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8 Huge Events From This Day In History, And The Movies To Celebrate Them With

2011-04-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

April 15 is my dad's birthday, so it's a date that always has a special spot in my calendar (Hi Dad!) But as it turns out today is a surprisingly momentous date in world history, boasting a number of famous birthdays, two huge tragedies, the end of an actual war and the beginning of one restaurant's metaphorical war against global health. And you just thought it was Tax Day!

Because I am a nerd for "on this day in history" features as well as for movies, I've compiled 8 of the more notable events that took place on this day, April 15, and picked movies you can watch to commemorate them. Some are classics, some are objectively awful, but a lot of them are available on Netflix Watch Instantly, which means you can spend a few minutes happily immersed in some cultural oddities the way I have all morning. It's Friday! Your taxes are (hopefully) paid! What else is going to bring you more historical, nerdy joy? Celebrate history and my dad's birthday by checking our your options below.

What happened: On this day in 1452, Leonardo da Vinci was born.
What happened: On this day in 1783, the Continental Congress ratified what's called the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.
What you should watch: The Revolutionary War isn't one of the more popular wars for American movies for some reason, and no, I'm not going to tell you to watch The Patriot just because it vaguely fits the theme. For the story of one of the people who ratified that treaty, and was sent to Paris to represent the new country, head to TV's John Adams miniseries. It's good history, quality television-- it racked up 13 Emmys-- and more good work from The King's Speech director Tom Hooper.
What happened: On this day in 1865, Abraham Lincoln died after being shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth the previous night, during a performance at Ford's Theater.
What you should watch: Even though this weekend's The Conspirator actually depicts the shooting and the aftermath of Lincoln's death, it's simply not a good movie. The best Lincoln movie may still be yet to come-- that'd be Spielberg's Daniel Day-Lewis-starring biopic, due in 2013-- but in the meantime revisit Lincoln's earlier days with the classic Young Mr. Lincoln, directed by the eternal John Ford and starring Henry Fonda, possibly as iconic a symbol of America as Lincoln himself.

What you should watch: Da Vinci has actually made relatively few screen appearances, and has no biopic focused on his genius like, say, Michelangelo's The Agony and the Ecstasy. So you're gonna have to settle for Hudson Hawk, the famously disastrous caper comedy in which Bruce Willis is a master burglar on a mission to stop an evil plot to take over the world by reconstructing some of Da Vinci's more powerful inventions. Da Vinci himself only pops up in the opening sequence, tinkering in his castle of a laboratory, but really, how better to celebrate the birth of a genius than by watching a movie that single-handedly destroyed its production company? (It was the last film released by Tri Star Entertainment before being bought out by Columbia Pictures) It's available to watch on Netflix Instant.

What happened: On this day in 1912, The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am, two hours and forty minutes after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Over 1500 people were killed.
What you should watch: I'm not even going to pretend there's a choice here. Watch Titanic and get over any notion you might have that it's not a good movie or doesn't hold up (read my ten year anniversary defense if you need more convincing).

What happened: On this day in 1942, Kenneth Lay, the CEO and chairman of Enron, was born.
What you should watch: I'm gonna cheat and give you two choices here, one obvious and one not so much. Clearly the best way to understand Lay's work and impact is to watch Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Alex Gibney's incredibly detailed documentary about exactly what happened at the company now synonymous with corporate greed (it's also streaming on Netflix Instant). For a more oblique analysis of Lay's impact, check out Tom McCarthy's new film Win Win in theaters now. Yes it's about a high school wrestling coach, but as McCarthy himself said in my interview with him, it's kind of an allegory for companies like Enron, that were cornerstones of communities even while doing terrible things. It's also a lot funnier than the documentary, if that's what you're looking for.

What happened: On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers, effectively breaking the color barrier in professional baseball. The Dodgers won the game 5-3.
What you should watch: There's a Robinson biopic in the works now with Robert Redford attached, but it probably won't match the surrealness of 1950's The Jackie Robinson Story, a biopic about Robinson in which he played himself, believe it or not. Even stranger, the New York Times Review praised Robinson's acting, writing "displays a calm assurance and composure that might be envied by many a Hollywood star." Best of all, you can watch it now on Netflix Instant.

What happened:On this day in 1955 Ray Kroc opened a franchised McDonalds in Des Plaines, Illinois; for whatever reason the corporation counts this as their founding date.
What you should watch: Mac And Me is not a good movie by any means, but it does hold the honor of winning Ronald McDonald a Razzie Award as "Worst New Star" thanks to his cameo in a four-minute dance sequence that takes place, for no apparent reason, entirely within a McDonalds. There's some evidence that the fast food chain didn't actually pay for this reference, but the scene is pretty difficult to distinguish from the actual singing and dancing McDonalds ads I remember from the time. Watch the dance sequence below, and if that wasn't enough McDonalds for you-- after all, the main alien character is named after a Big Mac-- the entire movie is streaming on Netflix. Prepare to be astonished.

What happened: On this day in 1990, Emma Watson was born.
What you should watch: Hermione turns 21 today, y'all. None of the Harry Potter movies are on Netflix Instant, but turn on ABC Family and at some point today one of them will probably come on. Make sure and protest the terrible treatment of house elves while you do it.

As a final note, if you do in fact want to honor my dad's birthday, his favorite movie is The Magnificent Seven. It's also on Watch Instantly.

Inside Ivory Coast's Palace, 'An Armory, A Powder Keg'

2011-04-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

Much has been reported about the presidential residence where the defiant, defeated Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo retreated during the battle for the commercial capital, Abidjan.
Far less has been heard about the condition of the official presidential palace across town, the symbol of authority in Ivory Coast, where Gbagbo worked — and where a veritable armory was uncovered.
Former Ivorian rebel commander Cherif Ousmane tells soldiers who come from the north and have never before set foot in Abidjan that the presidential palace in front of them is what they've been fighting for.

Enlarge Rebecca Blackwell/AP Boxes of weapons and ammunition line a hallway in the basement level of the presidential palace.

Rebecca Blackwell/AP

Boxes of weapons and ammunition line a hallway in the basement level of the presidential palace.

The manicured gardens are still neat, but the decorated fountains and bronze statues belie what is found on the grounds. The lawns are littered with abandoned army uniforms, body armor, helmets, cartridges and flip-flops — as if soldiers left in a rush. There's a tank in the backyard and a camouflaged armored vehicle nestled under canopy trees.
Ousmane accuses the ousted president of preparing for war.
"You'll find all sorts of weapons here: heavy weapons, rockets, mortars, BM-21 missiles — 8 feet long. Crates and crates of grenades and ammunition, mines. Assault rifles galore. The presidential palace was an armory, a powder keg," he says. "And all this to be used by Gbagbo against his own people, the Ivorian people."
The newly named Republican Forces, who back President-elect Alassane Ouattara, swept through the country at lightning speed earlier this month and reached Abidjan's city gates for the final military assault.
Inside The Palace Walls

At the palace, giant glass doors and windows are missing, likely hit by weapons fire. Glass crunches underfoot on the paving stones and just inside the entrance to the wing where Gbagbo was hastily sworn in as president after November's disputed election.
In the basement are cases upon cases of multiple rocket launchers that used to be called Stalin organs. This is what the United Nations was talking about when it said Gbagbo and his forces were using heavy weapons against civilians.
Standing by a stockpile, one soldier says he's in shock.
"He was even ready to make war against his own people," he says, "against us. Only God saved us."
The International Reaction
In Abidjan today, the Red Cross continued collecting corpses — some charred, some lying on the side of the road. The International Criminal Court in the Hague, as well as the U.N. Human Rights Commission, warn they are investigating atrocities and rights' abuses allegedly committed by both Gbagbo's and Ouattara's security forces in Ivory Coast.
"I think the position of the international community is that whoever commits atrocities, whoever commits crimes against humanity should be brought to book," Nigeria's foreign minister, Henry Odein Ajumogobia, said. "That's a lesson for all of us in our global village."
Nigeria is the current rotating chair of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which struggled to mediate in the Ivory Coast conflict. And Ajumogobia made the first diplomatic visit to Ouattara by a foreign dignitary since Gbagbo's ouster Monday. He said Nigeria fully supports the pursuit of justice.
"It's important that we learn lessons from this experience. We would only wish and counsel that the process be fair and transparent in determining the excesses that have taken place," Ajumogobia said.
The Nigerian minister says ECOWAS supports peace and reconciliation in Ivory Coast, but there must be no impunity.

Report: China Spying Extensively on U.S. Government and Companies

2011-04-16T03:24:00.000-07:00

A long report ran on Reuters today, detailing some of the ways the Chinese government and associated hackers spy on the United States and other Western governments and companies. In short, the Chinese are way better at cyberspying than pretty much anybody else.
There's a whole lot of very complicated information in the report, much of it just barely within a layman's grasp. If you'd like to be able to talk about it somewhat intelligently with your friends later, take a look through our condensed guide, below.
What's going on here? As you probably know, governments spy on each other all the time. Reuters's Mark Hosenball explains that "Today, most of that is done electronically, with computers rather than listening devices in chandeliers or human moles in tuxedos." And his report suggests that China has perhaps the best cyberspying operation on earth — better than the United States government and better than the largest U.S. companies. That means Chinese hackers are, overall, better than the American ones. They get more information from us than we do from them, and they work for or with the Chinese military.

Secret U.S. State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to Reuters by a third party, trace systems breaches -- colorfully code-named "Byzantine Hades" by U.S. investigators -- to the Chinese military. An April 2009 cable even pinpoints the attacks to a specific unit of China's People's Liberation Army.

What do these hackers do? They get sensitive military and corporate information through a variety of electronic means. Hosenball uses as a reference point the January 2010 malicious code attack on Google known as Aurora, "which compromised the Gmail accounts of human rights activists and succeeded in accessing Google source code repositories." Similar bits of malicious code have been used to get access to e-mails and e-mail addresses in the U.S. government, as well as "thousands" of companies. Then, hackers engage in so-called spear-phishing attacks, wherein hackers will contact key people and pose as trusted sources in order to extract sensitive information.

Two former national security officials involved in cyber-investigations told Reuters that Chinese intelligence and military units, and affiliated private hacker groups, actively engage in "target development" for spear-phish attacks by combing the Internet for details about U.S. government and commercial employees' job descriptions, networks of associates, and even the way they sign their emails -- such as U.S. military personnel's use of "V/R," which stands for "Very Respectfully" or "Virtual Regards."

Another bit of code that made it into at least one State Department computer in 2006 is known as the Gh0stNet Remote Access Tool, or RAT. It can "capture keystrokes, take screen shots, install and change files, as well as record sound with a connected microphone and video with a connected webcam."
How pervasive is this? It's pretty widespread. Hosenball reports that, "in the last five years, cyber-intrusions reported to the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, have increased more than 650 percent, from 5,503 incidents in fiscal 2006 to 41,776 four years later, according to a March 16 report by the Government Accountability Office." In the corporate world, Hosenball points out that the Aurora attack actually targeted thousands of companies. So far, only 34 have been identified.

The full scope of commercial computer intrusions is unknown. A study released by computer-security firm McAfee and government consulting company SAIC on March 28 shows that more than half of some 1,000 companies in the United States, Britain and other countries decided not to investigate a computer-security breach because of the cost. One in 10 companies will only report a security breach when legally obliged to do so, according to the study.

How does this affect me? Unless you work for the State Department, the Department of Defense, or one of the intelligence agencies, or are a higher-level employee of a large corporation, it probably doesn't affect you much directly. The espionage is aimed at the government and corporations as a way of learning as much as possible about secret systems in order to outperform or evade them. The Chinese are unlikely to invade any time soon, even if they find out when the secretary of defense takes his lunch break. Rather, the attacks are one of many tactics China is employing to keep its economy growing. But one expert says China won't do anything to destabilize the United States: "China's representatives acknowledged destabilization of U.S. markets would, in effect, be an attack on China's economy, itself."
What's being done about it? The U.S. government has reportedly begun "quiet, proxy-led talks with China over cyber issues." In addition, the "nominally independent" research group, China Institutes for Contemporary International Relations, made contact in mid-2009 with former U.S. diplomat James A. Lewis, who now works with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Lewis said that in his first meeting with his Chinese counterparts, a representative of the China Institutes asked: "Why does the Western press always blame China (for cyber-attacks)?" Lewis says he replied: "Because it's true."

While progress has been slow, Lewis told Reuters that both the U.S. and Chinese governments were monitoring the talks. "We're building the groundwork for official discussions."

Putting a fuel cell 'in your pocket'

2011-04-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

(PhysOrg.com) -- Technology using catalysts which make hydrogen from formic acid could eventually replace lithium batteries and power a host of mobile devices.

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Edman Tsang of Oxford University’s Department of Chemistry and colleagues are developing new catalysts which can produce hydrogen at room temperature without the need for solvents or additives.
Their initial results, reported in a recent paper in Nature Nanotechnology, are promising and suggest that a hydrogen fuel cell in your pocket might not be that far away.
The new approach involves placing a single atomic layer of palladium atoms onto silver nanoparticles. ‘The structural and electronic effects from the underlying silver greatly enhance the catalytic properties of palladium, giving impressive activity for the conversion of formic acid to hydrogen and carbon dioxide at room temperature,’ Edman told us.
He explains that the storage and handling of organic liquids, such as formic acid, is much easier and safer than storing hydrogen. The catalysts would enable the production of hydrogen from liquid fuel stored in a disposable or recycled cartridge, creating miniature fuel cells to power everything from mobile phones to laptops.
Another advantage of the new technology is that the gas stream generated from the reaction is mainly composed of hydrogen and carbon dioxide but virtually free from catalyst-poisoning carbon monoxide; removing the need for clean-up processes and extending the life of the fuel cells.
The chemists have worked closely with George Smith, Paul Bagot and co-workers at Oxford University’s Department of Materials to characterise the catalysts using atom probe tomography. The underlying technology is the subject of a recent Isis Innovation patent application.
‘There are lots of hurdles before you can get a real device, but we are looking at the possibility of using this new technology to replace lithium battery technology with an alternative which has a longer lifespan and has less impact on the environment,’ explains Edman.

Would You Buy an Apple Brand HDTV?

2011-04-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

You've heard of Apple TV, the $99 set-top box that allows you to rent movies and TV shows, watch Netflix titles, and stream photos and music from your home network to your living room television set. But what would you think about an Internet-connected HDTV built and branded by Apple?

According to online chatter, this is exactly what Apple is working on, with a potential release date set for sometime before the end of 2011. And why not? The LCD TV market is a $100 billion industry, and with Apple's ability to mass market trendy devices, would it really be so difficult for Apple to infiltrate our living rooms next?

This could all turn out to be much ado about nothing, but according to analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities, there were several "data points" dropped at an electronics trade show in China that point toward Apple releasing a full-fledged TV set.
"Our research suggests this Smart TV would go well beyond the miniature $99 second-generation Apple TV that the company released last fall and provide a full-blown TV product for consumers...The combination of Apple's powerful ecosystem, industrial design savvy, powerful brand, and ability to reinvent product categories could make Apple a powerful force in the TV world over the next few years."

Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, has been saying for some time that Apple would eventually introduce an Internet-connected HDTV, with a likely starting price of around $2,000. If any of this turns out to be true, it will be interesting to see how Apple proceeds, and whether or not the planned obsolescence model would be part of the package, as it is with many of Apple's products.

HTC Sense 3.0 UI Not to Come to Older Models; Official Tweet Brings Disappointment

2011-04-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

Well, this could be a little disappointing. However, we don’t think there’s reason for us to keep it a secret. HTC has officially decided that their unique HTC Sense 3.0 UI will not be rolling out to older devices. A tweet from HTC’s official Twitter account has confirmed this.

HTC has raised hardware issues as the reason for the inability of Sense 3.0 to run on older devices. In a gist, the tweet means that if you want to try your hands on the Sense 3.0 User Interface, you will have to go for new devices from HTC – which means you may have to spend money on an EVO 3D, a Sensation 4G or a Flyer.
The news, we think, is double-edged. It confirms that the new User Interface from HTC is all set to hit the smartphone community. At the same time, it is very much disappointing that devices like EVO 4G won’t get updated to the new UI. However, there are ways to pass over hurdles. Right?

Despite tweeting the probability that old devices not getting Sense 3.0, HTC has later clarified that the issue is with certain features of the new UI. So the company might want to look at making necessary arrangements so that owners of the old HTC devices too will get a taste of the new UI.
This might come about by way of rolling out the hardware-compatible features of Sense 3.0 to them. That is, indeed, a consoling gesture, we think. What do you feel? Do you know how the Sense UI works? Hit the play button to watch the video below:

Fukushima latest: the race to plug the radiation leak

2011-04-05T05:46:00.000-07:00

Top priority at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is to locate the source of radiation now pouring into the environment.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which operates the plant, says that contamination

spilling into the sea almost certainly originates from reactor 2, and that work to plug it could take months. But there may be other sources, according to reports today from Japan. In this briefing New Scientist assesses the latest information.

How much radioactive material has escaped into water?

On 1 April, TEPCO admitted that levels of radioactivity in groundwater underneath the facility were 10,000 times the legal limit, mainly as a result of contamination with iodine-131. At a monitoring point in the sea 330 metres south of the main water outlet from the plant, levels of iodine-131 were 3355 times the limit; levels 1263 times the limit were recorded 30 metres to the north.

What is the evidence that reactor 2 is the source?

It is the only one of the six reactor units at the site with suspected damage to the reactor core. The New York Times reported that US energy secretary Steven Chu has said that about 70 per cent of the core of one reactor – thought to be reactor 2 – has been damaged, and that another reactor has suffered a 33 per cent meltdown.

At reactors 1 and 3 there have been explosions of hydrogen gas powerful enough to blow the roof off their outer containment buildings, but the reactor pressure vessels containing the nuclear core appear to have stood firm.

Reactor 2, despite appearing the least damaged from the outside, may not have been so lucky. Four days after last month's earthquake and tsunami struck, an explosion was heard from somewhere in the inner containment, which houses the reactor's pressure vessel. Radiation levels are too high for an inspection, but the damage is thought to have been to a doughnut-shaped tank directly beneath the reactor vessel.

This "supression tank" recycles and regulates steam generated by heat from the reactor that is used to drive the electrical generators in the neighbouring turbine hall. The explosion may have damaged the reactor pressure vessel, perhaps holing it, leading to a partial meltdown and leak of the fuel inside.

What is being done to identify the leak and plug it?

Today, TEPCO engineers unsuccessfully attempted to show that the radioactive water reaching the sea came from a flooded trench beneath reactor 2 which houses electrical cabling for the unit. They poured 13 kilograms of a white powder into the trench, expecting it to emerge at the outlet into the sea. But it didn't, suggesting that the water from the trench is finding its way to the sea by a different route, possibly via groundwater.

What is behind stories about a "diaper"?

Yesterday, workers attempted to plug the trench by pumping in a polymer that soaks up 50 times its own volume of water, and so serves as a "molecular diaper". The idea was that the polymer would absorb the radioactive water, and would then be recovered and disposed of safely. This didn't work either.

What is the curtain being proposed for the sea around the plant?

TEPCO hopes to erect curtain-like barriers of silt around the water outlets to pen in the contaminated water flowing from the plant. "We would like to set up these barriers as soon as possible, but it could take several days to complete the work," Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for the government's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, told Kyodo News.

What other evidence is there that unit 2 is the source?

The cable trench there contains much more radiation than those in the other three damaged reactor units. In all four, the trenches are full to the brim with contaminated water, and threaten to overflow, potentially emptying into the sea about 50 metres away.

No one yet knows whether the tsunami filled up the trenches, or whether they have been flooded by the large volumes of water that have been sprayed onto the cores to prevent them overheating. The trench in reactor unit 2 is the most contaminated, with 1000 millisieverts of radiation per hour, exposure to which can cause acute radiation sickness. Radiation in the trench of unit 1, on the other hand, amounts to just 0.4 millisieverts per hour.

So how would water contaminated by the core have reached the trench?

An explosion in the suppression tank could have blasted a hole through to the neighbouring turbine hall. High levels of radiation registered in the turbine hall add credibility to this scenario. From there, it could have leaked through to the trench and flooded it or, if the trench was already full from the tsunami, have contaminated it. According to World Nuclear News, the trench probably contains about 6000 cubic metres of water. But it's still not clear how the water is reaching the ocean from the trench.

Why not pump water from the trench before it overflows, and store it somewhere where it can be dealt with safely?

TEPCO is proposing to do just that. It has said today that it plans to pump 11,500 tonnes of contaminated water from the trenches and turbine halls and dump it in the ocean, starting tomorrow. Though it contains radioactivity at 100 times the legal limit, TEPCO claims that dumping it out at sea will dilute it to safe levels. In a press release, TEPCO announced that it plans to dump 10,000 tonnes of water contaminated with low levels of radiation.

Andrew Sherry of the Dalton Nuclear Institute in Manchester, UK, told New Scientist that with US and French assistance, TEPCO is building a 6000-tonne water tank into which contaminated water will be sent for treatment in an ion-exchange unit that will decontaminate the water by scavenging the radioactive ions and replacing them for harmless ones. "Effectively, they are having to manage this contaminated water and treat it," he says.

Does the contamination of seawater pose a health threat?

So far, most of the radioactivity has come from iodine-131 which has a half-life of eight days. So within a month or so, the levels of iodine entering the sea will have fallen by a factor of 16. Some researchers contacted by New Scientist believe that more serious and long-lasting problems may have been caused by a plume of airborne radioactive material that blew north-west in the early days of the crisis.

The plume deposited radiation across Fukushima prefecture, with the worst contamination seen in the village of Iitate. Because the fallout included caesium-137, which takes 30 years to decay to half the original amount, farmers in "hotspots" may not be able to grow or sell their produce for many years. This is what happened in parts of western Europe after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine in 1986.

Kim Kardashian Brags About Her Cellulite

2011-04-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

Her diet makes it "so worth it."

Kim Kardashian claims she "couldn't care less" about her figure, and she's admitting to the physique flaw that every woman experiences. Here's why Kim Kardashian is not ashamed of her cellulite...in fact, she loves her "dimples."

We told you recently about Kim Kardashian's big lunch out with pals, in which she put her lips around a giant burger with fries and a Coke on the side. Her other indulgences? She told British "Cosmo" this: "I love Rice Krispies Treats, ice cream and frozen yogurt," Kardashian says.
Read: Kim Kardashian Thinks Her Wedding Will Be Bigger Than Royal Wedding?

When it comes to diets, the 30-year-old reality star reveals her thinking: "You can't torture yourself," she said, adding, "If I was stuck on a diet my whole life, I would be really miserable. I love to eat. If you can't enjoy your life then what's the point?"
Kim also admitted to the beauty nightmare many of us mortals spend major time and dollars trying to combat: "I have cellulite," Kim revealed. "So what! I've never claimed to be perfect. It's crazy anyone should assume that just because you're in the spotlight, you're flawless ... See this little dimple of cellulite here? It was so worth it for that cookies 'n' cream ice cream!"
Kim Kardashian's Diet: Burger, Fries, Muffin

Kim also says she's a size four, but "couldn't care less" if she were a size 14. Do all these body admissions make Kim seem more down-to-earth and relatable, or is it just a TMI-turnoff? And does Kim Kardashian ever talk about anything besides her body? We're still waiting on some really awesome charity action...

BMW Hints At CSL Successor With Special M3 Sedan Concept

2011-04-05T05:37:00.000-07:00

This past weekend BMW’s M performance division held a special event in Munich, Germany where it showcased a number of special models, namely, a concept version of the upcoming 2012 BMW M5 that we were fortunate enough to get leaked images of.

With all the hoopla surrounding the upcoming super-sedan, we almost didn’t notice that the BMW go-fast division also rolled out a very special concept version of its M3 Sedan. Built using parts from the track-focused M3 GTS, the new concept is essentially a stripped out and more hardcore version of the M3 Sedan and hints at a return of the CSL badge.

If you’re unfamiliar with the famous lettering, CSL stands for Coupe, Sport, Lightweight and marks the purest driver and most track-focused cars offered by BMW in the recent past. The last BMW M3 CSL was built in a limited run of just 1,400 cars between 2002 and 2004--such tiny numbers make it an exclusive offering, and only the most dedicated opt for the extra expense and somewhat harsher and noisier ride characteristics of the car.

Now the CSL badge looks set to finally return on the M3 but it’s unclear exactly what it will be like. We should see more power from the familiar high-rev 4.0-liter V-8 but not quite as high as the 450 horsepower from the 4.4-liter V-8 found in the M3 GTS. Some parts on this concept that are borrowed from the M3 GTS, however, include the custom 19-inch alloy wheels, uprated brakes and a blacked-out grille. Other modifications include a tuned exhaust system, lightweight construction and a subtle bootlid lip spoiler.

No word on production but most BMW concepts based on the automaker’s production cars tend to receive the green light.

Interestingly, there have been reports that BMW M is set to unveil a new lightweight concept at the 2011 Tokyo Auto Show this December, suggesting that we may see the return of the M3 CSL at the Japanese event.

McDonald's to hire 50,000 workers - in 1 day

2011-04-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- McDonald's said Monday that it is planning a one-day hiring spree of 50,000 new workers on April 19 for its U.S. restaurants.
McDonald's (MCD, Fortune 500) said that these new "Mcjobs" will include crew and management positions, part-time and full-time.

McDonald's, which has 14,000 restaurants in the United States, said the hires will occur nationwide.
"We're excited to offer 50,000 new jobs, all across America, all in one day," said Jan Fields, president of McDonald's U.S.A.
Fields, who started working at a McDonald's restaurant as a crew member behind the counter in 1978, said the 50,000 new hires will increase the U.S. workforce to 700,000 from its current level of 650,000.
She said the average pay for the jobs is $8.30 an hour. That's compared to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, though in some states the minimum wage is higher. She said that restaurant managers can make $50,000 a year.

How to Use New Auction Sites to Nab Must-Have Merchandise for up to 95% Off Retail

2011-04-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard of "Penny Auctions?"
They’re a new online auction model that is becoming hugely popular. Penny auctions allow individuals to do just what the name implies--buy new, popular products for just pennies on the dollar.

One of the most interesting and successful companies offering penny auctions is called QuiBids. This Oklahoma based company auctions off brand new products such as iPads, Macbooks, HDTVs, Digital Cameras, Gaming Consoles, and more for steep discounts, often as much as 85 percent off their retail price.

So, how do they do it? In the case of QuiBids, it’s quite simple. You see, whenever a prospective buyer places a bid for an item on QuiBids, the company collects a small fee. This fee is really inconsequential to the bidder, but based on the volume of sales and bids, the company is able to collect a substantial amount. This revenue allows the QuiBids to sell these expensive products to the winning bidders, even if their bid is only a tiny fraction of the value of the product.
Savvy bidders have recently been able to buy a brand new Apple Macbook Pro for $23.90, a Nikon D90 Camera for $45.84, and Sony Playstation 3 for $12.32. On average, buyers pay just 25 percent of retail for items they win in auction on QuiBids.
The auctions are also insanely fun. Each bid costs just 60 cents, and each auction has a strict time limit. When you place your bid, the system adds a little time to the auction to see if any other bids come in. If you have the winning bid when the clock runs out, you win the item for that price. According to QuiBids CEO Matt Beckham, “A huge part of our growth is generated by word-of-mouth and friends recommending us to their friends--so, we must be doing something right.”
But, the best part of QuiBids may be the “Buy-It-Now” feature. This allows bidders who did not win an auction to still buy the product they want and apply the cost of the bids they placed as a discount on the regular product price. So, you still get the item and the bids you placed previously in the auction don’t cost you anything!
Some customers have really made out like bandits on the site. We spoke with Cyril Bennet, a QuiBids customer in Arizona who recalled a recent auction that he participated in. “As I was bidding, my roommate was asking me how the auction was going. At that moment, gazing at the screen, I watched as the timer read, '3… 2… 1…SOLD!' and I won this VIZIO 32 HDTV for $2.60. True story. I’ve really enjoyed using QuiBids…its awesome!"
In today’s tight economy, it’s more important than ever to seek out the best possible deals on must-have items. Sites like QuiBids give savvy shoppers the opportunity to nab products at ridiculously low prices. Add in the element of fun, and the fact that their “Buy-It-Now” feature means that you can’t ever pay too much--and, it means there is simply no reason not to try it out for yourself.

Obama pushes for oil use reduction, clean fuel technology

2011-04-04T05:54:00.000-07:00

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Saturday curbing foreign oil dependence and investments in clean fuel technology are the main tenets of his plan to meet long-term energy needs and in turn strengthen the domestic economy.
"Real energy security can only come if we find ways to use less oil, if we invest in cleaner fuels and greater efficiency," he said during his weekly Internet and radio address, recorded at a UPS customer center in Maryland.
Obama said increasing oil exploration at home was part of the solution, but increasing fuel efficiency in cars and developing clean energy technology will help create jobs and protect the economy from swings in energy prices.
In the Republican response, House Speaker John Boehner, focused on the budget and spending patterns.
He said that no agreement had been reached with Democrats over the budget and said out-of-control spending is hindering job growth.
"Republicans continue to fight for the largest spending cuts possible to help end Washington's job crushing spending binge," he said in the weekly address.
Boehner said other Republican priorities include removing regulatory obstacles to job growth, expanding American energy production, ending the threat of tax hikes and approving stalled trade agreements.

Female Fetuses Aborted At Highest Rates Ever In India

2011-04-04T05:52:00.000-07:00

An embarrassing and distressing trend was confirmed in the most recent Indian census, reports the Globe and Mail: Female fetuses in India are being aborted at rates higher than ever before.

India has a massive population, currently at 1.21 billion people or 17% of the world's population, resident on approximately 2.4% of the world's surface area. Due to long-held societal biases against daughters, female fetuses and children are at greater risk than ever before. Since the last census, the ratio of girls to boys 6 and younger has dropped to 914 girls per 1,000 boys, down from 927 girls to 1,000 boys in the previous census. (The global female to male birth rate is 950 girls to every 1000 male boys). This number is the national average, meaning in some areas of India the ratio is far worse - one area of India reports a horrifying ratio of 883 girls to 1000 boys.

Why is this happening?
The reasons for this trend are complex. In India, tradition still demands parents of daughters pay an expensive dowry upon marrying, despite the fact that it is illegal. For that reason as well as the widely held view that girls are simply less desirable than boys girls are being aborted, killed at birth, or simply not being given adequate care as infants or young children like never before, meaning that fewer and fewer girls are surviving early childhood.

Indian government has attempted to take measures to quell this trend. Prenatal gender determination has been illegal since 1994. The government provides incentives to the parents of girl babies, such as financial payments at birth, provision of girls with bicycles and access to funds for secondary education, and even regular payments to the family intended to offset the costs of a future dowry.
Nothing seems to workHowever, these measures have met with almost no success in the face of tradition and long-held biases. The laws meant to protect female fetuses and babies are simply not being enforced: not only are the gender determination laws being ignored, the health ministry actually registered only 107 cases of female feticide in 2010. Given that scientists believe over 10 million female lives have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the last 20 years, this number is almost farcical.

As is the case in China, having a male-dominated population can cause serious societal issues, including having males who are unable to find a woman to marry. This can lead to antisocial behaviour, and place heavier and heavier burden on children to support their parents, when they themselves are less likely to have a family to support them in turn.

Skype's New Education Platform Connects Classrooms Around the Globe

2011-04-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

Good news for teachers looking to collaborate with their colleagues in other parts of the world. Skype has a new free service just for educators called Skype in the classroom, "a free global community created in response to, and in consultation with, the growing number of teachers" using the tool to help students learn.

Teachers already access the eight-year-old service for joint projects, global language exchanges, and guest lectures, but have had a hard time using it to find like-minded collaborators. Skype in the classroom solves that challenge by letting a teacher specify what grade or subject she teaches, and what kinds of projects she's interested in working on together, when she first sets up a profile.
Last December Missouri fifth grade teacher Kara Cornejo became one of the first beta testers of the tool. When Cornejo set up her profile, she indicated she "wanted to do a weather around the world unit." A one-minute search of other testers led her to another educator looking to collaborate on the same unit. By the end of the first day, five additional teachers had reached out to her.
The service already has almost 7,000 users, and Skype is looking for additional feedback on how to keep making the tool even better. They're also looking for tips, articles, links and success stories that can be added to their library of inspirational resources and ideas. They've already received classroom videos

Microsoft + Nokia = a Challenge for Apple

2011-04-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

The Samsung Focus runs on Windows Phone, a Microsoft platform that app developers are embracing.

IPHONES and Android phones seem to be everywhere I look in Silicon Valley. The future is obvious, isn’t it? IPhone, Android and no one else. They will form an exclusive duo in smartphones, just as Windows and Mac have in personal computers.

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Make way, however, for Windows Phone. Yes, Windows Phone. Despite Microsoft’s multiple, abject failures with mobile phones since 2002, many software developers and industry watchers expect Microsoft to become the second-largest smartphone player worldwide.
The evidence isn’t visible today, nor will it appear anytime soon. Even at year-end, Android will have a 39.5 percent share of smartphones worldwide, according to projections from IDC, the research firm. Symbian — used by Nokia, though it is not a major presence in the United States — would be second, at 20.9 percent, while Apple’s iOS, the software that powers the iPhone, would be third, at 15.7. Windows Phone 7 and its predecessor, Windows Mobile, would be far behind, at 5.5 percent.
These rankings are likely to change thanks to one player, Nokia, which has seen its market share shrink in the United States. It has formed an alliance with Microsoft and will switch from Symbian to Windows Phone software on its smartphones.
As a result, according to IDC predictions for 2015, Windows Phone 7 will occupy second place, at 20.9 percent of the market, ahead of iOS, which is projected to stay near 15 percent. BlackBerry, then as now, would be No. 4.
(In the United States alone, IDC expects Windows Phone 7 to jump to third place by 2015, at 15.6 percent, behind Android, at 48.9 percent, and iOS, at 16.8.)
Despite its recent worries, Nokia remains the largest phone manufacturer in the world, and it has no equal in building handsets inexpensively. Last year, it sold more than 452 million phones, including 100 million smartphones.
“The average price paid for smartphones is going to go down, and the total number of smartphones is going to go up,” says Andrew Lees, president of Microsoft’s mobile communications business.
Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7, a major overhaul, last fall. By year-end, Microsoft had 5,000 apps in its store, a milestone reached three times as fast as Google’s Android, says Al Hilwa, an IDC analyst.
Mr. Lees says that there are now more than 11,500 apps. It’s not close to the more than 350,000 apps that Apple boasts for iOS. But the difference may not be significant.
“What is often missed is the diminishing returns after 1,000 applications,” says Thomas R. Eisenmann, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “If a platform attracts the thousand-most-popular apps, then it provides almost anything a reasonable person would want to do with a smartphone.”
I sought out iPhone software developers who have done well with iPhone apps to see what they make of Windows Phone. I was surprised that many are already adding titles for Windows Phone, despite the tiny market share.
“Microsoft has a perception problem. Everyone thinks of them as a distant third, but they’ve got a good product,” says David Roberts, chief executive of PopCap, a games developer whose Plants vs. Zombies game is among the iPhone’s top-grossing apps. The company just introduced its first Windows Phone game, Bejeweled Live.
Halfbrick, based in Brisbane, Australia, is another successful iPhone software developer. Last week, its Fruit Ninja game was No. 5 in the App Store’s list of top paid apps. It, too, has introduced its first title for Windows Phone.
Shainiel Deo, Halfbrick’s C.E.O., says that while games were not a major attraction on past Microsoft phones, games will be a differentiator that will favor Microsoft this time. For example, the Marketplace store of Windows Phone employs the same user accounts used for Xbox Live.
Mr. Deo says he, too, is susceptible to iPhone-centrism. “In Australia, almost everyone I see has an iPhone,” he said. But “the next phone for a lot of the Xbox gamers will probably be a Windows Phone,” he remarked. “And there are 30 million Xbox Live subscribers.”
Jeffrey R. Williams, a professor of business strategy at Carnegie Mellon, predicts that Microsoft will become a major player in mobile devices for one overriding reason: “They’re willing to spend billions of dollars, just as they did with Xbox,” he says. “And this is even more strategic.”
There is also little need to focus on tight integration with Microsoft Office, a keystone of the company’s marketing campaigns for its earlier phones. The Office integration pitch was aimed at corporate I.T. departments, which also made the purchasing decisions that shaped the personal computer industry.
The world has changed since then, Professor Eisenmann points out. “In PCs, it was business leading consumers.” he said. “This is a different game: consumers leading business.”

SMARTPHONES are a different case for another reason. In the industry’s formative period, Windows and Macs didn’t mix well on the same network, but different brands of smartphones share the same voice and data networks just fine. “I don’t think the network effects in smartphones are as strong,” Professor Williams says.
Nokia is in Microsoft’s camp. Good reviews of the software are coming in. Some leading iPhone developers are taking it seriously, and the company has plenty of capital to help it form alliances. Unexpectedly, Microsoft is well positioned to leap into the top ranks of smartphone players. A story to hearten latecomers everywhere.

How to Make Your PC as Fast as the Day You Bought It

2011-04-04T05:36:00.000-07:00

One of the most frustrating things in life is a slow computer.
Every few years, we buy an expensive new PC and love how fast it starts up, runs programs, and loads websites. Inevitably though, it starts to slow down until eventually we are pulling our hair out waiting for it to do routine tasks.

Why is this? It turns out the answer is actually quite simple and you don't even need to be "technical" to understand the causes and solutions.
The good news: It's not the computer hardware that's the problem. In most cases, the hardware you have is perfectly capable of being restored to its original glory and kept in fast running condition with minimal effort.
Rather, the problem lies with changes that occur to the PC's software. The two most common causes of slowdown (along with easy solutions) are:
1. The most common problem: registery errors
Every time you (or your kids) load a program, game, or file, your PC's software registery is updated with new instructions needed to operate that item. However, when the item is removed, these instructions usually remain on your PC. Every time you run your computer it tries to execute these instructions but, because the related program can't be found, it causes a registry error. Your PC is doing a lot more work than it should be and the result is a significantly slower computer.
One of the best ways to manage this is with a neat little tool from Support.com, a Silicon Valley based company. It's called ARO 2011 and it scans, identifies, and fixes registry errors--resulting in a computer that's a lot more like it was when you first bought it. On top of the amazing results it offers, it's so easy to install and use that it was recently awarded a coveted 4.5 star rating (out of 5) by CNET's editorial staff and has been downloaded more than 30 million times.
You can now get a free working version of the software which will quickly scan your entire PC and identify all of the registry errors that may be bogging it down. The free version also scans for junk and checks your PC's baseline security status. It will eliminate the first 100 errors for free, and if you have more errors that you want to clean up or want to set the program to run on a regular basis (which is recommended), you can easily upgrade to the full version for just $29.95. After that, registry errors will no longer be a problem.

2. Spyware and viruses
Spyware and viruses are software programs that are loaded on your computer without your knowledge or permission. They have various purposes, including:

Changing the default search engine in your browser.
Tracking your Web surfing habits and showing you targeted advertising.
Using your email program to send out spam to other email addresses.
Stealing your personal information.

Most spyware and viruses get onto our computers through files that we download from the Internet or as attachments to emails. They tend to take up a lot of computing power and, as a result, will significantly slow down your computer.
The simple rule of thumb to follow is to never download any free software programs from companies you do not know and trust, especially screensavers, emoticons, and the like. In addition, you should never open any attachment to an email unless you are 100 percent certain you know and trust the sender. In addition, make sure you have a good anti-virus/spyware removal software running at all times.

How You Can Learn a Language in only 10 Days

2011-04-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

Most people recognize the many benefits of learning a foreign language: You can travel to foreign countries and feel comfortable, be a more productive and enticing employee in today’s competitive job market, and immerse yourself in the vast cultures that surround you. Scientific studies have even shown that learning a new language helps to keep memories sharp and naturally enhances overall brain function.

But did you know that you can learn a new language in as little as 10 days? For years, the FBI and National Security Agency have relied on the Pimsleur Approach to learn new languages quickly, and now you can too.
Your brain is already wired to learn a language in 10 days. You just need to activate it.
Dr. Pimsleur, a Ph.D. and specialist in the field of applied linguistics, devoted his life and career to learning languages and understanding the psychology of language acquisition. He recognized through extensive research that effective communication in any language depends on mastery of a relatively limited number of words. And, trying to learn too many words at first can actually slow the language retention process. However, once this “core vocabulary” is mastered and used consistently, it provides a framework for accelerated language learning. The Pimsleur Approach aims each lesson at teaching you to use the core vocabulary of the language, so you can speak the most in the least amount of time. It's not how many words you know, but rather, which words you can use.
Each Pimsleur Approach lesson has been scientifically sequenced to rapidly lock language material into your brain after just one listen. Just sit back and listen while the audio does the work for you.
The Pimsleur Language Programs

The entire Pimsleur Approach is what language learning should be: quick, fun and easy. You'll absorb your new language effortlessly without any reading, writing or computer use. The Pimsleur Approach has a 100 percent guarantee: Speak in 10 days or you don't pay.

Who is Dr. Pimsleur?

Dr. Pimsleur was a language educator for more than 20 years. He noticed that children have an amazing ability to learn new languages quickly. He spent his life developing this course to let you, as an adult, learn a new language as easily as a child would. You might not realize it, but you've already learned one language using the Pimsleur Approach. Your first language.

Top 5Thriftiest TV Families

2011-04-04T05:31:00.000-07:00

Sure, TV land has always been filled with characters who live in impossibly large New York City apartments ('Friends' gang, we're looking at you!). But there are also TV types who represent their more modest salaries in a realistic way.For example, no one could turn a lump of cheap meat into a hearty meal for a family of five like Roseanne Conner, and few look cuter clipping coupons than 'The Middle''s Frankie Heck. And, with our shaky economy these days, it was only a matter of time before reality TV caught up -- enter TLC's 'Extreme Couponing' (premieres Wed., April 6, 9PM ET).

In honor penny-pinching pioneers and frugal mamas everywhere, we proudly count down our 10 favorite thrifty '7th Heaven' (1996-2007)
Cheap chic: Yeah, okay, the Camdens lived rent-free in a pretty swell house owned by the church where papa Eric was the reverend. But still ... mom Annie fed, clothed and managed to provide more than just the basics for her brood, which consisted of seven (seven!) kids. On a preacher's salary. She even put her nifty thrifty skills (not to mention several college degrees and some serious handywoman talents) to use when the church was in need of funds for repairs. And, despite the harried sked she led raising seven kiddies, she started her own muffin baking biz to earn extra cash, inspiring the entrepreneurial spirit in daughter Ruthie in one memorable episode.

'Malcolm in the Middle' (2000-06)
Cheap chic: Dad Hal was a low-paid cubicle dweller and mom Lois was a cash register jockey at the Lucky Aide discount store. And that did not provide enough income to raise their five rambunctious boys in anything even remotely resembling luxury. Hal and Lois and the rest of the fam were lucky just to be able to pay the bills and keep the boys fed and clothed (though, as younger bro Dewey lamented, a steady stream of hand me downs meant he never owned a pair of pants without holes or stains or funny smells). Still, strict mama Lois assured Malcolm it would all be worth it in the end, as she explained in the series finale that the reason she ruined his chance for a well-paying job was because he was meant to struggle, go to Harvard and eventually become the first President of the United States who would truly empathize with working class citizens like his family.

'Roseanne' (1988-97)
Cheap chic: Dan and Roseanne Conner were frequently unemployed and even more frequently broke, but that didn't stop them from raising their family with a lot of love and laughter. Even in the face of illnesses, family squabbles, the failure of Dan's dream motorcycle shop and daughter Becky's dashed dreams of going to college, Roseanne found a way to keep her family going with a little bit of creativity. Roseanne "accidentally" mailed the wrong checks to the wrong payees to buy herself some time with the bills, gave up what she wanted so Becky would have a new dress for a school dance and, in an episode that included a guest appearance by future Oscar nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, spilled the secrets to saving money on meatloaf and breakfast cereal. Yes, Roseanne always proved to be one of the all-time great boob tube domestic doyennes.

'The Middle' (2009-present)
Cheap chic: Mike Heck is the manager of a local quarry ... and was temporarily laid off after discovering dinosaur bones on the grounds. Wife Frankie Heck is a car salesperson ... actually, the least successful car salesperson at Ehlert Motors. Needless to say, money is tight in Casa Heck, which leads to some creative thinking on Frankie's part. She's filled a car with jelly beans for a counting contest she hoped would generate sales (and which didn't go as planned), tried to turn a rug shopping trip into a romantic getaway with Mike (which was thwarted by a sick kid) and got the family to give up cable TV to save money (turned out she and Mike missed it just as much as the kids did). All that makes this sitcom the sweetest and most realistic view of a blue collar family since the Conners rode off into the TV sunset.

'Desperate Housewives' (2004-present)
Cheap chic: Wisteria Lane wife and mother of five Lynette Scavo defines the term "tough cookie." She's been a stay-at-home mom and a working woman (with a boss from hell) while hubby Tom played Mr. Mom. She's supported Tom's dream of opening a pizza joint and didn't divorce him when it turned out he'd fathered a child, Kayla -- and owed a slew of back child support -- before she married him. And then she continued to stretch her family's finances even further when Kayla's mom died and the Scavos took her into their home, just before Lynette was diagnosed with cancer and needed to borrow money for treatment. Need more? The Scavos also had hefty legal bills thanks to son Porter's dalliance with an older, married woman and had to sell the pizzeria to pay them off, which sent Lynette, once again, back to the workforce, where she had to hide the fact that she was preggers with twins because she feared losing her job. But through it all, Lynette managed to keep her kiddies fed and clothed and living in their swanky house in the 'hood. Like we said, tough cookie.

France Fines Google $142,000 for Privacy ViolationsFrance Fines Google $142,000 for Privacy Violations

2011-03-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

France’s data privacy regulator has fined Google €100,000 ($141,670 USD) for gathering data from private Wi-Fi networks while collecting imagery for Google Street View.
Google Street View has been controversial from the start; Many people and privacy groups didn’t like Google collecting imagery of buildings, license plates and faces for the panoramic-view service, complementary to Google Maps.

Google answered those complaints by blurring sensitive parts of the images, but the service raised far more privacy concerns in May 2010, when Google admitted that its Street View cars (mistakenly, according to Google) collected and stored data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. The incident instigated privacy probes against Google in countries all over the world, including in Australia, Canada, Germany, South Korea and the U.S.
In August 2010, French police stopped a Google Street View car under orders of National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) to inspect whether Google was still collecting Wi-Fi data.
Now, CNIL said that Google has pledged to erase the data it had collected, but it found “that Google has not refrained from using the data identifying Wi-Fi access points of individuals without their knowledge,” which prompted the fine.
“It is a record fine since we obtained the power in 2004 to impose financial sanctions in 2004,” the head of the CNIL Yann Padova told Le Parisien.
In July 2010, Google said that its “cars will no longer collect any Wi-Fi information at all,” but the fallout from the incident is still a reminder of how unpleasant the consequences of not respecting users’ privacy can be — especially for a giant company like Google.

Paperback rider: The technology that enables a computer to print off a full-working bicycle

2011-03-22T05:42:00.000-07:00

This bicycle is the first in the world to be created simply by printing it out on a computer, using groundbreaking new technology.
The fully-working cycle, which is made of nylon, is the result of an extraordinary project and is as strong as steel and aluminium but weighs 65 per cent less.
Scientists in Bristol designed the bike on a computer and sent it to a printer, which placed layers of melted nylon powder on top of each other to build-up the machine.

Individual components such as gears, pedals and wheels are usually made in different factories and assembled into a finished bike but the Airbike is a single, complete part.

The wheels, bearings and axle are incorporated into the 'growing' process, known as Additive Layer Manufacturing.

The Airbike can be built to the rider's own specification so requires no adjustment. It also requires no conventional maintenance or assembly.

It is made by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space group in Filton, near Bristol, The 3D printing method allows products to be made from a fine powder of nylon, carbon-reinforced plastics or metals such as titanium, stainless steel or aluminium.

They are drawn using computer-aided design and then sent to a printer, which is filled with the powdered material.

A computer splits the 3D design into many 2D layers and a laser beam is used to melt the powder material into the first of the layers.

This is then covered by a new layer of powder and the process is repeated with the next 'slice'.

The manufacturing process uses about one-tenth of the material required in traditional methods, reducing waste.

The technology is likely to be used in industrial applications such as aerospace, the motor industry and engineering.

Lead engineer Andy Hawkins said: 'The possibilities with ALM are huge - it's a game-changing technology.

'The beauty is that complex designs do not cost any extra to produce. The laser can draw any shape you like.

'Many unique design features have been incorporated into the Airbike, such as saddle cushioning or the integrated bearings encased within the hubs.'

Robin Southwell, chief executive of EADS UK, said: 'The Airbike is a fantastic example of British innovation at its very best.

'The team at EADS in Bristol includes world-class engineers who continue to push boundaries by working at the forefront of technology.'

Safe nuclear does exist, and China is leading the way with thorium

2011-03-22T05:34:00.000-07:00

A few weeks before the tsunami struck Fukushima’s uranium reactors and shattered public faith in nuclear power, China revealed that it was launching a rival technology to build a safer, cleaner, and ultimately cheaper network of reactors based on thorium.

This passed unnoticed –except by a small of band of thorium enthusiasts – but it may mark the passage of strategic leadership in energy policy from an inert and status-quo West to a rising technological power willing to break the mould.

If China’s dash for thorium power succeeds, it will vastly alter the global energy landscape and may avert a calamitous conflict over resources as Asia’s industrial revolutions clash head-on with the West’s entrenched consumption.

China’s Academy of Sciences said it had chosen a “thorium-based molten salt reactor system”. The liquid fuel idea was pioneered by US physicists at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 1960s, but the US has long since dropped the ball. Further evidence of Barack `Obama’s “Sputnik moment”, you could say.

Chinese scientists claim that hazardous waste will be a thousand times less than with uranium. The system is inherently less prone to disaster.

“The reactor has an amazing safety feature,” said Kirk Sorensen, a former NASA engineer at Teledyne Brown and a thorium expert.
“If it begins to overheat, a little plug melts and the salts drain into a pan. There is no need for computers, or the sort of electrical pumps that were crippled by the tsunami. The reactor saves itself,” he said.
“They operate at atmospheric pressure so you don’t have the sort of hydrogen explosions we’ve seen in Japan. One of these reactors would have come through the tsunami just fine. There would have been no radiation release.”
Thorium is a silvery metal named after the Norse god of thunder. The metal has its own “issues” but no thorium reactor could easily spin out of control in the manner of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, or now Fukushima.
Professor Robert Cywinksi from Huddersfield University said thorium must be bombarded with neutrons to drive the fission process. “There is no chain reaction. Fission dies the moment you switch off the photon beam. There are not enough neutrons for it continue of its own accord,” he said.
Dr Cywinski, who anchors a UK-wide thorium team, said the residual heat left behind in a crisis would be “orders of magnitude less” than in a uranium reactor.
The earth’s crust holds 80 years of uranium at expected usage rates, he said. Thorium is as common as lead. America has buried tons as a by-product of rare earth metals mining. Norway has so much that Oslo is planning a post-oil era where thorium might drive the country’s next great phase of wealth. Even Britain has seams in Wales and in the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Almost all the mineral is usable as fuel, compared to 0.7pc of uranium. There is enough to power civilization for thousands of years.
I write before knowing the outcome of the Fukushima drama, but as yet none of 15,000 deaths are linked to nuclear failure. Indeed, there has never been a verified death from nuclear power in the West in half a century. Perspective is in order.
We cannot avoid the fact that two to three billion extra people now expect – and will obtain – a western lifestyle. China alone plans to produce 100m cars and buses every year by 2020.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said the world currently has 442 nuclear reactors. They generate 372 gigawatts of power, providing 14pc of global electricity. Nuclear output must double over twenty years just to keep pace with the rise of the China and India.
If a string of countries cancel or cut back future reactors, let alone follow Germany’s Angela Merkel in shutting some down, they shift the strain onto gas, oil, and coal. Since the West is also cutting solar subsidies, they can hardly expect the solar industry to plug the gap.
BP’s disaster at Macondo should teach us not to expect too much from oil reserves deep below the oceans, beneath layers of blinding salt. Meanwhile, we rely uneasily on Wahabi repression to crush dissent in the Gulf and keep Arabian crude flowing our way. So where can we turn, unless we revert to coal and give up on the ice caps altogether? That would be courting fate.
US physicists in the late 1940s explored thorium fuel for power. It has a higher neutron yield than uranium, a better fission rating, longer fuel cycles, and does not require the extra cost of isotope separation.
The plans were shelved because thorium does not produce plutonium for bombs. As a happy bonus, it can burn up plutonium and toxic waste from old reactors, reducing radio-toxicity and acting as an eco-cleaner.
Dr Cywinski is developing an accelerator driven sub-critical reactor for thorium, a cutting-edge project worldwide. It needs to £300m of public money for the next phase, and £1.5bn of commercial investment to produce the first working plant. Thereafter, economies of scale kick in fast. The idea is to make pint-size 600MW reactors.
Yet any hope of state support seems to have died with the Coalition budget cuts, and with it hopes that Britain could take a lead in the energy revolution. It is understandable, of course. Funds are scarce. The UK has already put its efforts into the next generation of uranium reactors. Yet critics say vested interests with sunk costs in uranium technology succeeded in chilling enthusiasm.
The same happened a decade ago to a parallel project by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). France’s nuclear industry killed proposals for funding from Brussels, though a French group is now working on thorium in Grenoble.
Norway’s Aker Solution has bought Professor Rubbia’s patent. It had hoped to build the first sub-critical reactor in the UK, but seems to be giving up on Britain and locking up a deal to build it in China instead, where minds and wallets are more open.
So the Chinese will soon lead on this thorium technology as well as molten-salts. Good luck to them. They are doing Mankind a favour. We may get through the century without tearing each other apart over scarce energy and wrecking the planet.

What happens when computers stop shrinking?

2011-03-22T05:29:00.000-07:00

I remember vividly sitting in Mark Weiser's office in Silicon Valley almost twenty years ago as he explained to me his vision of the future. Gesturing with his hands, he excitedly told me a new revolution was about to happen that would change the world. Weiser was part of the computer elite, working at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, which was the first to pioneer the personal computer, the laser printer, and Windows-type architecture with graphical user interface), but he was a maverick, an iconoclast who was shattering conventional wisdom, and also a member of a wild rock band.
Back then (it seems like a lifetime ago), personal computers were new, just beginning to penetrate people's lives, as they slowly warmed up to the idea of buying large, bulky desktop computers in order to do spreadsheet analysis and a little bit of word processing. The Internet was still largely the isolated province of scientists like me, cranking out equations to fellow scientists in an arcane language.
There were raging debates about whether this box sitting on your desk would dehumanize civilization with its cold, unforgiving stare. Even political analyst William F. Buckley had to defend the word processor against intellectuals who railed against it and refused to ever touch a computer, calling it an instrument of the philistines.
It was in this era of controversy that Weiser coined the expression "ubiquitous computing." Seeing far past the personal computer, he predicted that the chips would one day become so cheap and plentiful that they would be scattered throughout the environment -- in our clothing, our furniture, the walls, even our bodies. And they would all be connected to the Internet, sharing data, making our lives more pleasant, monitoring all our wishes. Everywhere we moved, chips would be there to silently carry out our desires. The environment would be alive.
For its time, Weiser's dream was outlandish, even preposterous. Most personal computers were still expensive and not even connected to the Internet. The idea that billions of tiny chips would one day be as cheap as running water was considered lunacy.
And then I asked him why he felt so sure about this revolution. He calmly replied that computer power was growing exponentially, with no end in sight. Do the math, he implied. It was only a matter of time. (Sadly, Weiser did not live long enough to see his revolution come true, dying of cancer in 1999.)
The driving source behind Weiser's prophetic dreams is something called Moore's law, a rule of thumb that has driven the computer industry for fifty or more years, setting the pace for modern civilization like clockwork. Moore's law simply says that computer power doubles about every eighteen months. According to Moore's law, every Christmas your new computer games are almost twice as powerful (in terms of the number of transistors) as those from the previous year. Furthermore, as the years pass, this incremental gain becomes monumental. For example, when you receive a birthday card in the mail, it often has a chip that sings "Happy Birthday" to you. Remarkably, that chip has more computer power than all the Allied forces of 1945. Hitler, Churchill, or Roosevelt might have killed to get that chip. But what do we do with it? After the birthday, we throw the card and chip away. Today, your cell phone has more computer power than all of NASA back in 1969, when it placed two astronauts on the moon. Video games, which consume enormous amounts of computer power to simulate 3-D situations, use more computer power than mainframe computers of the previous decade. The Sony PlayStation of today, which costs $300, has the power of a military supercomputer of 1997, which cost millions of dollars.
So the old paradigm (a single chip inside a desktop computer or laptop connected to a computer) is being replaced by a new paradigm (thousands of chips scattered inside every artifact, such as furniture, appliances, pictures, walls, cars, and clothes, all talking to one another and connected to the Internet).
When these chips are inserted into an appliance, it is miraculously transformed. When chips were inserted into typewriters, they became word processors. When inserted into telephones, they became cell phones. When inserted into cameras, they became digital cameras. Pinball machines became video games. Phonographs became iPods. Airplanes became deadly Predator drones. Each time, an industry was revolutionized and was reborn. Eventually, almost everything around us will become intelligent. Chips will be so cheap they will even cost less than the plastic wrapper and will replace the bar code. Companies that do not make their products intelligent may find themselves driven out of business by their competitors that do.
Of course, we will still be surrounded by computer monitors, but they will resemble wallpaper, picture frames, or family photographs, rather than computers. Imagine all the pictures and photographs that decorate our homes today; now imagine each one being animated, moving, and connected to the Internet. When we walk outside, we will see pictures move, since moving pictures will cost as little as static ones.
The destiny of computers -- like other mass technologies like electricity, paper, and running water -- is to become invisible, that is, to disappear into the fabric of our lives, to be everywhere and nowhere, silently and seamlessly carrying out our wishes.
Today, when we enter a room, we automatically look for the light switch, since we assume that the walls are electrified. In the future, the first thing we will do on entering a room is to look for the Internet portal, because we will assume the room is intelligent. As novelist Max Frisch once said, "Technology [is] the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it."
We have to ask: How long can this computer revolution last? If Moore's law holds true for another fifty years, it is conceivable that computers will rapidly exceed the computational power of the human brain. By midcentury, a new dynamic will occur. As George Harrison once said, "All things must pass." Even Moore's law must end, and with it the spectacular rise of computer power that has fueled economic growth for the past half-century.
Today, we take it for granted, and in fact believe it is our birthright, to have computer products of ever-increasing power and complexity. This is why we buy new computer products every year, knowing that they are almost twice as powerful as last year's model. But if Moore's law collapses -- and every generation of computer products has roughly the same power and speed of the previous generation -- then why bother to buy new computers?
Since chips are placed in a wide variety of products, this could have disastrous effects on the entire economy. As entire industries grind to a halt, millions could lose their jobs, and the economy could be thrown into turmoil.
Years ago, when we physicists pointed out the inevitable collapse of Moore's law, traditionally the industry pooh-poohed our claims, implying that we were crying wolf. The end of Moore's law was predicted so many times, they said, that they simply did not believe it.
But not anymore.
Two years ago, I keynoted a major conference for Microsoft at their main headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Three thousand of the top engineers at Microsoft were in the audience, waiting to hear what I had to say about the future of computers and telecommunications. Staring out at the huge crowd, I could see the faces of the young, enthusiastic engineers who would be creating the programs that will run the computers sitting on our desks and laps. I was blunt about Moore's law, and said that the industry has to prepare for this collapse. A decade earlier, I might have been met with laughter or a few snickers. But this time I only saw people nodding their heads.
So the collapse of Moore's law is a matter of international importance, with trillions of dollars at stake. But precisely how it will end, and what will replace it, depends on the laws of physics. The answers to these physics questions will eventually rock the economic structure of capitalism.
To understand this situation, it is important to realize that the remarkable success of the computer revolution rests on several principles of physics. First, computers have dazzling speed because electrical signals travel at near the speed of light, which is the ultimate speed in the universe. In one second, a light beam can travel around the world seven times or reach the moon. Electrons are also easily moved around and loosely bound to the atom (and can be scraped off just by combing your hair, walking across a carpet, or by doing your laundry -- that's why we have static cling). The combination of loosely bound electrons and their enormous speed allows us to send electrical signals at a blinding pace, which has created the electric revolution of the past century.
Second, there is virtually no limit to the amount of information you can place on a laser beam. Light waves, because they vibrate much faster than sound waves, can carry vastly more information than sound. (For example, think of stretching a long piece of rope and then vibrating one end rapidly. The faster you wiggle one end, the more signals you can send along the rope. Hence, the amount of information you can cram onto a wave increases the faster you vibrate it, that is, by increasing its frequency.) Light is a wave that vibrates at roughly 10^14 cycles per second (that is 1 with 14 zeros after it). It takes many cycles to convey one bit of information (a 1 or a 0). This means that a fiber-optic cable can carry roughly 10^11 bits of information on a single frequency. And this number can be increased by cramming many signals into a single optical fiber and then bundling these fibers into a cable. This means that, by increasing the number of channels in a cable and then increasing the number of cables, one can transmit information almost without limit.
Third, and most important, the computer revolution is driven by miniaturizing transistors. A transistor is a gate, or switch, that controls the flow of electricity. If an electric circuit is compared to plumbing, then a transistor is like a valve controlling the flow of water. In the same way that the simple twist of a valve can control a huge volume of water, the transistor allows a tiny flow of electricity to control a much larger flow, thereby amplifying its power.
At the heart of this revolution is the computer chip, which can contain hundreds of millions of transistors on a silicon wafer the size of your fingernail. Inside your laptop there is a chip whose transistors can be seen only under a microscope. These incredibly tiny transistors are created the same way that designs on T-shirts are made.
Designs on T-shirts are mass-produced by first creating a stencil with the outline of the pattern one wishes to create. Then the stencil is placed over the cloth, and spray paint is applied. Only where there are gaps in the stencil does the paint penetrate to the cloth. Once the stencil is removed, one has a perfect copy of the pattern on the T-shirt.
Likewise, a stencil is made containing the intricate outlines of millions of transistors. This is placed over a wafer containing many layers of silicon, which is sensitive to light. Ultraviolet light is then focused on the stencil, which then penetrates through the gaps of the stencil and exposes the silicon wafer.
Then the wafer is bathed in acid, carving the outlines of the circuits and creating the intricate design of millions of transistors. Since the wafer consists of many conducting and semiconducting layers, the acid cuts into the wafer at different depths and patterns, so one can create circuits of enormous complexity.
One reason why Moore's law has relentlessly increased the power of chips is because UV light can be tuned so that its wavelength is smaller and smaller, making it possible to etch increasingly tiny transistors onto silicon wafers. Since UV light has a wavelength as small as 10 nanometers (a nanometer is a billionth of a meter), this means that the smallest transistor that you can etch is about thirty atoms across.
But this process cannot go on forever. At some point, it will be physically impossible to etch transistors in this way that are the size of atoms. You can even calculate roughly when Moore's law will finally collapse: when you finally hit transistors the size of individual atoms.
Around 2020 or soon afterward, Moore's law will gradually cease to hold true and Silicon Valley may slowly turn into a rust belt unless a replacement technology is found. Transistors will be so small that quantum theory or atomic physics takes over and electrons leak out of the wires. For example, the thinnest layer inside your computer will be about five atoms across. At that point, according to the laws of physics, the quantum theory takes over. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that you cannot know both the position and velocity of any particle. This may sound counterintuitive, but at the atomic level you simply cannot know where the electron is, so it can never be confined precisely in an ultrathin wire or layer and it necessarily leaks out, causing the circuit to short-circuit. According to the laws of physics, eventually the Age of Silicon will come to a close, as we enter the Post-Silicon Era.

U.S. Supreme Court denies appeal on Eminem's music royalty dispute

2011-03-22T05:22:00.000-07:00

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t get involved in a royalty dispute between Universal Music Group and rap artist Eminem and his producers over music sold online, in a case that could have far-reaching implications for record deals across the industry.
The court this morning denied an appeal from Universal Music Group.
The dispute centers on the rate of royalties Eminem and his producers are entitled to for music sold online – in downloads from iTunes, for example, or ringtones sold through cellphone providers.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled last year that the artist and his producers were entitled to a much bigger percentage of royalties from digital music sales than from physical CD and album sales.
Universal Music Group appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court.
The higher court’s denial of that appeal means the case will return to the Los Angeles courtroom where the case was first heard, within 30 to 60 days to determine damages, said Richard Busch, the Nashville-based attorney with King & Ballow, who represents Eminem’s producers, FBT Productions.
Eminem and FBT stand to gain tens of millions of dollars in retroactive royalties. They had been receiving 12 percent of online music royalties sold. The 9th Circuit said they were entitled to 50 percent instead.
Industry observers say the case could impact more than just Eminem’s royalties, and at a high cost to recording companies. A large percentage of record contracts like Eminem’s, which was signed in 1998 -- predating the digital era, spelled out smaller royalty payments for music sold in physical form than music licensed for other uses – in movies, for example. The 9th Circuit determined that the sale of online music is a “license” rather than a sale.

Defending against botnet attacks – by fighting back

2011-03-20T09:48:00.000-07:00

Online malcontents who try to take down web servers now face a new kind of defence system that can fight back. A common attack known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) knocks websites offline by flooding them with traffic from a horde of infected computers, or botnet. Yuri Gushin and Alex Behar of the internet security firm Radware, based in Tel Aviv, Israel, say they have turned this attack back on its perpetrators.

Most current DDoS defences work by blocking connections from attacking computers or throttling data rates to let only a certain amount of traffic through. But these methods can't handle the larger attacks that are increasingly common. "Today's technologies are not cutting it," explain Gushin.

The pair's more sophisticated technique manipulates an attacker's connection in order to make botnet computers work harder. By intentionally ignoring part of the intended connection request they are able to trick the attacker's computer into making a very slow connection to the server as it continues to try to make contact. This lasts for around 5 minutes. When the attacking botnet computer is slowed down in this way it will automatically try to send new connection requests, badly affecting its performance. Eventually the botnet computers making the attack will be forced to give up, depending on the instructions given to them by the botmaster who launched the attack.

This approach proved successful last year, when Gushin and Behar helped defend against attacks perpetrated by Anonymous, the loose collective of internet activists that took up digital arms to fight for WikiLeaks. "We were able to really turn the tide on the attack," says Behar

Who goes there?

Of course there's no point in stopping attacks if legitimate users can't get through, so the pair also challenge incoming connections to prove they are genuine requests before they launch their defence When a connection attempt is made, the server responds with a piece of Javascript or Flash that an ordinary user's computer will load in their browser. This provides a key that verifies the user as legitimate and allows them to access the site normally.

Attackers won't pass the test because computers in a botnet access servers without using a browser. "Unless it's a real browser on the other side with a real human behind it, the bots usually wouldn't render that content," explains Behar. The pair released a free version of this verification technique, dubbed Roboo, at the Black Hat Europe conference in Barcelona this week.

The defensive advantage afforded by Roboo could be short-lived, though, if attackers modify their tools to execute the test code. "If such techniques become widely deployed, attackers are driven to overcome them, yet nothing technically stops attackers using more sophisticated malware to do so," explains Steven Simpson, a researcher in network resilience at Lancaster University, UK.

12-Hour Telethon to Help Japan Relief Efforts

2011-03-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

Hanson and SXSW have teamed up for a 12-hour telethon to benefit the victims of the Japan quake and Pacific tsunamami, streamed live at http://sxsw4japan.org. The telethon will be streamed via Livestream, from 12pm CDT Saturday to 12pm CDT Sunday. Check it out now or keep reading for more info.
SXSW and Hanson have partnered to host a 12-hour telethon with the aim of offering assistance and support to victims of the magnitude 8.9 earthquake on March 11th, 2011. The earthquake and resulting tsunami has left countless dead and homeless across Japan and the Pacific region.
With some of the greatest minds in music, film and interactive media gathered in Austin for the week, HANSON and SXSW have partnered to capture the rare opportunity for the world of music to impact the world of those in need. Artists from across the globe are gathering in a downtown studio location to make inspiring music and encourage viewers to donate funds to the American Red Cross.
From 12 pm Saturday to 12 am Sunday, friends and acquaintances from across the music industry will gather to donate their time – and music – to support the cause. Those who can’t be in Austin can still join the event live by tuning into a Livestream online telethon featuring back-to-back performances and chats by notable and new artists, driving the audience to donate to the American Red Cross.
Scheduled performances and appearances include Michael Stipe of REM, John "JoJo" Hermann of Widespread Panic, the North Mississippi Allstars, The Boxer Rebellion, Hanson, Johnny Polygon, Andy Grammer, Stephen Kellogg, Anna Nalick, Jackson Harris, Charlie Mars, Bowling For Soup, Stephen Kellogg, An Horse, AWOLNATION, The Parlotones, Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr, Rayland Baxter and many more.
All proceeds from the event will go directly to the American Red Cross. Featured songs from the event will be sold as a part of a benefit project.
Fans can watch the stream live by going to www.SXSW4Japan.org or learn more on twitter @sxsw4japan.