News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
According to this report, there are 6 billion cellphone subscriptions worldwide, with about 75 percent of the world’s population having at least one cellphone. Think about that for a moment. A technology that first became commercially available about 30 years ago has spread to more than 5 billion people.
Link: http://dailycaller.com/…
This heavy lift ship, the VB 10,000 by Versabar, is known as “The Claw”. It’s used to lift sunken oil rig platforms from the ocean floor and has a rated lift capacity of 7500 tons. What gets me is that they probably pay someone to operate this machine—I’m pretty sure that any red-blooded American male would gladly pay them for the privilege of using this equipment.
Link: http://gizmodo.com/…
(via Neatorama)
Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass that’s used in many smartphones and tablets, has come up with a new product called Willow Glass. It’s paper-thin and scratch resistant, yet can be rolled into a circle with a 2-inch radius. It’ll be interesting to see what applications they find for this new technology.
Link #1: http://www.corning.com/…
Link #2: http://arstechnica.com/…
In a follow-up to this recent Chad’s News post, Adobe has pulled its Flash Player from the Android store. Thanks to Steve Jobs, it appears that HTML5 will be the delivery system of choice for multimedia content. Adobe still has plans for Flash, and it’s fully supported on PCs, but this is pretty much the end of it for mobile devices.
Link: http://www.bbc.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
Aaron Deveau, age 18, has been convicted of vehicular homicide for texting while driving. The distraction led to a crash that killed a man. Deveau will spend a year in jail then five years on probation, and he will lose his driver’s license for 15 years. A harsh punishment indeed.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
The linked article has an infographic listing the pros and cons of Windows 8, from primarily a corporate IT department point of view:
Pros:
Cons:
The radio show, This American Life, did a segment where they interviewed recent immigrants to the United States and asked them what aspects of American life they found to be the most unbelievable. Then someone posted a follow-up question on Quora to see what else there was. The lists include:
Link #1 (Flash audio stream. Starts at 35:34 and lasts about 10 minutes. Start the audio then click the right-arrow in the “Act 2” section to jump directly to it.):
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/…
(via Neatorama)
Link #2 (Follow-up): http://www.theatlantic.com/…
exFAT is a file system, similar to FAT32 or NTFS, developed by Microsoft and released to the mainstream in Windows Vista SP1. It’s primarily intended for Flash drives, as opposed to magnetic hard drives, and has the added advantage that Apple Macintosh computers with OS X 10.6.5 or later support it by default (which is not the case for NTFS). Based on the linked article, you should probably use NTFS for standard hard drives and exFAT for Flash-based devices, and just completely forget about ever using FAT32. exFAT will work with Windows XP if you install update KB955704.
Thanks to Josh for this link.
The linked article explains the two main types of memory cards and their various speed ratings. The author also gives tips on which ones to use for your camera, based on the type of photography you’re doing
Link: http://www.komando.com/…
The linked article discusses how geothermal energy from Iceland will be sent to mainland Europe. It also covers plans to build solar farms in Africa that will help power southern Europe. Now that’s what I’m talking about! For some time now I’ve been wondering why they don’t carpet the Sahara with huge solar farms—this would be such an economic boon for the African states, and it just makes environmental sense. So it’s good to hear that plans are underway to make that happen. I can see it going even further, where energy from the solar arrays is used to power massive desalinization plants, thus bringing fresh water to the African nations that most need it. I believe Northern Africa could be transformed into a prosperous region, much in the same way that oil has transformed Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
When I first heard about Windows RT, I got it confused with the old IBM RT PC, but they are not related. Instead, RT is a version of Windows 8 that will run on mobile devices that have ARM CPUs (instead of the familiar Intel/AMD CPUs that we see on desktops and laptops). One downside is that existing Windows applications, those developed prior to Windows 8, will not run on Windows RT without some conversion work. But Microsoft plans to release an ARM-compatible version of Office to help lead the way. Windows RT is an effort by Microsoft to get Windows into the mobile device market. The benefit to users will be Windows’ huge pool of applications. We’ll see how well it works out.
The linked article gives a summary of what it takes to convert a movie from 2D to 3D. The process is long and involved, and is compared to cutting your lawn with a nail clipper. The article covers the conversion of Titanic, which took more than two years. Many other conversions are done in much less time, and shortcuts are taken that make the 3D experience less enjoyable.
Link: http://www.extremetech.com/…
(via Slashdot)
