CDC Warns of Zombie Apocalypse

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday May 19, @03:18PM 

from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.

scotbuff writes"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have written an article about preparing for a zombie apocalypse on their blog. The CDC knows that a zombie apocalypse is no joke. 'If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated.'"

Could the Internet spell the end of snow days?

May 18, 2011 By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH , Associated Press

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In this April 8, 2011 photo, Cameron Mottet makes up a missed snow day in the kitchen of her home in as her mother Jane looks on Parkville, Mo. Some schools are experimenting with ways for students to do lessons online during bad weather, potentially allowing classes to go on during even the worst blizzard. So-called "virtual snow days" would ease pressure on school calendars and offer students more time to learn in the winter before taking standardized tests in the spring. But there are obstacles, too, especially for families who can't afford computers or Internet access. (AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

3D Display with a Knect Interface

Invisibility Cloak: Scientists Achieve Optical Invisibility in Visible Light Range of Spectrum

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2011) — "Seeing something invisible with your own eyes is an exciting experience," say Joachim Fischer and Tolga Ergin. For about one year, both physicists and members of the team of Professor Martin Wegener at KIT's Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) have worked on refining the structure of the Karlsruhe invisibility cloak to such an extent that it is also effective in the visible spectral range.

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Can Computers Be Used To Optimize the US Tax Code?

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 17, @05:20AM 

from the improvement-through-iteration dept.

FatLittleMonkey writes"Science fiction author David Brin wonders whether the US tax code, described by President Obama as a '10,000-page monstrosity,' could be dramatically simplified. His idea is about using computers to shuffle the existing system: 'I know a simple way the sheer bulk of the tax code could be trimmed by perhaps 70% or more, without much political pain or obstructionism! ... it should be easy to create a program that will take the tax code and experiment with zeroing-out dozens, hundreds of provisions while sliding others upward and then showing how these simplifications would affect, say, one-hundred representative types of taxpayers... Let the program find the simplest version of a refined tax code that leaves all 100 taxpayer clades unhurt. If one group loses a favorite tax dodge, the system would seek a rebalancing of others to compensate. No mere human being could accomplish this, but I have been assured that a computer could do this in a snap.' With all the talk about Open Government, perhaps the computer code currently used in tax modelling could be released to the wider community, leading eventually to a Folding@Home type project."

Really Cool HUGE pics

Click on the map and take a tour!
http://www.360cities.net/
Try this one...
http://www.360cities.net/london-photo-en.html

The Cost of US Security

Posted by Soulskill on Monday May 16, @10:25PM 

from the yeah-but-we've-foiled-potential-shampoo-bombers dept.

Hugh Pickens writes"The Atlantic reports that as we mark Osama bin Laden's death, what's striking is how much he cost our nation and how little we've gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the US at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down. 'What do we have to show for that tab,' ask Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley. 'Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden's terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt.' In 2004 bin Laden explicitly compared the US fight to the Afghan incursion that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 'We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,' said bin Laden, adding that that every dollar spent by al-Qaida in attacking the US has cost Washington $1m in economic fallout and military spending."

T'ai Chi Helps Prevent Falls and Improve Mental Health in the Elderly, Review Finds

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2011) — T'ai chi has particular health benefits for older people, including helping to prevent falls and improving mental wellbeing, reveals a review published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

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New Solar Product Captures Up to 95 Percent of Light Energy

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2011) — Efficiency is a problem with today's solar panels; they only collect about 20 percent of available light. Now, a University of Missouri engineer has developed a flexible solar sheet that captures more than 90 percent of available light, and he plans to make prototypes available to consumers within the next five years.

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First Habitable Exoplanet? Climate Simulation Reveals New Candidate That Could Support Earth-Like Life

ScienceDaily (May 16, 2011) — The planetary system around the red dwarf Gliese 581, one of the closest stars to the Sun in the galaxy, has been the subject of several studies aiming to detect the first potentially habitable exoplanet. Two candidates have already been discarded, but a third planet, Gliese 581d, can be considered the first confirmed exoplanet that could support Earth-like life. This is the conclusion of a team of scientists from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (CNRS, UPMC, ENS Paris, Ecole Polytechnique) in Paris, France, whose study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

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The Rise of Filter Bubbles

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday May 15, @11:21PM 

from the sound-of-your-own-voice dept.

eldavojohn writes"Eli Pariser gave a talk at TED which posits that tailoring algorithms are creating 'filter bubbles' around each user, restricting the information that reaches you to be — unsurprisingly — only what you want to see. While you might be happy that your preferred liberal or conservative news hits you, you'll never get to see the converse. This is because Google, Facebook, newspaper sites and even Netflix filter what hits you before you get to see it. And since they give you what you want, you never see the opposing viewpoints or step outside your comfort zone. It amounts to a claim of censorship through personalization, and now that every site does it, it's becoming a problem. Pariser calls for all sites implementing these algorithms to embed in the algorithms 'some sense of public life' and also have transparency so you can understand why your Google search might look different than someone with opposing tastes."Hit the link below to watch a video of Pariser's talk.

Netflix seals deal to stream Miramax movies, starting in June

By Vlad Savov  posted May 16th 2011 5:33AM

Breaking News

Netflix has just gone and scooped up another big content deal for itself. The movie streaming service has tied the knot with Miramax on a multi-year agreement to allow streaming of films from the latter's extensive library. Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Kill Bill, and hundreds of others will be added to the Netflix Watch Instantly catalog on a rotating basis, starting next month. This marks the first time Miramax flicks have been available on a digital subscription service. An agreement between these two companies was last rumored in March, with a five-year term and $100 million price being mooted as the likely parameters for getting it done. Neither outfit would disclose the cost to Netflix, but the benefit to you, dear subscriber, is pretty obvious. Full PR after the break. 

Invent the Medical Tricorder, Win $10,000,000

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 13, @06:35PM 

from the it's-life-jim-but-not-as-we-know-it dept.

GeneralSecretary writes"If you've ever watched Star Trek and said, 'Hey, I could build that,' now's your chance. Qualcomm and the X PRIZE Foundation have teamed together to offer ten million US dollars to whomever can invent 'a mobile solution that can diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians.' They call it the Tricorder X PRIZE. Hopefully the Tricorder will join the cell phone, MRI, and tablet computer in the list of Star Trek devices that are now part of our lives."

Is Your Electricity Meter Spying On You?

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 11, @01:44PM 

from the unseen-mechanized-eye dept.

lee1 writes"If you have a 'smart meter,' it is collecting data that can reveal when you wake up, when you leave for work and come home, when you go on vacation and when you take a shower. This data is commercially valuable and, if sold to third parties, can lead to privacy invasion on a massive scale. The California Public Utility Commission is reacting to the gas and electric company's mass installation of these meters with new proposals for strong privacy protections."

Do Geeks Make Better Adults?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday May 11, @11:42AM 

from the well-not-you-exactly dept.

mcgrew writes"What makes people unpopular in the hallways of high school, mainly an unwillingness to conform, tends to translate into success as an adult. Robbins lists several companies—including Yahoo!—that prioritize hiring quirky individuals who shun conventional thinking. She also name-checks historical and current celebrities, including director Steven Spielberg (who was taunted for being Jewish in high school) and Lady Gaga (a self-described former theater 'freak'), whose weirdness led to later fame. (Other now-validated former outsiders she touts: Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen and Angelina Jolie.)"

A Tiny Apartment in Hong Kong Transforms into 24 Rooms

By Eric - Categories: Apartments, Interior Design, Video   7 comments

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Gary Chang, an architect, designed his 344 square foot apartment in Hong Kong to be able to change into 24 different designs, all by just sliding panels and walls.

He calls this the “Domestic Transformer.” Check out the video of Chang in his apartment below.

23,000 File Sharers Targeted In Latest Lawsuit

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 10, @12:21AM 

from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

wiedzmin writes"Subpoenas are expected to go out to ISPs this week in what could be the biggest BitTorrent downloading case in US history. At least 23,000 file sharers are being targeted by the US Copyright Group for downloading The Expendables. The Copyright Group appears to have adopted Righthaven's strategy in blanket-suing large numbers of defendants and offering an option to quickly settle online for a moderate payment. The IP addresses of defendants have allegedly been collected by paid snoops capturing lists of all peers who were downloading or seeding Sylvester Stallone's flick last year. I am curious to see how this will tie into the BitTorrent case ruling made earlier this month indicating that an IP address does not uniquely identify the person behind it."

Portal turret replica has real laser, insatiable bloodlust

By Vlad Savov  posted May 10th 2011 3:22AM

You might not remember Ryan Palser by name, but you'll surely recall the good gent's homemadeFallout 3 plasma rifle. He has since stepped his game up to bigger and badder video game weapon replicas, and has just completed the construction of the first of his forthcoming army of Portal laser turrets. Thankfully, Ryan has been sporting enough to build the older version of these human eviscerators (not the upgraded Portal 2 turrets, phew!), giving us at least a small chance of survival -- provided we have the right gear, of course. See the laser-equipped, GLaDOS-approved, 38-inch tall turret next to its maker after the break, or hit up the source link for some gorgeous photos of its construction.

The Psychology of Steam Wallet & Microsoft Points

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 10, @06:26AM 

from the nickels-and-dimes dept.

Hugh Pickens writes"Ever bought something from Xbox Live Arcade? The first time, you may have been a bit bamboozled by the process because Microsoft doesn't just let you put $15 on your credit card to buy a new game; purchases are done in 'Microsoft Points' that you deposit into a virtual wallet and you use the points to buy stuff. 'Gamers possessed of equal parts suspicion and curiosity may wonder why our gaming overlords adopted such a strange system instead of just letting us pay real money for our purchases,' writes game psychologist James Madigan. He says the real reason for Microsoft Points is that sometimes you are going to have some points left over in your account. Leaving money on the table or in your Xbox Live account makes most of us a bit uncomfortable (PDF) because it feels wasteful. 'It's similar to overeating at a buffet or doubling your paper towel use after buying the 124 roll jumbo pack,' says Madigan. 'Even though you could just let those paper towels or Nintendo Points sit there until you have a good reason to use them, spending real money on something else seems wasteful.' And Microsoft isn't the only one – Sony and Nintendo have similar systems, and Valve has even rolled out a 'Steam Wallet' for in-game microtransactions."

Incredibly, impossibly beautiful time lapse video

   

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I’ve been posting a lot of time lapse videos lately, and they’re so amazing I keep thinking they can’t possibly get any more beautiful.

I keep thinking wrong.

"El Cielo de Canarias" (Canary Sky) is simply, unbelievably breathtaking.

Wow. I mean, wow. Daniel López is a gifted photographer. While looking at his photographs, my jaw literally dropped. They are that extraordinary.

Many years ago I visited La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, for a meeting. In the distance we could sometimes see the very top of Mt. Teide, seen in this video, poking over the clouds. It was so unearthly and captivating, and López has captured that feeling here. This video has everything! The fluid motion of the clouds, a double rainbow (yes, yes, I know), a corona around the Sun (not the Sun’s atmosphere, but a lovely optical effect from water droplets in the clouds), standing-wavelenticular clouds, even a Green Flash! Watch the stars as they wheel across the view; can you spot the Pleiades, the Andromeda Galaxy?

As many of these videos as I have seen, I’m still looking forward to more from Sr. López. This one is absolutely stunning.