1. In my opinion, multitasking can be a boost to performance in certain applications, but the human brain is not wired for it, and it is not good for your mental health if you excessively defy this biological basis. Can be very detrimental to the learning process.
2. Addiction is not something I will say is limited in it's targets, people with the predilection to additive behaviour can easily find themselves "hooked" on just about anything, but I am a firm believer that it is not set in stone and that all addictions can be overcome with enough willpower, and proper support. I don't know many people that I would say are addicted to games, most of them are sadly casual players, but my mother does show a bent towards addiction and could easily be pushed into it given the right circumstances.
3. I do not feel that this is a good thing, such a limited depth of content suggests many more issues. While multitasking can be helpful, and give a powerful sense of achievement when pulled off, if it hinders the ability to focus on a single subject at a time then it begins to get into a troubling area.
4. Short term concentration may indeed be where things are headed, but I still believe that being able to focus for long periods on a single subject is very important. People are already to shallow for my taste.
5. I think that it is a powerful tool in solving America's education problem but not the sole answer. I was raised by a humble family, we did not have the means to be early adopters of new technologies, I always got hand-me-downs or custom dinosaur computers, that barely ran, but from the moment I first used an Apple II in school to play the simple education games available I was changed, and as soon as I got regular access to my first computer (My aunt's Win3.1 machine with roaring fast 28.8 baud dial up!) my universe expanded so fast I swear I felt like a god for a second as I saw everything explode in front of me and I watched time begin, end and begin again and fast forwarded to where I was in that scale. A little dramatic, sure =p, but it really was a life changing experience. Alas, I digress... If I had a computer in school, things would have gone much better for me I think, but it wouldn't have solved all my problems. People seem to be keen on it because they see somehting missing in education, and there is, but throwing technology at the issue is not going to help raise well rounded students.
well that's about it.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Samsung laptops came with Keylogger
Mohamed Hassan, a graduate of the Master of Science in Information Assurance (MSIA) program at Norwich University, discovered an application called StarLogger had been installed on his brand new laptop.
Starlogger is a publicly available key logger that tracks keystrokes even in password boxes and can even take screenshots and sends this information to am e-mail account specified during the install.
He reported it and in a similar move to SonyBMG about the installing of rootkits, Samsung's support department denied the existence of any such software on its laptops., but after he got another model and it had the key logger on it to they said it was Microsoft's fault and they just make the hardware, after Mohamed told them that that didn't make sense he got pushed up the chain and the supervisor said he was "not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop," but confirmed that "yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
Whether Samsung faces a similarly global problem or merely one misbehaving reseller still isn’t clear. A statement from a company spokesperson says that it’s looking into the situation: “Samsung takes Mr. Hassan’s claims very seriously. After learning of the original post this morning on NetworkWorld.com, we launched an internal investigation into this issue. We will provide further information as soon as it is available.”
Starlogger is a publicly available key logger that tracks keystrokes even in password boxes and can even take screenshots and sends this information to am e-mail account specified during the install.
He reported it and in a similar move to SonyBMG about the installing of rootkits, Samsung's support department denied the existence of any such software on its laptops., but after he got another model and it had the key logger on it to they said it was Microsoft's fault and they just make the hardware, after Mohamed told them that that didn't make sense he got pushed up the chain and the supervisor said he was "not sure how this software ended up in the new laptop," but confirmed that "yes, Samsung did knowingly put this software on the laptop to monitor the performance of the machine and to find out how it is being used."
The two models currently known to contain this software are the R525 and R540. CNET has published a helpful guide on how to remove this software, to read it click here.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
New artificial leaf can power a home
Scientists at MIT today revealed that they have created a more efficient artificial leaf that is the size of a poker card and when placed in a gallon of water and left in direct sunlight can separate the water into oxygen and hydrogen, that goes to a fuel cell to provide power.
Artificial leafs were first made about a decade ago but they used rare, unstable materials. This version however makes use of readily available, less expensive materials used in a simple way. The new version can continue to function (in lab tests) for a minimum of 45 hours without a drop in production.
The hope is to be able to use these to bring power to developing nations or areas otherwise unable to have stable power.
Nifty thing, if they can make it even more efficient then I think it might be a nice way to get power to places without a grid.
Artificial leafs were first made about a decade ago but they used rare, unstable materials. This version however makes use of readily available, less expensive materials used in a simple way. The new version can continue to function (in lab tests) for a minimum of 45 hours without a drop in production.
The hope is to be able to use these to bring power to developing nations or areas otherwise unable to have stable power.
Nifty thing, if they can make it even more efficient then I think it might be a nice way to get power to places without a grid.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Plastic from Bannanas (Nanocellulose Applications)
Brazilian Scientists have found a way to utilize fibers from, Bananas, coconuts, and pineapples to create a stronger, lighter and biodegradable alternative to petroleum based plastics. These nanocellulose plastics are 30% lighter and 3-4 times stronger than the current petroleum based plastics as well as being more resistant to heat, gasoline and water.
They are first looking into automotive plastics such as dashboards, bumpers and some body panels for the material, but they think that it might eventually be able to replace steel and aluminum automotive parts as well.
They create the material by cooking the leaves and stems of these plants in what is basically a pressure cooker, and it yields a material that looks like talcum powder but is actually strands of nanocellulosic fibres so small that 50,000 fit in the diameter of a human hair.
The cost is realatively prohibitive at the moment but the lab is only working with small quantities of the material and they said that price would go down as production scales up, especially if the auto industry embraced the technology. One pound of nanocellulose can produce 100 lbs. of plastic.
Alcides Leão presented his findings today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California.
Sounds neat, a plastic stronger than Kevlar that weighs less and is biodegradable? Whats not to like?
They are first looking into automotive plastics such as dashboards, bumpers and some body panels for the material, but they think that it might eventually be able to replace steel and aluminum automotive parts as well.
They create the material by cooking the leaves and stems of these plants in what is basically a pressure cooker, and it yields a material that looks like talcum powder but is actually strands of nanocellulosic fibres so small that 50,000 fit in the diameter of a human hair.
The cost is realatively prohibitive at the moment but the lab is only working with small quantities of the material and they said that price would go down as production scales up, especially if the auto industry embraced the technology. One pound of nanocellulose can produce 100 lbs. of plastic.
Alcides Leão presented his findings today at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, California.
Sounds neat, a plastic stronger than Kevlar that weighs less and is biodegradable? Whats not to like?
Monday, March 21, 2011
Google Fined record amount by CNIL
CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) fined Google a record €100,000 for siphoning information from citizens unsecured WiFi networks, including Bank information, passwords and emails. Google got away with excuses in other countries but the frogs got 'em good. They were just letting the data sit on their servers untill Germany wanted to take a look at it, now
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Backup article: Fire Breathing Dragon Sculpture
Artists Dan Peppiatt and Paka made a mechanical fire breathing dragon, out of pneumatics from e-bay, scrap metal, and articulated with wheelchair motors. Oh yeah, and it breathes fire! Propane fire.
Not much here I didn;t have enough time to develop my accelerated expansion of the universe or reversing the Doppler effect articles. Cest la Vie
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/03/meet-the-fire-breathing-scrap-metal-dragon.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Not much here I didn;t have enough time to develop my accelerated expansion of the universe or reversing the Doppler effect articles. Cest la Vie
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/03/meet-the-fire-breathing-scrap-metal-dragon.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Nanotube nonvolatile memory that uses 100th the power of current flash
Eric Pop and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have created a new type on nonvolitile momory useing carbon nanotube switchs rangeing between 1-5 nanometres switch between islands of GST a phase change material of 10 nanometers , current memory size is only 50 nanometers.
This seems really nice especially for mobile devices, to extend battery life. Not much to say, I mean there is but it is very technical. the link is:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/35083/page1/
This seems really nice especially for mobile devices, to extend battery life. Not much to say, I mean there is but it is very technical. the link is:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/35083/page1/
Monday, March 14, 2011
IE finally worth a look?
IE 9 is rolling out and has a few new features as well as improved performance. It is due out tonight at 9 PM.
Unified search box now has on the fly searching as well as changing search providers
add-on performance monitor, is a little thing that warns you if an add-on is causing the browser to slow and it can be set to different thresholds to raise the alarm at.
You can pin sites to windows 7 desktop task bar and depending on the site developer's coding you can get site-specific jump lists, unread e-mail notifications, or streaming media player controls.
This version of IE also uses hardware graphics acceleration to improve performance.
The Caveat in this is that it is not supported by Windows XP, Microsoft's official reason for this is that the hardware acceleration utilized by IE 9 does not work with the device drivers in XP. It seems that they are really trying to push upgrades to windows 7, since Firefox 4 release candidate offers full hardware acceleration across multiple OSs including XP.
Looks neat, but idk if it will make me change from my Firefox
Unified search box now has on the fly searching as well as changing search providers
add-on performance monitor, is a little thing that warns you if an add-on is causing the browser to slow and it can be set to different thresholds to raise the alarm at.
You can pin sites to windows 7 desktop task bar and depending on the site developer's coding you can get site-specific jump lists, unread e-mail notifications, or streaming media player controls.
This version of IE also uses hardware graphics acceleration to improve performance.
The Caveat in this is that it is not supported by Windows XP, Microsoft's official reason for this is that the hardware acceleration utilized by IE 9 does not work with the device drivers in XP. It seems that they are really trying to push upgrades to windows 7, since Firefox 4 release candidate offers full hardware acceleration across multiple OSs including XP.
Looks neat, but idk if it will make me change from my Firefox
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Printed Bike
EADS, the European aerospace and defense group showed off their "Airbike", made out of nylon but strong enough to replace steel and requires no traditional maintenance or assembly. They created it using a process know as Additive Layer Manufacturing or ADL where they take a fine metal powder or carbon reinforced plastics. It was mostly just a demo for the technology that will be used in the aerospace industry.
Sorta neat but a little lean on content so i'll just link the article and shut-up.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-print-a-nylon-bike
Sorta neat but a little lean on content so i'll just link the article and shut-up.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-print-a-nylon-bike
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Wargames help warriors reduce nightmares
According to an online survey 98% of military personal who regularly play games that include war and combat, like Call of Duty, decreased the level of harm and aggression experienced when they dreamed about war. Soldiers who did not play these games had more violent dreams combined with a sense of unhappiness.
According to Jayne Gackenbach of Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada.
In the survey soldiers with predisposition to mental disorders were weeded out and the remaining "healthy" soldiers were put into two groups: "high gaming" and "low gaming" the former tended to play more intense, immersive games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty,most of them played everyday or at least several times a week while the latter group gravitated towards more "casual" games and played rarely as a few times a year.
Soldiers in the "high gaming" group reported combat nightmares were less intense and they often could fight back against what was threatening them, while soldiers in the "low gaming" group reported more instances of feeling helpless against an aggressive violent enemy.
'Gackenbach theorises that playing violent games while awake may serve as a sort of "threat simulator," a way of conditioning the mind to better cope with intense, dangerous situations when they arise in nightmares.'
I love this because you always have the old fuddy duddies who have nothing but bad to say about violent games, well buster... chew on this! =p
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/can-video-games-quell-nightmar.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
According to Jayne Gackenbach of Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton, Canada.
In the survey soldiers with predisposition to mental disorders were weeded out and the remaining "healthy" soldiers were put into two groups: "high gaming" and "low gaming" the former tended to play more intense, immersive games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty,most of them played everyday or at least several times a week while the latter group gravitated towards more "casual" games and played rarely as a few times a year.
Soldiers in the "high gaming" group reported combat nightmares were less intense and they often could fight back against what was threatening them, while soldiers in the "low gaming" group reported more instances of feeling helpless against an aggressive violent enemy.
'Gackenbach theorises that playing violent games while awake may serve as a sort of "threat simulator," a way of conditioning the mind to better cope with intense, dangerous situations when they arise in nightmares.'
I love this because you always have the old fuddy duddies who have nothing but bad to say about violent games, well buster... chew on this! =p
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/can-video-games-quell-nightmar.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Monday, March 7, 2011
Interactive Technology = Bad Sleep
A study by the National Sleep Foundation, shows that people who frequently send text messages or use their laptops before bed are less likely to get a good nights sleep, because they are more alerting and disruptive to the onset of sleep. The got their data from a survey they commissioned from WB&A Market Research. 1,508 surveys were conducted among a sample of Americans. Some other interesting tidbits: 39% of Americans are bring cell phones into the bedroom and using them when they are trying to go to sleep, esp those under the age of 30. texting was the biggest use, in the hour before bedtime. 61% are using computers or laptops regularly in the hour before bedtime. One thing I noted here is that I use my computer before bedtime nearly every night, and am indeed tired, and sleepy the next day, but what was funny is the activities they indulge in did not include anything I regularly do. Social networking, skype, watching video, etc. I just play games, then go to sleep. I bet I have more interesting dreams than these social butterflys =p
To cope with this detriment to sleep, the surveys found that younger groups were less likely consume caffeine than their older counterparts, although caffeine consumption was prevalent across all groups. The majority of younger participants also nap during the weekdays and those that do nap on weekdays are more likely to "catch up" on sleep over the weekend and tend to be more sleepy. well i could go on for awhile but I don;t need to so the link is: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/sleepinamericapoll/SIAP_2011_Summary_of_Findings.pdf
basically use tech before bed = bad sleep ;p
To cope with this detriment to sleep, the surveys found that younger groups were less likely consume caffeine than their older counterparts, although caffeine consumption was prevalent across all groups. The majority of younger participants also nap during the weekdays and those that do nap on weekdays are more likely to "catch up" on sleep over the weekend and tend to be more sleepy. well i could go on for awhile but I don;t need to so the link is: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/sites/default/files/sleepinamericapoll/SIAP_2011_Summary_of_Findings.pdf
basically use tech before bed = bad sleep ;p
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Windows System Backups
The top choices seem to be Macrium Reflect, Acronis and Norton Ghost
Macrium Reflect - $39.99
Automation options manage space on external backups for efficeint use
User Friendly, fully integrates with Windows Explorer
Integrates with VBScript and WScript
Image in Full, Incremental or Differencial
Can boot from the Macrium CD into a compact version of Linix with mouse and graphical interface to restore if unable to boot to Windows.
Can save backups as .XML
"Virtual Drive" browser to recover specific files and directorys using cut and paste
Acronis True Image 11 Home - $49.99
Fully integrates with Windows Explorer (windows 7)
Comes with "Try&Decide" which is like a Virtual Machine of your current machine that lets you change things and if the changes go well you can commit them to your actual system.
Automatically creates incremental backups every 5 mins
Select from various backup schemes to deal with limited backup space,or high security, or create a custom scheme.
U.S.B. 3.0 support
Refined G.U.I. with drag and drop and wizards
Works with acronis onine backup, fully integrated with the powerful Acronis True Image Home Plus Pack option, which allows you to restore your PC to dissimilar hardware regardless of make, model, or installed components, or to a virtual machine.
Acronis True Image Home Plus Pack - $29.99
Acronis Onine Backup - $4.95/month or $49.95/year
Cons:
For full functionality (web, pc restore to dissimiler hardware) you must buy and subscribe to extras
Norton Ghost 14.0 - $69.99
Advanced compression and encryption
NEW! Windows® 7 Bitlocker™ support
NEW! Symantec ThreatCon integration
Onsite and offsite backups
NEW! Cold imaging
NEW! Blu-ray Disc support
Windows 7/XP/Vista
Can convert HD to virtual disk format such as a VMware VMDK file
All the standard backups (file, full, incremental, differencial), as well as event based
Backups can be made to almost any media, includingCDR/RW and DVD+-R/RW drives, USB, FireWire® (IEEE 1394) devices, Iomega® Zip® and Jaz® drives.
Restore your system with an on-disk software recovery environment thanks to LightsOut Restore - no bootable CD required!
You can now copy recovery points to an FTP location in case you need to restore your data while being offsite.
You can back up your data to your network-attached storage devices (NAS), for instance a shared drive on your home network.
Remote management is supported: you can control other Norton Ghost installations (12.0 or higher) on your local area network.
Integration with Google Desktop™: you can now use this free, highly-efficient indexing tool to quickly search the data you have already backed up.
Cons:
Issue if you remove it from the startup folder it has to reconnect to something, and cannot preform an incremental backup
Issues with backing up to disk
It's a Symantec product! =p
Pros:
Feature Rich
Considered Reliable? (http://ghost.radified.com/)
Nice options (for networks [backup to disk, backup to network, remote management])
Works Fast (some speculation, incremental after full restore and defrag was half the size 15gigs, of the full restore, no files were opened/added/changed)
Just from a glance and reading what I have I would say while Norton looks promiseing I am a little gun shy when it comes to their products, too many problems, So for my personal use I would probably use somethign like Macrium Reflect because it has the features I need without the complications I don't.
Macrium Reflect - $39.99
Automation options manage space on external backups for efficeint use
User Friendly, fully integrates with Windows Explorer
Integrates with VBScript and WScript
Image in Full, Incremental or Differencial
Can boot from the Macrium CD into a compact version of Linix with mouse and graphical interface to restore if unable to boot to Windows.
Can save backups as .XML
"Virtual Drive" browser to recover specific files and directorys using cut and paste
Acronis True Image 11 Home - $49.99
Fully integrates with Windows Explorer (windows 7)
Comes with "Try&Decide" which is like a Virtual Machine of your current machine that lets you change things and if the changes go well you can commit them to your actual system.
Automatically creates incremental backups every 5 mins
Select from various backup schemes to deal with limited backup space,or high security, or create a custom scheme.
U.S.B. 3.0 support
Refined G.U.I. with drag and drop and wizards
Works with acronis onine backup, fully integrated with the powerful Acronis True Image Home Plus Pack option, which allows you to restore your PC to dissimilar hardware regardless of make, model, or installed components, or to a virtual machine.
Acronis True Image Home Plus Pack - $29.99
Acronis Onine Backup - $4.95/month or $49.95/year
Cons:
For full functionality (web, pc restore to dissimiler hardware) you must buy and subscribe to extras
Norton Ghost 14.0 - $69.99
Advanced compression and encryption
NEW! Windows® 7 Bitlocker™ support
NEW! Symantec ThreatCon integration
Onsite and offsite backups
NEW! Cold imaging
NEW! Blu-ray Disc support
Windows 7/XP/Vista
Can convert HD to virtual disk format such as a VMware VMDK file
All the standard backups (file, full, incremental, differencial), as well as event based
Backups can be made to almost any media, includingCDR/RW and DVD+-R/RW drives, USB, FireWire® (IEEE 1394) devices, Iomega® Zip® and Jaz® drives.
Restore your system with an on-disk software recovery environment thanks to LightsOut Restore - no bootable CD required!
You can now copy recovery points to an FTP location in case you need to restore your data while being offsite.
You can back up your data to your network-attached storage devices (NAS), for instance a shared drive on your home network.
Remote management is supported: you can control other Norton Ghost installations (12.0 or higher) on your local area network.
Integration with Google Desktop™: you can now use this free, highly-efficient indexing tool to quickly search the data you have already backed up.
Cons:
Issue if you remove it from the startup folder it has to reconnect to something, and cannot preform an incremental backup
Issues with backing up to disk
It's a Symantec product! =p
Pros:
Feature Rich
Considered Reliable? (http://ghost.radified.com/)
Nice options (for networks [backup to disk, backup to network, remote management])
Works Fast (some speculation, incremental after full restore and defrag was half the size 15gigs, of the full restore, no files were opened/added/changed)
Just from a glance and reading what I have I would say while Norton looks promiseing I am a little gun shy when it comes to their products, too many problems, So for my personal use I would probably use somethign like Macrium Reflect because it has the features I need without the complications I don't.
iPad 2 Malarkey
Lighter (by a whopping .2 lbs), Faster (dual core, whee), thinner (33% meh), 2 cameras (sorry nothing snarky) Alltogether it is nothign goundbreaking and not my cup of tea to start with and this just seems like the normal "New! Shiney!" whizz-bang thing, that keeps coming in an endless stream because people (sheeple?) keep buying them. It might work for some people but, for me, another pass.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)