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This Slate article hit the web yesterday and is gaining popularity.
I remind readers that in December it didn't seem like a foolish thing to buy into HD-DVD. Three Hollywood studios (including the biggest) seemed entrenched with the format; players were being sold for under $100; Warner Bros assured consumers in a statement it would not be abandoning HD-DVD; all HD-DVD players were upgradeable compared to Blu-ray's continued 'Profile' problems...Then the dominoes started to fall January 4.
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Scientists are priming two spacecraft to slam into the moon's South Pole to see if the lunar double whammy reveals hidden water ice. The Earth-on-moon violence may raise eyebrows, but NASA's history shows that such missions can yield extremely useful scientific observations."I think that people are apprehensive about it because it seems violent or crude, but it's very economical," said Tony Colaprete, the principal investigator for the mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. NASA's previous Lunar Prospector mission detected large amounts of hydrogen at the moon's poles before crashing itself into a crater at the lunar South Pole.
Now the much larger Lunar Crater and Observation Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, set for a February 2009 moon crash, will take aim and discover whether some of that hydrogen is locked away in the form of frozen water.
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Proving there are really no new ideas in Hollywood...now a new generation will be introduced to Get Smart. I guess Steve Carell is pretty much the Don Adams of our time...For those who grew up watching the Get Smart reruns, it will be interesting to see this version.
A US team based in Georgia has won a $50,000 international competition to design a spacecraft to rendezvous with and track the path of an asteroid which may threaten Earth. The winning entry, led by SpaceWorks Engineering, will shadow asteroid 99942 Apophis for 300 days. The measurements it takes will be used to refine what is known about the orbit of this 300m-wide space rock. Apophis will make a close pass of Earth in 2029 and there is a small but real possibility it could hit in 2036.read more | digg story
You can't really call it spam, as it was a true opt-in program. Out of 'over a million customers' Wal-Mart approached to be part of a test market to receive text message ads, 90% declined; leaving 'hundreds of thousands' [read: 200,000] of customers who opted-in.The program allowed for consumers to have short-duration sale ads text messaged to their cellphones. Initially sending information on 10-15 sale items in just 3-4 messages, Wal-Mart learned that was too much info. They also learned that if they crammed a bunch of messages into as little time as possible, it went over better with customers. Their theory? Consumers were believed to only check their text messages every few hours, so getting them all bunched up was considered less annoying. [Don't you read a text msg when you get it?]
If you have a prior business relationship with a company, and have given them your number, calling or texting your cellphone seems to be fair game. However, true text messaging spam is banned by federal law in the CAN-SPAM act. Even though that took effect in 2005, receiving text message spam seems to be a continued problem on some wireless carriers. As text messages seem to become cheaper every year, there doesn't seem to be enough consumer outrage for anything to be done about it.
Maybe if enough of these types of incidents keep happening, that will change.
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Looking something like the entrance to Superman's Fortress of Solitude (the comics version anyway), the Svalbard Global Seed Vault will open this week. It is the world's insurance policy on a host of threats that could destroy important crops, from global warming and war to natural disasters like drought, flood and wildfire.The vault's initial repository will include 250,000 varieties (10 million seeds) from virtually every country in the world. "All that can be seen of the vault outside the mountain is a concrete wedge, inside which a (410-foot) tunnel goes deep into the hillside, ending in three vaults with airlocked doors, keypad entry, stone and plastic-impregnated concrete walls," the Press Association reports.
"The air has been cooled to between -18C and -20C, but Norwegian meteorologists have calculated that without power, the vaults would still be below freezing 200 years from now under the worst climate change scenario."
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Justice League: New Frontier streets today in the US. A must watch for anyone who is or has been even a casual comics or animation fan; you don't have to know any character backstories or comics continuities. A realistic and gritty period piece aimed at adult audiences, Justice League: New Frontier is set during the height of cold war McCarthyism. As the Golden Age of heroes comes to a close, the traditional heroes must welcome the Silver Age newcomers and deal with a new threat to the world. This is a fantastic tribute film to all the classic DC heroes.
A great documentary is included even on the single disc version; more great stuff on the 2 disc one.
Available on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray.
Nokia and the University of Cambridge are showing off a new stretchable and flexible mobile device of the future called Morph. The new concept phone is part of an online display presented in conjunction with the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition underway through May 12 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The device, which is made using nanotechnology, is intended to demonstrate how cell phones in the future could be stretched and bent into different shapes, allowing users to "morph" their devices into whatever shape they want. Nokia says the concept device demonstrates handset features that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering, including flexible materials, transparent electronics, and self-cleaning surfaces.Yes, but will the nanites make my morning coffee and take out the trash?
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Notice a problem getting on YouTube Sunday afternoon? There's a reason. YouTube suffered a two-hour long, system-wide outage on Sunday that the company said was triggered by an ISP based, in all places, Pakistan.YouTube spokesperson Ricardo Reyes: "For about two hours, traffic to YouTube was routed according to erroneous Internet Protocols. Many users around the world could not access our site. We have determined that the source of these events was a network in Pakistan. We are investigating and working with others in the Internet community to prevent this from happening again."
It's being reported from multiple sources that religious authorities in Pakistan were unhappy with a perceived increase in 'blasphemous material' on YouTube. A Pakistan ISP, PieNet, decided it would be good to re-route IP requests for YouTube to whatever site it felt was more appropriate; essentially hijacking internet traffic requesting YouTube to another destination using BGP.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the core routing protocol the internet uses. These bad or poisoned BGP routes got picked up by ISPs everywhere and resulted in YouTube simply not showing up on the web browsers of millions of internet users. The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan’s traffic, PCCW, has consequently shut Pakistan off from the internet as the poisoned BGP routes are removed.
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In October, I posted about Union City, Indiana whose city council asked the local McDonald's franchise to remove R-rated and unrated titles from it's Redbox movie rental kiosks. They had gone so far as to request the kiosks carry only G-rated product.Now apparently they have succeeded in getting McDonalds to remove the R-rated titles. According to Union City's mayor, the owner of the Union City McDonald’s has agreed to take out the R-rated titles after being threatened with a Union City public nuisance citation. It was not reported if unrated titles with similar content were also removed. The city council had been pressuring the McDonalds franchise to remove the offending titles, complaining that it was too easy for young customers to rent titles rated appropriate only for people older than 17.
Should this be repeated in other cities, it will certainly give traditional brick and mortar video stores an advantage over the kiosk rental machines. A quick informal count of the 195 films in wide release in 2007 showed about 28% to be rated R; although it is common for DVD releases of films not rated R theatrically to include content which would have earned the film an R rating, often being touted as 'Unrated!' or 'The version you couldn't see in theaters!' The Union City mayor stated R-rated films made up 40% of the titles for rent in the Redbox kiosks.
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CBS has begun posting entire episodes of classic TV series on their Audience Network. You can now legally watch original uncut episodes of classics like Star Trek original series, Twilight Zone original series, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place. You have to sit through an occasional 15 or 30 second ad, and there doesn't appear to be a way to go fullscreen with it, but the shows play in a large window taking up more than a quarter of the screen. The running times on these reveal how much has been cut for syndicated reruns, especially on Trek and Zone clocking in at over 50 and 25 minutes respectively.read more | digg story
A survey of 1,266 consumers by research firm In-Stat found nearly 40% of respondents were unaware of the pending transition. When polled, 39% said the survey question itself was the 'first they've heard' of the impending switch. A similar finding was made recently by Consumer Reports, which found 36% of people they surveyed were unaware. These findings extrapolated to the entire country would mean over 100 million people in the US are unaware of the switch; even though it may directly affect as many as 15 million households.read more | digg story
Previously it has been impossible to photograph electrons since their extremely high velocities have produced blurry pictures. In order to capture these rapid events, extremely short flashes of light are necessary, but such flashes were not previously available. With the use of a newly developed technology for generating short pulses from intense laser light, so-called attosecond pulses, scientists at the Lund University Faculty of Engineering in Sweden have managed to capture the electron motion for the first time.
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It had to happen of course. Paramount Home Entertainment quietly came onboard via a statement issued Wednesday to The Hollywood Reporter. Universal Studios Home Entertainment, in contrast, cast its lot with Blu-ray within hours of Toshiba's announcement Tuesday. For those that have a player, Warner will continue to release HD-DVD movies until May. It is not yet known when Universal and Paramount HD-DVDs will begin disappearing from the release schedule.
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A senior producer for CNN is stating he was fired from the news network over his personal blog. Chez Pazienza, a senior producer for CNN’s “American Morning,” announced that he had been fired in a post last week on his blog, Deus Ex Malcontent.Looking over some of his posts, I can definitely see some CNN executive squirming in his seat while reading them. Example:
“I wake up every morning baffled as to why America hasn’t thrown George Bush and Dick Cheney in prison, Hollywood hasn’t stopped trying to convince me that Sarah Jessica Parker is attractive, gullible soccer moms haven’t realized that they share absolutely no kinship with Oprah, and Fox canceled ‘Firefly.'"In an age when anyone can instantly post online content from wherever they are, companies seem to be just recently coming to grips with this aspect of the internet.
Customers are now taking their gripes online to a wide audience. Companies have begun to respond to and actively search for what is being posted about them at sites like Planet Feedback and The Consumerist. In doing so, they are finding their employees may also be posting content online in personal blogs and internet forums.
In 2006, Forbes magazine published an article stating only 15% of employers had specific policies addressing work-related blogging; and that "16% of the employees who maintain blogs have posted information that could be considered negative or critical regarding their employer, supervisor, co-workers, customers or clients."
As a result, employers are increasingly implementing blogging policies, as CNN has, and enforcing them. Google 'fired for blogging' and you see how common this is becoming.
You'd better watch what you post online. It could get you fired.
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This interesting bit of info hit Science Daily this week. Maybe people have watched too much TV and are afraid of the Nanites or Skynet evolving out of nanotech. Grey goo, anyone?Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small.read more | digg story
Nanotechnology is a branch of science and engineering devoted to the design and production of materials, structures, devices and circuits at the smallest achievable scale, typically in the realm of individual atoms and molecules. The ability to engineer matter at that scale has the potential to produce a vast array of new technologies that could influence everything from computers to medicine.
Already, dozens of products containing nanoscale materials or devices are on the market. In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.
The new study has critical implications for how experts explain the technology and its applications. It means the scientific community needs to do a far better job of placing the technology in context and in understanding the attitudes of the American public.
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have compiled a large catalog of gravitational lenses in the distant Universe. The catalog contains a staggering 67 new gravitationally lensed images found around massive elliptical and lenticular-shaped galaxies. This sample demonstrates the rich diversity of strong gravitational lenses. If this sample is representative, there would be nearly half a million similar gravitational lenses in total over the whole sky.What is a gravitational lens? A gravitational lens is formed when the light from a very distant, bright source (such as a quasar) is "bent" around a massive object (such as a cluster of galaxies) between the source object and the observer. This is known as gravitational lensing, and is one of the predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.
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Game over, man! Game over! In a move that was hardly surprising but still disappointing to fans of HD-DVD, Toshiba decided at a board meeting today it would be abandoning the high definition DVD format. You can read the official press release below.Although it was the lower-priced HD format and the one with the most backwards compatibility with DVD for both consumers and manufacturers, HD-DVD could no longer be a viable format in the marketplace after being dropped by Warner and subsequently snubbed by Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart in favor of Blu-ray Disc.
Movies on HD-DVD will continue to be released for the next few months by Warner, Paramount, and Universal unless further announcements are made. Undoubtedly aftershocks and further developments will happen over the next few days, stay tuned.
Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.
HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.
"We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called 'next-generation format war' and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop," said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. "While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality."
Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.
Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.
This decision will not impact on Toshiba's commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.
Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.
Scientists studying Antarctic waters have filmed and captured giant sea creatures, like sea spiders the size of dinner plates and jelly fish with six meter (18 feet) tentacles. A fleet of three Antarctic marine research ships returned to Australia this week ending a summer expedition to the Southern Ocean where they carried out a census of life in the icy ocean and on its floor, more than 1,000 meters below the surface. "Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have collected huge worms, giant crustaceans and sea spiders the size of dinner plates," Australian scientist Martin Riddle, voyage leader on the research ship Aurora Australis, said on Tuesday. "Many live in the dark and have pretty large eyes. They are strange looking fish," Riddle told local radio.
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Christopher Lloyd has stepped back in front of the cameras, reprising the now classic role of Doc Brown from the Back to the Future trilogy. The last time Lloyd appeared as Doc Brown was in 1992 for live-action segments of the Back to the Future animated series. No — he wasn't secretly shooting some scenes from Back to the Future 4, but veteran actor & three-time Emmy-winner Christopher Lloyd was in town this week to work on a new music video by Universal Motown recording artist O’neal McKnight Featuring Greg Nice, directed by 'X' and the production power team of Cass and Dubs.McKnight reportedly is a huge Back to the Future fan and DeLorean enthusiast, insisiting on using the time travel classic in his latest video. ‘Check Your Coat’, currently rising on Billboard's "Bubbling Under R&B/Hip-Hop Singles" chart is a catchy tune centered on a coat-check clerk, played by McKnight, who encounters ‘Doc Brown’ and the DeLorean time machine. The duo leap into the past and future, giving McKnight a glimpse into his life and relationship with a beautiful lady whom he meets while at the dance club.
No details are currently available regarding the exact release date of McKnight's new music video and this exciting opportunity for Back to the Future fans to see 'Doc' once again.
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This story has been reported off and on for about the last year. Beekeepers all over the country have found their beehives empty- and no one knows where the bees have gone. In my part of the country, beekeepers are reporting losses of more than 70%.Now Haagen-Dazs is reporting that the missing bees could become a big problem for their business.
Haagen-Dazs, which is owned by Nestle, said bees are actually responsible for 40% of its 60 flavors - such as strawberry, toasted pecan and banana split. "These are among consumers' favorite flavors," said Katty Pien, brand director with Haagen-Dazs. "We use 100% all natural ingredients like strawberries, raspberries and almonds which we get from California. The bee problem could badly hurt supply from the Pacific Northwest," Pien said. Pien said Haagen-Dazs is hoping scientists get a breakthrough in this mystery soon. Otherwise, she said, the company may have to "re-examine the flavors that we currently offers our customers." Additionally, a supply shortage of key ingredients could push up retail prices for its products, she said.
Pien said the company is donating $250,000 to both Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Davis to fund research into the bee colony collapse disorder (CCD).
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Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found. New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems. There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe. Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say. New findings about planets were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.read more | digg story
Now that the writer's strike is over and shows are gearing up to begin production again, you might be wondering what shows are coming back and for how many episodes. It's too late in the year for anymore than nine more episodes to be produced for any series. Although some shows have yet to be officially canceled, production simply won't restart. This defacto cancellation seems to be the case with Bionic Woman and Journeyman (NBC); Big Shots and Cavemen (ABC); Cain (CBS); K-Ville (Fox); and Life Is Wild (CW).What shows are coming back?
ABC: Boston Legal (eight episodes, April), Ugly Betty (five episodes, April), Desperate Housewives (seven episodes, April), Grey's Anatomy (five episodes, April), Lost (six more prestrike episodes, five additional, April), Brothers & Sisters (five episodes, April).
CBS: The Big Bang Theory (nine episodes, March), CSI: Miami (eight episodes, March), Cold Case (five episodes, March), Criminal Minds (seven episodes, April), CSI: NY (seven episodes, April), CSI (six episodes, April), How I Met Your Mother (nine episodes, March), Ghost Whisperer (six episodes, April), Moonlight (four episodes, April), NCIS (seven episodes, April), Numb3rs (six episodes, April), Rules of Engagement (six episodes, April), Two and a Half Men (nine episodes, March), Without a Trace (six episodes, April).
Fox: Bones (four prestrike episodes, two new, April).
NBC: 30 Rock (five episodes, April), ER (six episodes, April), Law & Order: SVU (five episodes, April), Law & Order (five episodes, April), Medium (six pre-strike episodes, seven new, April), My Name Is Earl (nine episodes, April), The Office (six episodes, April), Scrubs (five episodes, April).
CW: Aliens in America (eight prestrike episodes, currently airing), Everybody Hates Chris (12 prestrike episodes, currently airing), The Game (eight episodes, March), Gossip Girl (five episodes, April), One Tree Hill (five prestrike episodes, six more, currently airing), Smallville (five episodes, April), Supernatural (four episodes, May).
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Things again aren't looking too good for HD-DVD. News sites and blog have been posting rumors since yesterday regarding Toshiba's plans to discontinue the format. Even Thomas K Arnold over at Home Media Retailing seems to think this will happen.
Poor Jodi Sally from Toshiba included this response regarding the 'death watch.'
Just this morning, it became known that Wal-Mart has decided to discontinue HD-DVD and carry Blu-ray exclusively in it's stores by June of this year, according to it's official blog.
This may be a final nail in the coffin for HD-DVD, as it would represent that practically all brick and mortar retailers are now firmly behind the Blu-ray format.
Poor Jodi Sally from Toshiba included this response regarding the 'death watch.'
“Given the market developments in the past month, Toshiba will continue to study the market impact and the value proposition for consumers, particularly in light of our recent price reductions on all HD DVD players."Players and movies are being hugely discounted at several retailers, including Amazon, where they are offering 150 HD-DVD movies at 50% off.
Just this morning, it became known that Wal-Mart has decided to discontinue HD-DVD and carry Blu-ray exclusively in it's stores by June of this year, according to it's official blog.
This may be a final nail in the coffin for HD-DVD, as it would represent that practically all brick and mortar retailers are now firmly behind the Blu-ray format.
Astronomers said Wednesday that they had found a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light-years across the galaxy — the first planetary system that really looks like our own, with outer giant planets and room for smaller inner planets.“It looks like a scale model of our solar system,” said Scott Gaudi, an assistant professor of astronomy at Ohio State University. Dr. Gaudi led an international team of 69 professional and amateur astronomers who announced the discovery in a news conference with reporters.
Their results are being published Friday in the journal Science. The discovery, they said, means that our solar system may be more typical of planetary systems across the universe than had been thought.
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(AP) — Euphoria over returning to work quickly gave way to workaday cold sweats as Hollywood writers resumed the daily grind of cranking out scripts after a three-month strike."I felt giddy," Craig Sweeny, a writer for the NBC drama "Medium," said about being back on the job Wednesday, a day after the Writers Guild of America overwhelmingly voted to end the walkout. "Then someone handed me a production schedule, and then I felt scared."
TV writers face tighter deadlines than usual to salvage what's left of the season for shows that went into reruns because of the strike that started Nov. 5. On its first day back, the crew at CBS' "CSI: NY" scrambled to start pounding out two scripts from scratch in two weeks, about half the usual time, so new episodes could premiere in early April.
Dates were announced Wednesday for some series to return to the air, among them CBS' "How I Met Your Mother" on March 17, NBC's "My Name Is Earl" on April 3 and NBC's "The Office" on April 10.
Along with the 10,500 writers who walked out, the strike immobilized thousands of technicians, makeup people and other production workers. The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. estimates the strike cost the local economy $3.2 billion in lost wages and revenue.
AP Photo/Ric Francis
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This survey was performed in North Carolina, but I'll bet it could easily be repeated just about anywhere in the country.Employees at the nation's top retail stores are giving out bad information about the country's upcoming switch to digital TV. When the North Carolina Public Interest Research Group sent secret shoppers into the country's top five retail stores last fall, they found store employees were as confused as customers [about the impending digital switchover.] Employees at Wal-Mart, Circuit City, Best Buy, Target and Radio Shack gave inaccurate information about the date of the switch 30 percent of the time. They gave inaccurate information about converter boxes 70 percent of the time. And 20 percent of the stores had analog TVs on their shelves which were all either mislabeled or had hard to read tags.
"Retailers across the country are woefully misinformed," said spokeswoman Kat Scott. "And they are misinforming millions of consumers."
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From SaveJourneyman.net:SciFi.com is conducting a poll on their SciFi Wire page asking which show you want to see returned to the air now that the WGA strike is over. Head over now and vote for Journeyman! This is a great opportunity to show support, since NBC and SciFi are owned by the same parent company.
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Join Indiana Jones for one more adventure May 22! Take a look at what warehouse they must be in at about one minute in...and at 1:26 the lettering on the crate says Roswell New Mexico 1947.
(Reuters) - Fossils from two newly discovered meat-eating dinosaurs that lived in the Sahara Desert 110 million years ago paint a fearsome picture of life in Africa's Cretaceous period, which appears to have been teeming with unusual carnivores. University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno unearthed Kryptops palaios, a short-snouted, hyena-like beast, and Eocarcharia dinops, a shark-toothed, bony-browed killer in a 2000 expedition. Both were about 25 feet in length -- and on the prowl for meat. Kryptops, or "old hidden face," was named because of the horny material called keratin that covered its face. This fast, two-legged creature specialized in gnawing. Kryptops was a scavenger and had a uniform series of relatively pointy teeth and a short snout. "The idea was that the animal was sticking its head into carcasses," he said.read more | digg story
Whoa. This is disappointing. Variety and EW are reporting a five month delay in the release of JJ Abrams' new Star Trek movie --from December 2008 to May of 2009.According to Variety, Paramount is repositioning the film from a Christmas release to a big summer tentpole film due to gaps in the release schedule caused by the writers strike. The release will be sandwiched between Fox's X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Sony's Angels and Demons.
Guess the Star Trek movie countdown clock will have to be recalibrated.
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Astronomers took pictures of a far-off lumpy galaxy just forming 13 billion years ago, putting it among the earliest and most distant cosmic objects ever photographed.Though the black-and-white images are fuzzy, they are the most detailed and best confirmed look back in both time and distance that humans have seen, said Johns Hopkins University astronomy professor Holland Ford. He was part of a team of scientists taking the pictures with NASA's space telescopes, Hubble and Spitzer.
The galaxy, called A1689-zD1, is from when the universe was about 700 million years old, not long after the formation of the first galaxies.
And it's different from galaxies like our Milky Way, Ford said.
"It is much smaller. It is lumpy. It has two centers instead of one and it is undergoing extreme star formation," he said. "It is basically the building blocks for what will be a galaxy like our own in the future."
To see that far away, astronomers needed a little luck and help from the cosmos. A cluster of much closer galaxies act as a natural zoom lens for Earth's telescopes. Strong gravitational forces bend light around that cluster of galaxies, magnifying the light from directly behind it.
In this case, the infant galaxy appeared at least 10 times brighter than it would have without the natural help, Ford said. Other places behind the cluster appear hundreds of times sharper. This natural lens has to be lined up perfectly in order to see what's behind it, he said.
When Earth gets stronger telescopes in the future, including a new space telescope to be launched in 2013, this young galaxy would be a good place to look, astronomers said.
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A new species of duck-billed dinosaur unearthed in Mexico is helping scientists fill in gaps in the fossil record of the Age of Dinosaurs. The creature, dubbed Velafrons coahuilensis, was a massive plant-eater belonging to a larger group of duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs. The dino's species name comes from the region of Mexico where it was found, Coahuila. Little is known about the region's ancient animal and plant life because low rates of erosion have kept fossils hidden under layers of rock. But V. coahuilensis and other fossil finds are helping to shed light on this murky part of North American history.read more | digg story
The three month long strike that stopped work on dozens of TV shows, disrupted movie production, and turned the usually star-studded Golden Globes show into a news conference has ended. The Writers Guild of America members voted today to end their strike that brought the entertainment industry to a standstill.In a letter to it's members, WGA presidents Patric M. Verrone and Michael Winship tells writers to plan to be at work tomorrow if they were employed at the beginning of the strike.
"At the end of the day, everybody won. It was a fair deal and one that the companies can live with, and it recognizes the large contribution that writers have made to the industry," said Leslie Moonves, chief executive officer of CBS Corp., who was among the media executives who helped broker a deal after talks between the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the trade group, collapsed in acrimony.
The Academy Awards can now go on without the previous threat of picketing or boycotts.
Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times
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This month, Google added 12 new cities from the US: Juneau (Alaska), Boise (Idaho), Salt Lake City (Utah), San Antonio (Texas) [w00t], Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill (North Carolina), Manchester (New Hampshire), Kansas City (Missouri), Milwaukee (Wisconsin), Albany, Schenectady (New York). It's interesting to see that the 12 cities are distributed uniformly and the total number of cities is now 35.read more | digg story
Back in July it was reported that water was found on another planet for the first time. Now organic molecules – in the form of methane – have been detected on the same planet. The giant planet, HD 189733b, which is slightly more massive than Jupiter and lies 63 light years from Earth. lies too close to its parent star for the methane to signal life, but the detection offers hope that astronomers will one day be able to analyze the atmospheres of Earth-like worlds. Because the planet crosses the face of its parent star as seen from Earth, some starlight is periodically filtered through the planet's atmosphere, where different chemicals absorb particular wavelengths. The observations confirm the earlier detection of water vapor and reveal the presence of methane gas.read more | digg story
Wow, two HD format related news items today. In a clear response to this morning's Netflix announcement, Best Buy had a little press release of their own this afternoon.Best Buy Co Inc, the largest U.S. consumer electronics chain, said on Monday it will recommend that consumers choose Sony Corp's Blu-ray high-definition video format.Ok...thanks for the recommendation, Best Buy. Don't you love it when major corporations are looking out for you? So, what's next, Blockbuster Online announcing that they will also drop HD-DVD from it's rental choices? That would just about be the last straw for mainstream consumer availability for HD-DVD.
The decision gives Sony yet another victory in the battle with Toshiba Corp's HD DVD to be the high-definition DVD format of choice.
Earlier on Monday, online video rental company Netflix Inc said it would exclusively stock Blu-ray DVDs after some of the world's biggest movie studios decided in favor of that format.
Best Buy said it believes consumers will benefit from the choice of one HD DVD format.
"Because we believe that Blu-ray is fast emerging as that single format, we have decided to focus on Blu-ray products," Brian Dunn, Best Buy's president and chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Best Buy will prominently feature Blu-ray hardware and software beginning in March, but will also carry an assortment of HD DVD products for customers who want those, Best Buy said.
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In an additional blow to fans of the HD-DVD format, Netflix Inc said today that it would exclusively stock Blu-ray Disc particularly after Warner Bros decision in favor of that high definition disc format. Netflix had previously stocked both Blu-ray and the competing HD-DVD format since they first came on the market in early 2006. Netflix said that with such a clear signal from the industry, it will only buy Blu-ray discs going forward and will phase out stock of HD DVD by about the end of the year. Is this the final prop kicked out from under fans of HD-DVD? If you want to enjoy discs from the remaining studios that produce HD-DVD your choices of how to do so are getting really thin. Does anyone else smell money changing hands here? Netflix could have easily continued to carry a limited selection of HD-DVD discs while the format is still around. Now Blockbuster Online seems to be the only major outlet where you can rent HD-DVD.read more | digg story
Roy Scheider, actor with 88 film and TV roles credited to him, died on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark at age 75. He was known for several genre roles including Jaws, 2010, and SeaQuest DSV. He probably will be best remembered for his role as Martin Brody, the water-shy police chief in "Jaws" (1975) who uttered the immortal line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat," after seeing the size of the shark. He once lamented that the role "will be on my tombstone."read more | digg story
Have you gone to buy audio/video cables recently and had sticker shock? A digital cable for that new HDTV can have quite a price tag. This begs the question, why are cables so expensive now? There has been much discussion of the effectiveness of expensive brand name audio/video cables this week in particular. On Thursday The Consumerist posted a list comparing the wholesale cost of a certain line of brand name cabling to the retail prices it sells for at Radio Shack. It revealed markup as high as 80% on this particular brand. But, are expensive cables like that really necessary, especially on digital cables where the signal either passes through or it doesn't?The argument over the effectiveness of high-end audio/video cabling (especially speaker wire) has been endlessly debated for decades. (I think James Randi still has that million dollar offer going.)
What I'm talking about is real-world home theater cables, especially digital cabling like HDMI (or DVI in the case of slightly older HD equipment.) Compare these two items.
Brand name 4' HDMI A/V Cable at Best Buy $169.
Generic 6' HDMI A/V Cable from Monoprice $5.24.
Sure the brand name cable is made to exacting standards. It has high-velocity, silver-coated center conductors; quad-layer shielding; nitrogen gas-injected dielectric and 24K gold contacts. If you're running this cable for over 50 feet there might be an argument that these features make a difference. But this is a four foot cable. The digital signal, both audio and video in the case of HDMI, either passes or it doesn't. Any correctly made HDMI cable in lengths used in typical home hookups are going to perform the same, no matter what the marketing department of that expensive cable brand says.
Popular Mechanics did a review of a generic HDMI cable vs. two other very expensive $200-$300 HDMI cables. No reviewer could tell the difference in performance.
So go ahead and buy the cheap HDMI cables from monoprice or newegg. Your wallet will thank you.
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The odd looking "creature" or "hand" extending in the photo is a gas cloud known as a cometary globule and are typically characterized by dusty heads and elongated tails. These cause cometary globules to have visual similarities to comets. Globules are frequently the birthplaces of stars, and many show very young stars in their heads.Galactus?
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From LiveScience: As if reaching out with a come-hither motion, a giant gas finger emanating from two neighboring galaxies has hooked into the starry disk of the Milky Way and is pulling all three galaxies closer. This extremity of hydrogen gas is actually the pointy end of the so-called Leading Arm of gas that streams ahead of two irregular galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The fate of these nearby galaxies, which are impacted by the Milky Way's gravity, has been somewhat of a mystery. The new finger findings suggest that the Magellanic Clouds will eventually merge with the Milky Way rather than zooming past. Called HVC306-2+230, the gas finger is gouging into our galaxy's starry disk about 70,000 light-years away from Earth. In the night sky, the contact point would be nearest the Southern Cross. In the distant future, the three galaxies could become one.read more | digg story
(Reuters) - Striking Hollywood writers could be back at work as early as Monday for the first time in three months if they embrace terms of a tentative contract deal that union leaders are expected to present them this weekend. The outcome hinges on meetings set for Saturday in New York and Los Angeles where rank-and-file members of the Writers Guild of America will be briefed on a labor pact taking shape in talks with studio executives over the past two weeks. Sources familiar with those talks have said a breakthrough was reached last Friday on key issues of paying film and TV writers for work distributed over the Internet, and the two sides have been busy since then fine-tuning contract language.Well, it's about time. Michael Eisner is going so far as to say "It's over," and that the writers "would be insane if they turned" down the terms of the new deal.
Full Reuters story
It's making the rounds in entertainment news that Val Kilmer is replacing Will Arnett as the voice of KITT in the resurrected Knight Rider. The ridiculous reason? GM reportedly asked Arnett to remove himself because of previous commercials Arnett had voiced for them. [Here's hoping KR will not just be a feature length commercial for Ford.] Anyone who has seen Arnett in Arrested Development knows the kind of smarmy smart aleck lines he could deliver, making him a great choice for KITT. How do you go from Arnett to Kilmer? What studio executive said 'You know who would be great as KITT? Val Kilmer.' Here's hoping he voices KITT like a combination Chris Knight/Iceman.
Knight Rider airs February 17 on NBC.
What do you call an absence of darkness? Dark matter is supposed to be spread throughout the universe, but a new study reports a spiral galaxy that seems to be empty of the stuff, and astrophysicists cannot easily explain why. In the outer regions of most galaxies, stars orbit around the center so fast that they should fly away. The combined mass of all the observable inner stars and gas does not exert strong enough gravity to hold onto these speeding outliers, suggesting some mass is missing. Most astronomers believe that the missing mass is made up of what is called dark matter, which forms vast spherical halos around each galaxy. However, in the spiral galaxy NGC 4736, according to scientists at the Polish Academy of Science in Krakow, ordinary luminous stars and gas can account for all the mass in NGC 4736; in other words, no dark matter. But some scientists aren't so sure.read more | digg story
IESB is reporting that a stand alone film featuring Marvel comics character Venom is in the works. If this is true, they may get a chance to redeem the character from it's underdeveloped portrayal in Spider-Man 3, which was a disappointment to most anyone familiar with the character. It would also be far too early to know if Topher Grace would return as Eddie Brock/Venom.For those unfamiliar with the comics, Venom is a character created by the combination of an alien symbiote organism, that Spider-Man once used as a costume, and a human with questionable values. The look of the character is a grotesque version of the black Spider-Man costume and retains all Spider-Man's abilities with even more strength.
But Venom fans rejoice, Marvel is moving forward with a new stand alone film, yep you heard right, Venom is coming back to the big screen.read more | digg story
We've confirmed that "the studio" has met recently with several "A list writers" about a spin-off film.
Yahoo Music Unlimited's days are numbered. Yahoo revealed yesterday that it will be shutting down it's subscription music service and in a deal with RealNetworks, switching its customers to the Rhapsody music service. Yahoo Music Unlimited had a compelling price point as low as $6/month for unlimited access to 2 million songs. Instead of buying each track of music, you could listen all you wanted on a subscription basis either on your PC or a compatible MP3 player. Under the Yahoo-RealNetworks partnership, subscribers to Yahoo Music Unlimited will be shifted to the Rhapsody service sometime in the first half of this year. Yahoo subscribers' music library and payment plans will remain the same for a limited time after the switch, but after that time, if you stay on Rhapsody you will be required to sign up at Rhapsody's rates, which start at $13/month, more than twice what Yahoo charged. Yahoo declines to say how many subscribers they have, my guess is probably not that many. They must not have been able to sustain their subscription model at the price points they were charging, making it too expensive to operate the service. Users that complete the switch to Rhapsody, be warned. Rhapsody is well known to be difficult to cancel, I know from personal experience.read more | digg story
The Beatles are about to become radio stars in a whole new way. NASA yesterday broadcast the Beatles' song "Across The Universe" across the galaxy to Polaris, the North Star. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the song, the 45th anniversary of NASA's Deep Space Network, which communicates with its distant probes, and the 50th anniversary of NASA is reportedly what triggered the idea. NASA loaded an MP3 of the song, just under four minutes in its original version, and transmitted it digitally at 7 p.m. last night from its giant antenna in Madrid, Spain. Coincidentally (or not) the film Across The Universe is being released today on DVD.Does the RIAA know about this?
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StopBadware has put RealPlayer 10.5 on it's badware list. The media player fails to "accurately and completely disclose the fact that it installs advertising software on" a user's computer according to the consumer group. It also claims RealPlayer 11 is badware because it "does not disclose the fact that it installs Rhapsody Player Engine software, and fails to remove this software when RealPlayer is uninstalled."
It's about time. Years ago RealPlayer was a must-have. It was one of the first media players capable of streaming media online. Over the last 10 years the company backing it has been acquiring other companies and adding pay services and features to the player like SuperPass and RealRhapsody. The player has gotten a reputation over the past several years as bloatware; when you install RealPlayer it tries to install numerous features, shortcuts, and add-on programs. Like many Windows programs, when you uninstall it, it leaves pieces of itself behind in your system. Most knowledgeable computer users now avoid this program altogether.
An alternative is VLC media player-it's a little free open source program that will play just about any type of media file you throw at it.
read more | digg story
It's about time. Years ago RealPlayer was a must-have. It was one of the first media players capable of streaming media online. Over the last 10 years the company backing it has been acquiring other companies and adding pay services and features to the player like SuperPass and RealRhapsody. The player has gotten a reputation over the past several years as bloatware; when you install RealPlayer it tries to install numerous features, shortcuts, and add-on programs. Like many Windows programs, when you uninstall it, it leaves pieces of itself behind in your system. Most knowledgeable computer users now avoid this program altogether.
An alternative is VLC media player-it's a little free open source program that will play just about any type of media file you throw at it.
read more | digg story
A breakthrough in contract talks has been reached between Hollywood studios and striking writers and could lead to a tentative deal as early as next week, a person close to the ongoing negotiations said Saturday. The two sides breached the gap Friday on the thorniest issues, those concerning compensation for projects distributed via the Internet, said the person, who requested anonymity because he were not authorized to speak publicly. A second person familiar with the talks, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to comment publicly, said that significant progress had been made and a deal might be announced within a week.read more | digg story
First it was 'Nuts to CBS.' Then Journeyman fans launched a Rice-a-Roni campaign to save their show. Now fans of the show 'The 4400' are protesting the abrupt cancellation of that show by sending network executives sunflower seeds, the favorite snack of a character named Dr. Kevin Burkhoff. Many are Giants Sunflower Seeds, manufactured by a Wahpeton-based company with eight employees. Many overseas fans are ordering from Giants over the Internet to avoid shipping hassles. The company said it has received inquiries from the Netherlands, Israel, Venezuela, Australia and South Africa, among other countries.read more | digg story
Yesterday's unsolicited offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion that was made public this morning is under scrutiny today as we all digest what this might mean for consumers that use Yahoo services. The Justice Department today said it is "interested" in reviewing antitrust issues associated this proposed merger of the two companies. Privacy groups Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) also expressed serious concerns over consumer privacy.Any time one company absorbs another there are concerns over what happens to customer data. With Yahoo services offering everything from free email to IM to Flickr online picture hosting to Yahoo Groups and personals, not to mention search data it may have on users; another company acquiring all this data is especially concerning. The possibility of Microsoft obtaining it and potentially cross-referencing Yahoo data with it's own is scary.
The Microsoft-Yahoo deal, if consummated, would "create a powerful interactive Internet duopoly in online media," [CDD] said. "Google and Microsoft will have inordinate power to shape the online communications marketplace, including journalism, entertainment and advertising. There are consequences to democratic societies everywhere, as two digital gatekeepers are likely to control how the Internet and other interactive media evolve."
The proposed deal also underscores a need for new laws or regulations that protect consumer data, Chester added. "In an era when individuals are increasingly conducting their personal, social and political lives online, the corporations that control the digital experience will have a far-reaching influence over every aspect of society," he said. "Consumers will be more vulnerable to having their personal information become the property of the GoogleClick's and Microhoo's."
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