The Thinking Man - Gadgets, Music, Politics, and more...

Airdrop Irrigation concept might be the answer to drought!

2011-11-09T16:35:00.001+02:00

First off i would like to apologize for the short period in which i wasn't able to post anything. As you know I'm writing this blog parallel to my studies and classes so occasionally i will not be able to post consistently.

However, now I'm back, and with my first post I wanted to show you a really cool invention that i read about recently:
It's called the "Airdrop Irrigation concept" and what it does is something remarkable - it draws air from the sorrounding area, and as you know - the air we breathe contains humidity. The system Then cools the humid air through a piping system that's hidden underground, And produces water! what it means is that drought is no longer an issue for agriculture in areas where water is otherwise scarce! Thanks to this amazing, yet simple system, any farmer can easilly water his plantations without having a direct source of water - all thanks to the humidity that exists in the air we all breathe.
What's great about this system is that it's Low-Tech - which means that a farmer with basic or no mechanical knowledge at all can maintain and operate this system with ease.

The invention has won this year's James Dyson award and you can watch a video where the recipient of the award (Edward Linacre) describes his invention and it's potential right below:

To learn more about this invention visit the James Dyson award's website: http://www.jamesdysonaward.org/Projects/Project.aspx?ID=1722&RegionId=0&Winindex=5
I hope you've enjoyed this post, and as always - have a great day!

Top 20 best PC games of all time - Places 20 - 11

2011-11-05T23:36:00.003+02:00

20. Sim City (Maxis / 1989 - 2003)

Sim City was the obvious choice to kick off this list, with it's amazingly simple interface, very up-to-date graphics and deep gameplay.
The concept was simple - Build a City from scratch, run it, rule it, develop it and take it to any direction you'd like, and most importantly- it is your little virtual ant farm for disasters! if your childhood dream was to see what a tornado can do to a city, with Sim City you can turn your dream into a reality!

The series began back in 1989 with Will Wright's (the same guy who invented sims) Sim City, a game that has set the stage for future games in the genre, and gave the first glimpse of fame for the then anonymous Wright.
From there Sim City's popularity boomed and it's fanbase increased all the way to becoming one of the most popular games during the beginning of the millenia (with Sim City 3000 and Sim City 4) and was maxis' best selling game untill the release of "The Sims" back in 2000.
The game is well respected among game critiques and it won numerous awards including The Parents' Choice Foundation Parents Choice award, for it's educational values and friendly enviorment.
If you've never played a City building\urban planning game before, Sim City is the game to start with.

19. Warcraft I-III (Blizzard entertainment / 1994-2002)

The first RTS on this list, Warcraft was the first Successful RTS game to incorporate all the elements we see in RTS games today - Using the mouse to control the units, fog of war, Resource gathering, The ability to build an entire society and not just an army (Unlike Dune II which was focused on army building only. for those of you who are not familiar with Dune II - it was the game that started the RTS revolution), all of these plus the fantasy-like enviorment made sure this game was a success.
Never ranking below 90\100 on the reviews, Warcraft 1-3 are some of the finest RTS games ever released.
If you ask yourself why haven't i included WOW... well, you'll find out later ;D

18. S.T.A.L.K.E.R : Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC game world / 2007)

Set in an alternate reality where a second nuclear disaster occurs in Chernobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R tells the story of the stalkers (Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber) a group of scavengers in "The zone" (the Chernobyl exclusion zone) and focuses on the character controlled by the player - "The marked one".

Featuring a non linear, Sandbox enviorment, stalker allows the player to explore an enormous area filled with completely independent NPC'S with whom he's able to interact and features some realistic gameplay features such as hunger, bleeding (the player loses small amounts of hitpoints after being shot as he hemorrhages) and radiation (the player can die from radiation poisoning).

Although not an obvious choice, it's realistic features, plot and graphics make it one of the best sandbox FPS games ever, and a well deserved choice on the list.

17. Counter Strike (Valve Corporation / 1999)

Released in 1999, Counter Strike was and is the most popular Half-life modification to date.
Although it wasn't covered too much by aggregators, the hype sorrounding Counter strike has created an entire culture among the gaming community. From professional gamers and leagues to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior, the Counter strike world had it all.
In 2003 version 1.6 of counter strike was released, along with Valve's Steam software, and from there on, Steam grew to become one of the largest computer game marketing companies in the world.

Counter Strike remains one of the most popular FPS (First Person Shooter) games to this day, and is played on professional gaming leagues such as the E-Sports Entertainment league, Regional Association gaming league and VEGA league. Various LAN tournaments are held throughout the world to this day. Among them - the CPL(the cyberathlete professional league), WEG (world e-sports games) and WCG (world cyber games).

At it's prime Counter strike's server population has outnumbered Both Quake's and Unreal Turnment's servers by a 3:1 ratio.
To sum it all up - CS is a well deserved 18th place.

16. Age Of Empires (Ensemble Studios, Microsoft Studios / 1997 - 2011)

Roman Legions running over Egyptian armies, Persian soldiers desperately trying to hold off the macedonians, This is what Age of Empires is all about - Giving the user the ability to build cities and control the armies of the past.
With every new installation featuring new civilizations to control, even better graphics than it's predecessor and a huge array of units and buildings to choose from, AOE had the plot and design to become one of the most successful RTS games ever.

In 2011 Microsoft decided to take AOE into the world of multiplayer gaming with Age of Empires Online, and boy oh boy... microsoft was able to create one fun and addictive game to play!

15. Doom (Id Software / 1993)

What can you say about such a game... the first thoughts that come across my mind are - BFG, zombies, giant demons with flames going out of their asses, tons of corpses and hundreds and hundreds of unforgettable playing hours.
I still remember the moment my brother, alex, introduced me to the game (or to be more accurate - the moment i snuck into his room, turned on his PC and clicked on the first icon i saw on the screen) and made me scream like i was raped.

This game is widely recognized for having popularized the FPS genre and is one of only few games to have been honored by a hollywood movie!!! moreover, a movie headlined by the one and only - Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (who happens to be my favorite wrestler of all time).

More importantly however, Doom featured a revolutionary game engine that featured height differences between rooms, non perpendicular walls, full texture mapping of all surfaces and varying light levels palettes. The lifelike enviorment of Doom was enhanced furthermore by it's Stereo sound system, which allowed the user, to some extent, determine the distance of a certain sound effect.

Thanks to it's engine and the enviorment in which it was set, Doom became an FPS legend - The game that had truly began the FPS revolution (no, with all due respect, it wasn't volvenstein) and one of the most celebrated PC video games in history.

Id software, i salute you.

14. Crysis (Electronic arts / 2007)

Do i really have to start?
Oh.... ok then...

Crysis is based in a future world where a massive ancient Alien structure has been discovered buried inside a mountain on an island in the fictional Lingshan Islands, somewhere near the coast of the East Philippines.
During the game, Nomad (The Charecter controlled by you) will face north koreans and ET'S (quite a unique combination, isnt it? :D) in various environments on and around the island.

By now sounds pretty much alright, eh?
Well, now it gets even better.
When released, Crysis was infamous for it's highly demanding system requirements. So demanding in fact, that at the time of it's release there were no commercially available computers that were able to run the game on it's highest resolution and settings.
It features one of the most complex game engines ever, with over one million lines of pure code (if you wanna know how much is 1 million line of code, try writing 50 lines of code with no previous experiance), 1 GB of texture data and 85,000(!!!!!!) shaders.

So now that you know it has an awesome plot and some of the best graphics ever i'm wondering a little why you're still reading these lines.
GO AND PLAY CRYSIS, NOW! i don't care if you got plans, a girlfriend or a lubed up dildo waiting for you at the side of your bed. get up, go to the store, buy this game and play it until your keyboard rips apart, your mouse turning into an atari 2600 joystick and your screen into a 7 segment LED display!

13. Command & Conquer - Red alert II (Westwood Studios / 2000)

The Commies start a world war, lose it, Stalin is shot dead by his advisors, A distant relative of czar nicholas II becomes the soviet premier, builds a giant army and declares war on the united states.
That's Red alert II in the nutshell.
But when looking on the bigger picture, you begin to see some remarkable things - buildings, cool units, giant maps with tons of rescources to gather and lots of paths to attack your enemies from. RE2 featured cutscenes starring such actors as Udo Kier and barry corbin and had one of the best RTS multiplayer platforms at it's time.

Red alert II was the pinnacle of what RTS games were back at it's days, and it's fanbase is going strong even to this day! it was one of the first RTS games to show the importance of macromanagement (that is - building your economy) and it is considered the most popular C&C game to date, with reviewers calling it "Outstanding" and "the best 2D real-time strategy game since Starcraft".

12. Half Life (Valve Corporation / 1998)

The geekness this game features already makes it a top choice for me!
Starting from it's cover - The name "Half life" which in chemistry means the amount of time required for a quantity of a material to decay into half it's original size is stylized in the cover with the greek letter lambda (λ) which symbolizes the constant of natural decay. Then we get to the storyline - a THEORETICAL PHYSICIST (yay!) named Gordon Freeman fights aliens and other pesky characters through a top secret military facility!

Aside from an awesome setting, Half life has featured some of the best graphics available at it's time and it's addictive gameplay made it one of the most popular FPS games ever, and the best selling one with over 9.5 million copies sold!
It won over 50 game of the year awards and it's cultural impact, multiple community mods and sequels have spawned a large fanbase and a cult following amidst FPS fans.

11. Minecraft ( mojang / Beta - 2010, TBR - 2011)

It's dark and rainy outside, you're hiding in your cave and all of a sudden - a set of eyes appears out of the dark. Then, a snorting sound is heard. What can it be? a demon? a wolf? no... it's a giant, pink pixelated pig! That's just one of those funny moments you'll experiance while playing minecraft, and if it doesn't sound too much fun right now, wait till you play the game. Mark my words.

First developed by Markus "Notch" Persson and later by his company Mojand AB, Minecraft is one of those rare games that are more addictive than drugs (as depicted by the image).
It's idea is simple, yet brilliant - A huge sandbox enviorment, filled with enormous amounts of rescources that you can gather in order to build tools and later on, buildings and enormous monuments that symbolize you giving up on life for minecraft and it's addictive gameplay.
You may be a total failure in real life, but you can always show off the huge castle you've built on Minecraft!

And if the open world building game isn't enough for you, it might make you happier to know Minecraft is online! While you can always play the offline survival mode on your own, playing the survival multiplayer mode of Minecraft takes the gaming experiance to a whole other level.
The Minecraft community made sure to create lots of maps for you and your virtual friends to play with, featuring huge cities built out of the game's blocks to travel through and lots of fun and challenging quests to tackle, Minecraft has got it all!
To get a great impression of the game you can check out The Yogscast's channel on youtube - "BlueXephos".

This was the 20-11 list of the Top 20 best PC games of all time.
Places 10-1 will be published in a couple of days.
I hope i covered some of your personal favorites and introduced you to some new games.
If you have any questions, suggestions or just an urge to chat - Please post a comment below or contact me via my Email (it's written in the "contact" page of the blog).

As always, Have a great day!

Top 20 best PC games of all time

2011-11-05T13:59:00.000+02:00

I started writing this list with the goal of making a "top 10 best PC games of all time" list.
However when i began writing the list and going over all the games i played, all the games i've been told of etc... i got to the conclusion that top 10 isn't enough to cover all the great games out there.
And so, my top 10 list became a top 20 one, and hopefully it won't become a top 30 by the end of this post.

I do understand that when making a top 20 list, some great games will not enter the list. For this reason i'll make a "Worthy of note" section before the top 20 list begins.
Now before some of you question the choices i made, i want to make sure you'll understand this list not only gives respect to the legends of PC game production, but is also consisted of games that are universally fun - games that are fun today, and will be fun even 5 years from now.

So let's go!

Worthy of note

Before i'll mention the unlucky few, i just wanna say that this is not the "hall of shame". the games included here are awesome games that just don't cut the cheese compared to the top 20 ones.

The Sims (maxis / 2000-2009)

Well, you can put a person in a pool, take the ladder out and watch him drawn. any questions?

But all jokes aside, this game is a fantastic game, the first in a series of three to become one of the best selling games ever.
With great graphics, an open world theme (in sims 3 that is) and an idea that allows any girl (and in some cases, boy) that has ever dreamt of his\er dream house make it a reality.
This game is one of the only games that are really suited for anyone - girl, boy, architect, physics major, hell... i'll go as far as serial killers. (which makes me wonder... maybe their killing spree's were triggered by watching their Sim die? we'll never know...)

All and all, Kudos to you EA, you've created a wonderful game.

Company of Heroes - Online (Relic entertainment / 2010)

This Choice was a tough one... at first, i thought i should include it in the top 20, but efter some thinking i decided not to.
Regardless, this game is what RTS games should be all about! it's set in WW2 (and we must agree that there's nothing more fun than to blow up nazies with an artillery barrage), it has tons of units to choose from, great graphics and most importantly - IT'S ONLINE.
The original game was the 2006 Game of the year award winner on both IGN and Game Spy, and COH Online is a well deserved heir to this excellent game.

Heroes of might and magic (New world computing / 1995-2011)

Some of you HOMM fans must be going crazy right now - "how could he!!! this game is legendary!" and to some extent, i agree with you completely.
HOMM was one of the first PC games i've ever played, with HOMM II being my first one, back at around 2000, and up to this day.
With an excelent background story, lots of factions to choose from, unlimited possibilities and probably the best turn-based battle system ever, HOMM is one game that's worth playing.
And if any of you HOMM fans wanna know my openion - 3 was the best, 4 was utter shit.

I'm out!

The next post will include the #20 - #11 games, so stay tuned!!!
And as always, have a great day.

Early Modern Warfare 3 copies sold in Kmart berfore the release!

2011-11-04T12:15:00.003+02:00

As it turns out, some lucky MW3 fans were able to pick up legitimate copies of the game from Kmarts in Miami and New-York even before the game was officially released!
If you are one of those lucky few there is no need to worry if you fancy giving the multiplayer side a go before the official launch. As Microsoft has explained no bans will enforced on legitimate copies purchased even if it was before the official launch date.

Some of the early customers have now turned to profiteering and have started selling copies Craigslist and eBay for as much as $200!
In response to the unusual situation, Microsoft's policy director Stephen Toulouse has stated that those who bought the game at retail, even early, are safe. He announced with a Tweet yesterday “If your copy is legit and obtained legitly, have fun”.

Ever wondered how much does the internet weigh?

2011-11-03T22:00:00.000+02:00

Well, Surprisingly - not so much, as shown by youtuber - vsauce (please take the time to check out his channel... he uploads some really cool stuff!).
Via some simple calculations based upon the weight of a single electron (9.1 * 10^-31) and the amount of binaries (1's and 0's) on all servers today he reached the very surprising result of....
Well to find out you'll have to watch the video!

I hope you've liked the post, and as always - Have a great day :)

Jason Becker - The best musician you've never heard of!

2011-11-02T21:49:00.000+02:00

The story behind Jason, is a unique one - inspiring and tragic at the same time.
Jason is a neo-classical Guitarist\Composer, and was born on July 22 1969.
At age 16 he joined the band Cacaphony with his then high-school friend, Marty Friedman (Megadeth's former guitarist and a very respected Guitarist in his own right.) and went on to record 2 albums with it.

He left the band around 1988 and went on to record his first solo album - "Perpetual Burn", which to this day is considered the epitemy of what guitar playing skill, dexterity and feel for the instrument is all about.

Jason on the cover of "Perpetual Burn"

He then went out to join David Lee Roth's band, however, tragedy struck as his success was hampered by his then-diagnosed Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and was given three to five years to live. Over the next years Becker was slowly entering a state of paralysis and in 1996, Becker eventually lost the ability to speak, and now communicates with his eyes via a system developed by his father.

Despite his severe disability he continues composing using a computer and has since released a collection - a "best of" album of his favourite songs and 3 new songs he composed over the years.
To this day his battle against paralisys gives hope and inspiration to people all around the world, proving that willpower is stronger than any disease.

Jason (After the illness) visited by fellow guitarist, and friend - Greg Howe.

Considered a virtuoso guitarist and one of the top players of his time (and perhaps in all of history), Jason studied the works of violinist Niccollo Paganini during his youth. He later arranged Paganinni's 5th Caprice, performing it during an instructional guitar video. Becker's compositions often include high speed scalar and arpeggio passages, both of which are trademarks of his "Shredding" style of playing. Often incorporating advanced techniques such as sweep picking, artificial harmonic accenting, and tapping. He was among the leaders of the field during the technical "shred" guitar and Neo-Classical Metal trend of the mid to late eighties and is still respected and honored by his musician peers today.

This is one of his more famous compositions - Altitudes.

Please be sure to check out his site - http://www.jasonbecker.com/ and support him.
I really hope that by now you are more familiar with his story and music, and that you've enjoyed this entry and the music posted in it.

Have a great day :)

Angry birds reaches half a billion downloads!!!!!

2011-11-02T19:38:00.003+02:00

I still remember rovio announcing about a couple of weeks ago that angry birds was downloaded over 400 million times, and today (november 2) rovio has announced that angry birds has been downloaded over half a billion times! (billion with a B, a Carl Sagan freakin BILLION!)
This achievement obviouslly makes angry birds one of the best selling, and most widespread game in the world, EVER.

Just to explain to you how much is 500,000,000 - Super Mario, the classic game featuring the short and chubby italian plumber was sold just over 210,000,000 times. Simply put - AB (angry birds) is a sensation! Just a week ago I walking across a toy store looking for a present for my 2 year old niece only to "stumble" upon a 10ft tall by 50ft long shelf filled with angry birds merchandise! AB pouffes, dolls, action figures, video games, blankets, bed sheets, curtains, heck... i even recall seeing an AB bikini once... and not in a store, but on an actually living breathing chick (with one of the nicest behinds i've ever seen, i must add! :D).

Angry birds did what pacman did back in his days, only much more than that. It changed our culture, the way some of us live! Nowdays, if you'd tell someone you don't know what angry birds is, you might just get one serious staredown from that person.

Back to the story though, Rovio has also put together a short video describing other statistics and milestones AB has set, among which over 130 million monthly users, and 300 million minutes of the game played each day.
there's the video:

As always, have a great day! :)

The video of the day - Quantum Levitation

2011-10-31T22:53:00.000+02:00

A couple of days ago a friend of mine sent me a really cool video featuring a demonstration of a physical phenomenon called "Quantum levitation" (quite a fancy name eh? :D).
There's the video:

The first time I've seen this phenomenon was around 2009 during a demonstration organized by the physics department of the university of Tel-Aviv (the guy demonstrating it in the video is from that department. yay for TAU!)
The physics behind it is pretty interesting - The block of dry ice is placed above a disc that acts as a superconductor. When placed above an electromagnet the superconductor doesn't allow any magnetic fields to go through it. However, since a superconductor, like any other object, has some gaps in it (in between the atoms), a portion of the field is able to go through the superconductor. when that happens the superconductor will try to "lock" itself in place so that the "flow" of the magnetic field through it will stay steady, thus appearing to "lock" itself in mid air!

credit goes to Garry - the friend that sent me this awesome video! :)

The Weekly rant – Internet explorer v Google Chrome

2011-10-31T20:58:00.007+02:00

You’ve probably asked yourself – the weekly rant? what the hell?
Well, the weekly rant will be a Once-A-Week post in which (as you’ve probably guessed by now) I’ll rant about whatever bothers me during that particular week.
I’ll try to keep it as clean as I can (better cover your children’s eyes though!) and in the same time as funny and objective as I can.
This weeks rant will will be about one thing that really pisses me off lately – IE (internet explorer, for the uneducated fellas among us…) users and fanboys.

see this screenshot? recognize the browser? better get used to it! cause by the end of this post, you’ll probably use it.

Now before I’ll start throwing some cold, hard, facts at you IE users I would like to mention the reason for this rant. in my (“humble”) opinion, I really do think that IE users are sort-of-kind-of technophobic and living in the past kind of person… ignorant at best (very, very unlikely though, as Google made sure there are chrome ads in every single freaking corner on the web). They’re like the neighbor who buys a 2008 car model instead of the 2011 one, just cause he likes the squeaking noise it’s engine makes. They’re the kind of person who will take the long way home instead of the short one, simply because they got used to it. And in the case of ignorance – they are the grandma that spends it’s entire day watching TV, and her only contact with the outside world comes once a year when her relatives recall she’s still alive (I know… I know… it’s kind of mean) and take her out for a walk outside.

Now That I’m done going at you a little, let me explain what the fuss is all about.
Let’s start with looks – it’s obvious chrome is the more elegant one, with IE crawling behind trying to copy elements from chrome as new versions are released (the most obvious one is the transition from the ie8 “classic” looks to the ie9 “chrome-ish” looks). With IE9 Microsoft tried to copy, among many other features, the “New Tab” feature from chrome, only to end up with a Frankenstein that looks like the baby of Gary Busey and Mr. Ed. Overall, IE9 still can’t provide the same slick look and smooth graphics that Chrome offers.

notice a resemblance, anyone? (from left to right – IE8, IE9. at the bottom - Chrome)

Now we enter chrome’s hot spot – Speed and functionality.
In some benchmark tests performed by me, and from some data gathered from other reviews (so you IE fanboys won’t say I’m cheating) chrome was twice as fast loading pages, quite an important fact when considering the average loading time on chrome was around the 2-4 second mark (depending on the site) compared to 7-9 seconds (!!!!!) on IE.

When considering stability and standards – chrome was ahead of IE on the Acid3 test (for those of you who are not familiar with acid3 – it’s a picture processing test) with 100\100 compared to IE’s 95\100 (which is quite a respectable feat, considering the fact IE8 was scoring around 85\100 or worse back in it’s days) and stability-wise, both IE and chrome made sure every new tab that’s opened is a separate process, so that if one tab crashes the other ones are out of danger.

Regarding functionality – while IE remained the same “naked”, featureless browser, Google made sure to add some really cool features – such as an address bar which is also a Google search tab, app launching screen and a really cool favorites menu compared to the “old school” favorites menu on IE. Even when doing some basic tasks such as zooming in, Chrome prevails as the more comfortable one – with the CTRL +, – and 0 key combinations you can easily zoom in and out of Pamela Anderson's tit’s (in case 34DDD isn’t enough for you horndogs ;] ) , or go back into the regular resolution. On IE however, the basic task of zooming in and out can turn out to be quite pesky… the CTRL 0 combination doesn’t work on the Numpad and in order to see how much you’ve zoomed in you have to add the extremely ugly and outdated status bar.

By now, some of you have probably asked yourself – “ok so chrome is better than IE… what about Firefox?”.
Well, When comparing Firefox to Chrome, you must understand that it’s like comparing Android with IOS. Both are great, both are fast, and both have tons of features, and while Firefox has a Swiss knife kind-of feel to it, Chrome tries to keep it simple and functional like Apple would with the IOS. If you’re into web apps and you like to tweak you browser add gizmos to it, be my guest and use Firefox. however, if you’re an average internet surfer who wants his browser to be clean, appealing and functional, go for Chrome… Trust me on this one, Google won’t disappoint you.

Prehistoric Greenhouse Data from Ocean Floor Could Predict Earth's Future

2011-10-31T11:46:00.000+02:00

A new research from the university of Missouri indicates that Atlantic ocean temperatures during the greenhouse climate of the late cretaceous period (145.5–65.5 m.y ago) were influenced by circulation of hot and cold water currents. These changes in circulation could help scientists understand the consequences of modern increases in greenhouse gases (i.e – global warming).

The study found that at the end of the Late Cretaceous greenhouse interval, water sinking around Greenland was replaced by surface water flowing north from the South Atlantic. This change caused the North Atlantic to warm while the rest of the globe cooled. The change started about five million years before the asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous Period.

To track circulation patterns, the researchers focused on "neodymium," an element that is taken up by fish teeth and bones when a fish dies and falls to the ocean floor. The ratio of two isotopes of neodymium acts as a natural tracking system for water masses. In the area where a water mass forms, the water takes on a neodymium ratio like that in rocks on nearby land. As the water moves through the ocean, though, that ratio changes little.
Because the fish take up the neodymium from water at the seafloor, the ratio in the fish fossils reflects the values in the area where the water sank into the deep ocean. Looking at changes through time and at many sites allowed the scientists to track water mass movements.

While high atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide caused Late Cretaceous warmth, it was noted that ocean circulation influenced how that warmth was distributed around the globe. Further, ocean circulation patterns changed significantly as the climate warmed and cooled.

Understanding the degree to which climate influences circulation and vice versa is important today because carbon dioxide levels are rapidly approaching levels most recently seen during ancient greenhouse times. In just a few decades, humans are causing changes in the composition of the atmosphere that are as large as the changes that took millions of years to occur during geological climate cycles.

The paper, "Changes in North Atlantic circulation at the end of the Cretaceous greenhouse interval," was published in the October online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. Coauthors include C. Isaza Londoño of the University of Missouri; E.E. Martin and C. Basak of the University of Florida, and A. Jiménez Berrocoso of the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.

Technorati Tags: science,earth,sea,tides,greenhouse,prehistoric,cretaceous,period,million,years,cool,awesome,geology,scientists,research,university

Samsung overtakes Apple as the world's biggest Smartphone manufacturer

2011-10-30T12:13:00.000+02:00

Now it's official - Samsung is the world's biggest Smartphone manufacturer, as it was announced by Strategy Analytics' latest report, Samsung has sold 27.8 million Smartphones worldwide during Q3, overtaking Apple's sales and quadrupling it's sales compared to last year.

pictured: Samsung's galaxy S II - their crown jewel and arguably the world's best smartphone!?

When considering the journey Samsung went through up until this milestone, it's quite obvious their achivement is a remarkable one - Samsung entered the Smartphone industry only a year ago, while apple introduced their Iphone back in 2007, and while Samsung's sales this quarter have almost quadrupled compared to last year, apple sold 16% less units, totaling with a "mere" 17.1 million sales this quarter.

                                                                                        Global Smartphones vendor shipments according to Strategy Analytics (left)


The earnings of the communications branch at Sansumg were doubled in comparison to last year, reaching 2.2$ Billion. The earnings of this branch constituted 60% of Samsung's total earnings.
The company has announced it feels confident going into Q4, predicting sales will not drop in the near future, and we sure hope that Samsung will continue with it's success going forward.

it should be taken into account that the statistics did not include the sales of the newly launched Iphone 4S.

Modern Warfare 3 copies stolen from warehouse!

2011-10-30T00:26:00.000+02:00

I've recentlly recieved some news regarding the release of modern warfare 3.
apparently a warehouse that stored copies of the soon to be released Call Of Duty - Modern Warfare 3 was burglarized, resulting in the release of a pirated version of the game!

Eventually though the news were clarified as it was announced that a person working for a fresno-based shipping warehouse got a hold of disc two, partially reassuring that there was no full "leakage" of the game.
However it is not clear yet whether or not someone got hold of the full, 2-disc package.

As a result activision announced they'll go, quite literally, "door to door" asking selected people to turn over pirated discs or delete files of the leaked game, rather than to face a fine of 5000$.
Quite a funny development in the world of Game Releases and Computer Game Hacking.

This week in israeli politics - a dive into history.

2011-10-29T20:54:00.000+02:00

well, this is my first entry... hopefully it will be a good one and you peeps will enjoy it :)

First, allow me to introduce myself - I'm Joe - a student, entrepreneur and a science enthusiast.
As you might, or might not know by now, I'm living in israel.
This blog will be dedicated to many things among which will be this entry's topic - israeli politics.
Recently, a kid named - Gilad Shalit was released in a deal with the hammas in exchange for 1027 prisoners. among those prisoners there were 250 men with life sentences - some of them had consecutive life sentences. 250 murderers with blood-stained hands were released in what is in my openion - one of the worse desicions ever made by the israeli government.
This deal signifies a new era in the israeli-palestinian conflict - the era of kidnappings.
Why should the hammas lose men in suicide bombings when it can send a guy with an ak-47 or a knife into israel, shoot\stab a couple of civilians, get arrested and sentenced for life (because there is no death sentence in israel) only to get released in the next prisoner exchange!
1 for 1027 is a great deal for anyone! in fact, if warran buffet would have had such an offer, in a 4-5 billion dollar deal, he would have been able to cover the entire U.S debt with the earnings!

I'm very happy for you gilad. let's hope though that all the murderers that were released in exchange for you won't do some funny business...

Now you probably ask yourself - why would a sane person agree to such a ridicolous deal?
well there are a couple of reasons in my openion:
1. The israeli public and press made an enormous deal out of this kidnapping, putting pressure on the government. they were so naive their motto was - give us gilad for ANY price. the initial hammas demands were around the 100-250 men for the poor soldier, however thanks to some basic understanding of supply and demand, the hammas suddenly raised the price tag to 500. Around that time, operation "Cast Lead" began. among the goals of the operation one goal was locating and releasing Shalit. sadly, because of political reasons and heavy pressure from the Then-Left wing government, the operation was stopped about 2 weeks from completion.
And so, shalit was left in the hands of the hammas waiting for his release.
Up untill his release, his family, the media and a generous precentage of the israeli citizens continued to battle for his release.

2. Going into sept'-oct' of 2011, Benjamin Netanyahu's popularity among the israeli citizens reached a record low thanks to the "welfare war" and his position regarding the shalit kidnapping.
Elections were soon to come and it seemed he won't be elected again, and so, in one brilliant political move he promised himself 4 things:
a. the release of shalit - relieving the pressure off of the israeli government, at least for the next couple of weeks.
b. an immidiate wave of support from the fanatic shalit supporters - thus saving his political future.
c. a temporary distraction from the "welfare war".
d. increasing the hammas' populatiry through this deal would lower the popularity of the fatah, who was battling for one sided U.N recodnition in a palestinian state.
And so, he did what seemed to be the obvious choice for him - he released 1027 terrorists and criminals in exchange for gilad shalit.

Now we come to this week - the week in which the results of the shalit exchange begin to reflect upon the security of the israeli citizens.
The men released are back in action, and, perhaps, in a celebratory act, for the first time after a 2 month halt, terrorist groups from gaza began firing rockets at israeli cities - among which is the city in which i live - Ashdod, which is located about 30km (20-18 miles) from the gaza strip. in fact, while writing this entry, a rocket was fired at my city and i had to run into a bomb shelter.A 56 year old man lost his life as a result of the rocket that fell in my city, 2 other civilians were injured and there was significant damage to cars and other property including a local elementry school in Gan Yavne.
Because of this the authorities are now discussing the option of halting the operation of schools in the southern area of israel in the next couple of days, at least untill "things cool off".

Pictured: The rocket that fell in Gan Yavne being removed from the impact scene

Now i'm asking you, my fellow readers - Do you really think a normal government would have allowed an organization which considers itself the leading authority in gaza to do such things to your country and civilians? would your government sat still while it's civilians are living in constant fear of rocket barrages? because this is exactly what the israeli government is doing. it sits still while the "arab spring" revolutions allow radical islamist political groups raise into power in their countries (the muslim brothers in egypt for example...) changing the entire political map and status quo in the middle east into what will soon appear to be - an islamist block, consisting of - libya, egypt, syria, lebanon, iran, afghanistan and pakistan, and while terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hammas arm themselves in preperation for the next face off against israel, a face off that will result in the deaths of hundreds and thousands of civilians on both sides, and will surelly not be the solution to the conflict.
So the obvious question is - how come the U.N allows such things to happen? how come the U.N and the world is so ignorant of the condition in southern israel? how come when an israeli bomber destroys a hammas administrative building\weapon stockpile even CNN talks about it and sometimes even descriminates the act, but when rockets are fired at israeli civilians none listens to the cry of the israeli mothers hiding their children in the bomb shelters?

I'll tell you why - because the U.N is a non operational body that exists only to give satge for tyrants and extrimists to spread their nonsensical agendas in front of the whole world. in all the years of it's existance it had no effect whatsoever on the status of world-wide politics and it's security council is a disgrace to what is supposed to be a non-biased political body, set to defend innocent civilians and stop altercations. It gives, the countries among it, unlimited power to set new international laws that give them various strategic advanteges on their surrounding countries and you can easilly say that the 5 permenent members - france, u.s, russia, china and the u.k have created an exclusive "nuclear club" which allows no new members in and legislates laws that allow them to continute to have their nuclear stockpiles, despite signing nuclear disarmament agreements. (not sure about china though..)
And since we're talking about israel and gaza - the body set by it - UNRWA monitors and builds hospitals and schools which instead of fulfilling their humanitarian goals, are used by Hammas and the Islamic Jihad organisations as shelters and bases for their men. during "cast lead", rockets have been fired out of UNRWA built schools and hospitals - not exactly a humanitarian action.

As for the world - The world was fed for years now, by one-sided anti-israeli propoganda launched by pro-palestinian bodies throughout the world. it's really easy to upload a picture of a dead palestinian baby in order to get pity from the world! palestinians do that all the time! (and with great success too!) however how come none has ever seen a picture of a dead israeli baby, with all the graphic gore included? i'll tell you why - because israelies are not animals. we will not go as low as to using this kind of media in order to get "support" (pity from "humanitarian" activists and media) from the worldwide community.
There is nothing in our power to do against the biased, self-righteous, anti-israeli media. media that ignores all aspects of truth, righteousness and care for the sake of cheap stories regarding newly released photographs of dead palestinians. they forget it's a war out there - and as in all wars, civilians do get hurt, and unfortiounatelly, killed sometimes, aspecially when terrorist groups use civilians and buildings inhibited by civilians as human shields.
we (those who understand the historic background and do not ignore it in order to support the poor palestinians who, by-the-way rightfully, demand peace BUT in the same time support the radical hammas and fatah organizations) know that historically, the israeli-palestinian conflict began because the palestinians were denied entry into the neighbouring arab countries - jordan, egypt, syria and lebanon after losing their desperate attemt to defeat the unprepared and untrained israeli army during the 1948-49' war of independence, and get israel back from the hands of the hands of the zionist activists - thust being left in a situation of refuge, and beacuse none of the countries listed above were "enemies" of the palestinians - the only country that could be harrased by terrorist activity was israel. the israeli - palestinian conflict never was a political conflict, but a chapter in a long history of hatred between two religions - judaism and islam. being the only non-islamic state in the middle east, it was obvious israel will be the one chosen to be harrased by the surrounding countries, aspecially because of it's definition - a JEWISH STATE. (a definition that I, by the way, oppose, but that will be discussed in one of the next posts) a state that is surrounded by self-proclaimed, muslim states. why would the palestinians use acts of terror against their muslim brothers when they can do the same thing to JEWS in order to get the exact same results!
And all of this happened in complete ignorance of the 1947 29th of november U.N general assembly decleration which stated that the zionist activists, and the worldwide jewish community have full rights for an independent, country of their own.
The palestinians spat in the face of the U.N by denying the 2 state U.N solution to the jewish refugee problem in europe after WWII, and starting a war against the recently established state of israel, YET the U.N and the worldwide community continue to support the palestinians, despite ignoring the U.N legislations and despite ignoring the fact that all the money invested into the poorly treated palestinian refugees eventually end up funding the terrorist organizations operating in the gaza strip, denying both israel and the palestinians of peace and in the case of the palestinians - freedom.

So now, after i described the current condition in my area and the historic background, i would like to ask you readers - what do you think of the situation? as a humanist, and as a citizen of the world, i cannot ignore the fact that most palestinians are peacefull, and do not want to engage israel - they just want peace, however considering the fact terrorist groups run the political scene in gaza, governing the gaza strip in a tyrant, anarchist, anti-humanist fashion i have no choice but to think the only, true, solution to the conflict is:
1. erasing any trace of extreme islamist, terrorist activity in gaza.
2. driving towards a 2 state solution in the confinement of the current border division (and not the in the confinement of the "green line" as it no longer reflects the political and military status in israel, and because a current settlement will not be based upon the 1947 2 state solution - a solution which the palestinians declined at it's time, and is no longer valid towards them).

I would love to hear your openions! (as long as they are written objectively and are non offensive in any manner)
Have a great week!