De-Worming Software More Effective at Detecting Infected Network Computers Before Contagion Can Spread
More than a year after being launched by hackers on a campaign to infect computers running Microsoft Windows, the Conficker worm 's effects are still being felt. England's Greater Manchester Police department, for example, has had to cut its computers off from a national criminal database since detecting Conficker on its network last week. [More]
Better Broadband: New Regulatory Rules Could Change the Way Americans Get Online
At the turn of the millennium, the U.S. had some of the best broadband access in the world. It reached more homes, and at a lower price, than most every other industrial country. Ten years later the U.S. is a solid C-minus student, ranking slightly below average on nearly every metric.
Just how the U.S. lost its edge and how it plans to get it back are the issues before the Federal Communications Commission as it prepares to launch the most significant overhaul of network policy since the birth of the Web. As part of last year’s stimulus package, Congress provided $7.2 billion to expand broadband access to every American. It also required the FCC to outline a plan for how to make that happen. The outcome of the FCC’s deliberations, due February 17, could determine not just control over the broadband infrastructure but also the nature of the Internet itself.*
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Microsoft's Hands-Free Answer to the Nintendo Wii
Editor's note: The online version of this story was posted on January 7.
When Nintendo’s Wii game console debuted in November 2006, its motion-sensing handheld “Wiimotes” got players off the couch and onto their feet. Now Microsoft hopes to outdo its competitor by eliminating the controller altogether: this past January it revealed details of Project Natal, which will give Xbox 360 users the ability to manipulate on-screen characters via natural body movement. The machine-learning technology will enable players to kick a digital soccer ball or swat a handball simply by mimicking the motion in their living room.
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Apple introduces the iPad and iBooks
What do you know? McGraw-Hill CEO Harold McGraw was on the money yesterday when he said Apple would announce a tablet on Wednesday . The iPad now has officially arrived, weighing in at less than a kilogram, with a 25-centimeter LED-backlit display that is just over a centimeter thick. It will be available by the end of March with a price tag starting at $499. [More]
You'll Go Blind: Does Watching Television Close-Up Really Harm Eyesight?
Dear EarthTalk: Years ago I read that children should be kept at least two feet from the television because of harmful electronic emissions. Is this still relevant? Is there a difference regarding this between older and new flat-screen models? --Horst E. Mehring, Oconomowoc, Wisc.
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Apple's new gadget is a tablet, McGraw-Hill confirms
McGraw-Hill's CEO has answered the burning question in technology for the past several months--what exactly does Apple have up its sleeve? During an interview Tuesday afternoon on CNBC, Harold McGraw confirmed on-air that Apple will introduce its tablet computer Wednesday and that it will use the iPhone operating system. TechCrunch posted video of the three-minute interview to its site this afternoon. [More]
Video Game Expands the Concept of Dark Energy for Mass Effect
Could a person harness the power of dark energy --the mysterious and pervasive force suspected of speeding the universe's expansion--to block bullets, hurl adversaries around like rag dolls, and create small gravitational vortices out of thin air using nothing more than thoughts? The short answer: no. That is, unless that person exists in the intricate cyber universe created by the makers of the video games Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, the latter of which drops on January 26. [More]
Better Mileage Now--Improving the Combustion Engine (preview)
Demand for automobiles is rising worldwide. So is concern about greenhouse gas emissions. In response, scientists and engineers are working diligently to perfect new power plants for future vehicles, including battery and hydrogen fuel-cell electric cars. Although these and other alternatives show great promise for the long term, perhaps the single greatest way to reduce fossil-fuel consumption in the near term is to further improve today’s dominant transportation power plant: the gasoline internal-combustion (IC) engine.
Fortunately, efficiency can be raised in a number of ways, notably, better control over the air-fuel mixture entering the combustion chamber, over the way gasoline is ignited there, and over the mechanical systems that harness that energy. These can improve traditional automobiles as well as gasoline-electric hybrid models.
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Creating Darwin's Biopic; and Consumer Electronics
Science Talk correspondent John Pavlus talks with Jon Amiel, director of the new Darwin biography movie Creation , and with Randal Keynes, Darwin's great-great-grandson and one of the film's scriptwriters. [More]
Environmental ills? It's consumerism, stupid
Two typical German shepherds kept as pets in Europe or the U.S. consume more in a year than the average person living in Bangladesh, according to research by sustainability experts Brenda and Robert Vale of Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. So are the world's environmental ills really a result of the burgeoning number of humans on the planet--predicted to reach at least nine billion people by 2050? Or is it more due to the fact that although the human population has doubled in the past 50 years, we have increased our use of resources fourfold ? [More]
Google escalates standoff with China by postponing the launch of two new Android phones
Even as Google considers its options in China, the company Wednesday postponed the launch in that country of two mobile phones running its Android operating system. Google has asked for cooperation from Motorola and Samsung Electronics (the companies that make the new phones) to postpone their release until the fate of its standoff with the Chinese government is resolved, The New York Times reported . [More]
Green for Green: U.S. Stimulus Package Offers Businesses $7 Billion in Environmental Incentives
Dear EarthTalk: I've been following reports about President Obama's stimulus package and what it may mean for creating green jobs. Beyond that, are there programs in place to help businesses switch to greener raw materials and/or to green up operations overall? --Diane, via e-mail
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Home Sweet Earthship: Building a Self-Sufficient Bio-House from Old Tires and Recycled Cans
Dear EarthTalk I've heard of extremely environmentally friendly homes and communities called "Earthships" popping up across the U.S. What are they exactly? --Kelsey Kuehn, Kirtland, Ohio
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Receive Between the Lines: FCC Mulls Signal "White Space" as Part of National Broadband Plan
As more and more wireless gadgets suck up more high-speed Internet bandwidth, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is challenged to find new avenues for consumers to get their mobile connectivity. One controversial option that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is considering as part of his agency's National Broadband Plan is to make slots of "white spaces," unused airwaves on the broadcast spectrum, available to the unlicensed mobile phones and PCs that are typically used by the general public. [More]
Mining for Online Game Gold and Other Amazing Stories
Scientific American magazine Editor in Chief Mariette DiChristina talks about the January issue, including articles on the chances of conditions conducive to life elsewhere in the multiverse and the growing practice of virtual gold farming, in which legions of online game players in developing countries acquire currency in the game that they sell to other players for real money. [More]
Google's China ultimatum could paint the company into a corner
Google delivered an ultimatum to the Chinese government Tuesday, stating on its blog that it is no longer willing to censor results on Google.cn, the Chinese version of its search engine. If the Chinese government fails to acquiesce, the company says it may shut down Google.cn as well as its offices in China. [More]
Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead
Attention, couch potatoes. Every hour spent on the sofa watching TV, whether it’s Iron Chef or Biggest Loser, is bad for your heart. Researchers tracked the viewing habits and health of nearly 9,000 adults to come up with the not-too-surprising finding, published in the journal Circulation . What’s alarming is just how bad being fused to your Lazyboy turns out to be.
For every hour glued to the boob tube each day, a participant's risk of death from cardiovascular disease shot up 18 percent. Viewers who tuned in daily for four hours or longer were 80 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease compared with people who watched TV for two hours or less each day.
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Can the World's Telecoms Slash Their Energy Consumption 1,000-Fold?
The unbridled success of wireless networks for Internet access and beyond has brought mobile telecommunications to remote areas of Africa , safety to many a driver stranded roadside, and worldwide mobility to professionals who were once deskbound. Yet all of this has come at a steep environmental cost: The global network and technology required to run it produce 250 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, roughly the same as is produced yearly by 50 million automobiles (20 percent of all the autos in the U.S.), according to Green Touch , a new international consortium of businesses, government agencies and academics formed to address this problem. [More]
Powerful Chips Aimed at Providing Massive Data for 3-D TVs and Smart Phones
LAS VEGAS--As tech vendors unleashed a barrage of 3-D HD TVs, smarter smart phones and home energy management systems on the public this week here at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Intel could not have been happier. All of these high-performance communication and entertainment gadgets generate a lot of data, and someone needs to provide the horsepower to make sure that data flows to where it needs to go. [More]
Talking Down Roadkill?: Ford Expands Sync for Drivers Unable to Leave the Internet at the Curb
LAS VEGAS--Pretty soon, car buyers will make their decisions about which vehicle to buy based not on styling, horsepower or color but rather on software. That is the vision that Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally laid out here Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when he and several company executives demonstrated new components of Ford Sync technology that will allow drivers hands-free access to modern necessities, including text messages and the Internet. [More]
