Category: Technology

Who is Louis Bayard?

Who is Louis Bayard? | Salon Books

Thanks to Bob Bopp for this look into the world of “Jeapordy”.

In a country where half of all households don’t buy books, why should this show continue to thrive? I think the secret lies in its original design. Like its sibling show, “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy” is crafted to make viewers at home feel smarter than the contestants on the tube. Start with the game’s rules, which require players to hold off on answering until Trebek has finished reading the question. (Ring in too early, you’re blocked out for a precious half-second.) Viewers at home are under no such obligation. If they know the answers, they can shout them out well before their counterparts on the screen, and because they’re not competing with anyone, they can cumulatively answer more questions than anyone on the show (except possibly Jennings). Watching “Jeopardy” confers, on a certain class of geek, a feeling of mastery. In our couch-potato hubris, we believe that, given a chance, we can sweep category after category, stunning our opponents into silence.

It’s an entirely American contradiction. A show that celebrates the intellect (“You don’t have to eat bugs here,” one of the contestant coordinators reassured us) really comes down to speed and muscular coordination. Brain to thumb to mouth.

Conspiracy theorists must face the truth of Mars hill

Conspiracy theorists must face the truth of Mars hill – space – 21 September 2006 – New Scientist Space
New images of the “face” on Mars have been obtained by Europe’s Mars Express spacecraft. They reinforce what scientists thought from the beginning – that the face is just a naturally sculpted hill.

Mission controllers have been trying to get images of the region since 2004 but had been thwarted until recently by dust and haze in the atmosphere. Finally, on 22 July 2006, the team obtained clear images of the region with the HRSC. (Click to Enlarge Picture).

If it stops plague, will it stop hospital superbugs?

If it stops plague, will it stop hospital superbugs? – health – 20 September 2006 – New Scientist
Disease bugs come equipped with a whole tool kit of tricks for evading our immune system. Now it seems that turning off just one of them can render bubonic plague harmless. A similar approach might lead to vaccines against many pathogens, including antibiotic-resistant hospital superbugs.

Cheap Airfare, Hotel Reservations, Car Rentals – Kayak.com

Cheap Airfare, Hotel Reservations, Car Rentals – Kayak.com

Thanks to Caroline:  I dont know if ya’ll have used it, but the site  http://www.kayak.com is the best Ive used to get tickets, cars, hotels.
Its way better than Sidestep, you dont have to download anything, it spiderwebs a huge number of sites, and is easy to use.

Cell phone makers fight resales

Cell phone makers fight resales
The middlemen indicate an apparently insatiable hunger for the phones, with profits in some cases of 100 percent for a handset that retails for as little as $20.

The phones are so cheap because TracFone and other providers of prepaid cellular service sell them at a loss to create a market for their real profit maker, selling customers more call time.

A lawsuit filed in January by Nokia Corp. accuses Pan Ocean Communications of Pompano Beach, Fla., of buying $20 cell phones from Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club and Target Corp. stores, disabling their software, then reselling them for $39 as legitimate Nokia handsets. The company sold them to distributors, wholesalers, exporters and flea market booth operators, the lawsuit said.

Destinations have changed over the years, from Singapore in the past to Mexico today, said John Walls, a spokesman for CTIA, a cellular industry trade association that opposes the practice.

Why the iPod is losing its cool

The Observer | UK News | Why the iPod is losing its cool
‘Panellists cite that the batteries are not replaceable, so when they die the entire player must be replaced,’ she said. ‘We have heard from some conspiracy theorists that the batteries are made to die soon after the warranty ends.

‘Other complaints are that iTunes [Apple’s online music store] is overpriced and the format is not easily transferred on to other players. In our ethnography interviews, some long-time iPod-users told us that they have stopped updating their iPods because it’s too much work, while other consumers who had bought iPods more recently had not even taken theirs out of the package to set it up.’

She added that the iPod is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success: ‘Some backlash is against the ubiquity of the iPod – everyone has those white headphones on the train.’

Ethanol E85, Disappoints

ConsumerReports.org – Ethanol E85, alternative fuels, flexible-fuel vehicles
When running on E85 there was no significant change in acceleration. Fuel economy, however, dropped across the board. In highway driving, gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7 mpg.

You could expect a similar decrease in gas mileage in any current FFV. That’s because ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline: 75,670 British thermal units per gallon instead of 115,400, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The FFV surge is being motivated by generous fuel-economy credits that auto-makers get for every FFV they build, even if it never runs on E85. This allows them to pump out more gas-guzzling large SUVs and pickups, which is resulting in the consumption of many times more gallons of gasoline than E85 now replaces.

Computer beats humans at crosswords

ANSA.it – News in English – Computer beats humans at crosswords
Computers won a points victory over human crossword puzzle enthusiasts at a contest organised during the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence here .

Webcrow, the first Italian software able to tackle a crossword, uses the Internet as a gigantic library. The man-versus-machine contest echoed events held in the 1980s where computers played chess against masters . Continue reading “Computer beats humans at crosswords”