ProjGuru.com

Improve Your Memory

2008-03-28T23:06:00.001+05:30

Objective:
Learn how to memorize any string of numbers. Ace tests and exams by easily memorizing hundreds of dates or strings of digits (key coureses include social studies, art history, etc.). Also never forget your bank account information--even memorize your credit card number!

Improve Your Memory
As shown below, you first memorize the letter sounds that correspond to the numbers 1-9 in the Red box. Then use the freeware software and tips on the next page to come up with objects that represent the numbers you would like to remember. In this example, I have converted the number 7215017 into a Candlestick.

Source: http://wwweudaigroup.com/memorytest/memorypage1.html

Unplugged Forbes Editor in Tears After Two Days

2008-03-28T22:43:00.000+05:30

Top 10 Ways to Build Muscle Mass Fast

2008-03-28T20:48:00.001+05:30

"Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."

- Arnold H. Glasow

1. Pursue Progressive Overload.

The law of progressive overload simply says that you must increase the amount of reps or the weight lifted every single workout (or as close to this as humanly possible) in order to ignite muscle growth.

2. Perform 8-12 reps.

3. Perform 6-9 sets.

Yes just 6-9 sets per body part. If you are working out with good form this is all you need to stimulate muscle growth. You want to keep your workouts under 45 minutes to avoid the release of hormones that actually break your muscle tissue down (catabolic hormones). Luckily, you can easily accomplish this by performing a maximum of 9 sets per body part.

4. Eat Eat Eat.

A good bodybuilding diet will allow you to grow without adding fat at the same time.

5. Increase the Amount of Protein in your Diet.

Lean Mass Weight (Kg) x 2.75 = Daily Protein Requirement

Your lean weight is your total body weight minus the amount of fat you are carrying. You will need to know your body fat percentage for this.

6. Eat Fat.

A Low-Fat diet is not desirable in bodybuilding. Eating fat increases the amount of anabolic (muscle building) hormones in your body. These are:

1. Testosterone
2. Growth Hormone
3. Insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1)

7. Make Sure you Drink Enough Water.

You should shoot for around 12 x 8 ounce glasses of water per day. Remember you can include your protein shakes towards your daily water intake.

8. Avoid Too Much Cardio.

Cardiovascular work will rob you of muscle gains. Yes if your goal is to lose fat you should do cardio but make sure it is:

(a) Performed immediately after your weight training

(b) 'High Intensity Interval Training' form of cardio for a maximum of 20 minutes.

The reason that too much cardio isn't desirable when your goal is to build muscle is that too much cardio releases catabolic hormones in the body, breaking down your muscle tissue; obviously this is counter-productive.

9. Sleep.

10. Relax.

Being stressed out results in a catabolic (muscle breakdown) environment in the body. One such hormone is cortisol. Remember that a calm, relaxed person builds more muscle than the hot-head :) (assuming all other factors are equal).

Source: http://ririanproject.com/2008/03/18/top-10-ways-to-build-muscle-mass-fast/

How to Improve your Discipline?

2008-03-28T16:15:00.000+05:30

And it was when one of my Martial Arts Teacher told me: "You always have an excuse for whatever happens to you" that everything clicked and I finally could see myself in the mirror and see that the only one who I was cheating was I and no one else.

Discipline like anything else is something you learn and you really need to start small in order to not get frustrated, once you work over your own "I can" scale then you will be able to do some amazing feats. Do not try to be a Shaolin Monk tomorrow :)

Start Small

Small things are great things to get disciplined.

Let say you have planed to clean your house on Saturday, nothing spectacular right? But then, a couple of friends call you to invite you to a party on Friday, you go and party all night! … you come home and sleep almost all Saturday, it's 5:00pm , What will you do? Will you move your house cleaning plan to Sunday? Or will you start your cleaning on Saturday?

Discipline starts even before, if you knew you would clean your house on Saturday then why did you stay so long partying on Friday?

I am hearing your excuses now: "Life is one and you have to enjoy it, I enjoy going to party and not cleaning my house"…

Let me tell you one thing, even though you might not be aware, you are surely doing the same thing in other aspects of your life. You are just evading your plans and responsibilities in exchange for entertainment, leisure and pleasure.

You are just a pawn of your desires, fears and greed and the only way to get rid of that is to be strict with yourself and follow your plans for the day.

Deepak Chopra in one of his books wrote that once you set your objective or your goal you have to release it, in other words, forget it, he gives as an example those moments in which you are trying to remember the name of someone and you are trying very hard to make it come to your memory even though you have this feeling that you have it "on the tip of your tongue", but at the very moment that you decide not to try to remember it anymore or "give up", the name almost instantly comes up and you remember it.

It is kind of illogical; to forget or to give up your goals but in some way that is how it works.

In other words, if you are so focused on the end result, you won't have as much fun in training and the chances of you reaching your time goals diminish greatly.

The main question each athlete has to ask themselves to enjoy the process of training is "how can I make this more enjoyable?" Enjoyable doesn't necessarily mean fun. I like words like challenging, uplifting, encouraging, satisfying, fulfilling, outstanding, achievement. These are the feelings you want to get from your training and often it's just a matter of perspective. These are the feelings that lead to a successful process."

This experience revealed me the next big secret: The Universal law of "What you give you shall receive".

Always remember this: "A candle looses nothing by lighting another candle".

Credits: http://success-is-in-you.com/

"The New York Times": Foreign Affairs

2008-03-28T14:54:00.001+05:30

"When we were young kids growing up in America, we were
Told to eat our vegetables at dinner and not leave them.
Mothers said, think of the starving children in India
And finish the dinner.'

And now I tell my children:
'Finish your homework. Think of the children in India
Who would make you starve, if you don't.'?"

Rising up to Mount Everest

2008-03-13T16:31:00.000+05:30

Edmund Hillary who was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay, had failed thrice earlier. Later at a party hosted in his honor in New Zealand, he looked at the portrait of Mount Everest and said: "Mount Everest has a problem. The problem is, it cannot grow more than about 29,000 feet, whereas I have the ability to grow in my ability to climb Everest".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary

100+ Resources for Web Developers

2008-03-06T01:19:00.001+05:30

Code

Photo Credit: Josh Lewis

1. Little Boxes
CSS Templates for various page layouts

2. Snipplr
Collection of code snippets - JavaScript, HTML, PHP, CSS, Ruby, Objective C

3. AJAX, DHTML and JavaScript Libraries
An extensive list with over 60 Ajax, Javascript and DHTML Libraries - with detailed descriptions.

4. Javascript Framework
Easy Ajax and DOM manipulation for dynamic Web applications

5. AJAX Javascript Solutions for Professional Coding
Over 90 useful AJAX-based techniques you should always have ready to hand

6. DHTML and AJAX samples
Nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX code

7. AJAX Patterns
A Wiki of reusable AJAX code, and huge AJAX resource

8. Mozilla Developer Center - AJAX
Mozilla's offering on AJAX

9. CSS Typeset
Interactive CSS generator

10. Open Source Directory
An archive of the Web's best Open Source software, applications and references.

11. .htaccess Creator
Online tool to create .htaccess files

12. PHP Form
Create HTML Forms in seconds and get the code

13. Best Solutions for Images
30 scripts of impressive slideshows, lightboxes and galleries you can use for effective presentations of your images.

14. Lightbox
Lightbox is a simple unobtrusive script used to overlay images on a page

15. Design patterns and tips
101 Design Patterns and Tips for Developers

16. Spanky Corners
Creates CSS and GIF images for rounded corners

17. Nifty Corners Cube
Rounded corners with no images

18. How to redirect a Web page the right way
Don't lose PageRank! Steven Hargrove gives you the code to redirect using htaccess, Mod_Rewrite, IIS, ColdFusion, ASP, Java, Perl, Ruby and PHP

Cool Online Tools

19. Pipe Bytes
Send files of any size through any Web browser. No software to install, private and the recipient can start downloading while you're still uploading

20. PHP FTP Synchronizer
Free program to update your website from local files

21. Dummy Text Generator
Generate text by number of paragraphs, words, bytes or lists

22. UTF-8 decoder
Unicode Decoder

23. CSS Tidy
Open source CSS parser and optimizer

24. HTML Tidy
Open source utility for tidying up HTML

25. FireFTP
Free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox

26. FileZilla
Free FTP client and FTP server

27. Dust-Me Selectors
Firefox extension that finds unused CSS selectors

28. ColorZilla
Get a color reading from any point within Firefox

29. FireFox IE Tab
Run IE inside Firefox

30. Font Sizer
Let visitors change the font size on your site. XHTML, CSS, and PHP source available

31. Recaptcha
Captcha helps prevent automated abuse of your site, ensuring only humans perform certain actions; free

32. Super Screenshot
Take a full sized screenshot of any Web page

33. Web Site Thumbnails
Get thumbnails of any Web site

34. Back Orifice
A remote admin system that enables a user to control a computer over a network

35. CoPilot
Remote control another computer – free on weekends, otherwise $5 for 24 hours

Documentation and Reference

36. Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications
The ultimate AJAX introduction

37. Cheat Sheet Round Up
Your one stop shop for all cheat sheets including: Actionscript, Ajax, Apache, ASCII, ASP, C#, CSS, CVS, C++, Django, Firefox, Google, HTML/XHTML, Java, JavaScript, LaTeX, MySQL, Perl, Photoshop, GIMP, PHP, Python, Regular Expressions, Ruby, Unix, Linux, Weblogs, Windows, XML.

38. Quick reference
Searches for references on C, C++, CSS, HTML, HTML DOM, Java, JavaScript, MySQL, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby

39. Got API
Easily search sites for API documentation

40. CSS Basics
Cascading Style Sheets made easy

41. The Ultimate CSS Resource

42. RSS Specifications
The authority on RSS - from Harvard

43. RSS Best Design Practices and Icons
All things RSS including free icons

44. Go To and Learn
Free video tutorials on Flash

45. Optimize Your PHP code
40 Tips to optimize your PHP code

46. Optimizing MYSQL queries
10 Tips to optimize MYSQL queries

47. How to Create a Dynamic BlogRoll
Using Feedjumbler - it takes 5 minutes

Testing

48. CSS Validation
At W3C

49. HTML/XHTML Validation
At W3C

50. HTML Validator
Firefox extension to validate your HTML (as used within http://validator.w3.org/)

51. Link Checker
Checks for broken links in your HTML pages

52. Firebug
Edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any Web page

53. Gray Bit
Online testing tool; convert a full color page into grayscale to visually test contrast

54. Cross Browser Compatibility Testing
Check your site with multiple browsers on a single machine

55. Screen Sizer
Check out your site in different screen sizes

56. Feed Validator
If you've ever noticed invalid characters or XML markup in content items, check your feed for validity problems.

Windows

57. Windows Unlocker
Tells you the application that is stopping you from deleting a file

58. Windows Dependency Walker
See which DLLs are required for Windows applications

59. Pending Moves
Show files will be updated when you next restart Windows

60. Process Explorer
View active processes – Task Manager on steroids

61. Process Monitor
Monitors file system, registry and process/thread activity

62. Regulazy
Visual regular expression builder

63. WinDirStat
Display size of files and folders graphically

64. wget for Windows
Gets a HTML resource (HTML, image, document, javascript, css etc)

65. WinSnap
Takes a snap shot of your screen ($19.90)

Converters

66. Convert HTML to RSS
Generate an RSS feed for almost any Web page.

67. Binary to Base64
Create data streams for embedding images (or any type of file) in (X)HTML, CSS and XML

68. HTML To JS/PHP/Perl Converter
This tool will convert normal HTML code to a script based language such as JavaScript, PHP or Perl

69. Text to Voice
Create an MP3 of a voice reading your text

70. Free PDF online conversion
Converts various files (DOC, PUB, RTF, XLS, PPT, HTML, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WMF, EMF, GIF etc.), to PDF online, then e-mails you the PDF

71. Web 2 PDF
Allow your visitors to create PDFs of any Web page

72. Text to Hex converter
Write your name in hex

Graphics

73. YotoPhoto
Search engine for royalty free images (over 250,000 indexed)

74. Background Image maker - http://lab.rails2u.com/bgmaker/
Create background images online with this quick and easy tool

75. Iconaholic
Lots of great free icons

76. Animated GIFs
Generate and preview animated GIFs, then download

77. 216 Color Webmasters Palette
Web Safe colors for webmasters

78. ASCII Art
The original Web Art

79. ASCII Generator

80. Image to ASCII
Convert images and text to ASCII

81. GIMP
GNU Image Manipulation Program

82. Inkscape
Open Source vector graphics editor, similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw

83. Create Web 2.0 Badges (image –png)
Ajax lessons show you how to create a shiny Web 2.0 badge in eight easy steps

84. Color Scheme Generator

Site Analytics

85. Who is the Owner?
Find out who owns a Web site quickly

86. Google Banned Tool
Quick way to find out whether your URL is in Google's banned database

87. Crazy Egg
Variety of products to see what people are doing on your site using a heatmap or just plain hard data. Pricing plans start with free accounts that let you track up to 5000 visits per month and four pages, up to Pro an offering for $99 per month that lets you track 250,000 visits per month.

88. SiteScan
A free way to ensure that your website is configured properly for Google Analytics.

89. Reinvigorate's Snoop
Real Time Web Analytics - free for PC and Mac. Greater flexibility than Google Analytics

90. PopURI
At-a-glance link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more

91. Quantcast
Demographics for your site

92. Social Meter
Scans popular social websites to analyze your social popularity

WordPress

93. How to create a WordPress theme
A 16 part series on how to build a WordPress theme from whoa to go

94. Highlight Author Comments
Matt Cutts shows you how to change the color of your own comments so they stand out. For WordPress

95. 100 High Quality and Free WordPress Themes
Smashing Magazine has downloaded, installed, and tested hundreds of themes; these are their top 100 picks. Whether you are after design inspiration or coding solutions, this is the place to start

Online Storage

96. Omnidrive
Up to 1GB Free, no file size limit but 128 bit SSL encryption only available for PRO accounts

97. Box
Up to 1GB Free storage but monthly bandwidth restricted to 10GB, file size restricted to 10MB

98. Media Max
25 GB Free, Download 1 GB per month, File size restricted to 10MB

Miscellaneous

99. Map-o-net
Shows you where you lie in the structure of IP addresses

100. Domain Hacks
Helps you find domains which are the combination of unusual TLD, directories and subdomains. For instance, http://l.id can be registered (from Indonesia)

101. Scratch – programming for kids
Want your little person taking over the family web development business? Let them play with Scratch. Developed by MIT

102. Internet World Stats
Comprehensive statistics about the Internet and Web

103. Feed Journal
The next generation newspaper, FeedJournal turns your RSS feeds into a newspaper formatted PDF so you can print it out and read it anywhere - free

Fun Stuff

You've made it this far - so a little silliness for your viewing pleasure - enjoy!

104. Music using ONLY sounds from Windows XP and 98! (approx. 2 mins)

105. Mac Parody (approx. 3 mins)

106. Ze Frank's Punctuation Substitution (approx. 2 mins)

107. Wes Borg-Internet Help Desk Live (approx. 6 mins)

108. BlueScreen of Death Screen Saver v3.2

Source: http://blog-well.com/2008/03/04/100-resources-for-web-developers/

2008-03-02T14:17:00.001+05:30

This one from designer Nuno Teixeira is certainly more attention grabbing than most, even if it isn't any more realistic. Dubbed the "iMac iView," the main distinguishing feature here is obviously the curved screen, which isn't actually all that far out there, but still a ways from becoming anywhere near commonplace. As if that wasn't enough, the concept also boasts a second screen on the rear, and webcams on both the front and back.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/29/curved-imac-concept-bends-beyond-the-realm-of-plausibility/

Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/index.php/2008/02/29/curved-imac-has-your-back/

Management Secrets From Inside GE

2008-03-01T16:38:00.000+05:30

Here's what it really takes to thrive at one of America's most demanding—and profitable—companies

Few companies can boast the performance of General Electric, one of the world's most consistently profitable enterprises. One of the top reasons is talent. GE recruits the brightest minds it can find and relentlessly cultivates its leaders, training them at its legendary in-house management school, known as Crotonville (for its location north of New York City). In addition to world-class CEOs like Jeff Immelt and his predecessor, Jack Welch, the GE system has produced numerous executives who have left to run other well-known companies. Jim McNerny of Boeing, Chrysler's Bob Nardelli, and Dave Calhoun of the Nielsen Co., for instance, are three GE alumni.

In 20 years at GE, where I was Welch's speechwriter, I learned a lot of key lessons—the kind they don't necessarily teach at business school. GE is notorious for demanding performance from its managers, weeding out those who don't deliver—and handsomely rewarding those who do. If I were to give a 10-minute management course, here's what I'd emphasize:

High energy = high hopes. There are some reasonably successful companies that don't require high amperage to do reasonably well. If you're comfortable in that kind of environment, fine. But I wouldn't want to work at such a company—or buy its stock. At a high-energy company like GE, the people who succeed cultivate a Type A personality, even if their shrinks or cardiologists object. Low energy, by contrast, equals low expectations. Welch once said this about a senior manager: "Yeah, he's good and he's smart, but he's low energy. I have to call him up and get him started on everything, or nothing ever happens." At GE, that's a wave goodbye.

Patience is a liability. There's continual tension in many companies between the demand for short-term results and the need for a long-term strategy. Feel you can't do both? The answer at GE: Yes, you can do both, and if you can't, we'll get somebody who can. Conversation over—along with your career, if you don't deliver. The top management at GE has no patience for either-ors. Anybody who asks management which is the higher priority—results today or performance tomorrow—gets "loser" stamped all over him.

Micromanage, meddle, and smell the latrines. It's essential to leave your management perch every day and mingle with the minions who ultimately determine the fortunes of your company. If a customer has a complaint—no matter how small (or how arrogant the complainer)—take the heat yourself over the phone or in person, to understand why you're failing him and losing business. Got a quality problem with one of your product lines? Hang out on the factory floor and listen to sweaty, angry people in overalls explain what they think the problem is. Part of your operation is losing customers? Spend an afternoon listening to the "grunts" who hate losing as much as you do and often have invaluable insights about why it is happening.

Substitute action for clichés. Don't call it a "deep dive" if all you do is get a tour from a plant manager and walk around in your suit wearing a hard hat and goggles. You'll look ridiculous—and never find out what's really going on Do you "delegate" for real, expending the effort to fully understand what your subordinates are doing? Or simply tick off bullet points assembled by staff? If your "leadership" consists of narrating PowerPoint slides points you only vaguely grasp, people will know it—both up and down the chain. Some of the more horrific career catastrophes I observed at GE involved unfortunates who walked into a conference room to brief senior leadership, with a flimsy feel for the substance of the briefings they thought would get them by. Instead, it was goodbye.

Change just to change. Stay on the edge, and never let yourself get too comfortable, no matter how well you're doing. There may come a day when you hear your colleagues in engineering, finance, or some other division having an animated conversation that you don't really understand. Queasiness and alarm should strike. You need to get back into the conversation quickly, no matter how much work it takes. The epitaph "unable to change" hangs over more career graves than any other.

At one of GE's annual meetings, Jack Welch told his top 500 managers, "If you are the same today as you were three years ago, you're out of it. If you're not going to be a lot different this year than you were last year, you stink. Don't let anyone say, 'Good old Harry. He hasn't changed a bit in the last five years.' "

It happened to me. I was late to adopt E-mail, late to use PowerPoint (which I still hate), late to understand E-business. After Welch retired in 2001, I unwittingly began to wear a label that said "dinosaur." It led me out of the company a bit earlier than I had intended. So do an honest inventory of the skills in your portfolio, and ask if you're keeping up at the speed of change. If not, get on it!

Bill Lane is the author of Jacked Up: the Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE Into Becoming the World's Greatest Company.

Source: http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/careers/2008/01/25/management-secrets-from-inside-ge.html

Good luck with that bikeway!

2008-02-29T19:34:00.001+05:30

Source: http://www.sonnyradio.com/goodluck.htm

Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins

2008-02-29T13:57:00.001+05:30

T4 Gets Release Date

So much for Judgment Day. The Terminator has been assigned a new target: May 22, 2009.

That's the date Warner Bros. has scheduled to unspool its heavily anticipated Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, per the trades.

The sequel, which will also serve as the first installment of another planned trilogy in the fabled man vs. machine sci-fi tale, picks up shortly after the first Terminator trilogy left off. Christian Bale plays the adult John Connor, leading a rebellion against the sentient computer network known as Skynet that seeks to wipe out all of humanity.

The studio will distribute Terminator Salvation in North America after securing a pact with Halcyon Co., which owns the franchise rights. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group will control international distribution.

Warner Bros.' summer tent pole will bow the same day Twentieth Century Fox plans to roll out Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian, the follow-up to its 2006 comedy hit Night at the Museum, in which Ben Stiller will reprise his part as the hapless security guard of a museum whose exhibits come to life after dark.

The original fantasy grossed $250 million in domestic ticket sales and the second Night is sure to give Bale and company a run for their money at the box office.

Despite its overwhelming popularity with the ComiCon crowd, the billion-dollar Terminator series has seen its blockbuster status slip in recent years. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the indestructible robot role that made him famous, grossed $150 million domestically when it opened in 2003, but cost an estimated $200 million to make. However, the film more than made up for it internationally, raking in $283 million in foreign ticket sales to bring its global haul to $433 million.

By contrast, 1984's The Terminator cost $6 million and tallied $38 million in the U.S., and eventually finished with $78 million worldwide. The biggest of them all was 1991's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which generated a whopping $204 million in U.S. ticket sales before going on to earn $516 million internationally.

The first two films were written and directed by James Cameron and the third by Jonathan Mostow.

Taking the reigns on the fourth chapter will be McG, a Hollywood director who started out in music videos but found big-screen success helming the feature film version of Charlie's Angels and its subsequent sequel.

But whether or not the director, whose real name is Joseph McGinty Nichol, has the chops to deliver the high-octane action goods of his predecessors remains to be seen.

The filmmakers have been tight-lipped about T4's plot, but one thing's for sure: it will not feature Schwarzenegger, who's busy finishing out his term as California's governor.

The story, penned by T3 writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris, is said to be set in the postapocalyptic nightmare briefly alluded to in the first three movies after Skynet fomented a nuclear holocaust hoping to destroy its human makers.

Aside from Bale—who's pulling double hero duty as the Caped Crusader in this summer's Batman sequel, Dark Knight—actor Sam Worthington is also in talks to come aboard. As it happens, Worthington is in the midst of wrapping a key role in Cameron's sci-fi action-adventure epic Avatar, the self-anointed king of the world's first Hollywood film since 1997's Oscar-winning Titanic.

Shooting on Terminator Salvation is scheduled to kick off in New Mexico on May 5 and continue there for two months before moving on to other locales.

Virtualization Battle Looms

2008-02-27T11:56:00.002+05:30

A technology called virtualization has become a big hit lately. But use of the software could soon kick into an even higher gear, because of new competition and technology changes that could widen its appeal.

The biggest development is a forthcoming offering from giant Microsoft Corp. called Hyper-V, which poses what could be the most serious competition yet to market leader VMware Inc. Microsoft released a test version of the software in February, and some analysts expect Hyper-V to be equal to VMware's products when it comes to doing some tasks.

With virtualization, a layer of software called a hypervisor emulates the underlying hardware of a server, allowing a system to run multiple operating systems and their associated application programs. As a result, one server may do work that once took eight or more machines, reducing not only hardware spending but other costs such as electrical and technicians to maintain multiple systems.

Larry Orecklin, Microsoft's general manager for server infrastructure, said thousands of businesses already are evaluating the Hyper-V product. "We expect very broad adoption; it's certainly priced to assure broad adoption," he said. "For those customers already implementing VMware, they can maintain their current workloads on VMware, and as they expand, they can leverage Microsoft and migrate over time."

Source: WSJ

What are the Pros and Cons of LinkedIn?

2008-02-27T11:51:00.002+05:30

Q: What are the pros and cons of signing up for http://LinkedIn.com ? While there may be benefits of professional networking sites, such as finding old contacts and potentially generating business, I am concerned that it will generate more junk emails and calls than it's worth.

A: Professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn.com, have become a valuable place to find new employees, employers or clients, reconnect and strengthen relationships with friends and former colleagues, and get career-related advice.

Many of the sites are continually adding features and tools. LinkedIn, for instance, offers service providers a referral feature where they can solicit reviews and referrals from other users. Another feature is called LinkedIn Answers, where users can pose questions to all or selected members of their personal network.

Source: WSJ

Electron Filmed for First Time

2008-02-27T11:25:00.001+05:30

Scientists have filmed an electron in motion for the first time, using a new technique that will allow researchers to study the tiny particle's movements directly.

Previously it was impossible to photograph electrons because of their extreme speediness, so scientists had to rely on more indirect methods. These methods could only measure the effect of an electron's movement, whereas the new technique can capture the entire event.

Extremely short flashes of light are necessary to capture an electron in motion. A technology developed within the last few years can generate short pulses of intense laser light, called attosecond pulses, to get the job done.

"It takes about 150 attoseconds for an electron to circle the nucleus of an atom. An attosecond is 10^-18 seconds long, or, expressed in another way: an attosecond is related to a second as a second is related to the age of the universe," said Johan Mauritsson of Lund University in Sweden.

Using another laser, scientists can guide the motion of the electron to capture a collision between an electron and an atom on film.

The length of the film Mauritsson and his colleagues made corresponds to a single oscillation of a wave of light . The speed of the event has been slowed down for human eyes. The results are detailed in the latest issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

Mauritsson says the technique could also be used to study what happens in an atom when an electron leaves its shell.

Linux Security Center Mayhem!!!

2008-02-27T11:22:00.000+05:30

Nokia unveils shape changing nano-phone concept

2008-02-27T02:16:00.000+05:30

Finnish handset giant Nokia gave the industry a glimpse of the future on Monday, when it unveiled a shape changing mobile devices concept based on nanotechnology.

Morph, a joint nanotechnology concept developed by Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, has gone on display as part of the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The concept demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform the gadget into radically different shapes.

Nanotechnology would enable the ultimate functionality delivering flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.

Mark Welland, head of the Department of Engineering's Nanoscience Group at the University of Cambridge and University Director of Nokia-Cambridge collaboration said: "Developing the Morph concept with Nokia has provided us with a focus that is both artistically inspirational but, more importantly, sets the technology agenda for our joint nanoscience research that will stimulate our future work together."

Nokia said that elements of Morph might be integrated into handheld devices within seven years, though initially only at the high end. In the future however, the Finnish firm sees nanotechnology as one day leading to low cost manufacturing and the potential for integrating complex functionality at a low price.

http://www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/20017508482.html

Sneak Peek at Windows Server 2008

2008-02-27T02:13:00.001+05:30

"There's even a minimalist installation called Windows Server Core that can run various server roles (such as DNS, DHCP, Active Directory components) but not applications (like SQL Server or IIS dynamic pages). It's otherwise a scripted host system for headless operations. There's no GUI front end to a Windows Server Core box, but it is managed by a command line interface (CLI), scripts, remotely via System Manager or other management applications that support Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), or by Remote Terminal Services. It's also a potential resource-slimmed substrate for Hyper-V and virtualization architectures."

Microsoft's long-awaited Windows Server 2008 delivers advancements in speed, security and management, but its virtualization and network-access control features come up short.

In our testing of Windows Server 2008 gold code – the product officially launches on Wednesday – we found that Microsoft has made a number of improvements to its flagship server operating system.

For example, new server administrative role schemes boost security, the Server Manager program improves manageability, Internet Information Server (IIS) Web management functionality is revamped, Active Directory is easier to control, and Windows Terminal Services has been redesigned. Windows Server 2008 is also significantly faster than Windows Server 2003, especially when client machines are running Vista.

Unfortunately, a highly anticipated feature of Windows Server 2008, the Hyper-V server virtualization tool, is missing. Microsoft includes a beta version of Hyper-V with Windows Server 2008 editions, but it will not release final code until the third quarter of this year.

Also missing is compatibility between non-Windows (and older Windows) clients and Microsoft's Network Access Protection (NAP) scheme, Microsoft's version of NAC.

Active Directory Certificate Services have been redesigned, and now join with Group Policy settings to allow easier certificate enrollment, discovery and storage. The public-key infrastructure that was formerly very difficult to establish, monitor and maintain in Windows 2003 Server editions has improved dramatically as choices for certificate management (including storage, issuance and certificate vetting) are wider than ever before.

A side benefit is that IPSec encryption can be used with a number of previously unavailable cryptography methods, such as elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman or Advanced Encryption Standard choices, allowing a simple but heretofore difficult security hole to be patched: Windows 2008 can provide comprehensive network encryption services, network-wide.

SMB 2.0, unlike SMB 1, has performance enhancements that are designed to allow greater speed. One of these enhancements allows for larger buffer sizes when both reading and writing files. More open files can also be sustained at a single exercise like a file folder copy, or the number of files open-for-write concurrently.

In our testing we found that under light loads, the effects in terms of speed of tasks like copying folders, streaming media and loading complex Web pages aren't strongly demonstrated, but the effects under heavy loads, however, favors performance for Vista, strongly. Depending on the mixture of I/O (but pronounced under streaming media and heavy file copying), Vista can be as much as 43% faster than Windows XP SP2 in copying operations and 18% faster in opening concurrent streams.

This also means that there's a two-class affinity for clients of Windows 2008 Server Editions — Vista and everyone else, including Windows XP SP2, MacOS (we used 10.4.10 and 10.5.2) or other SAMBA clients that use SAMBA 3.0.2+ connection methods. If you have a client with the new stack, you're more efficient, and, therefore faster under higher loads, but you're a second-class citizen if your stack isn't up to date.

Windows Vista supports and is shipped with both SMB 1.0 and SMB 2.0, whereas XP supports only SMB 1.0. Microsoft claims that Vista should be able to obtain better file/folder copy speeds over XP, especially in networks with higher latency.

When we swapped from a Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet network interface card to an Intel TOE Gigabit Ethernet NIC, the speed effects become highly demonstrable — even for clients that use older SMB and non-Windows TCP/IP communications stacks (such as Macs and Linux clients/servers).

This change cut CPU utilization (as measured by Perfmon) during our TCP SYN distributed DoS assault test from 48% to 18%, and in our TCP connections test from 61% at peak to 16% at peak. While TOE cards have been around for several years, we haven't seen the stark differences in performance from them.

We also assaulted the network side of Windows 2008 and IIS7 with a simple test get/post test that emulates a large number of users with get/post requests via http for delivery of static pages. We were able to increase the number of gets (using two independent Gigabit Ethernet connections concurrently) by 32% on the same hardware with Windows 2008 Server over Windows Server 2003.

http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2008/022108-windows-2008-server-test.html

www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/

MacBook Pro Now With Penryn Processors, Multitouch Trackpad

2008-02-27T00:43:00.000+05:30

More powerful versions of the MacBook Pro have been released today with up to 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Penryn processors, and the MacBook Air's trackpad, which allows for multi-touch gestures. The 2.5 and 2.6GHz models come with a new NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM. The MacBook has also been upgraded (yay!), but no multitouch (boo!), probably to make a distinction between them and the MacBook Air. The good, the bad and the ugly, specs and price list after the jump.

The good
• New Core 2 Duo versions across the board, which are supposed to be about 50% faster and more power efficient.
• New GeForce 8600M GT with 512MB.
• Multitouch pad on MacBook Pro.
• New LED option on top of the line 17" screen.

The bad
• No multitouch or LED on MacBooks.
• Multitouch trackpad on MacBook Pro is smaller than Air.
• Apple Remote is now a $19 option.

The Ugly
• Design whores like me will have to wait for the next generation for a new chassis. Clearly, this is a minor bump as we wait for the real things.

http://gizmodo.com/360753/macbook-pro-now-with-penryn-processors-multitouch-trackpad

9 (More) Useful Websites You Should Know About

2008-02-18T20:35:00.001+05:30

Genre: Instant messaging.

Why It's The Best: A one stop shop for all your instant messaging clients - Meebo allows you to sign into all of your instant-messaging services into the browser window, without having to download any of the individual clients (MSN, AOL/ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber/Gtalk).

Genre: Product Reviews.

Why It's The Best: With all the product reviews floating around the internet, it's hard to know who's behind these reviews. Review sites like Epinions pay their users to write reviews, so most of these reviews are written by people who never even bought or used the product.

On Buzzillions.com the majority of reviews are written by people who have been verified to have actually purchased the product, so the reviews are quality oriented, unbiased, and trustworthy. (See how the Verified Buyer system works) Also, they used a "tag based review system" where you can find products and reviews that match your user profile, needs, and interests.

Genre: Music.

Why It's The Best: An easy to use and extremely accurate music recommendations system, all you have to do is type in the name of your favorite band or artist, and immediately the site will start playing songs which you can thumbs up, thumbs down, or skip over. The more you tell the system what you like and don't like, the more accurate the recommendations will be. There's no registration and no downloads required.

Genre: Community based lending.

Why It's The Best: Prosper is a site where you can lend people money for an interest rate you set the minimum to and bid in increments of $50 to $25,000 on loan listings you select. If you're on the borrowing side, you can list how much you want to borrow and set your maximum interest rate, and lenders can compete for the loan by lowering their offered interest rate. Lenders can easily check the borrowers' credit grade to assess their risk. Read more under How it Works.

Genre: Local reviews.

Why It's The Best: Yelp is the best local guide in the San Francisco Bay, Chicago, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle, and pretty much every city that matters in the U.S. You can read reviews on everything from restaurants to home services within your area, and find which places to try out and which to avoid.

Genre:Auction site.

Why It's The Best: Etsy is essentially an eBay for all things handmade. Users can buy and sell homemade goods, promoting a vision for a better economy.

Genre: Textbook renting.

Why It's The Best: Chegg.com is a site I randomly stumbled upon through one of the founders I met through Facebook. Chegg provides a new way of getting your college textbooks for cheap by renting them for a fraction of their cost price. Additionally, Chegg promotes an "eco-friendly" business model by planting a tree for each textbook rented. They have an inventory of over 2 million book Titles.

Genre: GrandCentral gives you “One number for life” which lets you forward all your calls from any number, and answer calls at any phone you want.

Why It's The Best: You can easily switch phones in the middle of a phone call, screen your calls, check your voicemail by phone/email/or online, organize/store/and record calls, customized voicemails, and a lot more. For the full description and features, click here.

Genre: Sells cool stuff for cheap.

Why It's The Best: Woot sells one consumer electronics product a day until it is sold out (which is typically very fast since they offer it at a major discount). Users can discuss the product up for sale on the forum, and they show you all kinds of stats like percentage sales per hour, quantity breakdown, revenue they incurred for that product, and so on. A very fun way to get really cheap electronics!

Your Mom Lied: 5 Common Body Myths Debunked

2008-02-18T20:13:00.001+05:30

"If you shave, your facial hair will grow back thicker!"

The Lie:
Fellas, do you remember when you first started getting those wispy specks of hair on your chin? They were patchy and thin, but dammit you loved them, and you knew that it was merely a matter of months before you looked like those guys from ZZ Top. Do you remember what your mom told you? "If you shave your beard/moustache/muttonchops off it will grow back thicker and look much nicer." So you continued shaving it until, sure enough, five years later you had a perfectly serviceable moustache.

The Truth:
Actually, the only reason you ever managed to grow those whiskers was simply time. Renowned (read: gets the most tail) dermatologist Dr. Jerri Hoskyn M.D., says here that, "Shaving is just a method of cutting the hair at the skin surface and has no effect on the part of the hair ... where growth and pigmentation occur." Who's to argue with a man who had to go through eight years of medical school to cure pimples?

So why do moms perpetuate this one? Most likely out of the embarrassment most mothers of pubescent boys feel. It seems you didn't have the good fortune to hit the ground running with puberty like we Cracked staffers did, and it took you a few years to start looking and sounding like Powers Boothe. Consequently you had a fuzzy neck beard, and your parents didn't want to be seen in public with you until you shaved it.

So instead of telling you straight up that you were a repulsive pock-marked abomination and having to hear you whine in your broken girly voice, they simply lied and told you shearing hair makes it stronger and thicker, knowing you would do it--and keep doing it--in a futile attempt look like Grizzly Adams.

"You can't have anymore sugar, you'll be bouncing off the walls!"

The Lie:
All you wanted was another scoop of pure cane sugar in your cherry Kool-Aid, and your mom refused. What the hell! Of course her reasoning is "No, if you have anymore sugar you'll be bouncing off the walls." While we now know she was just telling us she didn't want us getting all hyperactive, you know, running around the house, screaming "child abuse" out of the windows at passers-by, setting the guinea pig on fire and tying our siblings to chairs, it was pretty much the worst thing she could have told us. Instantly our little minds were suddenly filled with visions of being able to defy gravity and ricochet about the house without ever having to touch the floors. In short, your mom told you that you could be fucking Spider-Man if you had more sugar, so you ate the entire bag of sugar.

The Truth:
Unfortunately after eating a bag of sugar you didn't become Spider-Man. In fact, the only superhero you became that day was Vomit-His-Stomach-And-Hallucinate-Man. Hell, it didn't even make you hyper.

Your mom was wrong on two counts: first off, gravity is unaffected by sugar. Secondly, hyperactivity is unaffected by sugar. Or at least, that's what dashing professor of neonatology and general pediatrics at UAMS Medical center, Dr. Bryan Burk says here. "No evidence exists that feeding children a high-sugar diet will induce hyperactivity, despite the common belief that it does."

It seems that you need to consume something more along the lines of caffeine, dopamine or crack to achieve any hyperactivity. In fact for some children, sugar may very well have an opiate affect on their brain. In case you didn't know, morphine and heroin are opiates, so when your mom gave you sugar, it may have been like shooting you up with tiny little amounts of smack, and smack addicts are not known as the most active of people.

Of course, the part about sugar destroying your teeth and turning you into a fatass are both still true, so in the end mom was right.

"Turn on a light! Reading in the dark will ruin your eyes"

The Lie:
Who doesn't remember being nine, sitting in the warming glow of the artificial fire, reading The Brothers Karamazov,and having their mom force them to turn on a lamp to spare their eyes? We all grumbled and groaned and switched on the lights and squinted as the glare from the pages blinded our eyes, and later Uncle Paul would take us to the ice cream shop and let us stick our fingers in the blender. Who can forget that? That did happen to everyone, right?

The Truth:
It seems that, not only did your mom lie about your Uncle Paul's stay in "con college," she also lied to you about your eyes as well. Of course we all know this has become a non-issue since we have it on good faith that only doctors, fat people and nerds read anything anymore.

The truth is, due to the amazing resilience of the human eye, reading in dim light doesn't hurt our eyes. Dr. Katrina Schmidt, who is both a doctor and a woman, says here that, "Reading in dim light is not in itself going to ruin your eyes."

However she does note that our eyes work a little harder in dim light, so if we keep moving the book to try and focus on it, it will tax our poor retinas to the point where they may well just leap off of our eyeballs and walk out the door. According to Wikipedia there have been five cases of this exact thing [citation needed].

"Don't swallow that gum! It takes seven years to pass through your digestive system!"

The Lie:
So there you are chewing gum and playing hopscotch while jumping rope on a roller coaster. You desperately try and keep that delicious resin-based goop in your mouth while enjoying your favorite activities, so one moment you're chewing on it, and then the next moment it feels as if a slug is climbing down your throat. It's then that your mother's words echo in your head, "Never swallow your gum, it'll take seven years before you crap it out." You suddenly picture years worth of gum accumulating in your stomach into a hardening clump that will, of course, kill you.

The Truth:
We would think you'd learn not to listen to your mother by this point, and that the only true thing she ever told you in your life was that you're adopted. The truth (as presented by Cracked.com and your friends at Hubba Bubba) is that you could swallow a whole thing of bubble tape and you'd get to see it come out the other end in a matter of days.

According to those killjoys over at Snopes, the reason your mom lied to you is because she was confused about the term "indigestible," which actually just means your stomach acids are unable to break down the components of gum. While this may sound unpleasant, note that no one ever accuses corn of ruining your digestive system, and it's just as hard to digest.

So the only thing this means is that your gum will appear intact upon exiting your body, which leaves it open to any number of workplace pranking opportunities, Cracked is not responsible for any injuries or firings resulting from that idea, but will gladly own up to any resulting hilarity.

"Put a jacket on! You'll catch a cold!"

The Lie:
We all heard this one while storming out the door in our pajamas in a desperate quest to bury ourselves in the field of fresh snow just outside the threshold of our homes. "Put a jacket on! You'll catch your death out there!" she'd scream, especially if this was all taking place in the 1950s. That's just like your mom to "kill your buzz" and "cramp your style" when all you wanted to do was skinny dip down in the ol' (half-frozen) fishing pond. So against your will you ended up waddling out the door bundled in seven layers of clothing, all due to your mother's half-cocked misconceptions about colds.

The Truth:
In your mother's defense, there's a definite causality between cold weather and colds, but we'll get to that in a moment, after explaining why she's so horribly, horribly wrong. You see, the "common cold" is caused by the rhinovirus, this friendly fellow:

An actual photo of the rhinovirus, from GiantMicrobes.com

What your mom misunderstood about our friend the rhinovirus is that he is just that, a virus. Viruses are pure undead malevolence encoded into genetic material and wrapped up in a creepy protein shell. They aren't even technically alive, so temperature has no affect on them. They're just tiny zombies that you can't even shoot in their microscopic zombie heads.

So why do people get a cold when it's cold out? It depends on who you ask, but if you ask Robert Bradsher M.D. you'll learn that "cold weather usually makes people stay indoors, which might increase the person-to-person transmission of respiratory viruses." Really, if your mother was smart and well informed she would have kicked your ass outside so she could enjoy her Southern Comfort, childless home and germ-free air.

It should also be noted that when you did finally catch that cold, your mom starving your cold and forcing orange juice down your throat did absolutely jack-all for curing you.

<source: http://www.cracked.com/article_15916_your-mom-lied-5-common-body-myths-debunked.html >

What makes something 'Better Than Free'? Generatives

2008-02-17T11:28:00.001+05:30

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap, they are free.

Our digital communication network has been engineered so that copies flow with as little friction as possible. Indeed, copies flow so freely we could think of the internet as a super-distribution system, where once a copy is introduced it will continue to flow through the network forever, much like electricity in a superconductive wire. We see evidence of this in real life. Once anything that can be copied is brought into contact with internet, it will be copied, and those copies never leave. Even a dog knows you can't erase something once its flowed on the internet.

This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports — that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly.

Yet the previous round of wealth in this economy was built on selling precious copies, so the free flow of free copies tends to undermine the established order. If reproductions of our best efforts are free, how can we keep going? To put it simply, how does one make money selling free copies?

I have an answer. The simplest way I can put it is thus:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

Well, what can't be copied?

There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world.

There are a number of other qualities similar to trust that are difficult to copy, and thus become valuable in this network economy. I think the best way to examine them is not from the eye of the producer, manufacturer, or creator, but from the eye of the user. We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free.

In a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.

Eight Generatives Better Than Free

Immediacy — Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released — or even better, produced — by its creators is a generative asset. Many people go to movie theaters to see films on the opening night, where they will pay a hefty price to see a film that later will be available for free, or almost free, via rental or download. Hardcover books command a premium for their immediacy, disguised as a harder cover. First in line often commands an extra price for the same good. As a sellable quality, immediacy has many levels, including access to beta versions. Fans are brought into the generative process itself. Beta versions are often de-valued because they are incomplete, but they also possess generative qualities that can be sold. Immediacy is a relative term, which is why it is generative. It has to fit with the product and the audience. A blog has a different sense of time than a movie, or a car. But immediacy can be found in any media.

Personalization — A generic version of a concert recording may be free, but if you want a copy that has been tweaked to sound perfect in your particular living room — as if it were preformed in your room — you may be willing to pay a lot. The free copy of a book can be custom edited by the publishers to reflect your own previous reading background. A free movie you buy may be cut to reflect the rating you desire (no violence, dirty language okay). Aspirin is free, but aspirin tailored to your DNA is very expensive. As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents. Marketers call that "stickiness" because it means both sides of the relationship are stuck (invested) in this generative asset, and will be reluctant to switch and start over.

Interpretation — As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that. They provide paid support for free software. The copy of code, being mere bits, is free — and becomes valuable to you only through the support and guidance. I suspect a lot of genetic information will go this route. Right now getting your copy of your DNA is very expensive, but soon it won't be. In fact, soon pharmaceutical companies will PAY you to get your genes sequence. So the copy of your sequence will be free, but the interpretation of what it means, what you can do about it, and how to use it — the manual for your genes so to speak — will be expensive.

Authenticity — You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity. There are nearly an infinite number of variations of the Grateful Dead jams around; buying an authentic version from the band itself will ensure you get the one you wanted. Or that it was indeed actually performed by the Dead. Artists have dealt with this problem for a long time. Graphic reproductions such as photographs and lithographs often come with the artist's stamp of authenticity — a signature — to raise the price of the copy. Digital watermarks and other signature technology will not work as copy-protection schemes (copies are super-conducting liquids, remember?) but they can serve up the generative quality of authenticity for those who care.

Accessibility — Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you. Many people, me included, will be happy to have others tend our "possessions" by subscribing to them. We'll pay Acme Digital Warehouse to serve us any musical tune in the world, when and where we want it, as well as any movie, photo (ours or other photographers). Ditto for books and blogs. Acme backs everything up, pays the creators, and delivers us our desires. We can sip it from our phones, PDAs, laptops, big screens from where-ever. The fact that most of this material will be available free, if we want to tend it, back it up, keep adding to it, and organize it, will be less and less appealing as time goes on.

Embodiment — At its core the digital copy is without a body. You can take a free copy of a work and throw it on a screen. But perhaps you'd like to see it in hi-res on a huge screen? Maybe in 3D? PDFs are fine, but sometimes it is delicious to have the same words printed on bright white cottony paper, bound in leather. Feels so good. What about dwelling in your favorite (free) game with 35 others in the same room? There is no end to greater embodiment. Sure, the hi-res of today — which may draw ticket holders to a big theater — may migrate to your home theater tomorrow, but there will always be new insanely great display technology that consumers won't have. Laser projection, holographic display, the holodeck itself! And nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.

Patronage — It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. But they will only pay if it is very easy to do, a reasonable amount, and they feel certain the money will directly benefit the creators. Radiohead's recent high-profile experiment in letting fans pay them whatever they wished for a free copy is an excellent illustration of the power of patronage. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something. In Radiohead's case it was about $5 per download. There are many other examples of the audience paying simply because it feels good.

Findability — Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. A zero price does not help direct attention to a work, and in fact may sometimes hinder it. But no matter what its price, a work has no value unless it is seen; unfound masterpieces are worthless. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention — and most of it free — being found is valuable.

The giant aggregators such as Amazon and Netflix make their living in part by helping the audience find works they love. They bring out the good news of the "long tail" phenomenon, which we all know, connects niche audiences with niche productions. But sadly, the long tail is only good news for the giant aggregators, and larger mid-level aggregators such as publishers, studios, and labels. The "long tail" is only lukewarm news to creators themselves. But since findability can really only happen at the systems level, creators need aggregators. This is why publishers, studios, and labels (PSL)will never disappear. They are not needed for distribution of the copies (the internet machine does that). Rather the PSL are needed for the distribution of the users' attention back to the works. From an ocean of possibilities the PSL find, nurture and refine the work of creators that they believe fans will connect with. Other intermediates such as critics and reviewers also channel attention. Fans rely on this multi-level apparatus of findability to discover the works of worth out of the zillions produced. There is money to be made (indirectly for the creatives) by finding talent. For many years the paper publication TV Guide made more money than all of the 3 major TV networks it "guided" combined. The magazine guided and pointed viewers to the good stuff on the tube that week. Stuff, it is worth noting, that was free to the viewers. There is little doubt that besides the mega-aggregators, in the world of the free many PDLs will make money selling findability — in addition to the other generative qualities.

These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.

In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.

Careful readers will note one conspicuous absence so far. I have said nothing about advertising. Ads are widely regarded as the solution, almost the ONLY solution, to the paradox of the free. Most of the suggested solutions I've seen for overcoming the free involve some measure of advertising. I think ads are only one of the paths that attention takes, and in the long-run, they will only be part of the new ways money is made selling the free.

But that's another story.

Beneath the frothy layer of advertising, these eight generatives will supply the value to ubiquitous free copies, and make them worth advertising for. These generatives apply to all digital copies, but also to any kind of copy where the marginal cost of that copy approaches zero. (See my essay on Technology Wants to Be Free.) Even material industries are finding that the costs of duplication near zero, so they too will behave like digital copies. Maps just crossed that threshold. Genetics is about to. Gadgets and small appliances (like cell phones) are sliding that way. Pharmaceuticals are already there, but they don't want anyone to know. It costs nothing to make a pill. We pay for Authenticity and Immediacy in drugs. Someday we'll pay for Personalization.

Maintaining generatives is a lot harder than duplicating copies in a factory. There is still a lot to learn. A lot to figure out. Write to me if you do.

KEVIN KELLY is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the popular Technium, Cool Tools, True Film, and Street Use websites. He is the author fo Out of Control.

Pasted from <http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html>

Artificial Intelligence at Human Level by 2029?

2008-02-17T09:53:00.001+05:30

"Some members of the US National Academy of Engineering have predicted that Artificial Intelligence will reach the level of humans in around 20 years. Ray Kurzweil leads the charge: 'We will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029. We're already a human machine civilization, we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that. We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons.' Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers, and a gentleman we've discussed previously. He was chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering. The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter."

Pasted from <http://slashdot.org/>

Five Idiotic Patents You've Probably Never Heard Of

2008-02-14T23:17:00.008+05:30

To date, the USPTO has issued over seven million patents - many of them were brilliant. These patents, however, are not amongst them...

#1) U.S. Patent No. 6,263,710: Anti-Abduction Device

“A method of preventing and discouraging the abduction of children and other persons comprising: extending the arms of the person around an object and interconnecting the arms so as to effectively tie that person to the object.”

So let me get this straight... I'm supposed to place these on my child and just hope that he or she doesn't accidentally lock himself around something? Not to mention, if there were an abduction attempt, you've essentially just made your child a sitting duck for an abductor to assault.

#2) U.S. Patent No.1,493,222: Feces Scale

“A weighing device especially adapted for weighing feces as excreted...” “The operation is obvious. After the feces are deposited a reading is made. Then to wash the tray, the finger is pressed down on the cap 18 and the closet simultaneously flushed.”

I am dumbfounded as to why anybody would ever actually need to weight their own feces and urine, and I think that there is little else to be said about the stupidity of this device.

#3) U.S. Patent No. 3,138,870: Vacuum Operated Hair Clipper

“This invention relates to powered clippers of the class operated by attachment to a vacuum cleaner or other air pump, and is particularly directed to certain improvements in air driven clippers productive of greater versatility and increased performance therein.”

So, pretty much what we've got here is the "Suck Cut" from Wayne's World - which by the way, depicts my every thought of what could potentially go wrong with such an asinine device... “Aaaahh! Turn it off man, turn it off! It's sucking my will to live! Oh, the humanity!”

#4) U.S. Patent No. 3,150,831: Birthday Cake Candle Extinguisher

“This invention concerns a candle extinguisher particularly adapted for extinguishing lighted candles on birthday cakes and the like.”

Wow. Yet another testament to humanity's newfound laziness. Apparently, we're so physically inept that we're officially unable to blow out our own freakin' birthday candles? Good God...

#5) U.S. Patent No. 5,392,735: Marine Mammal Communication Device

“An innovative communication device and learning tool that enables marine mammals, such as dolphins, to communicate with humans and with each other. The communication device includes a keyboard having a plurality of hollow keys. Each key includes a switch which can be activated by the dolphin, and a two- or three-dimensional object which can be distinguished by dolphins from other objects in other keys both visually and through echolocation.”

Do people really have this much time on their hands? I mean, what exactly do these people think that they would possibly be able to achieve here? On second thought-I hope that this thing is made one day and the first thing that the dolphins tell us is, “We ate Lassie.”

Pasted from <http://www.purpleslinky.com/Offbeat-/Five-Idiotic-Patents-Youve-Probably-Never-Heard-Of.83027>

Image of the big-bang in a piece of toast

2008-02-14T23:13:00.003+05:30

Excitement is growing in the Northern England town of Huddlesfield following the news that a local man saw an image of the big-bang in a piece of toast. atheist donald chapman, 36, told local newspaper, "the huddlesfield express" that he was sitting down to eat breakfast when an unusual toast pattern caught his eye.

"I was just about to spread the butter when I noticed a fairly typical small hole in the bread surrounded by a burnt black ring. however the direction and splatter patterns of the crumbs as well as the changing shades emanating outwards from this black hole were very clearly similar to the chaotic-dynamic non-linear patterns that one would expect following the big bang". "It's the beginning of the world" he added excitedly.

Ever since news of the discovery made national headlines, local hoteliers have been overwhelmed by an influx of atheists from all over the country who have flocked to Huddlesfield to catch a glimpse of the scientific relic. "I have always been an Atheist and to see my life choices validated on a piece of toast is truly astounding" said one guest at the Huddlesfield arms hotel.

To the surprise of many, the UK national atheist association has asked its members not to pay attention to the story despite its potential to inspire less faith. "Given what the religious believe already, this is an easy sell" said one disgruntled activist who said he was going to huddlesfield anyway noting that "Seeing is not believing".

Pasted from <http://www.satireandcomment.com/0208toast.html>

IBM ThinkPad X300

2008-02-14T23:09:00.002+05:30

Only a month or so after Apple announced its MacBook Air laptop, which it calls the world’s thinnest laptop, Lenovo is about to spring its own super-skinny machine: the ThinkPad X300. Here’s a sneak peek. My full review will appear after I have fully tested this unusual new laptop, which I expect to be of great interest to road warriors.

Like the MacBook Air, this is a rare small laptop that is built around a full 13-inch-wide screen display and a full keyboard, rather than the little screens and cramped keyboards common in subnotebooks. And, like the Air, it offers a fast, rugged solid-state drive instead of a hard disk.

But, unlike the Apple, Lenovo’s new skinny ThinkPad comes with a hefty complement of ports and features, some of the very things critics complained Apple left out. It has a built-in DVD drive, removable battery, three USB ports, and a wired Ethernet networking jack. Inside, in addition to Wi-Fi, it can be ordered with a built-in cellphone modem and even GPS. It comes with either Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Sporting the traditional ThinkPad black slab design, the X300 isn’t as skinny or sexy as the Apple, but it’s still very slender and attractive, at under an inch thick. Also, unlike the Apple, most of the ThinkPad’s configurations are a bit heavier than the 3-pound weight that traditionally denotes a subnotebook. But it still feels very light to carry around, at 3.12 pounds with the standard battery and DVD drive.

The biggest downsides to the new ThinkPad X300 are price and limited storage capacity. Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive. So it will start at between $2,500 and $2,800–up to $1,000 more than the Apple’s base price–and will be limited to a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage.

Pasted from <http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/20080213/x300/>