Sorry Snooks, but we don’t need another Amy Winehouse. One is quite enough, thank you.
Before she was picking up “juicers” and dancing on bars for MTV’s cameras, Jersey Shore’s Princess of Poughkeepsie was turning YouTube gems like this one. Do you think she realizes that we’re all laughing at her?
While many of us are aware of every single pound we gain (and, more importantly, the effect on how comfortable our best pair of jeans feel) it seems that weight awareness might not figure as prominently as the numbers on the scale exceed the healthy … Read more
TorrentFreak has an article up about an announcement from the rather aggressive Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, insisting that it had shut down nearly 400 different BitTorrent sites in 2009, along with another 200 plus “illegal sites.” However, as TorrentFreak notes, no one seems to know what the majority of these sites were. It had cataloged somewhere around two dozen sites that were shutdown, but didn’t hear a peep from the users of the other hundreds of sites shut down — which seems odd, since users of such sites are usually pretty quick to tell TorrentFreak of any shutdowns. So, did BREIN shut down sites that no one uses? Or did those users not tell anyone? Anyone have any answers?
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience this weekend that the world has changed, that it’s become more public and less private, and that the controversial new default and permanent settings reflect how the site would work if he were to create it today. Not everyone agrees with his move and its justification.
Has society become less private or is it Facebook that’s pushing people in that direction? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway? Below are some thoughts, based primarily on the pro-privacy reactions to Zuckerberg’s statements from many of our readers this weekend. Though there is a lot to be said for analysis of public data (more on that later), I believe that Facebook is making a big mistake by moving away from its origins based on privacy for user data.
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In Facebook’s early days, and for the vast majority of the site’s life, its primary differentiator was that your user data was only visible to other users that you approved friend requests from. As of mid-December, Facebook users were no longer allowed to hide from the web-at-large some information including their profile photos, list of friends and interests in the form of fan pages they followed. Text, photo and video updates shared on the site have always been by default private (friends only) but if you’d never changed your privacy settings before last month, then Facebook suggested you switch them to make those updates publicly visible to everyone. That became the new default.
Here are three reasons why making some of this data public by requirement and some public by default is the wrong thing to do and why society is not in fact changing the way that Zuckerberg claims it is.
Mark Zuckerberg might be right, people probably are becoming more comfortable telling the world at large about more and different parts of their lives. Why does that mean it’s ok to take away peoples’ choices and force them to make public some of their information all the time? That just doesn’t make sense.
Privacy is a fundamental human right and while that may seem less true when we’re operating on corporate turf like Facebook, Facebook used to be based on privacy. Why give it up so easily? (Isn’t it a cause for concern that so much of our civic interaction now goes on through this and other corporate channels?)
It’s very hard to believe that the hundreds of millions of mainstream Facebook users are wanting to throw their privacy out the window – and if Facebook believes they are, why not just ask them clearly?
This Summer we wrote about the academic research of University of Massachusetts-Amherst Legal Studies student Chris Peterson, who argues that an accurate and contemporary understanding of privacy is based more on the integrity of context than on absolute secrecy. Peterson tackles the contemporary reality of privacy on Facebook in a very readable draft thesis paper titled Saving Face: The Privacy Architecture of Facebook (PDF).
Peterson argues that the idea that anything published ought to be understood as intended for public distribution is an antiquated understanding from the era when publishing was expensive and required a lot of effort. The opposite is true today, it’s free and easy to publish – so information at different levels of appropriateness for public eyes is being published. Why not support that?
But at any rate they could plug into your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984
Instead of what Facebook is doing, Peterson says that a more appropriate understanding of privacy today is based on context. We expect our communication to go on in an appropriate context (no drinking in church or praying in the bar) and we expect to understand how our communication will be distributed.
If a college friend took photos of you drinking in a bar and showed them off to people in church, you might feel your privacy has been violated in both appropriateness and distribution. The bar is a public place, though, and not completely secret. Thus the need for a more sophisticated understanding of privacy that is more than mere secrecy.
By pushing your personal information and conversation through activity updates fully into the public, Facebook is eliminating any integrity of context that these conversations would naturally have. Posted updates can be directed only to limited lists of Facebook contacts, like college buddies or work friends, but that option is buried under more public default options and much of a user’s activity on the site is not subject to that kind of option.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg used to say that people would share more information if they felt comfortable knowing that it would only be visible to people they trusted. He told me in an interview two years ago that users who wanted to do so couldn’t take their data off of the site because privacy control “is the vector around which Facebook operates.” Now apparently, he’s changed his mind. This weekend I argued that his justification for the new stance is not credible.
Do people no longer need to keep access to some of their personal information online limited just to trusted friends? Facebook seems to be arguing that they don’t.
There is a long list of people who clearly do, though, including: people who’ve escaped abusive relationships, people with marginalized religious or sexual preferences, people who fear losing their jobs or who’ve been pushed around by bullies throughout their lives. That list adds up to a very large portion of the world, in fact. The group of Ivy League elites who run Facebook might think there’s no reason to be able to control access to their personal information, but many of them are less socially vulnerable and have less need to control their personal information.
Consider this comment left by one of our readers in response to Zuckerberg’s statement this weekend.
“As a person who is being stalked for being an innocent bystander in a child custody case, I can tell you that losing my choices over what is searchable or not is huge. I have nothing to hide nor be ashamed of but the loss of choice for my privacy has hit home in a poignant manner.”
Stories like that are far more common than you might think and removing user control over what’s public removes the ability for millions of people to safely participate on Facebook.
More than millions, tens or hundreds of millions of people around the world have reason to limit visibility of their personal information from the web but still want to be able to share that information with trusted contacts. Facebook became a huge success on that premise and ought to be able to continue to thrive without doing a 180 degree turn on privacy.
Coming soon: The positive side of Facebook data made public. Hint.
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Hakeem Kae-Kazim who is known for Hollywood blockbusters like ‘X Men Origins: Wolverine’, The Fourth Kind and Hotel Rwanda, is back in his home country of Nigeria filming his latest flick ‘Inale’.
Hakeem Kae-Kazim
Hollywood actor Hakeem Kae-Kazim rose to fame playing George Rutuganda opposite Don Cheadle in the oscar nominated ‘Hotel Rwanda’. It wasn’t long before he played in amazing films like ‘The Librarian’, ‘King Soloman’s Mines‘ and the family favourite ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and the hit TV show ‘24’. This award-winning actor was ecstatic to be filming in the country of his birth, for the first time in his life.
Hakeem stars in the Nigerian film ‘Inale’, with Jeta Amata (Amazing Grace, Alexa Affair, Queen) directing this wonderful story. The film is set to the music of the RENOWNED Bongos Ikwue and features songs from his past present and future. The story features an Idoma princess called Inale, who is said to have married the prize winner of a wrestling match and is played by Hollywood actress Caroline Chikezie (Aeon Flux),
Hakeem Kae-Kazim will be back in Nigeria very soon to film another story with the same director and production team. With his aim of raising the bar of Nigerian movies and to make it’s presence really felt on the world stage, his face will stay familiar both on a local and international level.
“It is an exciting time in the Nigerian film industry I believe we are on the cusp of telling the African story from the African perspective on an international level, we have so many untold stories I want to be at the forefront of getting them out to our people and to an international market”. Hakeem Kae-Kazim
Geodelic had the coolest location services app on T-Mobile’s popular Android phone. The Geodelic-based Sherpa app could help you discover what restaurants, coffee shops or other establishments were nearby, using an intuitive user interface.
Now the company is expanding to the iPhone and other Android phones. The app is available now in both the iTunes App Store and the Android Market now. The Sherpa Local Discovery App debuted earlier this year on T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G with Google phone. It is still one of the most popular apps and has surpassed 300,000 downloads and 100,000 monthly users. Those are decent numbers for the fledgling Android platform.
The free app has a carousel interface. You can use your finger to swipe a touch screen to spin the carousel to find out nearby restaurants or other places that are nearest to your location. The app learns your tastes and then makes future recommendations based on what it knows about you. It’s great when you’re in an unfamiliar place and don’t have time to plan where to go in advance.
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Geodelic plans to open its location-based publishing system, giving businesses a way to add their businesses to the database.
Rahul Sonnad, chief executive of Geodelic, was on my panel on Location-based Services at the Consumer Electronics Show on Saturday. He said that brands such as Best Buy and Universal Studios have begun using Geodelic to promote themselves to consumers based on geographic data.
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ASUS and Acer have made sure we’d never have a shortage of Ion nettops, but it appears Mouse Computer is sneaking through the cracks with its Lm-mini20. Unlike the company’s CD drive packing netbook, there isn’t really much of note here. The 34800 yen ($376) version has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium, 160GB of storage, 1GB of RAM, and NVIDIA ION graphics. And you can configure the standing mini-desktop to your hearts content with a larger hard drive and more RAM. We can’t exactly say we are waiting for this little guy to hit the U.S. market when we have the competent ASUS Eee Box EB1501, but if you must have a Mouse Computer, at least for the jokes, you can hit the source link and order it up.
Filed under: Desktops
Mouse Computer Lm-mini20 nettop crawls out with NVIDIA Ion originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Despite the widely publicized December pre-announcement, Mini still managed to make a splash with the debut of its Moke-inspired Beachcomber Concept at the 2010 NAIAS earlier today. In the flesh the compact SUV Concept looks like a whole lotta fun – no roof, no doors and some clever details to add to its beach-going credentials such as run-flat tires, a rear-mounted spare wheel compartment that’s really a lockable storage space and a dedicated case for cycling and swimming goggles between the rear seats. Gizmag was on the scene in Detroit to snap these pics, and yes, that is a guy in a shark suit behind the wheel…
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by Ashley Braun
The Ford Fusion Hybrid. Photo courtesy Ford Motor Company via FlickrNo green spin necessary, the Ford Fusion Hybrid sedan was soundly voted the 2010 Car of the Year. While not the first-ever hybrid vehicle to win this award (even for Ford), it is notable that the 2010 North American Car of the Year (NACOTY) was given to a U.S. automaker for a hybrid amidst one of the worst times to be selling any kind of car, much less a hybrid. And yet, the Fusion Hybrid helped Ford set record sales in hybrids in a year when overall industry demand for gas-electric cars tanked, bolstering the appearance that Ford is doing something right.
The Fusion Hybrid beat out its non-hybrid version, the Fusion sedan, as well as three other 2010 green cars on the market: the Honda Insight, the Toyota Prius, and the Volkswagen Golf/GTI/TDI (a clean diesel Green Car of the Year Finalist). So what does the Fusion Hybrid deliver? As NACOTY juror Csaba Csere said, “Though not the first hybrid on the market, or even the second or third, the Fusion Hybrid is simply the best one ever built. In addition to delivering terrific mileage, it looks and drives like a regular car—and a very good one indeed.”
The only other hybrids to win this non-eco honor were the Toyota Prius in 2004 and the Ford Escape Hybrid (Truck of the Year) in 2005.
I learned more about the Fusion Hybrid at a press event last April, which included a good old-fashioned test drive and a close-up look at some of the features that buff the car’s eco-cred.
Photo courtesy rumblestripradio via FlickrMuch of the excitement about the Fusion Hybrid centered around Ford’s innovative approach to the type and amount of information communicated to the driver. Ford called this instrument cluster the “Smart Gauge with EcoGuide,” [PDF]. The driver sees two in-dashboard LCD screens which, at a glance, tell the driver (nicely) whether to ditch the lead foot or keep the good times rollin’. The idea is that the EcoGuide is a friendly coach, rewarding the driver’s efficient driving behavior with lush digital green vines and leaves. Obviously, the more leaves, the better.
Photo courtesy karend via FlickrIt is designed to benefit the regular driver, who can learn how to improve mileage on daily commutes, and is aided by a summary screen of information at the end of each trip. I was skeptical of the “green leaves” cliche, but it turns out that people preferred this imagery in tests because it is easy to understand and doesn’t distract or overwhelm the driver with excessive data (a wee bit of a problem when you’re cruising 65 miles per hour). And there are other settings, aside from the leaves, to display the same instantaneous fuel economy statistics.
EPA ratings put the Fusion Hybrid at 41 miles per gallon (mpg) city and 36 mpg highway, although some test drivers report more than 50 mpg. Nancy Gioia, Ford director of Global Electrification, pointed out, “Driver behavior counts … when you get it right, the car lets you know.” Aggressive drivers may see fuel economy increases of up to 15 percent as compared to the more conscientious drivers, who may only see a 3 percent increase.
In addition to fuel economy, the “fun to drive” factor and smooth transition between electric and gas engines contribute to the Fusion Hybrid’s popularity. In fact, it outscored every other Ford vehicle ever in customer satisfaction. But does the car give up any efficiency to get that extra juice on the highway?
“We haven’t sacrificed anything for the additional horsepower,” claims Gioia. “What we’ve really done is optimized both the engine and the electric machines to work in combination delivering that fantastic, fun-to-drive experience … What we’ve tried to do is take a mid-sized sedan and make it, as it is, the most fuel-efficient mid-sized sedan in North America.”
Fifty top automotive journalists in North America agree that this makes the Fusion Hybrid the Car of the Year.
As for me, while it was fun to zoom around in a peppy, smooth-rolling hybrid, with green leaves spilling off the dashboard, I’ll still be waiting for the day when the Car of the Year is awarded to my favored vehicle of transport—the bus.
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-Meet Kim Kardashian’s new dog, Rocky…..
–Super Bowl Ad prices have taken a dive…..
-It took a decade, but Mark McGwire has finally copped to his steroid use…..
-Randy Jackson says Adam Lambert is a “bigger personality” than Idol winner Kris Allen. Well hello, Captain Obvious!
-Oliver Stone wants to show us another side of Hitler….
-Former reality star and father of eight Jon Gosselin appears to be getting serious with his new girlfriend. He’s already met her parents….
-Speaking of Jon Gosselin, he wants to make sure ex-flame Hailey Glassman fries for allegedly trashing his bachelor pad…..
–Jared The Subway Guy is Engaged…..
–Minka Kelly’s Hottest Pics – Let’s hope Mr. Jeter knows how to behave himself better than others…..
-White House rains on Weatherproof’s Obama billboard…..
-Vice-President Biden is mourning the loss of his beloved mom. Jean Biden was 92…..
-Art Clokey, the 88-year-old animator who created Gumby, also died over the weekend…..
-A Blizzard Hits Jessica Biel, Emile Hirsch on Mt. Kilimanjaro!
Previously, we’ve discussed the role of TV in weight gain, but a new study has shown that watching too much TV may mean less time living.
According to the study published online today in an American Heart Association journal called Circulation, each hour that study participants spent in front of the TV increased their risk of dying of cardiovascular disease by a whopping 18%! The overall premature death risk from any cause increased by 11% for each hour spent watching TV per day. The risk of cancer increased by 9% for each hour watching TV.
The study found that individuals who watched four or more hours of TV each day were 80% more likely to die from heart disease compared to people who watched less than two hours each day. Plus, the same group who watched four or more hours of TV were 46% more likely to die of any other cause. The risk from TV watching remained even after researchers controlled for other risk factors like excessive waist circumference, smoking habits, diet, blood pressure, exercise habits and cholesterol.
All of the nearly 9,000 adults in the six-year study had no history of heart disease. By the time the study ended, 284 people had died.
No, the TV doesn’t send out some horrid heart-killing rays. The reason people who watch too much TV die sooner is simply physical inactivity. We sit too still while watching TV, and that may disrupt our metabolism.
“Even if someone has a healthy body weight, sitting for long periods of time still has an unhealthy influence on their blood sugar and blood fats,” said David Dunstan, Ph.D., the study’s lead author.
While the study was conducted in Australia, Dunstan believes the results apply to Americans as well. Average TV watching in America is up to eight hours, compared with an average of only three hours in Australia and the UK.
Will this study influence your TV watching habits?
(Image via stock.xchng)
Post from: Blisstree
In tomorrow’s New York Times, I dig up some of the fossil viruses that have been buried in our genome for tens of millions of years.
This is a subject I’ve explored here on the Loom before (1, 2), but now is a great time to stop and take stock of just how much progress scientists have made in exhuming the ancient invaders that helped make us what we are.
There was one dimension of this research that I didn’t have space to describe, but it’s too cool to let go unmentioned. In the article, I describe a virus protein called syncitin that is essential for placentas to develop. Cells push the protein to their surface, where it lets them latch onto other cells, fusing together to create a special layer through which nutrients can pass from mother to child. The protein got its start on viruses, which use it to latch onto host cells and fuse to them, allowing their genes to slip in.
But recent research has revealed an intriguing new twist to our viral legacy. It turns out that the viral surface protein in question has a second job. It also tamps down the immune system of its host. If the protein is altered to make it unable to suppress the immune response, viruses cannot successfully infect their hosts.
Thierry Heidmann, a leading paleovirologist whom I spoke to for the article, suspects that this second function may have been critical in the evolution of the placenta. That’s because there are two major challenges to being a placental mammal. First off, mothers need to be able supply their embryos with lots of nutrition for a long time through their circulatory system. Second, they have to cool down their immune systems. A baby’s tissues would otherwise look to the mother’s immune system like foreign tissue and be quickly rejected. So it’s possible that viruses not only let mothers feed their babies, but not kill them either.
This is a story that’s just going to get cooler, so expect updates as necessary.
São Paulo – O ministro do Trabalho, Carlos Lupi, afirmou hoje (11) durante visita ao Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos do ABC, na grande São Paulo, que a Região Nordeste deverá ser uma das maiores responsáveis pela criação de praticamente 2 milhões de empregos em 2010.
"O Nordeste tem crescido acima da média e acredito eles serão o segundo maior gerador de empregos este ano, perdendo apenas para São Paulo, que cria entre 30% e 35% dos empregos do país".
Lupi afirmou que o setor de serviços deve puxar este crescimento pois o mercado interno brasileiro está aquecido. Para o ministro, o programa Minha Casa, Minha Vida, impulsionará o setor da construção civil.
"Este programa está deslanchando. Acredito que a construção civil ficará em segundo lugar, perdendo apenas para o setor de serviços. Depois, penso que os metalúrgicos e comércio e agricultura serão mais beneficiados", completou.
Para Lupi, que também estava acompanhado pelo senador Eduardo Suplicy (PT), 2010 "será o melhor ano dos dois governos do presidente Lula".
"Sou muito otimista. Acho que 2010 será excelente para todos".
Segundo o ministro, a redução da jornada de trabalho deve ser aprovada ainda no primeiro semestre deste ano.
"O Michel Temer [presidente da Câmara dos Deputados] já está formando uma comissão dos que são contra e [dos que são] a favor da redução. Acredito em uma votação ainda neste semestre".
Matthew Inman, aka “The Oatmeal,” is a former web designer turned comic artist. He subsists primarily on a diet of dead crickets and malt liquor. He also thinks that printers have a place in hell right next to unicorns.
Reprinted with permission from Matthew Inman. You can see more of his work on The Oatmeal or in 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth, the comic book which he self published last year.
9th November 2009 – Two years ago in mid 2007 the hundredth Aker Wirth triplex mud pump, type TPK 2200 left the Erkelenz workshop. Just two years later, the two hundredth pump of this series has now been delivered.
The development of the 2200 hp pumps is one of the reasons why Oilfield & Pumps is now the best selling business stream at Aker Wirth GmbH. More than half of the company’s turnover is generated by products for the oil and gas business. The order value of this pump is about 1.1 million Euro.
After its successful test run, the jubilee pump will make the journey to the DSME shipyard in South Korea. The pump will then be installed as one of four pumps on the deep sea drilling vessel project “Norbe 9″ of Odebrecht. From 2012 this drilling vessel will be used by the Petrobras group off the eastern coast of Brazil, where it will drill several kilometres in the sea floor to explore crude oil and natural gas fields at a depth of approximately 3000 m.
Widespread application range
The top model TPK 2200 pump has a wide-spread application range globally and operates on platforms, jack-ups, semi-subs, drilling vessels and land rigs drilling for oil and gas deposits. The TPK 2200 has a 2200 hp drive power and can pump up to 1640 litres of drilling emulsion per minute at a max pressure of 517 bar. It operates in temperatures ranging from –40°C to +60°C.
Exceptional team
According to clients’ analyses the Aker Wirth pumps have documented high reliability and efficiency.documenting the availability of the equipment in operation evidence the high reliability and efficiency of Aker Wirth pumps. There have been achieved availability rates of 99.9 %. A prerequisite for such extraordinary performance is an exceptional team. Throughout the entire production chain-up to the point of optimum maintenance and spare parts service, more than 50 experts from Aker Wirth have contributed their know-how, making each single pump a success.
The jubilee pump alone contributes significantly to the company’s annual turnover figures for „lifecycle services” i.e. services accruing after the sale of the product and relating to the entire life cycle of the product. CEO of Aker Wirth, Christoph Kleuters explains: “Commissioning, service performance, spare parts service and training activities provide a favourable environment where our highly qualified specialists can demonstrate their technical know how and their extensive experience”.
To ensure that this high quality standard is maintained, 35 new service technicians were recruited in 2009. Prior to their worldwide assignments they were trained and suitably qualified at the Aker Wirth in-house competence centre.
The successful large pumps will play a central future role for the Erkelenz’ machine building company. At present 35 further pumps – with a drive power of up to 2 500 hp – have been booked.
The MAXstep is a common product to the MAXnet controller and typically is mounted to the MAXnet controller as a single compact package. Together, the multi-axis MAXstep driver and MAXnet controller provide a powerful stepper motor control package that is capable of complex motion on any and all five axes. Each of the motors is limited to 2.2 amps per phase providing impressive torque and motor performance for the compact size. The MAXstep is equipped with resettable current limiting fuses for each axis individually as well as protection from voltage transients for the health of the system. Available in one through five axis models and can be mounted to the MAXnet controller or as a stand-alone multi-motor driver unit.
Features:
• Up to 5- axis Stepper Motion control
• Bi-Polar Stepper Drive’s
• Compact size (4.00” x 6.5”)
• Stepper Motors to 2.2Amp per Phase
• Companion Product to the MAXnet 5 Axis Controller
• Selectable step Resolution Full-1/2-1/4-1/8 Step
• Power Management Cable
• Each Axis Individually fused for over current (Resettable Fuse)
• Motor Supply Voltage +12 to +30 VDC
• + 5V logic supply sourced by the MAXNET controller
• Snap-in screw terminal connections for motor connection
• High performance in a small form factor
