pop.ul.ar

Looking for the The Google Font? It is Catull, but found out more about the Google logo by reading the Google Font Page

Fancy reading my Spam collection ? It's even getting multilingual

Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux... want to try it ??? Knoppix is really nice. And easy. Download, burn, reboot. Et voila, Linux is running...

My invisible hand in your panties and other economic tales - 28 mai 2006

Germans have a sense of humor

- What is romantic?
- I don't know.
- When a man strokes a woman tenderly with a feather.

- What is perverse?
- I don't know.
- When the chicken is still attached.

Computer Simulation of an Entire Life Form and Researchers simulate complete structure of virus–on computer

It's a simple little virus -- so simple that biologists often refer to it as a "particle" rather than organism, so small and primitive that it can only proliferate in a cell that's already been hijacked by another virus. But a recent simulation of the satellite tobacco mosaic virus is also a striking first. There's never been a computer simulation of an entire life form at atomic detail. Until now.
A report on the work by Klaus Schulten and his collaborators at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of California at Irvine appears in the March edition of Structure. It relied on computing systems at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), home to the largest open academic computing environment in the country.

The article in the magazine Structure: Molecular Dynamics Simulations of the Complete Satellite Tobacco Mosaic Virus

The genre may be called casual gaming but with a large user and revenue base, it is serious business

Is there room for creativity and innovation?
Unlike traditional video games, with their massive development teams, movie and comic-book tie-ins, and enormous marketing budgets, casual games must succeed on their own merit. So casual game developers must innovate at a very fundamental, archetypal level-you can only make so many ‘match three’ type of games before you’ve exhausted the subject. Casual game developers are also in a position to do more experimentation than traditional game developers are. It’s a lot easier to shelve a $200,000 project midway through than a $5 million project. So we in the casual games space are always trying new ideas, many of which never see the light of day. But those that do work are generally different and novel.

The Cost of Bandwidth (And a lot of bittorrent based alternative ideas in the comments)

Why does this matter? Well, consider the usual claim about selling things online: No cost of goods!
Right, we don't have to manufacture boxes and manuals and disks and ship them to stores. But...
I'll take a really bad case to start with. Suppose we have a game that (in the full version) is 1 gigabyte in size. Doom 3 is 1.5 gigs, and we're considering carrying at least two games that are 1 gigabyte or larger. Suppose that this game has a demo version which is considerably smaller--let's say 400 megs.
The casual downloadable game sites--the closest thing, in terms of basic business dynamics, to what Manifesto plans to be--typically see 1-2% conversion rates. That means users download 50 (or 100) demos for every sale they make. Let's say a 2% conversion rate holds for this game. Fifty demos at 400 megabytes each get downloaded for every sale. So there's 21 gigabytes of traffic for one sale; at 70 cents a gig, that's $14.70.
In other words-- our cost of goods is not zero; effectively, it's $14.70.

Ethanol: Myths and Realities: Ten questions -- and answers -- about the fuel that's supposed to save the economy

Doesn't producing ethanol on a large scale use a great deal of energy?[...]
There's no absolute consensus in the scientific community, but that argument is losing strength. Michael Wang, a scientist at the Energy Dept.-funded Argonne National Laboratory for Transportation Research, says "The energy used for each unit of ethanol produced has been reduced by about half [since 1980]." Now, Wang says, the delivery of 1 million British thermal units (BTUs) of ethanol uses 0.74 million BTUs of fossil fuels. (That does not include the solar energy -- the sun shining -- used in growing corn.) By contrast, he finds that the delivery of 1 million BTUs of gasoline requires 1.23 million BTU of fossil fuels.

Review of 'Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations,' by David Warsh

Warsh tells the tale of a great contradiction that has lain at the heart of economic theory ever since 1776, the year in which Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations." Warsh calls it the struggle between the Pin Factory and the Invisible Hand. On one side, Smith emphasized the huge increases in productivity that could be achieved through the division of labor, as illustrated by his famous example of a pin factory whose employees, by specializing on narrow tasks, produce far more than they could if each worked independently. On the other side, he was the first to recognize how a market economy can harness self-interest to the common good, leading each individual as though "by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention."
What may not be obvious is the way these two concepts stand in opposition to each other.

PCs for Third World, by design

In sharp contrast to the early 1990s, today's initiatives appear ready to deliver locally designed devices and to create a network of local manufacturers willing to build them. Further, appetite for new educational devices among populations in the emerging markets is also rising. Recalling the absurdity of marketing $500 PCs to people with incomes of $1 a day, Radjou said that this time, AMD is partnering with microlending banks to make PCs affordable to rural users. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) the company works with are collaborating with microfinancing agencies to subsidize Internet costs.
But no worthy cause comes without strings attached--usually in the form of corporate technology agendas.

Linux in China

The government's "excessive preference" for the open-source Linux platform is harming the domestic software industry and Linux's business model is flawed as the low, or no, charge is thwarting the profitability of Linux developers, the [China Software Industry Association (CSIA)] said in the report.
In an exclusive interview with China Daily, [Lu Shouqun, president of the China Open Source Software Promotion Union] said the government should continue to help develop a "high-quality and low-cost" operating system to offer users a choice besides Windows to reduce reliance on Microsoft.

OLPC news: OLPC source code repository is available; the first working prototypes are there : pictures!!!. And good news, SVG is on the OLPC

Seymour Papert’s Corner: Learning Learning with for each entry, a bite, a lick and an insight.

Cambodia PM Bans 3G Mobile Phone Service and TheRegister take on it Cambodia bans 3G phones

In a petition addressed to Hun Sun and dated May 19, Bun Rany argued that obscene images have "gravely negative consequences for social morality" and could increase the "sexual exploitation of women and children and other vices that would cast our society as a very dark one."
On Friday, Hun Sen said he agrees with his wife and that while Cambodia is still unable to cope with pornography on the Internet, "how can we go for video phones?

Is Jon Stewart helping or hurting?

But is his sarcasm turning those who watch him the most — young adults — into giant cynics with a diminishing trust in politicians and the institutions of democracy?
One new study, published this month in the journal American Politics Research, says yes. Reseachers have connected The Daily Show to lower opinions of politicians and greater cynicism toward the mainstream media and the electoral process itself.
At the same time, for reasons the study's authors propose are none too flattering, these same young people also figure themselves quite confident in their own knowledge about the complex world of politics.
"We are not saying The Daily Show is bad for democracy," says study co-author Jonathan Morris, an assistant professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. "I'm a fan of The Daily Show. I watch it very frequently.
"We're just pointing out that exposure to this show among young adults is associated with cynicism toward political candidates and the political process as a whole."

The pdf (27 pages) is free "for a limited time": American Politics Research: The Daily Show Effect: Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth

Although research indicates that soft news contributes to democratic citizenship in America by reaching out to the inattentive public, our findings indicate that TheDaily Show may have more detrimental effects, driving down support for political institutions and leaders among those already inclined toward nonparticipation.

And the NYT notes that That After-Dinner Speech Remains a Favorite Dish: people now download the audio version of the Stephen Colbert speech for their iPod and it ranks No 1 in the audiobook section of iTunes.

Les gladiateurs du free fight, un sport né après la seconde guerre mondiale au Brésil sous l'appellation vale tudo ("tout est permis", en portugais).

Frapper un homme à terre ? Une idée inacceptable au pays de Coubertin. Pour justifier son interdiction, le ministre des sports, Jean-François Lamour, s'appuie sur une recommandation du Conseil de l'Europe de 1999, estimant que "la violence et les actes barbares et sauvages commis au nom du sport sont dénués de valeur sociale dans une société civilisée qui respecte les droits de l'homme". Le veto a été étendu, début 2006, aux chaînes de télévision par le Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (CSA), lequel considère que la retransmission est "susceptible de nuire gravement à l'épanouissement physique, ment ou moral des mineurs".