Digital Nation assignment

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.

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."

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.

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.”

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.

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?

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

"Deleting the data has always been our priority, and we're happy the CNIL has given permission for us to do so." According to Google's chief privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer.

LOL:

That is all

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

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/