A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from 1960, found in Google’s new newspaper scans search:
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Computer Is a Gentleman (Pic) | Comments]
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Computer Is a Gentleman (Pic)
08
Sep
Philipp Lenssen via Google Blogoscoped
shared by 5 people
[Advertisement] PingPongPie - the art of linkbaiting and social media marketing
[Advertisement] PingPongPie - the art of linkbaiting and social media marketing
Animated spider Flash toy
08
Sep
Play With Spider is a remarkable, Flash-based 3D animated spider that set my skin a-crawl within seconds of loading, You can even drop little insects for it to feast on. Don't miss the sliders for ultimate creepiness. Play With Spider (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Chevy Volt rolls out into the open at long last
08
Sep
Filed under: Transportation
It's official public debut may still only be coming next week, but it looks like GM has finally decided to give up on the carefully-chosen teaser shots and let the hotly-anticipated Volt out in the open for all the internet to see. No doubt to the dismay of some, the would-be next Prius sure looks a good deal different than the far more angular prototype we've all come to know over the past little while, although we can't say we're exactly surprised given GM's mass-market hopes for the car. Still, it is quite the milestone for the auto industry, and hopefully only the start of things to come. Be sure to hit up Autoblog for a gallery full of more pics of your favorite GM execs -- and the Volt, too.
Google Launches Newspaper Digitization Project [Newspapers]
08
Sep
Gina Trapani via Lifehacker
shared by 10 people
Google says it's bringing history online, one newspaper at a time with a new initiative to digitize millions of newspapers—like this article from the 1969 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the moon...
Google says it's bringing history online, one newspaper at a time with a new initiative to digitize millions of newspapers—like this article from the 1969 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the moon...
Facing Foreclosure? Buy A Second Home! Wait, What? [Mortgage Meltdown]
08
Sep
ABCNews says that more and more people who are facing foreclosure are just buying cheaper homes and then just walking away from their original mortgage. It only works for people who can afford the down payment on a new home and carry both mortgages until they're in the new home, but for some people whose payments are about to balloon, it's the most attractive option out there right now.
From ABCNews:
Eble owes $334,000 on his first house, which is now worth only $219,000 and is still dropping in value. He has an adjustable rate mortgage that has doubled to more than $4,000 a month, more than Eble can afford to pay.
So before the bank forecloses on his first house he is taking advantage of falling real estate prices to buy a new home for $285,000, with a fixed rate mortgage he can afford. Once inside the new home, he can either sell the first property for a huge loss to the bank or walk away completely and let it slip into foreclosure.
This exit strategy only helps homeowners who can afford the down payment on the second home as well as carry both mortgages until they are in their new home.
Like Jim Eble, homeowner Kim Hinske just bought a new home — for $280,000 — as a way to get out of an expensive mortgage.
"Yes, it's a scary thing, but I know that my family's taken care of 'cause we have another house, a bigger house and a mortgage that's less," Hinske said.
ABCNews says that the practice is prompting lenders to improse more strict guidelines for approving a second mortgage. A spokesperson from RealtyTrac, the firm that compiles foreclosure statistics, says that the trend is caused by desperation on the part of both borrowers and lenders.
"Desperate people do desperate things and again, we're at a point now where the relationships between the borrowers and lenders really seem to have devolved into a survival of the fittest mode," said Rich Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for homes in foreclosure.
In Foreclosure? Buy a Second Home [ABCNews]
(Photo: stirwise )
Google Releases More Patches for MySQL
08
Sep
Leslie Hawthorn via Google Open Source Blog
shared by 4 people
By Mark Callaghan, Software Engineering Team
Did you know that Google uses MySQL as part of its Ads system? As you can imagine, we demand a lot from this Open Source code base and so we have spent a fair amount of time enhancing it to work better in our massively scaled environment. In the past, we have published several patches and today we have a few more to offer. We expect several of these features to be merged into a future official MySQL release, and one of them, semi-synchronous replication, is already available as a MySQL feature preview.
All of the features in the patch are described on our project wiki. The features include:
By Mark Callaghan, Software Engineering Team
Did you know that Google uses MySQL as part of its Ads system? As you can imagine, we demand a lot from this Open Source code base and so we have spent a fair amount of time enhancing it to work better in our massively scaled environment. In the past, we have published several patches and today we have a few more to offer. We expect several of these features to be merged into a future official MySQL release, and one of them, semi-synchronous replication, is already available as a MySQL feature preview.
All of the features in the patch are described on our project wiki. The features include:
- enhancements and bug fixes for features from the previous patch
- changes to make InnoDB run faster on multi-core servers
- changes to display mutex contention statistics
- changes to monitor and rate-limit activity by database account and client IP
- a patch for MySQL 5.0.37 with all of our changes
- a patch for MySQL 5.1.26 with the changes for mutex contention statistics
- a patch for MySQL 5.0.67 to make InnoDB run faster on multi-core servers
What I hear when creationists speak [Pharyngula]
08
Sep
PZ Myers none@example.com via ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed
shared by 5 people
I like it. This is a perfect analogy to creationist argument.
Read the comments on this post...The theory of childhood, also known as child origin, is a damnable, loathsome and indefensible lie. How can any thinking person suppose all humans used to be babies once? There is no development path from babies to adults, no transitional forms between these two species. Show me even one baby with the head of a grown man on his body. Can you? No? Not even a bearded toddler? No adults with unfused skullbones, outside unfortunate disorders? Not even a tiny little newborn girl suddenly sprouting a respectable bosom? You can't find them, because they don't exist. There isn't a single transitional form between children and adults, and you will never find one because the theory simply is an unscientific lie.
The development of children has been well-researched in our six-month study following a sample of one thousand children and adults of various ages. We have conclusively proven that while there are minor changes in features like height and body fat, and replacement of deciduous teeth with permanent teeth, incontravertibly still every creature in the study that started out as a child had only slightly more adult features at the end of the observation period than at its beginning. Children and adults are separate kinds and there will never be sufficient changes to change one into the other. We reject any evidence from longer-term studies as we believe the laws of physics have changed within the last year.
To claim people come from children is demeaning and morally degrading. We have observed how children behave. If we acted like small children we'd all be demanding and impatient, and we'd be cheating, lying, and stealing from each other all the time. If the theory of childhood were true there would be no morality, and with no morality to build one on, no society. Childhood is a wicked lie used by charlatans to justify evils such as public schools.
There is no consensus on the theory of childhood in the scientific community. We should teach the controversy. Our children will be served well to learn that the prospect of them becoming adults is merely a theoretical idea. Many children come from families that do not subscribe to the theory of childhood, and they could be disturbed if the theory were taught as fact.
Gamers fight back against lackluster Spore gameplay, bad DRM
08
Sep
bkuchera@arstechnica.com (Ben Kuchera) via Ars Technica
shared by 4 people
Spore seems to be having a rocky launch: gamers are fighting back over what they perceive as unacceptable DRM, carpet-bombing Amazon with one-star reviews. The uninspiring game play isn't making things better.
Launch: Design Jobs on the Wall
08
Sep
I’m very excited to announce the launch of Design Jobs on the Wall. It is a job board mainly focused on design jobs. The pricing for posting a full-time job is only $75 and $50 for freelance jobs. Don’t miss out the opening special; enter the coupon code ‘promo’ to receive 50% off the first job listing. When you post your job openings here, it will be instantly featured on Web Designer Wall as well as other design related websites. Hopefully this board will bring more job opportunities to Web Designer Wall’s readers.
Thanks to Justin from Scheetz Designs for coding the backend of the job board.