobile, the carrier partner for Nexus One, did not provide the same carrier co-marketing support as it did for the myTouch 3G launch. And Google has set its direct-to-consumer price for the Nexus One at over $500.


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  • Nintendo finally gets Netflix movies on the Wii

    nintendoIn case you needed one more place to get Netflix videos: now you can use your Nintendo Wii game console to watch them.

    It’s a little hard to get excited about this. Netflix is available on a wide variety of set-top boxes such as Roku, and it is being built into many connected TVs that are selling this year. It has been on the Xbox 360 game console’s Xbox Live service for more than a year, and it recently became available on the Sony PlayStation 3.

    This is an odd place for Nintendo to be, since the company has generally looked down on Sony and Microsoft and their thinly disguised ambitions of taking over the entirety of living room entertainment. Nintendo executives have often insisted that their consoles are all about games.

    By letting users watch movies, Nintendo is buying into the argument that people want more out of their game consoles as a bridge between TV and online multimedia. The Nintendo Wii can’t even play DVD movies, nor does it have storage capacity to store movies. But now Wii owners with a broadband connection and at least a $9-per-month Netflix subscription will be able to use the online service for watching Netflix movies.

    Nintendo users will have to put a Netflix disc into their consoles while they watch, as is the case with Sony’s PS 3. The Wii can’t do high-definition video. In that sense, this service seems to call out the Wii’s weaknesses. But there are a lot of Wii’s out there. More than 60 million have sold worldwide. [art credit: gadget review]


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  • Five companies create United Nations Citizens virtual world

    un 3Cisco Systems, Equifax and three smaller companies have partnered to create United Nations Citizens, a virtual world that has a real economy and is geared toward enabling a virtual shopping mall.

    The virtual world lets consumers create their own 3-D avatars to shop with or hold down jobs inside the virtual environment. Numerous partners have invested millions of dollars into the technologies that provide electronic commerce companies with the ability to conduct transactions in the world. Besides Cisco and Equifax, partners include Heads & Tails TV, Faithful Friends TV & Montage Systems.

    un 4United Nations Citizens enables online commissioned sales assistants and paid greeters to become faithful friends helping consumers with questions and purchases. Those assistants can sell the products and services of more than 330 name brand retailers. The world is a place where people can hold down good paying jobs, says Anthony Loiacono, CEO at Heads & Tails TV. The companies say the graphics will be stellar, using the core animation engine behind the film Avatar. But I can’t tell. This could be sterile or cool.

    un 1The world has features such as high-definition television screens inside the world where consumers can watch movies or branded advertising. There are opportunities inside the world to promote local events such as high school sports, festivals, fashion shows, and more. On paper, it sounds a lot like Sony’s Home virtual world on the PlayStation 3 or Linden Labs’ Second Life. About 330 retail brands are participating, including Apple iTunes, Microsoft Store, Walmart, and Sky Mall.

    If the in-world avatars do a good job selling merchandise from those brands, then the people operating the avatars can be paid.The 3-D world will offer lots of ways for the products and services to be merchandised in a way that mirrors the real world. But this world is all digital, so it will be easy to collect analytics data.


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  • Spyker to Buy Saab in Days or Give Up

    The talks between Spyker and Saab have apparently reached the boiling point and the Dutch carmaker isn’t willing to wait for a GM decision anymore. Spyker CEO Victor Muller said in a statement that he expects to reach a deal in a few days or the Dutch company might walk away from the talks.

    There is a point in time where we would say, ‘This is not for us,’ Muller said at the Automotive News World Congress. The last time I looked, which was a half hour ago, we were in the mi… (read more)

  • Molecular Manufacturing

    In fairness to all, nanotechnology is in early days.  We are seeing a lot of exciting proof of principal type work.

     

    We can make some predictions.

     

    We need an engineering template idea similar to the integrated circuit to organize and use this knowledge.  Otherwise we will be studying thousands of noncompatible dead ends.  Right now we do not know if this is possible.  This template system is likely to be three dimensional.

     

    Our capabilities will swiftly surpass anything imagined by Mother Nature.  This is important because Mother Nature has actually built out with a lot of constraints that is could not work around easily.  We actually have the option of introducing exotic combinations that super perform.

     

    In short, expect to be surprised and surprised and surprised.

     

    This NRC report is attempting to establish a focus and support system within the community to ease the process.  I think that we still need much more data and conferences to settle directions.  Again this is early days and this process has likely decades to develop.  Right now we want to avoid closing off any avenues.

     

    Molecular Manufacturing:

     

    http://metamodern.com/2010/01/07/molecular-manufacturing-the-nrc-study-and-its-recommendations/

     

    The NRC study and its recommendations

     

    by ERIC DREXLER on JANUARY 7, 2010
    Part 6 of a series prompted by the recent 50th anniversary of Feynman’s historic talk, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”. This is arguably the most important post of the series, or of this blog to date.
    Topics:
    The most credible study of molecular manufacturing to date
    The study’s recommendations for Federal research support
    The current state of progress toward implementation
    The critical problem: not science, but institutions and focus
    A Matter of Size: Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative
    Committee to Review the National Nanotechnology Initiative, National Research Council
    (full document [pdf])
    A formal, Federal-level study has examined the physical principles of high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing (aka molecular manufacturing), assessing its feasibility and closing with a call for experimental research.
    Surprisingly, this recommendation smacks of heresy in some circles, and the very idea of examining the subject met strong opposition.
    The process in outline: Congress voted to direct the U.S. National Research Council,the working arm of the U.S. National Academies, to conduct, as part of the lengthy Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, what in the House version had been described as a “Study on molecular manufacturing…to determine the technical feasibility of the manufacture of materials and devices at the molecular scale”, and in response, the NRC convened a study committee that organized a workshop, examined the literature, deliberated, and reported their conclusions, recommending appropriate research directions for moving the field forward, including experimental research directed toward development of molecular manufacturing.
    NRC studies are not haphazard processes, and the National Academies website describes its procedures in substantial detail. Because the NRC often advises the Federal government on politically charged questions, “Checks and balances are applied at every step in the study process to protect the integrity of the reports and to maintain public confidence in them.” These include independent scientific review of reports that are themselves the product of independent experts assembled with attention to potential conflicts of interest.
    It’s worth taking a moment to compare the NRC to the three previous leading sources of information on molecular manufacturing: committed advocates, committed critics, and self-propagating mythologies. None of these is remotely comparable. Unless one has studied the topic closely and in technical detail, it seems reasonable to adopt the committee’s conclusions as a rough-draft version of reality, and to proceed from there.
    Here are some excerpts that I think deserve special emphasis, followed by the concluding paragraph of the report:
    Technical Feasibility of Site-Specific Chemistry for Large-Scale Manufacturing
    The proposed manufacturing systems can be viewed as highly miniaturized, highly articulated versions of today’s scanning probe systems, or perhaps as engineered ribosome-like systems…

    …The technical arguments make use of accepted scientific knowledge but constitute a “theoretical analysis demonstrating the possibility of a class of as-yet unrealizable devices.”22

    Construction of extended structures with three-dimensional covalent bonding may be easy to conceive and might be readily accomplished, but only by using tools that do not yet exist.25 In other words, the tool structures and other components cannot yet be built, but they can be computationally modeled.


    [ … concluding paragraph:]

    Although theoretical calculations can be made today, the eventually attainable range of chemical reaction cycles, error rates, speed of operation, and thermodynamic efficiencies of such bottom-up manufacturing systems cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Thus, the eventually attainable perfection and complexity of manufactured products, while they can be calculated in theory, cannot be predicted with confidence. Finally, the optimum research paths [to advanced systems] cannot be reliably predicted at this time. Research funding that is based on the ability of investigators to produce experimental demonstrations that link to abstract models and guide long-term vision is most appropriate to achieve this goal.
    22. K.E. Drexler. 1992. Nanosystems, Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation. New York: Wiley & Sons.

    [see page on my website]

    25. M. Rieth and W. Schommers, eds. 2005. Handbook of Computational and Theoretical Nanotechnology. American Scientific Publishers.

    [see chapter pdf]
    Source pages, NRC report [pdf ]

    My summary in a nutshell:

    The committee examined the concept of advanced molecular manufacturing, and found that the analysis of its physical principles is based on accepted scientific knowledge, and that it addresses the major technical questions. However, in the committee’s view, theoretical calculations are insufficient: Only experimental research can reliably answer the critical questions and move the technology toward implementation. Research in this direction deserves support.
    \
    I should note that the tone of the report is skeptical, emphasizing what the committee [correctly] sees as the unusual approach and the [resulting,methodologically inherent] incompleteness of the results. A quick skim could easily suggest a negative assessment. A closer reading, however, shows that points raised are in the end presented, not as errors, nor even as specific, concrete weaknesses in the analysis, but instead as work not yet done, motivating the development of a research program directed toward validating and achieving the proposed technological objectives.

    The call for research

    The report closes with a call for research on pathways toward molecular manufacturing, quoted above, and an earlier section outlines some appropriate objectives:
    To bring this field forward, meaningful connections are needed between the relevant scientific communities. Examples include:
    Delineating desirable research directions not already being pursued by the biochemistry community;
    Defining and focusing on some basic experimental steps that are critical to advancing long-term goals; and
    Outlining some “proof-of-principle” studies that, if successful, would provide knowledge or engineering demonstrations of key principles or components with immediate value.

    The response and progress

    The technology roadmap

     

    Research directions toward molecular manufacturing have been charted in the subsequent Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, the result of a project led by the Battelle Memorial Institute, the manager of research at U.S. National Laboratories that include Pacific Northwest, Oak Ridge, and Brookhaven. These labs hosted several Roadmap workshops and provided many of the participating scientists and engineers; I served as the lead technical consultant for the project.
    The Roadmap is responsive to the NRC request above, and recommends research that includes work along the lines I describe below.

    Molecular engineering methodologies

     

    The crucial research objective is the development of systematic experimental and design methodologies that enable the fabrication of large, multicomponent, atomically precise nanostructures by means of self-assembly. This research direction fits the NRC committee’s criteria: it is, by nature, strongly experimental, and in mimicking macromolecular structures and processes in biology, it holds promise for near-term biomedical applications.

    Structural DNA nanotechnology

     

    In the year the NRC report reached print, a Nature paper reported a breakthrough-level development, “DNA origami”. This technology opened the door to systematic, atomically precise engineering on a scale of hundreds of nanometers and millions of atoms.
    Since then, we’ve seen rapid progress in structural DNA nanotechnology. I discussed recent landmark achievements here and here.

    Polypeptide foldamer nanotechnology

     

    There’s also been rapid progress in design methodologies for complex, atomically precise nanoscale structures made from polypeptide foldamers (aka proteins). In recent years, protein engineering has achieved a functional milestone: systematically engineering devices that perform controlled molecular transformations (see“Computational tools for designing and engineering biocatalysts”).

    Framework-directed assembly of composite systems

     

    Looking forward, promising next steps involve integrating structural DNA frameworks with polypeptide foldamers, other foldamers, and other organic and inorganic materials. These classes of components have complementary properties (as discussed in my comments on “Modular Molecular Composite Nanosystems”).

    Why these developments are important

     

    As is now well recognized, “existing biological systems for protein fabrication could be harnessed to produce nanoscale molecular machines with designed functions” (“Computational protein design promises to revolutionize protein engineering”). Further, as biological systems demonstrate, programmable molecular machine systems can be harnessed to build programmable molecular machine systems.
    As I’ve discussed, this capability could be exploited to pursue a spiral of improvement in materials, components, and molecular machine systems.

    The path ahead

     

    This spiral of development, in which molecular tools are used to construct more capable next-generation molecular tools, could be exploited to develop products with expanding applications, falling cost, and increasing value.
    As I discussed in “Making vs. Modeling: A paradox of progress in nanotechnology”,each generation of tools can be expected to enable fabrication processes and products that are more robust, more susceptible to computational simulation, and better suited to established systems engineering design methodologies. This indicates the potential for an accelerating pace of development toward a technology platform that can support the implementation of high-throughput atomically precise fabrication.
    This path is being followed today, yet the level of support and organization, of mission and urgency, does not come close to matching its potential for solving long-term yet urgent problems.

     

    Appropriate and inappropriate responses to the NRC report on molecular manufacturing

    The evaluation of the feasibility of molecular manufacturing and recommendations for research form the concluding section of the body of the NRC’s Triennial Review of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. In the three years since the publication of the NRC report, I have seen no document from a Federal-level source that acknowledges these conclusions, and, of course, none that offers a substantive response.
    This is of concern, because the NRC report calls for a sharp break with past thinking. To put it bluntly, much of the opinion in general circulation about molecular manufacturing (both pro and con) is rubbish because it is based on mythology, and not on the scientific literature. The NRC report can be criticized on several points, but it isn’t rubbish.

    Fulfilling the initial promise of nanotechnology

     

    Atomically precise fabrication technologies exist today, and as I have noted,advanced atomically precise fabrication is the promise that initially defined the field of nanotechnology. I believe the record shows that advanced atomically precise fabrication is also the promise that got it funded.
    Building on recent advances, strategically targeted research in atomically precise fabrication could draw on and contribute to fields across the spectrum of modern nanotechnologies, from materials to deviced, and could bring them together to elevate the technology platform for further advances. Ultimately, as the NRC report suggests, those advances could potentially deliver what was promised at the inception of the field.
    Make no mistake: the path to high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing will not be short, and it will not be direct. It will be a multi-stage development process, and as I have discussed, the early steps differ greatly from the ultimate results in both their form and their potential applications.

    Growing urgency

     

    Today, the potential promise of high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing must be regarded as credible. As a consequence of its inherent productive capacity, it offers a credible potential solution to problems of energy production and climate change. The National Research Council of the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has called for the support of research explicitly directed toward the development of this technology. This has become urgent.

    The strength and limitations of current research support

     

    It is both laudable and problematic that the research I’ve reported above is chiefly funded by programs in biology and medicine. This support has enabled great progress, and I know from long discussion that researchers in these areas have ambitious visions for the future. There are, however, limits to what can be achieved while developing molecular engineering within the framework of biotechnology, much as there would have been if aeronautical engineering research had been developed as a field of ornithology.
    The critical need today is not for new scientific results, but for an integrative approach to molecular systems engineering, directed toward strategic technology objectives. The science is ready. The institutions are not.

     

    A word to readers:

     

    The implications of the NRC report call for reconsidering views that have shaped policy in the research disciplines critical to progress toward molecular manufacturing, yet like many other NRC reports, it is virtually unknown. Directing other readers to what I have written here could help to remedy this problem.
    (And a further note to readers who are bursting with frustration: Please don’t. It is counterproductive, and generates far more heat than light.)
    Note: I say in the first paragraph that Congress voted for “…what in the House version had been described as a ‘Study on molecular manufacturing…to determine the technical feasibility of the manufacture of materials and devices at the molecular scale’” to reflect an oddity of the legislative history behind the study: After the House transmitted the bill to the Senate, a nanotechnology business association successfully lobbied to replace “molecular manufacturing”, thereby calling for a (puzzling) “Study on molecular self-assembly”. An uproar followed. In the end, the NRC did a study of molecular self-assembly, as directed in the final bill, but also responded to the request by the House for a study of molecular manufacturing. In the end, molecular manufacturing dominated the agenda of the workshop. [I corrected the main text and this description after reviewing the GPO documents, several hours after the initial posting.]
    In a later section, I note that “I have seen no document from a Federal-level source that acknowledges these conclusions”. There is, in fact, a document that quotes from the conclusions, but the quoted material is edited in a way that wrongly indicates that the recommendations regarding molecular manufacturing are, instead, recommendations regarding molecular self-assembly (see “The National Nanotechnology Initiative: Second Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel”, p.43).
    [Dec 8: Updated to add the paragraph beginning “I should note that the tone of the report is skeptical…” I would expect this tone to strongly influence the impression left on casual readers, blunting the impact of what, in substance, amounts to a sharp rebuke to the conventional wisdom.]
    An open comment thread for this post can be found here.

  • Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter caught nonchalantly hanging out in the wild

    Interested in getting prepared for all your Wireless Display (WiDi) needs? Looks like Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter is already on the shelves of at least one Best Buy, right in front of a $99 price tag that matches the press release from before. The back of the box photo, seen after the break, doesn’t shed any new light on the device. Unless you’re really into (near term) future proofing of your wireless display needs, it might be best to wait for a few more options when it comes to fancy-schmancy new compatible machines.

    [Thanks, Colin]

    Continue reading Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter caught nonchalantly hanging out in the wild

    Netgear’s Push2TV wireless TV adapter caught nonchalantly hanging out in the wild originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • John Booth Replaced Alex Tai as Virgin Racing Team Principal

    Virgin Racing started doing some reorganizing of themselves lately, despite the fact that they’ve just officially launched the Formula One team less than a month ago. Consequently, the former Manor Grand Prix boss John Booth will take over from Alex Tai as team principal as of this morning.

    According to a press release issued by the Virgin Racing organization, the move was intended to fully addressing the complexity and challenges of the new business and to creating a team with th… (read more)