Netflix Decides To Keep Profiles

If you were one of the Netflix users upset over their recently announced decision to do away with their 'Profiles' feature, take heart! Netflix today announced they will be keeping the feature after all. 'Profiles' allows Netflix users to maintain separate rental queues for different family members or organizing your rental activity (i.e. Movies and Television.)
Netflix had previously decided to do away with the feature, citing that it was used only by a minority of subscribers. After over 1200 people howled in protest (some even threatening to leave the service) Netflix changed their mind. I guess Tom Merritt will be glad to hear this.

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Quantum Of Solace Trailer

Scientists Say It Once Rained on Mars

Drizzle once fell on Martian soil, according to a new geochemical analysis by Berkeley scientists, though the rain probably stopped several billion years ago.
Drawing on soil data from the five missions to Mars before the current Phoenix Lander and comparing it to information collected in Earth's driest places, the scientists concluded that water must have fallen from above, not welled up from below, as has been thought.
"The soil acts as a sort of an imperfect record of climate change," said Ronald Amundson, UC Berkeley professor of ecosystem sciences and the study's lead author. "We can study the chemistry of the soil and extract information about climate history."
Amundson's key observation is that Martian soil has a layer of sulfates sitting on top of chlorides. That's a pattern consistent with water moving downward from the atmosphere to the regolith in places on Earth.

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Giant Crater Explains Strange Shape of Mars

A giant crater made by an asteroid or comet explains why Mars is so lopsided, with a basin on one hemisphere and high terrain on the other, three separate teams of scientists said today.
As reported in the journal Nature, the impact gouged out a hole 5,200 miles across and 6,500 miles long -- the size of the combined areas of Asia, Europe and Australia.
It would be the largest impact yet found in the solar system.

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George Carlin Has Died

Legendary comedian George Carlin has died. The man who made famous the "seven words you can never say on television" passed away yesterday evening at age 71.
Carlin, who has had several heart attacks and a history of cardiac issues, went into the hospital this afternoon after complaining of heart problems.
Carlin has more than 20 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, numerous TV and movie roles, and three best-selling books to his credit. Last year, he celebrated his 50th year in show business, and he had just finished his last HBO special in March, "It's Bad for Ya."

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NASA Phoenix Mars Lander Confirms Frozen Water

Scientists relishing confirmation of water ice near the surface beside NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander anticipate even bigger discoveries from the robotic mission in the weeks ahead.
"It is with great pride and a lot of joy that I announce today that we have found proof that this hard bright material is really water ice and not some other substance," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, during a Friday news briefing to announce the confirmation of water ice.
"The truth we're looking for is not just looking at ice. It is in finding out the minerals, chemicals and hopefully the organic materials associated with these discoveries," said Smith.

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Earth Will Survive After All, Physicists Say

It looks like it won't destroy us after all. The Large Hadron Collider, scheduled to go into operation this fall outside Geneva, is no threat to the Earth or the universe, according to a new safety review.
“There is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the LHC,” five physicists who comprised the safety assessment group wrote in their report.

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Three Super-Earths Orbit One Star

Three new super-Earths have been spotted around the same star in a remarkable new discovery by planet-hunters announced today.
The new worlds - all less than ten times the Earth's mass - are orbiting a star 42 light-years away in the constellation of Pictor, the painter's easel.
Most planets detected in alien solar systems have been so-called "hot Jupiters" because they are much more massive. The three new planets are 4.2, 6.7, and 9.4 times the mass of the Earth and orbit their parent sun in 4.3, 9.6, and 20.4 days, respectively.
The star, labelled HD 40307, is similar to the Sun but slightly smaller. It is only visible in the southern hemisphere and never rises above the UK's horizon. News of the discovery was broken today at an international conference of astronomers at Nantes, France.

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Stan Winston Has Died

One of the greatest names in special effects, Stan Winston has died at age 62. There are probably three names I can think of when it comes to true special effects: Ray Harryhausen, Rick Baker, and Stan Winston.

Known particularly for his robotic and animatronic special effects on films from The Terminator to Iron Man, Stan has been one of the main 'go-to' effects masters for the last 20 years. Much of his work was done before the days of CGI, when you actually had to make a solid, tangible creation for almost anything you saw on screen.

He was a winner of numerous awards including 3 Oscars and 2 Emmys. He was the creative force behind the creature effects on such films as Gargoyles (a 1972 TV movie that scared the crap out of me as a kid), Starman, Aliens, The Monster Squad, and the Terminator series and more.

Steven Spielberg, who worked with Winston on several films, said in a statement "Stan was a fearless and courageous artist/inventor and for many projects, I rode his cutting edge from teddy bears to aliens to dinosaurs. My world would not have been the same without Stan. What I will miss most is his easy laugh every time he said to me, 'Nothing is impossible.'"

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Astronomers Argue Pluto IS A Planet!

Disgruntled scientists renewed their vows this week to call Pluto a planet despite an international governing body's latest ruling to reclassify the tiny world.

On Wednesday, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) declared that Pluto will henceforth be known as a "plutoid," a new class of objects that has two members (the other being Eris, a small body beyond Pluto). The IAU, considered in charge of naming celestial objects, has been around since 1919. It demoted Pluto to "dwarf planet" status in 2006.

The latest decision was announced by email to the press, and it took researchers by surprise. Even IAU members and astronomers who discovered Eris and other objects that might eventually be called plutoids were not consulted or informed.

That's left many scientists peeved that the IAU developed the new term and its definition behind closed doors. They accuse the IAU of being secretive, out of touch and of failing to consider basic physical characteristics that researchers use to define planets.

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'No Facebook? I Quit!'

What would make you quit your job? Lack of insurance or other benefits? A lengthy and expensive commute? Limited advancement opportunities? No Facebook access? Wait, what?
Ann All over at ItBusinessEdge posted about a recent survey that found an incredible 39% of 18-to-24-year-olds would consider leaving their jobs if their employer prevented them from accessing Facebook. 21 percent would just be “annoyed” by it.

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Although not connected to this specific survey, this reminds me of the 60 Minutes segment a few weeks ago about the entry of the 'Millenials' into the workplace. There is a complete disconnect between older employers and the young adults entering the workplace who have never held a summer job and have never faced criticism growing up. Watch the segment here, it's pretty interesting.

Clumpy Martain Soil Chokes Phoenix

Reuters- Dirt that the Phoenix Mars Lander scooped recently from the planet's surface may be too clumpy to be analyzed by the machine's onboard system, NASA reported on Saturday.
A robotic arm retrieved a cup-sized sample of Martian dirt on Friday and placed it on the lander's Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, which was scheduled to spend about a week determining the soil's water and mineral content.
The TEGA features a screened opening that prevents large particles from clogging it. Only those thinner than 1 mm (0.04 of an inch) can pass through, and an infrared beam verifies whether they have entered the instrument. The beam has not yet confirmed any activity and researchers are not sure why, NASA said in a statement.
Scientists suspect the soil may be clumped together too tightly, NASA said.
Photo:REUTERS/NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&M University/Handout
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Amazon Down For 2 Hours Friday

Amazon.com, the world's largest online retailer, appeared to have been caught by surprise Friday when its U.S. site crashed for about two hours. For the first hour, visitors to the site got the cryptic message you see to the left, "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable." Later, the company was able to put up a "we're sorry!" message with the corporate logo.
Every person contacting Amazon regarding this got the same response: "Amazon's systems are very complex and on rare occasions, despite our best efforts, they may experience problems. We work to minimize any disruption and to get the site back as quickly as possible."
I highly doubt that Amazon was doing any site maintenance in the middle of a weekday. It seems more likely that there is another answer, such as a DDOS attack.
Some estimate that the retailer lost $30,000 each minute the site was unavailable.

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120,000 Year Old Bacteria Discovered Two Miles Under Glacier

Sounding suspiciously like an episode of the X-Files, Penn State scientists announced the discovery of a 120,000-year-old microscopic bacteria that live two miles under the ice of a Greenland glacier. The bacterian are so tiny that it is able to pass through microbiological filters.
The microorganism's ability to persist in this low-temperature, high-pressure, reduced-oxygen and nutrient-poor habitat makes it particularly useful for studying how life, in general, can survive in a variety of extreme environments on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the solar system.

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Time Warner To Begin Bandwidth Caps

Time Warner Cable will begin imposing bandwidth caps on consumers in Beaumont, Texas this week as part of a trial program. Consumers who exceed the bandwidth caps will pay $1 for every additional gigabyte consumed.
As the article intimates, this is clearly a move to discourage new BitTorrent users (undoubtedly the '5% of subscribers using half the bandwidth'.) However, as more and more devices start to connect to the net, and households start using more content-on-demand services, this will begin to affect more than 5% of Time Warner subscribers.
Bandwidth caps started to become a prominent tech issue when Comcast last fall axed the service of some of it's subscribers when they reportedly reached some kind of unpublished limit on bandwidth consumption.

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Trek Producer Robert Justman Dies

From Trek United:
Robert Justman, producer of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation succumbed to Parkinson’s disease at the age of 81. A driving force behind the first two Star Trek series, Bob Justman was brought on board for the original Star Trek pilot, ‘The Cage,’ back in 1964, as an associate produced under Gene Roddenberry.
Justman’s death comes within days of receiving the news that two other Star Trek legends, TOS director Joseph Pevney and Star Trek theme composer Alexander Courage, had also passed away. Robert Justman’s son, Jonathan Justman, said “There seems to be a big Star Trek convention and everyone is going. Everyone is getting beamed up.”

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Paramount Reportedly Inserting Audio Dropouts In Indiana Jones

I honestly can't say I noticed this when I saw the film. I did notice a slight misframe that lasted about 10 minutes. Is there no pride in film presentation anymore?
Via BoingBoing:

While at the cinema yesterday, I read a notice posted by the box office that Paramount has intentionally silenced bits of the soundtrack of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in order to deter and track piracy. The notice acknowledged that the momentary silences were annoying but that it was out of their control. Basically it said, please don't bug the manager if the sound drops out, unless it lasts more than a minute.

Our favorite studio, Paramount, involved in another hair-brained anti-piracy scheme? Say it aint so!

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Billboards That Spy On You

Minority Report is finally here. Cameras are now everywhere. At retail stores, at street intersections, at work and even at church. Now, behind the billboard above the street. I foresee some kind of personal surveillance jamming technology becoming available for those who don't care to be recorded everywhere they go. It will be illegal, of course.

For the most part, [billboards] are still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.
Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by--their gender, approximate age, and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

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Fire At Universal Studios Hollywood

Fire broke out just before dawn on a sound stage at Universal Studios Hollywood this morning and has claimed at least one building and three blocks worth of movie facades. Included among the destroyed sets include Universal's New York City facade used in films from King Kong to Bruce Almighty; the 'clock tower' Courthouse Square seen in Back to the Future; and the King Kong attraction.
No injuries have been reported thus far and there are unconfirmed reports that some filming was going on at the time and that the studio's film vault was threatened.
The theme park did not open today as firefighters were still dousing hot spots this afternoon some 10 hours after the blaze began.

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