NETFLIX BREAKS THE 10 MILLION SUBSCRIBER MARK, KEEPS ON TRUCKIN'

by Darren Murph, posted Feb 12th 2009 at 10:39AM

We can't say the economic crisis has been too kind to every industry, but it's been a best friend to Netflix. As consumers divert their out-on-the-town dollars to sit-on-my-arse-and-watch-Netflix dollars, the by-mail and streaming movie rental company is just breaking records left and right. After closing a stellar 2008 with 9.4 million customers, the company has today announced that the 10 million mark has been crossed. For those struggling with basic math, that means that it has added 600,000 net subscribers since January 1st. So, where does Netflix go from here? Into everynook and cranny it can, of course, so don't be shocked to see Watch Instantly creep onto your next HDTV, set-top-box, Blu-ray player or portable microwave. Seriously, it could happen.

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Google Buys Finnish Paper Mill

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday February 12, @10:10AM

from the now-they-aren't-making-google-book dept.

raffnix writes"Today, Finland-based paper group Stora Enso has announced that Google is buying the buildings and most of the Summa Mill site, where production of paper was ceased last month in January 2008, for approximately 40 million euros ($51.7 million). Obviously the space is most likely going to serve as a data center, which has now also been confirmed by Reuters."

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Mind reading gets closer to real thanks to Canadian scientists

by Darren Murph, posted Feb 12th 2009 at 10:12AM

Hate to break it to you, but that clairvoyant you've been paying daily to read you fortune cookies while blindfolded actually isn't some sort of medium. Tough to swallow, we know. That said, researchers at Canada's largest children's rehabilitation hospital are getting closer to equipping entrepreneurial individuals with the tools they need to read minds. By measuring the intensity of near-infrared light absorbed in brain tissue, scientists were able to decode a person's preference for one of two drinks with 80 percent accuracy, all without a single minute of training on the human's behalf. This research gives promise to finding out true feelings of those who can't speak or move due to physical limitations, though there's no word on how close it is to becoming viable outside of a lab. As an aside, we hear Professor X is pretty perturbed.

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5MB Hard Disk in 1956

Its a hard disk in 1956....The Volume and Size of 5MB memory storage in 1956.In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data.Let us start appreciating your 4 GB jump drive!

 

Could Carbon Dioxide Replace Antibiotics In Surgery?

ScienceDaily (Feb. 12, 2009) — The journal Medical Hypotheses has announced the winner of the 2008 David Horrobin Prize for medical theory.  Written by Mikael Persson and Jan van der Linden from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the article “Intraoperative CO2 insufflation can decrease the risk of surgical site infection” was judged to best embody the spirit of the journal.

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Hackable Microcontroller-Powered Valentine's Card

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 09, @11:25PM

from the gotta-have-heart dept.

compumike writes"If you have a significant other to impress this Valentine's Day, consider putting your programming skills to use. This video tutorial shows how to build an LED Heart Valentine's card, powered by a microcontroller running C code, with a neat randomized 'twinkling' effect in an interrupt handler. Think about it: how many ladies can say that their Valentine's card runs at 14 MHz?"

History of the Internet

Gut Feelings May Actually Reflect Reliable Memories

ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2009) — You know the feeling. You make a decision you're certain is merely a "lucky guess."

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Natural, Alternative Insect Repellent As Effective As DEET, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2009) — Isolongifolenone, a natural compound found in the Tauroniro tree (Humiria balsamifera) of South America, has been found to effectively deter biting of mosquitoes and to repel ticks, both of which are known spreaders of diseases such as malaria, West Nile virus, and Lyme disease.

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Spray on Solar Panels - Coming Soon to a Roof Near You?

by JOSH LOPOSER
Feb 8th 2009 @ 11:00AM

Filed under: GreenTech, Alternative Energy

Researchers at the Australian National University have teamed up with Spark Solar Australia and Finland-based Braggone Oy todevelop a cheaper, more efficient,spray-on solar panel. Unlike the roll-on solar project going on at Swansea in Wales, these "spary-on" panels wouldn't be applied to your house in liquid form. Instead, the spray-on aspect of these panels refers to a change in the manufacturing process.

Conventional solar panels are manufactured through a complex process involving vacuums, hydrogen in plasma form, silicon, and other expensive junk like that. This process is what makes solar photovoltaics so darn expensive. If ANU's research pans out, PV panels could be manufactured by simply spraying on a hydrogen film and then a anti-reflective film on a conveyor belt. Not only would these panels be much cheaper, but researchers are also hopeful that they can achieve greater energy gathering efficiency that conventional panels by experimenting with alternative materials. Heck, even if the efficiency isn't one bit better, we could all afford to by more panels. So, it's a win-win.

[via Clean Technica]

How Color Impacts Your Thinking

Submitted by Will on Saturday, 7 February 2009

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The NY Times posted the results of some interesting research into how color impacts cognition. The bottom line is, if you want to boost your attention to detail, surround yourself with red, and if you want to boost creativity, then blue is your color.

Red groups did better on tests of recall and attention to detail, like remembering words or checking spelling and punctuation. Blue groups did better on tests requiring imagination, like inventing creative uses for a brick or creating toys from shapes.

Link: Color Study Looks at Effects of Red and Blue - NYTimes.com

So, I suppose that creating blue rooms at work for the creatives and red for the accountants would be a good idea.

When Dr. Zhu’s subjects were asked what red or blue made them think of, most said that red represented caution, danger or mistakes, and that blue symbolized peace and openness. Subjects were quicker to unscramble anagrams of “avoidance related” words like “danger” when the anagrams were on red backgrounds, and quicker with anagrams of positive, “approach related” words like “adventure” when they were on blue backgrounds.