I guess everyone that has an interest in matters internet related already know that there is a new kid on the block in the search engine market. Go have a look at http://www.cuil.com if you haven’t done it yet. more....
Monthly Archive for July, 2008
Hack a day serves up a fresh hack each day, every day from around the web and a special how-to hack each week. Have fun reading, I certainly do.
Hack a Day
Twitter IRC server, tircd
Parts: Digital proximity sensor (Sharp GP2Y0D02)
Homebrew on the PSP3000
7 color hand held laser projector
Parallel parking system
Hacking at Random 2009 call for papers
Light to sound converter
Tiny projector teardown
Game Boy Pocket backlight
Washing machine generator
The Malware Challenge
Microwave timer switch
Make: television premiering today
Automated wire cutter and stripper
Twittering washing machine
more....
Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day
You may ask “What is a System Administrator?”
The answers you will find at http://www.sysadminday.com/ are as good as any. Being a System Administrator is a somewhat stressful job and turns you into a cynic very quickly (see http://www.sysadminday.com/time.html ) and you start hanging out in places like the scary devil monastery. Your (l)users also stop talking to you mainly out of fear of hearing the truth because the last time they complained about not getting e-mail you answered “Well, maybe nobody likes you anymore”
Continue reading ‘If you can read this, thank your sysadmin’
Yesterday Andrew McGill posted the message below on the Gauteng Linux User Group mailing list. Because he is not blogging I’m doing it for him. What he is describing is one of the biggest frustrations people have with so called new and improved software. more....
If you have a look at the page “Where I’ve been” you will see that I have traveled in most of Sub Saharan Africa. I travel in Africa for work, which is installing advertisement monitoring systems for one of my customers. more....
Slashdot
News for nerds, stuff that matters
How the City Hurts Your Brain
Hugh Pickens writes "The city has always been an engine of intellectual life and the 'concentration of social interactions' is largely responsible for urban creativity and innovation. But now scientists are finding that being in an urban environment impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory and suffers from reduced self-control. 'The mind is a limited machine,' says psychologist Marc Berman. 'And we're beginning to understand the different ways that a city can exceed those limitations.' Consider everything your brain has to keep track of as you walk down a busy city street. A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to redirect our attention constantly so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. Natural settings don't require the same amount of cognitive effort. A study at the University of Michigan found memory performance and attention spans improved by 20 percent after people spent an hour interacting with nature. 'It's not an accident that Central Park is in the middle of Manhattan,' says Berman. 'They needed to put a park there.'"
Depleted Cranium
Bad Science And Scary Science
Sylvia Browne?s Economic Predictions for 2008
Now that the Montel Williams Show is no longer being filmed we won’t be privy to this spectical anymore, but at the end of each year, Sylvia Browne, a self-proclaimed psychic would issue her predictions for the next year. Last year I noted that her predictions for 2007 were very very wrong. However, it seems [...]
Rainbow Conspiracy Theory Fail
Yes, the following video is real. It comes directly from Failblog, because in this case, it was such a failure that it actually was recognized as one almost universally. A crazy lady finds that her sprinkler makes a rainbow. What? A rainbow? Those are supposed to be in the sky! And it’s not raining [...]
The Toof Fairy is Back
The toof fairy has been making her rounds trying to get kids who live near nuclear plants to hand over some teeth to prove that they were exposed to fission byproducts in recent years. Now, however, it seems that the original study started back in the 1950’s and concerned nuclear weapon tests, or to be [...]
More ?Uranium is running out? nonsense
This time it’s from a politician. Geez, who would ever think a politician would mislead the public about the facts? Still, it’s an unfortunate and persistent myth that replacing fossil fuels with nuclear fission will lead us to a ‘peak uranium’ crisis in a few years or decades.
Is uranium going to hit a”Hubbert Peak”?
Hubbert didn’t [...]
Banished Words Of the Year (Guess what?s No 1.)
Lake Superior State University is known for one tradition that has been going on for thirty four years: “The Banished Word List.” The list is basically a collection of fifteen words of the year that have been so overused, so misused so hyped, so trendy that they have come to define everything annoying and lame [...]
What the hell is a natural pizza?
I was flipping through the channels today when I saw the word “natural” come up. Obviously I stopped to see what kind of product it would be, as the word seems to be a buzzword for every bad science scheme out there. This time it’s pizza. Yes, that’s right. A **NEW** natural pizza from Pizza [...]
First ?Solar Powered Freighter? - No not really
There’s a big to-do about the fact that some shipping company has placed a bunch of solar panels on one of their big international freighters. Ironically, it happens to be a car carrier. Like all solar projects, it seems this one was damn expensive and offers a very low return.
I think these guys may even [...]
Bitching over Bad Science Works!
Omega Pharmaceuticals is a European company which manufacturers non-prescription health and medical products. The products they manufacture include some at least appear to be legitimate, such as a treatment for hair lice as well as some that are a bit more questionable, such as “natural” health products.
Not long ago the company came out with a [...]
Ignorance and Paranoia Get Contagious
You may remember that there was a lot of talk about how a rail maintiance facility was really a concentration camp run by the government and preparing to become part of a program to slaughter millions. You may have also seen a recent post describing how this mentality has spread beyond the US all the [...]
Celebs not the best health advisors? Really?
A rare piece of extremely good, yet all to obvious advice in the mainstream media turned up in the London Times. It seems that the paper is advising readers that the fact that someone is well known for their acting, music or sexy bod does not necessarily mean you should put any value on their [...]
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