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Submitted by actz
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Thursday, 22 March 2007 |
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Here is the future of the green amusement park: The Skycycle at Washuzan Highland Park in Okayama, a pedal-powered roller coaster. They clearly have some dramatic topography to take advantage of here, and it looks truly frightening. Most North American amusement parks are on pretty flat terrain but they often build artificial mountains- Demand a green ride like this on the Magic Mountain.
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Monday, 19 March 2007 |
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 EAST AMWELL, N.J. - Mike Strizki lives in the nation's first solar-hydrogen house. The technology this civil engineer has been able to string together – solar panels, a hydrogen fuel cell, storage tanks, and a piece of equipment called an electrolyzer – provides electricity to his home year-round, even on the cloudiest of winter days.
Mr. Strizki's monthly utility bill is zero – he's off the power grid – and his system creates no carbon-dioxide emissions. Neither does the fuel-cell car parked in his garage, which runs off the hydrogen his system creates. It sounds promising, even utopian: homemade, storable energy that doesn't contribute to global warming. But does Strizki's method – converting electricity generated from renewable sources into hydrogen – make sense for widespread adoption? According to some renewable-energy experts, the answer is "no," at least not anytime soon. The system is too expensive, they say, and the process of creating hydrogen from clean sources is itself laced with inefficiency – the numbers just don't add up. Strizki's response: "Nothing is as wildly expensive as destroying the whole planet." Source: Yahoo! News / Full story
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Monday, 19 March 2007 |
 TWO Australian scientists have invented computer software that distinguishes a beautiful face from a less attractive one. Their invention uses facial measurements, related to ratios and images of models, actors and some 200 women from around the world. After a photograph of a woman's face is put into the program, it returns a beauty rating of between one and 10. University of Technology Sydney computer scientists Hatice Gunes and Massimo Piccardi believe the software could be used in fields such as cosmetic surgery. "Potential applications exist in the entertainment industry, cosmetic industry, virtual media and plastic surgery," they explain in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Source: The Age Full story
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Monday, 19 March 2007 |
 Dell and its boutique subsidiary Alienware began shipping 1-terabyte drives inside select desktop PCs this week. Dell also said that it has begun a YouTube-styled "video time capsule," consisting of the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive. Users can upload their video messages at StudioDell.com and have them stored for fifty years on the drive. The new terabyte options are available on the XPS, Aurora, and Area 51 desktops. On the Alienware Area 51, the 1-Tbyte option is an extra $320. "Digital content use is exploding in the consumer market – with this 1TB hard drive, a lifetime of memories, music and other information can be made, stored and shared with others," said Neil Hand, vice president, worldwide consumer marketing consumer product group, in a statement. "This type of capability used to be available only to the largest corporations. With the spectacular advancement in hard drives and the engineering in our systems, we're now able to bring it to consumers." Source: ExtremeTech (Thanks to serges2 for submitting the news)
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Submitted by actz
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Friday, 16 March 2007 |
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SanDisk greatly impressed Riyad with its new 1.8in ultraportable 32GB solid state hard drive (SSD) at CES. It had two shortcomings however, both of which have now been addressed.
The first of these is that a new 2.5in version has been announced to offer a solution which is compatible with all major mainstream notebooks. The second is that this version comes with SATA connectivity – the defacto interface for modern laptop drives. Source: Trusted Review
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Submitted by jamie
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Friday, 16 March 2007 |
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 NBC Universal said on Wednesday it would let viewers buy full-length, prime-time television shows such as "The Office" and "Heroes" on-demand to play on mobile phones, a first for the United States.
The decision is the latest effort by media and wireless companies to entice consumers to watch video on their phones. The strategy aims to expand viewership outside the home and boost revenue for service providers beyond charging for phone calls. NBC's new service will be delivered through privately-held MobiTV, allowing viewers to stream full episodes of top-rated shows starting at $1.99 for a 24-hour period after the show airs. But prices will also depend on how much wireless service providers want to charge. View : Full Story (Reuters)
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Saturday, 10 March 2007 |
 The federal government made headlines on Thursday by cracking down on dozens of penny stocks whose prices had been manipulated by mass e-mailers.But while the Securities and Exchange Commission made a splash by unveiling "Operation Spamalot", it is unlikely to end spam. In the face of increased enforcement, warnings and federal laws, spam is not only continuing, but flourishing. And there's no reason to think the SEC will be able to do anything to stop it. The SEC's anti-spam team identified 35 stocks that had seen their shares rise after spam campaigns, according to Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the SEC's Enforcement Division. Stock spam is simply a high-tech version of the classic pump and dump scheme: Promoters send millions of e-mail messages at a time promoting "can't miss" stock tips. Enough recipients inexplicably buy in, the price soars and then the spammers sell off their shares at the top of bubble. Source: Forbes Full story
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Friday, 09 March 2007 |
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 FAQ The fact that the U.S. is springing forward three weeks early could leave computer owners losing more than an hour of sleep.
Daylight saving time will kick in this weekend, but that's not when many computers are programmed to expect it. Getting ready for the time change has proved thorny for businesses, and even workers whose systems are now patched could see some calendar items showing up an hour off. Here's a list of some commonly asked questions and answers regarding the time shift. Source: C|Net news Full story
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Friday, 09 March 2007 |
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 Scientists have created a salamander-inspired robot that married biology and robotics and enabled them to explore ideas about the first vertebrates that emerged from water to land hundreds of millions of years ago.
The robot, described on Thursday in the journal Science, looks and moves like a salamander and is controlled by a system that imitates the amphibian's spinal cord, enabling it to alternate between swimming and walking. The Swiss and French scientists made the robot, named Salamandra Robotica, swim in Lake Geneva and crawl on the lake shore. They also said the robot demonstrated that biology offers good design ideas for robots. Source: C|Net news Full story
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Submitted by psYchotic
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Friday, 02 March 2007 |
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 An obese 26-year-old man in northeastern China died after an extralong online-game session over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media said Wednesday. The 330-pound man from Jinzhou, in the Liaoning province, collapsed on Saturday, the last day of the holiday, after spending "almost all" of the seven-day break playing online games, the China Daily said, citing his parents. Xu Yan, a local teacher, said the "dull life" during the holiday prompted many people to turn to computer games for entertainment.
Source: CNet news Full story
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Unbelievable! I'm impressed, and jealous, that around 100 gamers who turned up for the London launch of the 
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