You have probably noticed that across the Web, two different things are happening right now:
1. More and more sites are asking you to pay a fee to subscribe to all or part of the Web site.
2. Advertising is becoming more and more "in your face." There are now pop-up ads, ads that play music and sound tracks, ads that swim across the screen, and so on.
The second trend is true of nearly all commercial Web sites. There are many new forms of Web advertising, and they are more and more obvious. Many Web users have questions about all of these new ad types. For example:
* Why do Web sites have so many ads now?
* Why do Web sites allow pop-up ads that open new windows? (Many people hate closing them all.)
* Why do Web sites allow these floating ads that cover the content so I cannot read it?
* How can I make all these ads go away?
In this article, we will look at all the different forms of Web advertising in use today, as well as the economics that are driving them, so that you can have a much better understanding of how Web advertising works. Whether you are a casual surfer or someone running your own Web site, you will find this article to be a real eye-opener.
Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising.htm
Online: 3/15/2011
How Domain Name Servers Work
If you spend any time on the Internet sending e-mail or browsing the Web, then you use domain name servers without even realizing it. Domain name servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet, and they are fascinating. The DNS system forms one of the largest and most active distributed databases on the planet. Without DNS, the Internet would shut down very quickly.
When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL "http://www.howstuffworks.com" contains the domain name howstuffworks.com. So does the e-mail address "iknow@howstuffworks.com."
Human-readable names like "howstuffworks.com" are easy for people to remember, but they don't do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP addresses to refer to one another. For example, the machine that humans refer to as "www.howstuffworks.com" has the IP address 70.42.251.42. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address. During a day of browsing and e-mailing, you might access the domain name servers hundreds of times!
In this article, we'll take a look at the DNS system so you can understand how it works and appreciate its amazing capabilities.
Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm
Online:3/15/2011
When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL "http://www.howstuffworks.com" contains the domain name howstuffworks.com. So does the e-mail address "iknow@howstuffworks.com."
Human-readable names like "howstuffworks.com" are easy for people to remember, but they don't do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP addresses to refer to one another. For example, the machine that humans refer to as "www.howstuffworks.com" has the IP address 70.42.251.42. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address. During a day of browsing and e-mailing, you might access the domain name servers hundreds of times!
In this article, we'll take a look at the DNS system so you can understand how it works and appreciate its amazing capabilities.
Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm
Online:3/15/2011
Immortality only 20 years away says scientist
The 61-year-old American, who has predicted new technologies arriving before, says our understanding of genes and computer technology is accelerating at an incredible rate.
He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
"Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.
"Heart-attack victims – who haven't taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts – will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.
"Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.
"If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.
"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html
Online: 3/15/2011
He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
"Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.
"Heart-attack victims – who haven't taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts – will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.
"Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.
"If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.
"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html
Online: 3/15/2011
Can we live without digital technology?
Is it possible to exist without digital technology? Nick Galvin rewinds for two days.
My youngest daughter is in tears. She points accusingly at her older sister. "She's being mean!" she sobs. "She won't show me the picture on the camera."
Daughter No. 1, it turns out, has taken a picture with an old camera we gave her. I explain to my youngest that this is a film camera and that, unlike a digital camera, she will only be able to see the picture once the film is developed.
She looks dubious and, as she wanders off to cause mayhem elsewhere, I can tell she doesn't believe me.
And why should she? She has grown up surrounded by digital devices that make everything instant and convenient. Why would anyone want to go back to the old analog ways, stuffing around with something as old-fashioned as, say, film?
She has never known anything different in her short life. But this proliferation of digital devices has only really taken off in the past couple of decades.
All of which got me and the Icon editor thinking: what would it be like to abandon digital technology, for a while at least?
What would it be like to do without all these gadgets we take for granted and, as much as possible, to do things the old analog way, even if for only a short period?
The challenge is then made - go digital cold turkey for 48 hours.
Without thinking too much, I agree. I mean, how hard can it be? It's not like doing without food or, God forbid, wine for two days. Surely I am not so far down the path of digital dependence that going tech-free for a short while would be that painful.
How wrong I was.
The first task is to work out how much digital equipment I rely on each day. Even a brief inventory around the house reveals how far digital technology has invaded just about every nook and cranny of my daily life.
There's all the obvious stuff such as the computer, the TV, digital cameras, the mobile phone and iPods and PDAs but then you need to consider all the pieces of kit that come with so-called embedded systems.
These embedded systems processors are the brains behind the microwave in the kitchen, the washing machine in the laundry and even the car in the driveway - its engine control unit and anti-lock braking systems, among others.
Without feeding the family with home-grown vegies, making our own clothes and living in a yurt outside Nimbin, dodging the ubiquitous stream of ones and zeros will be nigh-on impossible.
Time to set some boundaries on my two days of digital deprivation. I am not going to go without power and water and I reserve the right to use my car but otherwise I'll try to do without every other digital device in my life.
Day one does not get off to a good start as I fail to correctly set the old alarm clock that I'd dug out of the bottom of the cupboard. Don't ask me how but after years of pressing the same buttons to set my digital clock, the simple act of setting a wind-up device appears to be beyond me.
The whole family is now late, so the hour before getting the kids off to school becomes even more fraught than usual. Matters are not helped when my wife points out that, under the rules of my self-imposed techno-purdah, I am not allowed to reheat my stone-cold coffee in the microwave.
If I didn't know her better, I'd say she enjoys that particular moment.
I'd already told my boss I would be working from home that day due to my exile from the 21st century (not much she could say to that, although I think it would wear pretty thin if I tried to use it again), so I settle down to work.
Resisting the temptation to turn on the computer and check my email, an action these days that is almost as reflexive as breathing, I take out my notebook and pen and begin making notes for this article. After 20 minutes my wrist begins cramping up and it occurs to me that I haven't sat down and written by hand for this length of time since I was in high school.
Other than making shorthand notes and signing the odd credit card coupon, there is almost no point in my daily life that involves actually writing with a pen - everything is done on a computer or perhaps via text message. Bizarrely, it appears that I've forgotten how to write.
I am also beginning to miss the internet for research purposes. I'm old enough to remember journalism in the pre-internet days when research meant borrowing a dusty envelope of cuttings from the library which was only a few weeks out of date if you were lucky. Now, with the internet at our disposal we have instant access to . . . well . . . everything, including a private database of every story printed in every sizeable publication in the country.
Trying to research a story without going online proves a lot tougher than I imagined so I decide to head off to do the chores my wife has left for me.
She'd asked me to pay a couple of bills. With the incredible convenience of the Bpay system, this is the work of a couple of minutes - however, under my analog regime, I have to resort to old-fashioned methods.
After a five-minute walk from my front door, I am standing in a queue at The Post Office That Time Forgot.
Getting two bills paid becomes a 40-minute task, however, that does include a long chat catching up with a couple of neighbours, who I would ordinarily not have bumped into that day, so it isn't all bad.
Looking back over the first tech-free 24 hours it is clear that it has been a highly unproductive work day. I'm used to working from home and invariably find I get more done than I would in the office. But working remotely involves heavy dependence on technology, using a combination of email, the internet, mobile phones and Fairfax's own sophisticated virtual private network. Without all this gear, I am pretty much lost.
When day two dawns things get off to a better start as I have finally got the hang of the alarm clock. Doing without email and the internet today should be easier as it's a Saturday and there's no work to be done.
However, going without music is a much bigger problem. I love music and we have something playing in the house (generally jazz) pretty much all the time. All my music is now stored on a laptop and iPod, making it easy to pipe around the house via a system of wired and wireless speakers. It's a neat use of digital technology but one I'm going to have to get by without using for a day at least.
A mate who lives nearby owns a turntable, which I can probably use without breaking the spirit of the experiment. After picking up the mobile to call him and copping a warning glare from my wife, I walk around to his house and lug back the turntable plus a few vinyl records from his collection.
Listening to vinyl is fun for a while (the kids call the records "those big, old CDs") but it soon begins to pall, largely due to the inconvenience of mucking about lifting LPs on and off the turntable and the limited amount of music available - when you're used to 500 albums on your iPod, half a dozen albums soon get pretty repetitive.
Later we head down to the beach for a late-afternoon dip. Normally I'd shoot off a couple of text messages to other friends telling them where we are going and inviting them to join us. Not today, though. For the first time I begin to feel a little disconnected from my own personal network. We have a great time at the beach anyway.
My wife and I round off the day sharing dinner cooked on our non-digital, low-tech LPG cooker and a bottle of wine. Typically, a Saturday evening would see us watching a rented DVD but instead we sit and talk, then read for a while.
Next day, as I get back on the digital treadmill and attend to a mountain of emails and text messages (some a little grumpy from friends and colleagues who think they are being ignored), I have time to reflect on my brief, and imperfect, experiment.
There's no doubt the miracle of digital technology adds a lot to my daily life. For instance, I would really miss my vast digital music collection which accompanies me everywhere on my iPod. Likewise, I would not want to give up my digital camera and go back to expensive and messy film.
But there is also no doubt that the stream of ones and zeros that have insinuated themselves into every corner of our lives also has a downside.
The digital revolution has always been about making things faster but faster doesn't always mean better. Sometimes it's good to flick the off switch and remind ourselves what it is like to live life at a more human pace.
Now where's my PDA?
The future is digital - just don't ask me what it means
Talk about any modern technology and sooner or later - probably sooner - the word digital is bound to crop up.
But it's a pretty good guess that, pressed to define what it means to digitise something, average users, me included, would be hard pushed to come up with a convincing explanation.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines "digital" as "of or relating to a device which represents a variable as a series of digits".
It goes on to give the example of a digital watch, which "shows the passing of time by a series of changing numbers", presumably as opposed to an analog watch which uses a hand sweeping around a dial.
"If you create something that relies on a naturally occurring underlying physics then it is normally analog," says Tim Hesketh, associate professor at the University of NSW's School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. "The world is inherently analog - there are very few naturally occurring digital systems. Nearly all digital systems are man-made."
A film camera is an example of an analog device because it relies on the underlying physics of light falling on grains of silver halide on the surface of a piece of film. It's counterpart, the digital camera, interprets that image as a series of numbers that go together to form a digital file.
Turning data of any kind, be it music, images or words, into digital information has advantages that have rendered analog technology all but obsolete in many cases.
The main advantages of digitisation are digital signals don't pick up "noise" or distortion the same way analog signals do, plus they are easier to transmit and store (think of the number of vinyl records it would take to store the songs on the average MP3 player).
A digital file can also be copied endlessly without becoming degraded - a source of angst for those charged with protecting against the "piracy" of software or music.
Digital information is the "language" spoken by the processors in computers and many other devices, from cars to microwaves.
These latter processors are referred to as being "embedded" or built-in, Hesketh says.
"We are now so reliant on embedded systems," he says. "They are there in your fridge and your washing machine and masses of the other devices. We just take that sort of power and convenience ... for granted."
Vinyl or CD? Music fans spin out over debate
There is little doubt digital technology is superior to its analog equivalent in many areas but when it comes to music the debate still rages fiercely.
When compact discs first began appearing in the early 1980s, vinyl records rapidly began disappearing from stores.
Within a few years, the dominance of the new digital medium was complete and many music aficionados such as Steve Danno abandoned the "old-fashioned" vinyl for CDs.
"Initially, I was, like, 'Wow! This is new technology. It must be better - it's digital,"' says Danno, who works at Ashwood's (www.ashwoods.com), a Sydney shop that has sold vinyl records for 75 years. "I got right into CDs for a while and I foolishly sold a lot of the old records."
Gradually, however, Danno realised listening to a CD was not the same as the old vinyl experience. "You just don't get the same buzz that you do with a record," he says. "The sound on records just jumps out more - a lot of people say that they sound 'warmer'. The cymbals sound so much more real and the guitars ring a lot clearer."
With 20,000 albums for sale, Ashwood's is still doing brisk business selling vinyl to keen music fans who love the analog sound.
And it's not just the sound that keeps some shoppers coming back to Ashwood's and a handful of other specialist stores, Danno says. There is a sense of romance attached to vinyl records and their packaging that you just don't get with CDs. "There's nothing like the thrill of walking out of the shop with a big LP bag," he says. "You're actually carrying a piece of art, not just a little CD."
Source:http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/can-we-live-without-digital-technology/2007/05/19/1179497332260.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Online: 3/15/2011
My youngest daughter is in tears. She points accusingly at her older sister. "She's being mean!" she sobs. "She won't show me the picture on the camera."
Daughter No. 1, it turns out, has taken a picture with an old camera we gave her. I explain to my youngest that this is a film camera and that, unlike a digital camera, she will only be able to see the picture once the film is developed.
She looks dubious and, as she wanders off to cause mayhem elsewhere, I can tell she doesn't believe me.
And why should she? She has grown up surrounded by digital devices that make everything instant and convenient. Why would anyone want to go back to the old analog ways, stuffing around with something as old-fashioned as, say, film?
She has never known anything different in her short life. But this proliferation of digital devices has only really taken off in the past couple of decades.
All of which got me and the Icon editor thinking: what would it be like to abandon digital technology, for a while at least?
What would it be like to do without all these gadgets we take for granted and, as much as possible, to do things the old analog way, even if for only a short period?
The challenge is then made - go digital cold turkey for 48 hours.
Without thinking too much, I agree. I mean, how hard can it be? It's not like doing without food or, God forbid, wine for two days. Surely I am not so far down the path of digital dependence that going tech-free for a short while would be that painful.
How wrong I was.
The first task is to work out how much digital equipment I rely on each day. Even a brief inventory around the house reveals how far digital technology has invaded just about every nook and cranny of my daily life.
There's all the obvious stuff such as the computer, the TV, digital cameras, the mobile phone and iPods and PDAs but then you need to consider all the pieces of kit that come with so-called embedded systems.
These embedded systems processors are the brains behind the microwave in the kitchen, the washing machine in the laundry and even the car in the driveway - its engine control unit and anti-lock braking systems, among others.
Without feeding the family with home-grown vegies, making our own clothes and living in a yurt outside Nimbin, dodging the ubiquitous stream of ones and zeros will be nigh-on impossible.
Time to set some boundaries on my two days of digital deprivation. I am not going to go without power and water and I reserve the right to use my car but otherwise I'll try to do without every other digital device in my life.
Day one does not get off to a good start as I fail to correctly set the old alarm clock that I'd dug out of the bottom of the cupboard. Don't ask me how but after years of pressing the same buttons to set my digital clock, the simple act of setting a wind-up device appears to be beyond me.
The whole family is now late, so the hour before getting the kids off to school becomes even more fraught than usual. Matters are not helped when my wife points out that, under the rules of my self-imposed techno-purdah, I am not allowed to reheat my stone-cold coffee in the microwave.
If I didn't know her better, I'd say she enjoys that particular moment.
I'd already told my boss I would be working from home that day due to my exile from the 21st century (not much she could say to that, although I think it would wear pretty thin if I tried to use it again), so I settle down to work.
Resisting the temptation to turn on the computer and check my email, an action these days that is almost as reflexive as breathing, I take out my notebook and pen and begin making notes for this article. After 20 minutes my wrist begins cramping up and it occurs to me that I haven't sat down and written by hand for this length of time since I was in high school.
Other than making shorthand notes and signing the odd credit card coupon, there is almost no point in my daily life that involves actually writing with a pen - everything is done on a computer or perhaps via text message. Bizarrely, it appears that I've forgotten how to write.
I am also beginning to miss the internet for research purposes. I'm old enough to remember journalism in the pre-internet days when research meant borrowing a dusty envelope of cuttings from the library which was only a few weeks out of date if you were lucky. Now, with the internet at our disposal we have instant access to . . . well . . . everything, including a private database of every story printed in every sizeable publication in the country.
Trying to research a story without going online proves a lot tougher than I imagined so I decide to head off to do the chores my wife has left for me.
She'd asked me to pay a couple of bills. With the incredible convenience of the Bpay system, this is the work of a couple of minutes - however, under my analog regime, I have to resort to old-fashioned methods.
After a five-minute walk from my front door, I am standing in a queue at The Post Office That Time Forgot.
Getting two bills paid becomes a 40-minute task, however, that does include a long chat catching up with a couple of neighbours, who I would ordinarily not have bumped into that day, so it isn't all bad.
Looking back over the first tech-free 24 hours it is clear that it has been a highly unproductive work day. I'm used to working from home and invariably find I get more done than I would in the office. But working remotely involves heavy dependence on technology, using a combination of email, the internet, mobile phones and Fairfax's own sophisticated virtual private network. Without all this gear, I am pretty much lost.
When day two dawns things get off to a better start as I have finally got the hang of the alarm clock. Doing without email and the internet today should be easier as it's a Saturday and there's no work to be done.
However, going without music is a much bigger problem. I love music and we have something playing in the house (generally jazz) pretty much all the time. All my music is now stored on a laptop and iPod, making it easy to pipe around the house via a system of wired and wireless speakers. It's a neat use of digital technology but one I'm going to have to get by without using for a day at least.
A mate who lives nearby owns a turntable, which I can probably use without breaking the spirit of the experiment. After picking up the mobile to call him and copping a warning glare from my wife, I walk around to his house and lug back the turntable plus a few vinyl records from his collection.
Listening to vinyl is fun for a while (the kids call the records "those big, old CDs") but it soon begins to pall, largely due to the inconvenience of mucking about lifting LPs on and off the turntable and the limited amount of music available - when you're used to 500 albums on your iPod, half a dozen albums soon get pretty repetitive.
Later we head down to the beach for a late-afternoon dip. Normally I'd shoot off a couple of text messages to other friends telling them where we are going and inviting them to join us. Not today, though. For the first time I begin to feel a little disconnected from my own personal network. We have a great time at the beach anyway.
My wife and I round off the day sharing dinner cooked on our non-digital, low-tech LPG cooker and a bottle of wine. Typically, a Saturday evening would see us watching a rented DVD but instead we sit and talk, then read for a while.
Next day, as I get back on the digital treadmill and attend to a mountain of emails and text messages (some a little grumpy from friends and colleagues who think they are being ignored), I have time to reflect on my brief, and imperfect, experiment.
There's no doubt the miracle of digital technology adds a lot to my daily life. For instance, I would really miss my vast digital music collection which accompanies me everywhere on my iPod. Likewise, I would not want to give up my digital camera and go back to expensive and messy film.
But there is also no doubt that the stream of ones and zeros that have insinuated themselves into every corner of our lives also has a downside.
The digital revolution has always been about making things faster but faster doesn't always mean better. Sometimes it's good to flick the off switch and remind ourselves what it is like to live life at a more human pace.
Now where's my PDA?
The future is digital - just don't ask me what it means
Talk about any modern technology and sooner or later - probably sooner - the word digital is bound to crop up.
But it's a pretty good guess that, pressed to define what it means to digitise something, average users, me included, would be hard pushed to come up with a convincing explanation.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines "digital" as "of or relating to a device which represents a variable as a series of digits".
It goes on to give the example of a digital watch, which "shows the passing of time by a series of changing numbers", presumably as opposed to an analog watch which uses a hand sweeping around a dial.
"If you create something that relies on a naturally occurring underlying physics then it is normally analog," says Tim Hesketh, associate professor at the University of NSW's School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. "The world is inherently analog - there are very few naturally occurring digital systems. Nearly all digital systems are man-made."
A film camera is an example of an analog device because it relies on the underlying physics of light falling on grains of silver halide on the surface of a piece of film. It's counterpart, the digital camera, interprets that image as a series of numbers that go together to form a digital file.
Turning data of any kind, be it music, images or words, into digital information has advantages that have rendered analog technology all but obsolete in many cases.
The main advantages of digitisation are digital signals don't pick up "noise" or distortion the same way analog signals do, plus they are easier to transmit and store (think of the number of vinyl records it would take to store the songs on the average MP3 player).
A digital file can also be copied endlessly without becoming degraded - a source of angst for those charged with protecting against the "piracy" of software or music.
Digital information is the "language" spoken by the processors in computers and many other devices, from cars to microwaves.
These latter processors are referred to as being "embedded" or built-in, Hesketh says.
"We are now so reliant on embedded systems," he says. "They are there in your fridge and your washing machine and masses of the other devices. We just take that sort of power and convenience ... for granted."
Vinyl or CD? Music fans spin out over debate
There is little doubt digital technology is superior to its analog equivalent in many areas but when it comes to music the debate still rages fiercely.
When compact discs first began appearing in the early 1980s, vinyl records rapidly began disappearing from stores.
Within a few years, the dominance of the new digital medium was complete and many music aficionados such as Steve Danno abandoned the "old-fashioned" vinyl for CDs.
"Initially, I was, like, 'Wow! This is new technology. It must be better - it's digital,"' says Danno, who works at Ashwood's (www.ashwoods.com), a Sydney shop that has sold vinyl records for 75 years. "I got right into CDs for a while and I foolishly sold a lot of the old records."
Gradually, however, Danno realised listening to a CD was not the same as the old vinyl experience. "You just don't get the same buzz that you do with a record," he says. "The sound on records just jumps out more - a lot of people say that they sound 'warmer'. The cymbals sound so much more real and the guitars ring a lot clearer."
With 20,000 albums for sale, Ashwood's is still doing brisk business selling vinyl to keen music fans who love the analog sound.
And it's not just the sound that keeps some shoppers coming back to Ashwood's and a handful of other specialist stores, Danno says. There is a sense of romance attached to vinyl records and their packaging that you just don't get with CDs. "There's nothing like the thrill of walking out of the shop with a big LP bag," he says. "You're actually carrying a piece of art, not just a little CD."
Source:http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/can-we-live-without-digital-technology/2007/05/19/1179497332260.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Online: 3/15/2011
SXSW 2011: Al Franken warns of 'outright disaster' over net neutrality
Democratic senator Al Franken has has issued a rallying cry to "innovators and entrepreneurs" at SXSW to fight back against Comcast and other companies lobbying to pave the way for a two-speed internet.
The principle of net neutrality, under which all content is delivered equally to internet users' homes, is "in big trouble", Franken warned in a passionate rallying cry at the conference on Monday.
Franken's address was always going to be a preach to the converted – SXSW is the spiritual home for small, independent media and technology firms – but he warned that unless the 200,000 attendees "use the internet to save the internet", then big telecoms firms will muscle through plans for a two-tier net.
"The one thing that big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes," he said.
"Big corporations like the telecoms firms have lots of lobbyists – and good ones too. Every policy-maker in Washington is hearing much more from the anti-net neutrality side than the side without lobbyists. But everyone has more to fear from these big corporations than from us. [Their proposals] would benefit no one but them."
In the US, where the net neutrality debate rages on despite a conciliatory bill by the Federal Communications Commission in December, telecoms giant Verizon is fighting the rules in a bid to allow internet providers to choose which content they can charge for. Net neutrality advocates fear that internet providers, most pertinently Comcast which controls a large stake in both TV and internet provision, could downgrade rivals' content and boost delivery of their own.
"[On today's internet] you don't need a record deal to make a song and have people hear it, or a major film studio for people to see your film, or a fancy R&D job. But the party may almost be over," Franken said.
"There is nothing more motivated than a corporation that thinks it is leaving money on the table. They are coming on the internet and wanting to destroy its freedom and openness. All of this is bad for consumers but an outright disaster for the independent creative community."
Big corporations like Verizon and Comcast are not "inherently evil," he added, but their duty to shareholders "to make as much money as they can" could change the internet for every American as they know it.
Comcast was last month accused of effectively erecting a tollbooth that puts competitive video streaming service, namely Netflix, at a competitive disadvantage. Franken on Monday accused Comcast of thinly disguising its "real endgame," which he argued was "to put Netflix out of business".
He added: "Today SXSW is a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and innovation.
"But what will it be 20 years from now? Will Americans have no choice but to consumer corporate content? Will entrepreneurs still matter? Or will conglomerates have so much control that only the innovations that they profit from will make it onto the market.
"Let's not sell out. Let's not let the government sell us out. Let's fight for net neutrality. Let's keep Austin weird. Let's keep the internet weird. Let's keep the internet free."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/mar/14/sxsw-2011-al-franken-net-neutrality
Online: 3/15/2011
The principle of net neutrality, under which all content is delivered equally to internet users' homes, is "in big trouble", Franken warned in a passionate rallying cry at the conference on Monday.
Franken's address was always going to be a preach to the converted – SXSW is the spiritual home for small, independent media and technology firms – but he warned that unless the 200,000 attendees "use the internet to save the internet", then big telecoms firms will muscle through plans for a two-tier net.
"The one thing that big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes," he said.
"Big corporations like the telecoms firms have lots of lobbyists – and good ones too. Every policy-maker in Washington is hearing much more from the anti-net neutrality side than the side without lobbyists. But everyone has more to fear from these big corporations than from us. [Their proposals] would benefit no one but them."
In the US, where the net neutrality debate rages on despite a conciliatory bill by the Federal Communications Commission in December, telecoms giant Verizon is fighting the rules in a bid to allow internet providers to choose which content they can charge for. Net neutrality advocates fear that internet providers, most pertinently Comcast which controls a large stake in both TV and internet provision, could downgrade rivals' content and boost delivery of their own.
"[On today's internet] you don't need a record deal to make a song and have people hear it, or a major film studio for people to see your film, or a fancy R&D job. But the party may almost be over," Franken said.
"There is nothing more motivated than a corporation that thinks it is leaving money on the table. They are coming on the internet and wanting to destroy its freedom and openness. All of this is bad for consumers but an outright disaster for the independent creative community."
Big corporations like Verizon and Comcast are not "inherently evil," he added, but their duty to shareholders "to make as much money as they can" could change the internet for every American as they know it.
Comcast was last month accused of effectively erecting a tollbooth that puts competitive video streaming service, namely Netflix, at a competitive disadvantage. Franken on Monday accused Comcast of thinly disguising its "real endgame," which he argued was "to put Netflix out of business".
He added: "Today SXSW is a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and innovation.
"But what will it be 20 years from now? Will Americans have no choice but to consumer corporate content? Will entrepreneurs still matter? Or will conglomerates have so much control that only the innovations that they profit from will make it onto the market.
"Let's not sell out. Let's not let the government sell us out. Let's fight for net neutrality. Let's keep Austin weird. Let's keep the internet weird. Let's keep the internet free."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/mar/14/sxsw-2011-al-franken-net-neutrality
Online: 3/15/2011
Earth's Climate Warming Abruptly, Scientist Says
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Earth's climate is undergoing an abrupt change, ending a cooler period that began with a swift "cold snap" in the tropics 5,200 years ago that coincided with the start of cities, the beginning of calendars and the biblical great flood, a leading expert on glaciers has concluded.
The warming around Earth's tropical belt is a signal suggesting that the "climate system has exceeded a critical threshold," which has sent tropical-zone glaciers in full retreat and will melt them completely "in the near future," said Lonnie G. Thompson, a scientist who for 23 years has been taking core samples from the ancient ice of glaciers.
Thompson, writing with eight other researchers in an article published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the ice samples show that the climate can and did cool quickly, and that a similarly abrupt warming change started about 50 years ago. Humans may not have the luxury of adapting to slow changes, he suggests.
"There are thresholds in the system," Thompson said in an interview in his lab at Ohio State University. When they are crossed, "there is the risk of changing the world as we know it to some form in which a lot of people on the planet will be put at risk."
"I think the temperature will continue to rise, the glaciers will continue to melt. Sea levels will continue to rise. I think there is a good indication now that the magnitude of severe storms will rise," he said.
Thompson's work summarizes evidence from around the world and ice core sampling from seven locations in the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas. It considerably extends the reach of a growing number of scientific findings documenting the historically unusual warming of Earth. A top scientific panel last week endorsed an earlier study, by Penn State professor Michael E. Mann, that concluded the recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere is of a scale probably unseen for 400 to 1,000 years.
Thompson, whose research has focused on glaciers in the high mountains of the tropics, writes that the warming there "is unprecedented for at least two millennia." He teamed with his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, an expert in polar ice sampling, and concluded that the glacial retreat "signals a recent and abrupt change in the Earth's climate system."
Caspar Amman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said Thompson's "perspective of the changes over the past 2,000 years is striking. Something is definitely different towards the end of the 20th century."
But the finding likely to cause the most debate is Thompson's conclusion that a swift and sudden cooling of the climate five millennia ago occurred simultaneously with key changes in civilizations.
"It represents a time where, for many parts of the world, people ceased to be hunters and gatherers and formed cities," he said. "Many of the modern calendars began around this time. It would also fall in the general time frame of the biblical flood."
Thompson said he does not know what caused the abrupt change -- one possibility is a "mega La Ni?a" shift in upper air currents. But he said the evidence from such diverse sources as Mount Kilimanjaro; African lakes; Greenland and Antarctic ice cores; the Andes and the Alps point to a sudden arrival of cool and often wet conditions, all about the same time.
That time saw cities form in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, his paper says, and the end of a humid period in Africa that "seems to have begun and ended abruptly, within decades to a century." In what is now Florida, water levels rose rapidly. In Washington state, glaciers covered whole trees. In the Alps, a mortally wounded hunter nicknamed Otzi was buried quickly by snow and captured within a growing glacier until it melted enough to expose him in 1991.
Theories linking climate change with changes in the history of humans are increasingly popular. The book "The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden argues that climate shifts accompanied the fall of many civilizations.
Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, applauded Thompson's work but said his conclusions about events 5,200 years ago have many skeptics.
"You would have to put that argument as more intriguing rather than definitive," Schmidt said. "There are a number of issues in the tropical ice cores that are problematic for dating things 4,000 to 5,000 years ago."
Thompson and other scientists typically drill down to layers of glaciers put down by snow thousands of years ago. The air bubbles caught in those cores are analyzed to determine the atmosphere at the time. Sediment, insects and pollen are further clues to the climate in ancient history.
SOurce: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601237.html
Online: 3/13/2011
The warming around Earth's tropical belt is a signal suggesting that the "climate system has exceeded a critical threshold," which has sent tropical-zone glaciers in full retreat and will melt them completely "in the near future," said Lonnie G. Thompson, a scientist who for 23 years has been taking core samples from the ancient ice of glaciers.
Thompson, writing with eight other researchers in an article published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the ice samples show that the climate can and did cool quickly, and that a similarly abrupt warming change started about 50 years ago. Humans may not have the luxury of adapting to slow changes, he suggests.
"There are thresholds in the system," Thompson said in an interview in his lab at Ohio State University. When they are crossed, "there is the risk of changing the world as we know it to some form in which a lot of people on the planet will be put at risk."
"I think the temperature will continue to rise, the glaciers will continue to melt. Sea levels will continue to rise. I think there is a good indication now that the magnitude of severe storms will rise," he said.
Thompson's work summarizes evidence from around the world and ice core sampling from seven locations in the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas. It considerably extends the reach of a growing number of scientific findings documenting the historically unusual warming of Earth. A top scientific panel last week endorsed an earlier study, by Penn State professor Michael E. Mann, that concluded the recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere is of a scale probably unseen for 400 to 1,000 years.
Thompson, whose research has focused on glaciers in the high mountains of the tropics, writes that the warming there "is unprecedented for at least two millennia." He teamed with his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, an expert in polar ice sampling, and concluded that the glacial retreat "signals a recent and abrupt change in the Earth's climate system."
Caspar Amman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said Thompson's "perspective of the changes over the past 2,000 years is striking. Something is definitely different towards the end of the 20th century."
But the finding likely to cause the most debate is Thompson's conclusion that a swift and sudden cooling of the climate five millennia ago occurred simultaneously with key changes in civilizations.
"It represents a time where, for many parts of the world, people ceased to be hunters and gatherers and formed cities," he said. "Many of the modern calendars began around this time. It would also fall in the general time frame of the biblical flood."
Thompson said he does not know what caused the abrupt change -- one possibility is a "mega La Ni?a" shift in upper air currents. But he said the evidence from such diverse sources as Mount Kilimanjaro; African lakes; Greenland and Antarctic ice cores; the Andes and the Alps point to a sudden arrival of cool and often wet conditions, all about the same time.
That time saw cities form in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, his paper says, and the end of a humid period in Africa that "seems to have begun and ended abruptly, within decades to a century." In what is now Florida, water levels rose rapidly. In Washington state, glaciers covered whole trees. In the Alps, a mortally wounded hunter nicknamed Otzi was buried quickly by snow and captured within a growing glacier until it melted enough to expose him in 1991.
Theories linking climate change with changes in the history of humans are increasingly popular. The book "The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden argues that climate shifts accompanied the fall of many civilizations.
Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, applauded Thompson's work but said his conclusions about events 5,200 years ago have many skeptics.
"You would have to put that argument as more intriguing rather than definitive," Schmidt said. "There are a number of issues in the tropical ice cores that are problematic for dating things 4,000 to 5,000 years ago."
Thompson and other scientists typically drill down to layers of glaciers put down by snow thousands of years ago. The air bubbles caught in those cores are analyzed to determine the atmosphere at the time. Sediment, insects and pollen are further clues to the climate in ancient history.
SOurce: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601237.html
Online: 3/13/2011
Kids Online: Parent's Guide to Internet Safety
The headlines and statistics about Internet predators can be unnerving. It’s difficult enough being a parent without worrying about Internet safety as well. Luckily, parenting a child online is not so different from parenting a child in the “real world.” The key is to remember that the Internet is a lot more like the real world than like television, to which it is so often compared.
Parents often set curfews and have rules about visiting a friend’s house without an adult present. They expect to meet friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends in person. They want to know where a child is going and what they’re going to be doing before they leave the house. When kids are young or if they are going further from home, there is usually a chaperone present. Parents frequently ground their children or take away privileges for not obeying. You may or may not enforce similar rules in your home, but they are an excellent starting place for creating a positive and safe online experience.
Talk to your children. Much like anything else, it’s important that your child knows what your expectations are, understands the basics of Internet safety, and feels comfortable talking to you about problems and concerns.
Set guidelines. Create a set of guidelines about when and how long your children can use the computer. Be clear about what they can and cannot do online. If they need to complete chores or homework first, outline that as well. Discuss things like instant messaging, chat rooms, blogs, and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook), virtual worlds (Club Penguin, RuneScape, Gaia, Webkinz). Work out a contract with your children about household expectations and have everyone sign it. Don't forget to come up with consequences for breaking the rules.
Follow through. It is important to stick with your rules. It’s true that kids need boundaries and, as much as they fight you on it, count on you to set them. Set a timer for online activity. Use monitoring software that tracks where they are going and what they are doing.
Pay attention. It’s not enough for your computer to be in a central location in your home if you’re not paying attention to what your kids are doing. Make a habit of pulling up a chair and talking to your child about what they’re doing. If you expect to know who your kids are with and where they go when they leave the house, this is no different.
Read more about it. If you ask your child what they’re doing and you don’t understand the answer, it’s time to read more about it. Visit the website if possible, search for related news about it and see if you can find an article here on About.com or another site. You can even email the Family Computing Guide to ask. Whatever path you take, it’s important to understand what your kids are going when they’re online.
Join the fun. This is no different from attending a sporting match or chaperoning a dance or field trip. If your child has taken an interest in an online community such as Webkinz, Neopets, MySpace, Facebook, etc., find out what they like about it. Sign up for your own account and add your child as a “friend.” This allows you to have a better sense of what they’re doing and what sort of things they’re coming in contact with, but it also shows your kids that you’re interested in their activities.
Use available technology. There is no shortage of Internet Safety tools available to help you control, track and/or limit what your kids can say and do online. Take the time to learn about Internet filters, firewalls, monitoring software, browsers for kids and other tools. While they are not a replacement for strong parenting, they can help make your task easier, especially with younger children.
Do a little sleuthing. Use your browser history, cache and cookies to find out what sites your kids have been visiting. This is not to suggest that you should spy on your child, but a spot check now and again is a good idea. Enter their names (including nicknames) into popular search engines to see if they have public profiles on social networking sites. Do the same with your address and phone number. You might be surprised by how much of your personal information is online!
Watch for warning signals. A child who is reluctant to talk to you about what they’re doing online or seems to be withdrawing from family and/or friends may have a problem. It can be easy to chalk up certain things to normal teenage behavior, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore changes in your child’s personality. Cyberbullying is just one experience that may cause your child to withdraw.
Know when to say, “No.” If your child continually spends too much time online or ignores rules about what they can and cannot do, it may be time to pull the plug on the Internet as a sort of "virtual grounding." Although your child may disagree, they can survive without it. Make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and how long it will last. Consider what you’ll do if they have a homework project that requires access, and remember that they may be able to use computers at school, the library, and a friend’s house. They may even be able to browse the web on their cellphone.
Source: http://familyinternet.about.com/od/computingsafetyprivacy/a/parentsafetyg.htm
Online: 3/13/2011
Parents often set curfews and have rules about visiting a friend’s house without an adult present. They expect to meet friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends in person. They want to know where a child is going and what they’re going to be doing before they leave the house. When kids are young or if they are going further from home, there is usually a chaperone present. Parents frequently ground their children or take away privileges for not obeying. You may or may not enforce similar rules in your home, but they are an excellent starting place for creating a positive and safe online experience.
Talk to your children. Much like anything else, it’s important that your child knows what your expectations are, understands the basics of Internet safety, and feels comfortable talking to you about problems and concerns.
Set guidelines. Create a set of guidelines about when and how long your children can use the computer. Be clear about what they can and cannot do online. If they need to complete chores or homework first, outline that as well. Discuss things like instant messaging, chat rooms, blogs, and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook), virtual worlds (Club Penguin, RuneScape, Gaia, Webkinz). Work out a contract with your children about household expectations and have everyone sign it. Don't forget to come up with consequences for breaking the rules.
Follow through. It is important to stick with your rules. It’s true that kids need boundaries and, as much as they fight you on it, count on you to set them. Set a timer for online activity. Use monitoring software that tracks where they are going and what they are doing.
Pay attention. It’s not enough for your computer to be in a central location in your home if you’re not paying attention to what your kids are doing. Make a habit of pulling up a chair and talking to your child about what they’re doing. If you expect to know who your kids are with and where they go when they leave the house, this is no different.
Read more about it. If you ask your child what they’re doing and you don’t understand the answer, it’s time to read more about it. Visit the website if possible, search for related news about it and see if you can find an article here on About.com or another site. You can even email the Family Computing Guide to ask. Whatever path you take, it’s important to understand what your kids are going when they’re online.
Join the fun. This is no different from attending a sporting match or chaperoning a dance or field trip. If your child has taken an interest in an online community such as Webkinz, Neopets, MySpace, Facebook, etc., find out what they like about it. Sign up for your own account and add your child as a “friend.” This allows you to have a better sense of what they’re doing and what sort of things they’re coming in contact with, but it also shows your kids that you’re interested in their activities.
Use available technology. There is no shortage of Internet Safety tools available to help you control, track and/or limit what your kids can say and do online. Take the time to learn about Internet filters, firewalls, monitoring software, browsers for kids and other tools. While they are not a replacement for strong parenting, they can help make your task easier, especially with younger children.
Do a little sleuthing. Use your browser history, cache and cookies to find out what sites your kids have been visiting. This is not to suggest that you should spy on your child, but a spot check now and again is a good idea. Enter their names (including nicknames) into popular search engines to see if they have public profiles on social networking sites. Do the same with your address and phone number. You might be surprised by how much of your personal information is online!
Watch for warning signals. A child who is reluctant to talk to you about what they’re doing online or seems to be withdrawing from family and/or friends may have a problem. It can be easy to chalk up certain things to normal teenage behavior, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore changes in your child’s personality. Cyberbullying is just one experience that may cause your child to withdraw.
Know when to say, “No.” If your child continually spends too much time online or ignores rules about what they can and cannot do, it may be time to pull the plug on the Internet as a sort of "virtual grounding." Although your child may disagree, they can survive without it. Make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and how long it will last. Consider what you’ll do if they have a homework project that requires access, and remember that they may be able to use computers at school, the library, and a friend’s house. They may even be able to browse the web on their cellphone.
Source: http://familyinternet.about.com/od/computingsafetyprivacy/a/parentsafetyg.htm
Online: 3/13/2011
Full Spectrum Lighting
Natural sunlight indeed plays an important role in every living thing's life on this planet. We all are so used to the adaptation and nourishment from natural sunlight that we have almost developed ourselves under the vision of nature's full spectrum. But today, everything is changing. Times are changing. People do not prefer or do not just adapt themselves to natural sunlight because they spend much of their time at home, in offices, schools so on. This is where they lack the intake of natural source of light and just tend to surround themselves to standard fluorescent or incandescent lighting which is known to have an incomplete balanced spectrum of light. If there is lack of full spectrum lighting in a human body, people can suffer from lack of nutrients, metabolic imbalances, depressions, sleep orders and as a matter of fact, issues like SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) as well. So to avoid all of this, somehow the body has to compensate with a different type of lighting. In this case, a full spectrum lighting is far more effective and harmless to humans' health and natural behavior. So, what is full spectrum lighting exactly?
What is Full Spectrum Lighting?
There is no technical definition to what is full spectrum lighting exactly, but scientist have concluded it as electric light bulbs a.k.a full spectrum light bulbs that imitates natural sunlight. Full spectrum light bulbs are optically balanced artificial light bulbs which imitates the color intensity and clarity of what the great ball of fire called the Sun is actually! Basically, full spectrum light bulbs emulate a clear white light having 90-100 Color Rendering Index (CRI) and a Kelvin temperature of 5000-5500 Degrees. Now, as the name suggests, 'full spectrum', these light bulbs have sought an entire gamut of light rays starting from infrared through near-UV, covering the whole electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths protruding out of full spectrum light bulbs are beneficial and useful to animal and plant life as well. With the innovative light therapy, reduction of energy cost up to 60% over conventional electric light bulbs and just an ideal instrument for treating disorders, don't you think full spectrum lighting is a striking and economical option to live by!
Speaking in the same breath, full spectrum lighting really improves people's vision, contributes less eyestrain, reduces glare and much more. It's good as a reading lamp, a desk lamp or floor lamp! And as discussed already, the plus point of using these bulbs is the alleviation of disorders, diseases, shift work, fatigue, jet lag, insomnia, name it and these bulbs works its magic in all these areas. If you are concerned about what type of light does any full spectrum light bulb emit, well let me tell you the color rendition of these light bulbs is simply awesome. For an attractive home décor you want it bright or you want it light, you have it all! So it's already mentioned in-depth how good and effective full spectrum light bulbs are, let's move on to read some general full spectrum lighting benefits in the following content.
Benefits of Full Spectrum Lighting
Full spectrum light bulbs are long-lasting and have low cost-energy.
They are adjustable and can be equipped into almost any light fixtures and lamps at your office or home.
These light bulbs positively help babies sleep peacefully at night.
In an adult's body it helps lower the blood pressure level.
Improves mood and gives better sleep to children and adults too.
Enhances concentration of a person, stimulates productivity and mental awareness.
Super-charges the immune system.
Gives an excellent visual clarity and the quality of color perception.
Provides more energy and reduces eye-strain.
Helps in plant growth.
Improves Vitamin D content in the body.
Reduces the occurrence of dental decay.
Helps in the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
If a person spends too much time in a confined room for several hours without sunlight and windows, his/her behavior changes drastically. If these bulbs are installed in a room, they enhance the ability of learning new things and controls the behavioral aspect of a person as well.
If a person spends too much time in a confined room for several hours without sunlight and windows, his/her behavior changes drastically. If these bulbs are installed in a room, they enhance the ability of learning new things and controls the behavioral aspect of a person as well. With this take on full spectrum lighting in this article, I am sure you must have learned all the acclaimed aspects of these bulbs, such as, improved color rendering, visibility, great productivity, better health and much more. So, although these instruments are a bit overboard, its entailing benefits and outcomes are worth the cost!
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/full-spectrum-lighting.html
Online: 3/9/2011
What is Full Spectrum Lighting?
There is no technical definition to what is full spectrum lighting exactly, but scientist have concluded it as electric light bulbs a.k.a full spectrum light bulbs that imitates natural sunlight. Full spectrum light bulbs are optically balanced artificial light bulbs which imitates the color intensity and clarity of what the great ball of fire called the Sun is actually! Basically, full spectrum light bulbs emulate a clear white light having 90-100 Color Rendering Index (CRI) and a Kelvin temperature of 5000-5500 Degrees. Now, as the name suggests, 'full spectrum', these light bulbs have sought an entire gamut of light rays starting from infrared through near-UV, covering the whole electromagnetic spectrum. The wavelengths protruding out of full spectrum light bulbs are beneficial and useful to animal and plant life as well. With the innovative light therapy, reduction of energy cost up to 60% over conventional electric light bulbs and just an ideal instrument for treating disorders, don't you think full spectrum lighting is a striking and economical option to live by!
Speaking in the same breath, full spectrum lighting really improves people's vision, contributes less eyestrain, reduces glare and much more. It's good as a reading lamp, a desk lamp or floor lamp! And as discussed already, the plus point of using these bulbs is the alleviation of disorders, diseases, shift work, fatigue, jet lag, insomnia, name it and these bulbs works its magic in all these areas. If you are concerned about what type of light does any full spectrum light bulb emit, well let me tell you the color rendition of these light bulbs is simply awesome. For an attractive home décor you want it bright or you want it light, you have it all! So it's already mentioned in-depth how good and effective full spectrum light bulbs are, let's move on to read some general full spectrum lighting benefits in the following content.
Benefits of Full Spectrum Lighting
Full spectrum light bulbs are long-lasting and have low cost-energy.
They are adjustable and can be equipped into almost any light fixtures and lamps at your office or home.
These light bulbs positively help babies sleep peacefully at night.
In an adult's body it helps lower the blood pressure level.
Improves mood and gives better sleep to children and adults too.
Enhances concentration of a person, stimulates productivity and mental awareness.
Super-charges the immune system.
Gives an excellent visual clarity and the quality of color perception.
Provides more energy and reduces eye-strain.
Helps in plant growth.
Improves Vitamin D content in the body.
Reduces the occurrence of dental decay.
Helps in the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
If a person spends too much time in a confined room for several hours without sunlight and windows, his/her behavior changes drastically. If these bulbs are installed in a room, they enhance the ability of learning new things and controls the behavioral aspect of a person as well.
If a person spends too much time in a confined room for several hours without sunlight and windows, his/her behavior changes drastically. If these bulbs are installed in a room, they enhance the ability of learning new things and controls the behavioral aspect of a person as well. With this take on full spectrum lighting in this article, I am sure you must have learned all the acclaimed aspects of these bulbs, such as, improved color rendering, visibility, great productivity, better health and much more. So, although these instruments are a bit overboard, its entailing benefits and outcomes are worth the cost!
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/full-spectrum-lighting.html
Online: 3/9/2011
How Does a Car Work
It is hard to imagine today what a world without cars would be like. Cars have revolutionized human transportation. As I said before, people are not really interested in knowing how does a car work, as it is possible to drive it without really knowing what happens under the hood! This article is for those of you who are curious about the working of engineering marvels like a car. I will give you the basic overview of how does a car work.
It is not just about knowing enough, so that you can know what may have gone wrong in car. It is about appreciating the beauty of a machine in action. When you understand how every tiny working part contributes and works in harmony to propel a car forward, you can't help but be amazed and respect man's engineering genius! The explanation here will be very brief and simplified. If you want to know more, you must dig deeper into books, that talk about the actual working of the automobile.
How Does a Car Work & Function?
Asking a question like 'How does a car work?' is not one question, but a series of questions about every process which makes the car working possible. Let us discuss the working of important systems and components, that make the working of a car possible. We will try to answer this big question through a series of small questions about cars.
How Does a Car Engine Work?
The heart of a car is its engine. It is a device which makes the motion of a car possible. There are many types of car engines like the petrol and diesel engines. I will discuss the working of a generic car engine. A car engine is called an internal combustion engine. An engine derives force of motion from the combustion of a fuel like gasoline or diesel. The explosive force created by the burning of fuels is converted in to mechanical force. An engine consists of multiple cylinders with movable pistons inside. Pistons are connected to the crankshaft. Every cylinder is a combustion chamber and is tightly sealed. Every working cycle of a car engine consists of four strokes:
Intake: The fuel is taken into the chamber in vapor form with opening of a valve and the piston goes down.
Compression: The piston rises up while compressing the gaseous fuel.
Combustion: Either the fuel gets self ignited under compression or it's ignited by a spark plug. When it ignites, it causes an explosion which sends the piston down again. This motion of the piston is conveyed through the crankshaft to the flywheel, which ultimately turns the wheels through the transmission!
Exhaust: The exhaust valve opens and the by products of combustion are released and directed through the catalytic converter (which filters out pollutant gases). From there, the gases are released through the tail pipe.
So, the energy released through chemical combustion is converted to mechanical motion of the piston and finally through the crankshaft, it turns the flywheel. That is how your car gets the force of propulsion and wheels get the torque which turns them. Engine cycles like these keep happening in rapid succession, which gives the car more power and speed! Engine horsepower depends on how many such piston based combustion chambers are connected to it. For example, a V8 engine used in formula one racing has eight combustion chambers! The compression ratio decides the amount of power drawn from a combustion engine. Read more on 'Compression Ratio Explained'.
How Does a Car Battery Work?
The car needs an electrical support system, that powers everything from the ignition to the car lights and air conditioning. The car battery is a set of electrochemical cells, that are rechargeable. The car generates its own power through the alternator, which is a dynamo that charges the car battery when the car is moving. Read more on 'How to Test a Car Battery'.
How Does a Car Start?
A different way to phrase the question would be to ask how a car starter works. As I explained previously, the car motion depends on the car engine and a gasoline powered engine's four stroke cycle cannot begin without a spark, from the spark plug. When you put in the key and turn the ignition on, power is supplied to the spark plugs, which fire the engine cycle. That is why it is called the 'Ignition', as it ignites the gasoline and starts the engine cycle. Read more on 'How to Change Spark Plugs'.
How Does a Car Transmission Work?
The car speed control and systematic harnessing of engine power is done through the gear transmission. As you may know, this transmission is either manual or automatic. The torque generated in the flywheel is transmitted through the transmission system to the wheels. Gears help in deriving maximum torque from the flywheel and it helps in adjusting the speeds. The torque is transmitted to the wheels from the transmission through the drive shaft. The drive shaft turns the axle and the wheels attached at the ends of it.
Besides this, there are brakes which help in stopping the car by absorbing the rotational torque. The accelerator causes the car to move faster by feeding more gasoline during every engine cycle. Another important part is the steering system of the car, which is a bit too complex for me to explain here. It is synchronized in such a way that when the car turns, the two wheels turn in the right turning radii. There are a lot many more aspects, which I haven't covered here except the most important ones.
Read more on:
Car Engines - How they Work
Troubleshooting Car Electrical Problems
Car Alternator Problems
So, this was a rapid fire explanation of how does a car work. To know more, you might want to check up with your car mechanic, who will be delighted to give you the lowdown on it. You could also attack automobile engineering texts, which will give you a deeper and more clearer explanation.Car is a beautiful machine, which is a testimony to the ingenuity of the ones who built them!
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/how-does-a-car-work.html
online: 9/3/2011
It is not just about knowing enough, so that you can know what may have gone wrong in car. It is about appreciating the beauty of a machine in action. When you understand how every tiny working part contributes and works in harmony to propel a car forward, you can't help but be amazed and respect man's engineering genius! The explanation here will be very brief and simplified. If you want to know more, you must dig deeper into books, that talk about the actual working of the automobile.
How Does a Car Work & Function?
Asking a question like 'How does a car work?' is not one question, but a series of questions about every process which makes the car working possible. Let us discuss the working of important systems and components, that make the working of a car possible. We will try to answer this big question through a series of small questions about cars.
How Does a Car Engine Work?
The heart of a car is its engine. It is a device which makes the motion of a car possible. There are many types of car engines like the petrol and diesel engines. I will discuss the working of a generic car engine. A car engine is called an internal combustion engine. An engine derives force of motion from the combustion of a fuel like gasoline or diesel. The explosive force created by the burning of fuels is converted in to mechanical force. An engine consists of multiple cylinders with movable pistons inside. Pistons are connected to the crankshaft. Every cylinder is a combustion chamber and is tightly sealed. Every working cycle of a car engine consists of four strokes:
Intake: The fuel is taken into the chamber in vapor form with opening of a valve and the piston goes down.
Compression: The piston rises up while compressing the gaseous fuel.
Combustion: Either the fuel gets self ignited under compression or it's ignited by a spark plug. When it ignites, it causes an explosion which sends the piston down again. This motion of the piston is conveyed through the crankshaft to the flywheel, which ultimately turns the wheels through the transmission!
Exhaust: The exhaust valve opens and the by products of combustion are released and directed through the catalytic converter (which filters out pollutant gases). From there, the gases are released through the tail pipe.
So, the energy released through chemical combustion is converted to mechanical motion of the piston and finally through the crankshaft, it turns the flywheel. That is how your car gets the force of propulsion and wheels get the torque which turns them. Engine cycles like these keep happening in rapid succession, which gives the car more power and speed! Engine horsepower depends on how many such piston based combustion chambers are connected to it. For example, a V8 engine used in formula one racing has eight combustion chambers! The compression ratio decides the amount of power drawn from a combustion engine. Read more on 'Compression Ratio Explained'.
How Does a Car Battery Work?
The car needs an electrical support system, that powers everything from the ignition to the car lights and air conditioning. The car battery is a set of electrochemical cells, that are rechargeable. The car generates its own power through the alternator, which is a dynamo that charges the car battery when the car is moving. Read more on 'How to Test a Car Battery'.
How Does a Car Start?
A different way to phrase the question would be to ask how a car starter works. As I explained previously, the car motion depends on the car engine and a gasoline powered engine's four stroke cycle cannot begin without a spark, from the spark plug. When you put in the key and turn the ignition on, power is supplied to the spark plugs, which fire the engine cycle. That is why it is called the 'Ignition', as it ignites the gasoline and starts the engine cycle. Read more on 'How to Change Spark Plugs'.
How Does a Car Transmission Work?
The car speed control and systematic harnessing of engine power is done through the gear transmission. As you may know, this transmission is either manual or automatic. The torque generated in the flywheel is transmitted through the transmission system to the wheels. Gears help in deriving maximum torque from the flywheel and it helps in adjusting the speeds. The torque is transmitted to the wheels from the transmission through the drive shaft. The drive shaft turns the axle and the wheels attached at the ends of it.
Besides this, there are brakes which help in stopping the car by absorbing the rotational torque. The accelerator causes the car to move faster by feeding more gasoline during every engine cycle. Another important part is the steering system of the car, which is a bit too complex for me to explain here. It is synchronized in such a way that when the car turns, the two wheels turn in the right turning radii. There are a lot many more aspects, which I haven't covered here except the most important ones.
Read more on:
Car Engines - How they Work
Troubleshooting Car Electrical Problems
Car Alternator Problems
So, this was a rapid fire explanation of how does a car work. To know more, you might want to check up with your car mechanic, who will be delighted to give you the lowdown on it. You could also attack automobile engineering texts, which will give you a deeper and more clearer explanation.Car is a beautiful machine, which is a testimony to the ingenuity of the ones who built them!
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/how-does-a-car-work.html
online: 9/3/2011
Electric Cars
The new batch of electric cars are here. After years of debate and wonder, automobile companies have introduced the concept of electric cars in the market. People all around the world are excited and are showing great interest in the purchase of electric cars. Most of us are just tired of tolerating the increase in gas prices every now and then. Plus cars which run on gas cause a lot of environment pollution by emitting harmful gases. Now, if you are ready to make a one time investment and benefit from it for a long time, I advise you to have a look at electric cars 2011.
Best Electric Cars 2011
If you are a keen follower of the automobile market, you must have seen that there's an increase in the demand of diesel, hybrid and electric cars. The new batch of electric cars 2011 have really got their design and machinery worked up. People used to shy away from buying electric cars because of a poor initial impression, and they were also not great to run. But not anymore, witness one of the most beautiful automobiles of the world.
Chevrolet Volt
The great General Motors wants to be the main leader in the electric car segment with the Volt. A great plug-in hybrid with 40 miles of battery power and 500 miles of gas. GM has got over 10,000 Volt orders for 2011. Next in line is a plug-in crossover SUV which is bound to give all the other SUV's a tough competition on the road. The Volt is definitely one of the best hybrid cars for 2011 and is priced at $40,000.
Nissan Leaf
Nissan will be the first automaker to put over 10,000 pure battery electric cars on the road. A true technological invention, the Leaf is a 100% electric car with no gasoline. It can seat up to 5 passengers and gives you a mileage of 100 miles on a single charge. This is going to be the best cars for suburban people for their daily commuting. The Leaf will cost around $28,000. For more information visit your nearest Nissan Dealer.
Coda
Another good electric car for 2011, the Coda can seat up to 4 passengers and is powered by a lithium-iron phosphate battery. With a single charge this car can run up to 90 miles with a top speed of 80 mph. The car comes with a 3 year warranty/36,000 miles and the battery has a guarantee of over 8 years/100,000 miles.
Fisker Karma
If you believe in arriving in class, then the Fisker Karma is surely the best way to go about it. It's one of the best luxury sports plug in hybrid sedans. The car features 20kWh of lithium batteries and you can travel up to 50 miles before making turning on to the gas engine. The car will also offer solar panels which will charge the Karma without any electric supply. Karma is all about luxury, style, class and passion and the base model of this car is priced at $95,000.
Ford
Ford will be bringing out at least two electric cars in the last quarter of 2011. I have high hopes for the Ford Focus Electric, which is expected to give tough competition to the Leaf. There are also rumors that Ford will start taking orders from 2012 for a hybrid crossover SUV but the company is keeping mum about this. Ford is making sure that it becomes the leader in the electric car segment after the launch of its new electric cars.
Wheego Life
The Wheego is an exciting new hatchback from China. It's an American car but its sourced in China. The company's main objective is to make sure that Life captures the heart and mind of the American customer. It has a 30Kw battery pack which is connected to a 60 horsepower electric motor. The car runs about 100 miles on a single charge, the top speed is about 60 mph on the highway. The company plans to sell this cute electric car for $33,000.
The launch of electric cars of 2011 is good news not only for car lovers but also for people who fight to keep our planet green. So before investing your hard earned money in a car which is run by gas consider the advantages of electric cars and the amount of money you save by buying one.
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/electric-cars2011.html
Online: 3/9/2011
Best Electric Cars 2011
If you are a keen follower of the automobile market, you must have seen that there's an increase in the demand of diesel, hybrid and electric cars. The new batch of electric cars 2011 have really got their design and machinery worked up. People used to shy away from buying electric cars because of a poor initial impression, and they were also not great to run. But not anymore, witness one of the most beautiful automobiles of the world.
Chevrolet Volt
The great General Motors wants to be the main leader in the electric car segment with the Volt. A great plug-in hybrid with 40 miles of battery power and 500 miles of gas. GM has got over 10,000 Volt orders for 2011. Next in line is a plug-in crossover SUV which is bound to give all the other SUV's a tough competition on the road. The Volt is definitely one of the best hybrid cars for 2011 and is priced at $40,000.
Nissan Leaf
Nissan will be the first automaker to put over 10,000 pure battery electric cars on the road. A true technological invention, the Leaf is a 100% electric car with no gasoline. It can seat up to 5 passengers and gives you a mileage of 100 miles on a single charge. This is going to be the best cars for suburban people for their daily commuting. The Leaf will cost around $28,000. For more information visit your nearest Nissan Dealer.
Coda
Another good electric car for 2011, the Coda can seat up to 4 passengers and is powered by a lithium-iron phosphate battery. With a single charge this car can run up to 90 miles with a top speed of 80 mph. The car comes with a 3 year warranty/36,000 miles and the battery has a guarantee of over 8 years/100,000 miles.
Fisker Karma
If you believe in arriving in class, then the Fisker Karma is surely the best way to go about it. It's one of the best luxury sports plug in hybrid sedans. The car features 20kWh of lithium batteries and you can travel up to 50 miles before making turning on to the gas engine. The car will also offer solar panels which will charge the Karma without any electric supply. Karma is all about luxury, style, class and passion and the base model of this car is priced at $95,000.
Ford
Ford will be bringing out at least two electric cars in the last quarter of 2011. I have high hopes for the Ford Focus Electric, which is expected to give tough competition to the Leaf. There are also rumors that Ford will start taking orders from 2012 for a hybrid crossover SUV but the company is keeping mum about this. Ford is making sure that it becomes the leader in the electric car segment after the launch of its new electric cars.
Wheego Life
The Wheego is an exciting new hatchback from China. It's an American car but its sourced in China. The company's main objective is to make sure that Life captures the heart and mind of the American customer. It has a 30Kw battery pack which is connected to a 60 horsepower electric motor. The car runs about 100 miles on a single charge, the top speed is about 60 mph on the highway. The company plans to sell this cute electric car for $33,000.
The launch of electric cars of 2011 is good news not only for car lovers but also for people who fight to keep our planet green. So before investing your hard earned money in a car which is run by gas consider the advantages of electric cars and the amount of money you save by buying one.
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/electric-cars2011.html
Online: 3/9/2011
Used Forklift Batteries
If you have too much on your plate regarding money, to carry any sort of work at your warehouse, then using alternative things like used forklift batteries instead of purchasing new ones should be a good option. Used forklift batteries are basically second hand used batteries whose condition is totally scrapped out and is of no economical worth to another vehicle or truck which run on more power. Thus, when these batteries are taken from trucks and cargo vehicles, they are first gravity and load tested to check its substantial condition and then are equipped into some other applications. It's known that used forklift batteries are just ideal for forklift trucks which mainly pick light goods and packaging on docks, harbors and industrial warehouses.
Used Forklift Batteries
It is a fact that, used forklift batteries are really cheap and affordable because the main reason is they are considered as scrape batteries but are still equally efficient for light usage forklift trucks. If you have a warehouse that chiefly deals with light usage of goods and products, a brand new battery might cost you thousands of dollars to just get a simple job done. But if you choose to buy used forklift batteries, it might cost you half the price of a new battery. Somehow, many people aren't very comfortable buying second hand things because they are already used by someone else, but if you consider even a used forklift battery it gives the guarantee to work and prove as good as new.
There are ex-rental forklift batteries that are sold too in the market. Again they have the same description of being a scrapped battery (second hand) but they are taken from the packs which have actually been related to customers who were in need of them at certain working intervals. Thus, the life these second hand batteries spent on the forklift is very short and when they aren't in use, they are kept float charged in a storage room.
Types of Forklift Batteries
Speaking about types of forklifts there are mainly two types: nickel iron and lead acid. A lead acid forklift battery is the one you see in any automobile being heavy and large in size and weight. They have a life of maximum 5-6 hours per day. Well, recharging these batteries isn't a hassle, with some manufacturer's instructions and directions, the task is pretty simple. Many forklift batteries are extremely heavy and need a crane to pick them up and recharge them, whereas, other forklift batteries can get recharged in the lift itself. The tendency of batteries is to wear out eventually and if a new forklift battery wears out after a certain period, it becomes a used forklift battery. Then probably used forklift batteries work as short-term used electric forklift batteries which, if cared well for and recharged timely, they can play along as back up emergency batteries in trucks and other pickup vehicles.
Used Forklift Batteries Sale
For an average business to function economically around the globe in terms of industrialization and warehouse products, the sale of a new battery would actually bust up the consumers financially. Hence, such people should actually look out for used forklift batteries for sale and then purchase them accordingly. The best places to look for is obviously the Internet in the first place. A person situated anywhere on the globe can actually make a purchase on the other part of the continent with the help of the Internet. There are wholesalers, dealers, online businesses which smoothly run long distances.
Second most obvious place to look out for used forklift batteries is at online auction sites. Here you can directly approach the seller and bargain the battery's price at your suitable interest. He/she will have his manufacturing distributors sell the products to the consumer's shipping address.
So you can see how convenient and efficient used forklift batteries are, even if they are a scrapped product of new batteries. All you need to do is maintain it well, charge it regularly as long as it has its shelf-life and you will see, your business will still go on and your wallet will still be very adequate!
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/used-forklift-batteries.html
Online: 9/3/2011
Used Forklift Batteries
It is a fact that, used forklift batteries are really cheap and affordable because the main reason is they are considered as scrape batteries but are still equally efficient for light usage forklift trucks. If you have a warehouse that chiefly deals with light usage of goods and products, a brand new battery might cost you thousands of dollars to just get a simple job done. But if you choose to buy used forklift batteries, it might cost you half the price of a new battery. Somehow, many people aren't very comfortable buying second hand things because they are already used by someone else, but if you consider even a used forklift battery it gives the guarantee to work and prove as good as new.
There are ex-rental forklift batteries that are sold too in the market. Again they have the same description of being a scrapped battery (second hand) but they are taken from the packs which have actually been related to customers who were in need of them at certain working intervals. Thus, the life these second hand batteries spent on the forklift is very short and when they aren't in use, they are kept float charged in a storage room.
Types of Forklift Batteries
Speaking about types of forklifts there are mainly two types: nickel iron and lead acid. A lead acid forklift battery is the one you see in any automobile being heavy and large in size and weight. They have a life of maximum 5-6 hours per day. Well, recharging these batteries isn't a hassle, with some manufacturer's instructions and directions, the task is pretty simple. Many forklift batteries are extremely heavy and need a crane to pick them up and recharge them, whereas, other forklift batteries can get recharged in the lift itself. The tendency of batteries is to wear out eventually and if a new forklift battery wears out after a certain period, it becomes a used forklift battery. Then probably used forklift batteries work as short-term used electric forklift batteries which, if cared well for and recharged timely, they can play along as back up emergency batteries in trucks and other pickup vehicles.
Used Forklift Batteries Sale
For an average business to function economically around the globe in terms of industrialization and warehouse products, the sale of a new battery would actually bust up the consumers financially. Hence, such people should actually look out for used forklift batteries for sale and then purchase them accordingly. The best places to look for is obviously the Internet in the first place. A person situated anywhere on the globe can actually make a purchase on the other part of the continent with the help of the Internet. There are wholesalers, dealers, online businesses which smoothly run long distances.
Second most obvious place to look out for used forklift batteries is at online auction sites. Here you can directly approach the seller and bargain the battery's price at your suitable interest. He/she will have his manufacturing distributors sell the products to the consumer's shipping address.
So you can see how convenient and efficient used forklift batteries are, even if they are a scrapped product of new batteries. All you need to do is maintain it well, charge it regularly as long as it has its shelf-life and you will see, your business will still go on and your wallet will still be very adequate!
Source: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/used-forklift-batteries.html
Online: 9/3/2011
Website for the end of the line
IT CAN be hard to talk about and some people can't deal with the fact that it will happen to them. So a social networking site has been set up to get people to plan their end-of-life arrangements.
WrappingUp.com aims to help people get their affairs in order.
The site will offer legal and financial information, advice for dealing with family members and pets and suggestions to manage grief and bequests. Members are also encouraged to support each other.
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''Australians spend almost $17 billion on funerals, nursing homes and community care services per year,'' Choice magazine spokesman Chris Zinn said. ''However, funeral planning and insurance are two areas where there is a lack of transparency and confusion, with many people not knowing whether they are paying what they should.''
The website's founders, Kelly Chapman and Della Churchill, believe it's important for people to understand their choices when it comes to planning their own funeral or finalising a loved one's estate. ''Until now there's been nowhere to go,'' Ms Chapman said.
''We hope by having this online resource at hand, more Australians will take charge of their own affairs to relieve their next of kin of the responsibility, at what is usually an emotional time.''
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/website-for-the-end-of-the-line-20110309-1bmra.html
Online: 9/3/2011
High-tech criminals outsmarting the law
Computer crime investigations are facing a major upheaval as the shift towards a new type of hard drive technology allows criminals to cover their tracks and outsmart digital forensic specialists, Australian researchers have found.
The new drives found in many of the latest desktop and laptop computers make it virtually impossible to recover files that criminals have deleted, which forensic experts say will cause serious issues when it comes to presenting evidence in court.
Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf, head of the NSW Police computer crimes unit, conceded that with the new technology there would be some evidence that cannot be recovered but said there would always be other sources of evidence for police to draw on.
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For decades, the primary method of storing data on a computer has been on a magnetic disc. Even after the disc has been formatted and data removed, most of the information can still be recovered by skilled forensics specialists.
But increasingly, computer makers are moving to a new technology called solid-state drives (SSDs), which are faster, quieter and less susceptible to physical shocks as they store data on memory chips instead of spinning magnetic discs.
Graeme Bell and Richard Boddington of Perth's Murdoch University, in a paper published in the Journal of Digital Forensics, ran tests which discovered that with SSDs, once the user erases their hard drive, the data is gone forever in minutes and cannot be recovered.
The pair said the results were "remarkable" and revealed that SSDs are "quite capable of essentially near-complete corrosion of evidence entirely under their own volition".
In their experiments, with a traditional hard drive almost all files were preserved after the user runs a quick format, and those files could later be recovered perfectly.
"In contrast, with SSD we saw that shortly after reboot the entirety of the files were damaged and almost all were purged completely, including their filesystem and metadata records," the study found.
"After only a few minutes of sitting idle, only a single file among 316,666 was even 50 per cent recoverable; and only 0.03 per cent of data was recoverable. The contrast is startling."
Sydney forensics expert Graham Thompson said: "In summary, yep , it's a problem - forensically, legally, with probative evidence and everything else. If there's nothing there, there's no evidence, there's nothing we can do about it."
Thompson said there was already evidence of criminals migrating to SSDs. He said similar issues were encountered when trying to recover data from mobile phones and forensic investigators were also battling with the shift to the internet "cloud", as this threw up jurisdictional and privacy issues when attempting to gather evidence.
"The law is always 10, 20 years behind the technology," he said.
Even when the researchers installed a physical write-blocker, which is designed to prevent data from being erased, the evidence is still purged from the SSD.
The write-blocker angle was the most interesting aspect for Nigel Phair, former team leader of investigations at the Australian High Tech Crime Centre.
"Write blockers are devices that allow acquisition of information on a hard drive (when it is copied to another storage device) and are the staple of computer forensic acquisition and are used to ensure there is no accidental damaging of the drive contents," said Phair, who now works as a private consultant.
"This occurs by allowing read commands to pass but by blocking write commands. Many are customisable and this would have to be explored in light of this new research to make sure they can still perform the desired role."
Sydney computer forensics expert Nick Klein said the paper was "interesting" and the SSD technology was "very clever". He conceded it would affect how computer forensic investigations were conducted but claimed it was "just par for the course in this field".
"While deleted and unallocated data can be a valuable source of evidence, it's only one source - a good computer forensic investigator should still be able to identify other available sources, depending on the case of course," said Klein.
Klein added that the move to SSDs could provide a false sense of security to users who try to cover their tracks.
"For example those who delete evidence of their activities but are unaware of information such as Windows restore points, which can remain," he said.
"The underlying truth still remains - deleting some evidence of one's actions on a computer is easy; deleting all evidence is much more difficult. And any half-baked effort to cover one's tracks can always look suspicious."
The researchers presented a scenario of a criminal who reformats their hard drive containing evidence of their activities. They perform a quick format and then go and make a cup of tea.
"Meanwhile, the SSD's controller chip analyses the new filesystem and determines that few of the disk blocks are in use. The SSD resets most of the data blocks to prepare them for use, purging all of the data that was previously on the disk," the researchers wrote.
"When police seize the computer a few minutes later, they find it to be almost completely empty of data. A forensic analyst later wonders: was there ever anything illegal there, and if so, did the suspect knowingly purge that illegal data from the drive?"
The researchers concluded that this would cause havoc for police as they would lose access to important evidence and be on the back foot when trying to present their case in court as it would be impossible to prove that someone deliberately tried to destroy evidence.
Bruce van der Graaf, head of the NSW Police computer crimes unit, said accessing deleted files on offenders' hard drives was just one method investigators used to obtain evidence.
"If the research is right there will be some evidence that can't be recovered but that's not the only thing that police use to find people or to prosecute," he said.
"You don't always recover all of the deleted data in any case, that's been the situation for some time."
Phair noted that evidence should always be corroborated, and investigators should ideally never rely on only one source of proof to validate their findings.
Computer storage manufacturer Western Digital said it estimated that worldwide sales of SSDs were $US1 billion last year, compared to $US35 billion for traditional hard drives. But SSD sales are expected to continue growing as computer manufacturers migrate to the new technology.
Online: 3/9/2011
New Chrome browser ready for the world
Google has released a finished version of its speedy new Chrome web browsing software for desktop or laptop computers.
The latest version of Chrome promised quick and responsive handling of software running in the web browser.
"We realise that speed isn't just about pure brawn in the browser," Google engineer Tim Steele said in a blog post announcing the latest Chrome release.
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"It's also about saving time with simple interfaces."
Google improved settings for bookmarks, passwords, searches and home pages as well as enhanced protection from websites booby-trapped by hackers with malicious code.
The latest Chrome browser software is available free online at google.com/chrome. Earlier versions of the Web browser already being used in computers will be automatically updated, according to Google.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the most widely used web browser in the United States followed by Firefox, Chrome and Apple's Safari.
online: 3/9/2011
Special Relativity
Galilean Relativity again
At this point in the course, we finally enter the twentieth century—Albert Einstein wrote his first paper on relativity in 1905. To put his work in context, let us first review just what is meant by “relativity” in physics. The first example, mentioned in a previous lecture, is what is called “Galilean relativity” and is nothing but Galileo’s perception that by observing the motion of objects, alive or dead, in a closed room there is no way to tell if the room is at rest or is in fact in a boat moving at a steady speed in a fixed direction. (You can tell if the room is accelerating or turning around.) Everything looks the same in a room in steady motion as it does in a room at rest. After Newton formulated his Laws of Motion, describing how bodies move in response to forces and so on, physicists reformulated Galileo’s observation in a slightly more technical, but equivalent, way: they said the laws of physics are the same in a uniformly moving room as they are in a room at rest. In other words, the same force produces the same acceleration, and an object experiencing no force moves at a steady speed in a straight line in either case. Of course, talking in these terms implies that we have clocks and rulers available so that we can actually time the motion of a body over a measured distance, so the physicist envisions the room in question to have calibrations along all the walls, so the position of anything can be measured, and a good clock to time motion. Such a suitably equipped room is called a “frame of reference”—the calibrations on the walls are seen as a frame which you can use to specify the precise position of an object at a given time. (This is the same as a set of “coordinates”.) Anyway, the bottom line is that no amount of measuring of motions of objects in the “frame of reference” will tell you whether this is a frame at rest or one moving at a steady velocity.
What exactly do we mean by a frame “at rest” anyway? This seems obvious from our perspective as creatures who live on the surface of the earth—we mean, of course, at rest relative to fixed objects on the earth’s surface. Actually, the earth’s rotation means this isn’t quite a fixed frame, and also the earth is moving in orbit at 18 miles per second. From an astronaut’s point of view, then, a frame fixed relative to the sun might seem more reasonable. But why stop there? We believe the laws of physics are good throughout the universe. Let us consider somewhere in space far from the sun, even far from our galaxy. We would see galaxies in all directions, all moving in different ways. Suppose we now set up a frame of reference and check that Newton’s laws still work. In particular, we check that the First Law holds—that a body experiencing no force moves at a steady speed in a straight line. This First law is often referred to as The Principle of Inertia, and a frame in which it holds is called an Inertial Frame. Then we set up another frame of reference, moving at a steady velocity relative to the first one, and find that Newton’s laws are o.k. in this frame too. The point to notice here is that it is not at all obvious which—if either—of these frames is “at rest”. We can, however, assert that they are both inertial frames, after we’ve checked that in both of them, a body with no forces acting on it moves at a steady speed in a straight line (the speed could be zero). In this situation, Michelson would have said that a frame “at rest” is one at rest relative to the aether. However, his own experiment found motion through the aether to be undetectable, so how would we ever know we were in the right frame?
As we mentioned in the last lecture, in the middle of the nineteenth century there was a substantial advance in the understanding of electric and magnetic fields. (In fact, this advance is in large part responsible for the improvement in living standards since that time.) The new understanding was summarized in a set of equations called Maxwell’s equations describing how electric and magnetic fields interact and give rise to each other, just as, two centuries earlier, the new understanding of dynamics was summarized in the set of equations called Newton’s laws. The important thing about Maxwell’s equations for our present purposes is that they predicted waves made up of electric and magnetic fields that moved at 3×108 meters per second, and it was immediately realized that this was no coincidence—light waves must be nothing but waving electric and magnetic fields. (This is now fully established to be the case.)
It is worth emphasizing that Maxwell’s work predicted the speed of light from the results of experiments that were not thought at the time they were done to have anything to do with light—experiments on, for example, the strength of electric field produced by waving a magnet. Maxwell was able to deduce a speed for waves like this using methods analogous to those by which earlier scientists had figured out the speed of sound from a knowledge of the density and the springiness of air.
Generalizing Galilean Relativity to Include Light: Special Relativity
We now come to Einstein’s major insight: the Theory of Special Relativity. It is deceptively simple. Einstein first dusted off Galileo’s discussion of experiments below decks on a uniformly moving ship, and restated it as :
The Laws of Physics are the same in all Inertial Frames.
Einstein then simply brought this up to date, by pointing out that the Laws of Physics must now include Maxwell’s equations describing electric and magnetic fields as well as Newton’s laws describing motion of masses under gravity and other forces. (Note for experts and the curious: we shall find that Maxwell’s equations are completely unaltered by special relativity, but, as will become clear later, Newton’s Laws do need a bit of readjustment to include special relativistic phenomena. The First Law is still o.k., the Second Law in the form F = ma is not, because we shall find mass varies; we need to equate force to rate of change of momentum (Newton understood that, of course—that’s the way he stated the law!). The Third Law, stated as action equals reaction, no longer holds because if a body moves, its electric field, say, does not readjust instantaneously—a ripple travels outwards at the speed of light. Before the ripple reaches another charged body, the electric forces between the two will be unbalanced. However, the crucial consequence of the Third Law—the conservation of momentum when two bodies interact, still holds. It turns out that the rippling field itself carries momentum, and everything balances.)
Demanding that Maxwell’s equations be satisfied in all inertial frames has one major consequence as far as we are concerned. As we stated above, Maxwell’s equations give the speed of light to be 3×108 meters per second. Therefore, demanding that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames implies that the speed of any light wave, measured in any inertial frame, must be 3×108 meters per second.
This then is the entire content of the Theory of Special Relativity: the Laws of Physics are the same in any inertial frame, and, in particular, any measurement of the speed of light in any inertial frame will always give 3×108 meters per second.
You Really Can’t Tell You’re Moving!
Just as Galileo had asserted that observing gnats, fish and dripping bottles, throwing things and generally jumping around would not help you to find out if you were in a room at rest or moving at a steady velocity, Einstein added that no kind of observation at all, even measuring the speed of light across your room to any accuracy you like, would help find out if your room was “really at rest”. This implies, of course, that the concept of being “at rest” is meaningless. If Einstein is right, there is no natural rest-frame in the universe. Naturally, there can be no “aether”, no thin transparent jelly filling space and vibrating with light waves, because if there were, it would provide the natural rest frame, and affect the speed of light as measured in other moving inertial frames as discussed above.
So we see the Michelson-Morley experiment was doomed from the start. There never was an aether wind. The light was not slowed down by going “upstream”—light always travels at the same speed, which we shall now call c,
c = 3×108 meters per second
to save writing it out every time. This now answers the question of what the speed of light, c, is relative to. We already found that it is not like sound, relative to some underlying medium. It is also not like bullets, relative to the source of the light (the discredited emitter theory). Light travels at c relative to the observer, since if the observer sets up an inertial frame (clocks, rulers, etc.) to measure the speed of light he will find it to be c. (We always assume our observers are very competent experimentalists!)
Truth and Consequences
The Truth we are referring to here is the seemingly innocuous and plausible sounding statement that all inertial frames are as good as each other—the laws of physics are the same in all of them—and so the speed of light is the same in all of them. As we shall soon see, this Special Theory of Relativity has some surprising consequences, which reveal themselves most dramatically when things are moving at relative speeds comparable to the speed of light. Einstein liked to explain his theory using what he called “thought experiments” involving trains and other kinds of transportation moving at these speeds (technically unachievable so far!), and we shall follow his general approach.
To begin with, let us consider a simple measurement of the speed of light carried out at the same time in two inertial frames moving at half the speed of light relative to each other. The setup is as follows: on a flat piece of ground, we have a flashlight which emits a blip of light, like a strobe. We have two photocells, devices which click and send a message down a wire when light falls on them. The photocells are placed 10 meters apart in the path of the blip of light, they are somehow wired into a clock so that the time taken by the blip of light to travel from the first photocell to the second, in other words, the time between clicks, can be measured. From this time and the known distance between them, we can easily find the speed of the blip of light.
Meanwhile, there is another observer, passing overhead in a spaceship traveling at half the speed of light. She is also equipped with a couple of photocells, placed 10 meters apart on the bottom of her spaceship as shown, and she is able to measure the speed of the same blip of light, relative to her frame of reference (the spaceship). The observer on the spaceship will measure the blip of light to be traveling at c relative to the spaceship, the observer on the ground will measure the same blip to be traveling at c relative to the ground. That is the unavoidable consequence of the Theory of Relativity.
(Note: actually the picture above is not quite the way it would really look. As we shall find, objects moving at relativistic speeds are contracted, and this combined with the different times light takes to reach the eye from different parts of the ship would change the ship’s appearance. But this does not affect the validity of the statements above.)
Surce: http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/spec_rel.html
online: 3/7/2011
