PLANET sam planet sam planet

A qué no sabeis de quién es este coche?

Sepiraph writes "In a letter sent to the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and Bell Canada on May 15, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) have ordered Bell Canada to provide tangible evidence that its broadband networks are congested to justify the company's Internet traffic-shaping policies. This is a response after Bell planned to tackle the issue of traffic shaping, also called throttling, on the company's broadband networks. It would be interesting to see Bell's response, as well as to see some real-world actual numbers and compare them to a previous study."

Hoy ha amanecido despejado en San Francisco: cielo azul, aire fresco y agradecido. Me he tenido que conformar con disfrutarlo desde el salón de mi casa casi todo el día; me duele la garganta al tragar y tengo unos pocos de mocos. Es un rollo estar malo, sobre todo con días tan buenos y en los que a uno le proponen tantos planes.

De camino a la tienda del barrio donde me he comprado fruta y algo para comer, me he encontrado con esta estampa: un padre con sus dos hijos vendiendo limonada y pastelitos a 50 céntimos la unidad.

bughunter writes "Internet consultant firm Gartner claims that only 1 in 10 commercial virtual worlds succeeds, and most fail within 18 months: 'Businesses have learned some hard lessons," Gartner analyst Steve Prentice said in a statement released Thursday. "They need to realize that virtual worlds mark the transition from Web pages to Web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behavior count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience."'" Hard to believe it's even as high as one in ten -- most "virtual worlds" with obvious commercial trappings certainly don't inspire much besides mockery.

Stating the obvious: "Two scientists write that obese people are disproportionately responsible for high food prices and greenhouse gas emissions because they consume 18% more food energy due to their greater body mass -- and require increased quantities of fuel to transport themselves and the food they eat. 'Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food,' write the authors, Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts of the evocatively named London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine."

theodp writes "You probably saw media coverage of Bill Gates showing off touch-screen technology to his CEO play group last week. With the introduction of the iPhone and iPod Touch, touch (and multi-touch) technology — which folks like Ray Ozzie enjoyed as undergrads way back in the early '70s — has finally gone mainstream. The only question is: Why did it take four decades for its overnight success? Some suggest the expiration of significant patents filed during '70s and '80s may have had something to do with it — anything else?"

andrewmin writes "SoC 2008 has begun, and with 175 organizations and 1125 students it looks better than ever before. Here's a quick run-down of a few programs that, if they are finished, will definitely be making their way onto your machine."

As go celebrities, so go other things in our culture.

Today Seesmic got a HUGE win. The Indiana Jones crew, including famous movie stars and movie directors, are on Seesmic. Here, check them out:

Well, we’ve fought about it. Made noise about it. And you’re witnessing two giants fighting over our social networks. Here, let’s discover my social network:

Robert Scoble (Friend of:)

schliz writes "Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a device that lets a standard digital camera take pictures with a resolution of 1-gigapixel (1,000-megapixels). The Gigapan is a robotic arm that takes multiple pictures of the same scene and blends them into a single image. The resulting picture can be expanded to show incredible detail."

An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has revealed that the Wikimedia Foundation Board (which controls Wikipedia and Wikinews) has killed off a Wikinews report into the Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation lawsuit. Wikinews is a collaborative news site and is meant to be editorially independent from the WMF. The WMF office also suppressed a Wikinews investigation into child and other pornography on Wikipedia, which was independently covered by ValleyWag and other outlets this week. The US Communications Deceny Act section 230 grants providers of internet services (such as the Wikipedia and Wikinews) immunity from legal action related to their user-generated content provided they do not exercise pre-publication control. In deleting articles critical of the WMF prior to publication, Wikileaks says the Wikimedia Foundation may have set a dangerous precedent that could remove all of its CDA section 230 immunity (at least for Wikinews, where the control was exercised)."

El 17 de mayo de 1990, la OMS eliminó la homosexualidad de su lista de trastornos sexuales. Hoy se celebra el Día contra la Homofobia.  Leer. Escuchar

Por alguna razón (más bien por dinero) nos empeñamos siempre en tener muchos lectores o muchos usuarios, millones si es posible. En redes sociales como Tuenti o Sonico ya han llegado a ese nivel y los problemas han llegado co ellos.

De Sónico no tengo información a este respecto pero es facil pensar que con 15 millones de usuarios registrados no será fácil manejar una comunidad tan grande. Por cierto, sería muy interesante saber cuántos de esos 15 millones de usuarios son activos, ya con que sean un 10% la cifra es impresionante.

De Tuenti si que tengo más información, las cifras no son tan altas como en Sónico pero parece que el “enganche” de la gente es enorme. Fijaros por ejemplo que el 8 de mayo comunicaron en el blog que iban a hacer mudanza de servidores, el artículo lleva en estos momentos 747 comentarios y es muy interesante leerlos para saber cómo son los usuarios de esa red social, al menos los más beligerantes que suelen ser los que menos problema tienen para decir lo que piensan. No se cuántos usuarios registrados tiene Tuenti pero me atrevo a decir que ya tiene suficientes como para ser una comunidad bastante difícil de manejar, sobre todo a nivel técnico pero también en otros muchos aspectos.

La presidenta madrileña ha pedido aclaraciones durante un homenaje a víctimas de ETA. Algunos asistentes han abucheado a Gallardón y vitoreado a Aguirre.  Leer. Escuchar

Corrado writes "There is a big discussion going on over removing a bit of non-preemptable code from the Linux kernel. 'As some of the latency junkies on lkml already know, commit 8e3e076 in v2.6.26-rc2 removed the preemptable BKL feature and made the Big Kernel Lock a spinlock and thus turned it into non-preemptable code again. "This commit returned the BKL code to the 2.6.7 state of affairs in essence," began Ingo Molnar. He noted that this had a very negative effect on the real time kernel efforts, adding that Linux creator Linus Torvalds indicated the only acceptable way forward was to completely remove the BKL.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Websense Security Labs explains the spammer Anti-CAPTCHA operations and mass-mailing strategies. Apparently spammers are using combination of different tactics — proper email accounts, visual social engineering, and fast-flux — representing a strategy, explains their resident CAPTCHA expert. It is evident that spammers are working towards defeating anti-spam filters with their tactics."

coondoggie writes "Turns out that the surface of Mars is stiffer and colder than previously thought. New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.NASA made the discovery was using the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument on the Orbiter, which revealed long, continuous layers stretching up to 600 miles or about one-fifth the length of the United States. The radar pictures show a smooth, flat border between the ice cap and the rocky Martian crust, NASA said. On Earth, the weight of a similar stack of ice would cause the planet's surface to sag. The fact that the Martian surface is not bending means that its strong outer shell, or lithosphere, a combination of its crust and upper mantle, must be very thick and cold."

Ayer se presentó en sociedad el libro 15 años de internet en España que han realizado Angel María Herrera y Jorge Villabona con la participación de un buen número de emprendedores protagonistas de esos 15 años de la historia de internet en España.

Llegué a la noticia a través de un tweet de mi amigo Héctor, y la verdad es que me ha hecho sentir como en aquellas películas de espías en las que el malo se ponía el microchip adhesivo en el dedo y le daba una palmada al bueno para poder seguirlo (infructuosamente, porque es bien sabido que el caballo o el coche del malo siempre son sistemáticamente más lentos :-)

El invento viene de Hitachi, y es un chip de identificación por radiofrecuencia o RFID,con la gracia de que han conseguido reducirlo hasta nada menos que un cuadradito de 0.15 mm. de lado, todavía más pequeño que el que ya comercializan a día de hoy, que era de 0.4 mm. Más allá de paranoias - un chip RFID posibilita una detección en proximidad mediante un emisor de una frecuencia determinada cuya reverberación en el circuito del chip provee la energía suficiente para generar un rebote con una identificación de 128 bits - lo que resulta evidente es quesemejante nivel de miniaturización posibilita nuevos usos, además de suponer un incremento de productividad como de cuatro veces, al multiplicar el numero de chips que se obtienen de cada wafer, o lámina fabricada. Con un grosor de 7.5 micrómetros, puede utilizarse para verificación de documentos, entradas de espectáculos, o para muchísimos usos donde hasta el momento resultaba relativamente aparatoso.