Ouch - Sony takes it in the shorts over PS3

It's odd reading something like this as Sony is now the parent company of my employer. It's hard when you work for Xbox for years to turn around and start rooting for the enemy... even when the enemy is now yourself. So it is with some glee and trepidation that I read the news below.

Man, Sony can't seem to catch a break these days. Just as they're beginning the Tokyo Game Show hype by releasing a list of games to be shown, the news out of Japan is that their stock has dropped 3.1% after Mitsubishi UFJ, a brokerage firm, lowered their rating on the company. Worse for gamers is the reason why:

Mitsubishi UFJ Securities lowered its rating on Sony to "3" from "2" and slashed by half its estimate on PS3 sales for the current business year ending March 31 to 3 million units, citing difficulties in procuring enough cutting-edge parts.

Who's winning?

Speak it brother. It seems really easy to me. Terrorists want us to be afraid. So the only way to "win" so to speak is to not let them scare you. If you assume that terrorists are going to do terrible, horrible things and fail to be surprised by it then at least you can make rational logical decisions on how to deal with it as opposed to some people who think they can talk big like a cowboy and solve all our issues with a swagger and a big gun.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics.

The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

Wired News: Refuse to be Terrorized

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This is why Burning Man is so cool

A steam powered 3 story Victorian mansion. Where you can join for Irish tea every afternoon.

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

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Sometimes you make the right call in life

I joined Grouper in mid-May. So now instead of working for a little start-up I work for a little start-up joined by a giant parent company who promises to leave us alone for a year. Can anyone say Sony discount?

Sony Pictures Entertainment has become the latest traditional media company to plunge into the new media arena with the $65m acquisition of Grouper, an internet company that specialises in user-generated video.
Grouper has just 8m unique users, far fewer than rivals such as YouTube, the largest internet video aggregator. However, that figure has grown from 1m in March. The company also boasts a video-sharing technology that allows users to post Grouper-created videos on other social networking sites, such as MySpace or Friendster, expanding its potential reach.

FT.com / Companies / Media & internet - Sony enters new media with Grouper deal

technorati tags:Grouper, Sony

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Bush to let woman decide for themselves?

For those of you following the debate over Plan B this is welcome news. What appeared to be a lost cause may finally result in a compromise that works. Women 18 and over would be allowed to purchase or obtain Plan B with no prescription. I'm shocked that something this sensible concerning birth control could make it through the Bush administration. It isn't set in stone yet, but cross your fingers.

“I believe that Plan B ... ought to require a prescription for minors. That’s what I believe,” Bush said at a news conference.
Barr Pharmaceutical’s has been unsuccessful in two attempts to win government approval to sell its Plan B drug more widely without a prescription. Its first application in 2003 covered women of all ages but was rejected. The second was limited to women 16 and older. The FDA postponed a decision.
The company Friday said it filed a revised application but no details were released. The FDA is expected to act soon.

Bush supports limits on morning-after pill - Sexual Health - MSNBC.com

technorati tags:bush, birth control

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Squirrels invent inviso-smell cloaking device

Squirrels are the unlikely inventors of a cloaking device that lets them thwart rattlesnakes by using the snakes' own scent against them.

Female California ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) chew on skins shed by Pacific rattlesnakes (Crotalus oreganus) then lick themselves and their pups, apparently to anoint them with the odour of the enemy.

Smelly squirrels fool hungry snakes - life - 19 August 2006 - New Scientist

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Drug War = Waste of your money

More evidence that the war on drugs is a waste of time unless of course you consider spending billions of dollars with no results a good investment.

The latest chapter in America’s long war on drugs — a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia’s coca crop — has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged.

The effort, begun in 2000 and known as Plan Colombia, had a specific goal of halving this country’s coca crop in five years. That has not happened. Instead, drug policy experts say, coca, the essential ingredient for cocaine, has been redistributed to smaller and harder-to-reach plots, adding to the cost and difficulty of the drug war.

¶As much coca is cultivated today in Colombia as was grown at the start of the large-scale aerial fumigation effort in 2000, according to State Department figures.

¶Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the leading sources of coca and cocaine, produce more than enough cocaine to satisfy world demand, and possibly as much as in the mid-1990’s, the United Nations says.

¶In the United States, the government’s tracking over the past quarter century shows that the price of cocaine has tumbled and that purity remains high, signs that the drug is as available as ever.

Colombia’s Coca Survives U.S. Plan to Uproot It - New York Time

technorati tags:War, Drugs

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Video laugh of the day

I'm such a sucker for watching people fall on their faces and getting a baseball bat to the nuts. On to the videotape!

J-Tim trashes American Idol

Now this is good ol' fashioned tabloid style news. Big star trashes young up and comer. I'm only disappointed he didn't throw in any references to hookers and blow.

Justin Timberlake backtracked from criticism of "American Idol" winner Taylor Hicks after telling Fashion Rocks magazine the 29-year-old soul singer "can't carry a tune in a bucket."

"I have a strange relationship with that show," Timberlake tells the magazine in an interview. "I despise it, and yet I'm completely fascinated."

"The guy who won _ people think he looks so normal, and he's so sweet, and he's so earnest, but he can't carry a tune in a bucket. Do you realize how much pressure it is to put on somebody all of a sudden?"

Timberlake, a member of boy band 'N Sync who is now pursuing a solo career, also said: "If he has any skeletons whatsoever; if, God forbid, he's gay, and all these people in Mississippi who voted for him are like, `Oh, my God, I voted for a queer!' It's just too much pressure."

BREITBART.COM - Timberlake Not Impressed by 'Idol' Hicks

technorati tags:Justin, Timberlake, American, Idol

PS3 sits on top of Xbox360. Crushes it.

And it's got a curved top. You're kidding right?

Engadget

technorati tags:xbox360, ps3

The Parasite That Shaped America?

This would be too easy of an explanation. Sounds a little too "They" to me... you know, Aliens in human form taking over the US but you can only see they are actually lizard people if you have the special glasses.

You are not the only one controlling your mind.Approximately one-quarter of Americans host a parasite that has been shown to affect personality in both rodents and humans. According to a recent study, this single-celled organism may be able to shape entire cultures.

In a paper published in the online edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society, United States Geological Survey researcher Kevin Lafferty argues that a significant factor in why some countries exhibit higher levels of neuroticism than others may be the prevalence of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. The study also indicates that it may influence a society's preference for strict laws, an expression of uncertainty avoidance, and its valuation of 'masculine' priorities such as competitiveness and financial success over 'feminine' values like relationship-building.

Newsvine - The Culture-Shaping Parasite

technorati tags:Culture

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It's the shoes, Money

Airport X-ray scans of airline passengers' shoes cannot detect explosives, according to a 2005 Homeland Security Department report on aviation screening. So why are authorities still scanning our shoes with outdated technology incapable of spotting what it's supposed to spot? Snip from AP item:

Findings from the report, obtained by The Associated Press, did not stop the Transportation Security Administration from announcing Sunday that all airline passengers must remove their shoes and run them through X-ray machines before boarding commercial aircraft. (...)

In its April 2005 report, "Systems Engineering Study of Civil Aviation Security — Phase I," the Homeland Security Department concluded that images on X-ray machines don't provide the information necessary to detect explosives. Machines used at most airports to scan hand-held luggage, purses, briefcases and shoes have not been upgraded to detect explosives since the report was issued.

The quietest shade of loud

Another interesting visualization by Martin Wattenberg is The Shape of Song. It illustrates the repetitive patterns in music using translucent arches that connect identical passages of notes. The following image shows one instrument track from the Beatles song 'We Can Work It Out'.

The Shape of Song

technorati tags:Music

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LED Musicbox

Part of his MusicBox Project, the piece, as you can no doubt guess, consists of elements designed to mimic a music box in one form or another. The SoniColumn itself works through an array of touch-sensitive LEDs that each emit a unique tone when touched -- the budding musician can then turn a crank to rotate the column and play back his/her composition in its entirety.

Engadget

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How to make MySpace not suck so bad

Browser plug in Browster released version 2.0 of its product this weekend and is aiming to make MySpace profiles easier to view. A Windows download for IE and Firefox, Browster preloads pages from search results and provides a live minibrowser when inserted lightning bolts are hovered over. The new version also offers a live search box supporting a number of web, blog and shopping search engines inside the Browster window. Those search box results are combined with contextual ads. Future features will also generate ad revenue.

Techcrunch

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Why midnight snacking is addictive

If that midnight snack is a hard habit to break, you may have trained your brain to expect it. Eating at odd times causes "clock" genes in mice, which were thought to respond only to light, to adjust to the new schedule. The finding could help explain eating disorders in obese people, some of whom eat at unusual times.

New Scientist News - Why midnight snacking is addictive

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Why not to be afraid of terrorism

Interesting paper. Terrorists can be defeated simply by not becomming terrorized -- that is, anything that enhances fear effectively gives in to them.

The bottom line is, terrorism doesn't kill many people. Even in Israel, you're four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.

Schneier on Security

technorati tags:Terrorism

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Duran Duran moves to Second Life, will gig there

Duran Duran have bought a virtual island in Second Life, a creative 3D multiplayer world where you can make sophisiticated objects and avatars. The band will perform live shows in-game: "When the video revolution began we instantly saw the opportunity to experiment and explore a new form of expression to enhance the musical experience. Second Life is the future right now, offering endless possibilities for artists." Rhodes said he hoped the Duran Duran community would help develop the island into a "fully functional, futuristic utopia". He said the band was "thrilled to become citizens of Second Life".

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things

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Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?

It may be that the unattractive man has a lot of money, or some other compelling attribute.

But a new study by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, suggests it may be a simple supply-and-demand issue: there are more beautiful women in the world than there are handsome men.

Why? Kanazawa argues it’s because good-looking parents are 36% more likely to have a baby daughter as their first child than a baby son—which suggests, evolutionarily speaking, that beauty is a trait more valuable for women than for men. The study was conducted with data from 3,000 Americans, derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and was published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Freakonomics Blog » Why Do Beautiful Women Sometimes Marry Unattractive Men?

Ketamine treats depression in hours

Ketamine proved effective in under two hours. An anaesthetic can treat depression within hours, a study has suggested. A US team found ketamine, a medication usually used as an anaesthetic but also taken as a recreational drug, relieved symptoms of depression. Most existing treatments for depression take weeks or even months to relieve people's symptoms. But the team, writing in Archives of General Psychiatry, said ketamine would need to be altered so it lost its existing hallucinatory side-effects.

BBC NEWS | Health | Drug 'treats depression in hours'

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Drug danger list according to UK Science & Technology Select Committee

25633101.jpg (JPEG Image, 552x358 pixels)

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