Gemstone Pendants blogs

But even this bad news might bring with it some good. The technique in the thinking-cap experiments, known as transcranial magnetic stimulation, also seems to be helpful in treating depression.

Mirroring the way savants are both brilliant and mentally not quite there (remind you of any techies you know?), the thinking cap’s scientific milliners use tiny magnetic pulses to either deaden a part of your brain or excite it beyond its normal level of stimulus, thereby allowing the excited part to reveal the full glory of its capabilities.

Yes, soon you may be able to buy your own thinking cap, put it on, and be the person you always thought you could be.

There is, however, a little bad news. The effects of the thinking-cap zap wear off after an hour. This might lead to some very unfortunate occurrences.

Once the thinking cap buzzes experimentees up for 10 or 15 minutes, some are able to draw in a far more lifelike manner. Others, and this will please many at this site greatly, become far better editors, able to spot mistakes in a text that they could not see before the “OUT OF ORDER” sign has been hung on certain areas of their brains.

(Credit: CC Breibeest)

Professor Allan Snyder’s optimism for your ability to, say, rumba like a Cuban while being an analyst for Mark Cuban, is boundless: “I believe that each of us has within us nonconscious machinery which can do extraordinary art, extraordinary memory, and extraordinary mathematical calculations.”

If you’ve always thought you were a wonderful singer, but somehow failed to produce your best in karaoke bars, scientists may have found a solution.

The cap looks a little like a hairnet, but please don’t let that put you off. The theory behind the incredible thinking cap is that it will be able to switch different parts of your brain on and off, thereby allowing specific parts of your gray matter to blossom to their full potential.

This is not a thinking cap. But wouldn't it be great if it came in pink?

Scientists from the University of Sydney have studied brilliant people like Dustin Hoffman. Or, rather, brilliant people like the Qantas Airways-knowledgeable savant Dustin Hoffman plays in Rain Man.

You’ve impressed someone over dinner with your ability to simultaneously sing hits from the ’70s and balance a spoon on your nose. You go back to your place. The clock strikes midnight, the spoon falls off and, in the middle of some particularly apposite Barry Manilow rendition, you hit more bum notes than Britney Spears hits live.

At last, some of the world’s finest brains have gotten together to release the finest parts of everyone’s brain.

Japan: Mixi

Germany: StudiVZ

Skyrock dubs itself the “Free People Network” and generally succeeds in making that moniker hold up. User profiles are freely available with site registration and users can create blog entries that are published on the site’s main page. The top 100 bloggers are featured under the site’s “Blogs” heading, which also includes a blogger “Hall of Fame” and a running tally of articles–656,000 as of this writing. According to the site’s figures at the top of its page, there are currently 20 million blogs and 11.3 million profiles on Skyrock. If you want to create a profile–anyone from any country is allowed to do so–the site does require a quick registration. But if you’re looking for privacy, you won’t find it here–Skyrock is all about being open and hides nothing from site visitors.

It’s a big world out there and believe it or not, Facebook and MySpace don’t own it.

France’s leading social network, Skyrock, may surprise you a bit: it never was supposed to be a social network. Skyrock started as a blog in 2002, which was eventually abandoned in 2007 and turned into a social network. It was the right move.

Cyworld’s success has been astounding. The site currently has more than one-third of South Korea’s entire population using its service and 90 percent of all South Koreans in their 20s use the site.

South Korea’s Cyworld has been the de facto leader in that country for years. And although the odds are against it, it recently launched a U.S. site in an attempt to expand globally and take Facebook and MySpace on directly.

China: Xiaonei

Mixi controls almost every aspect of the member’s profile design and structure and it doesn’t even let third-party developers deploy apps on the site. Membership is restricted to users over 18 years of age and requires an invitation from a current user to sign-up. According to the company, just 5 percent of the site’s 15 million users provide their real names and photos and every visitor to a person’s profile page is recorded so they can see who has been looking them up.

Once users register for StudiVZ, it allows them to create a profile and interact with others. They can upload photos and videos, share interests, make updates, and post messages on friends’ walls. In fact, most Facebook users would feel right at home using StudiVZ. See what I’m getting at?

Facebook and MySpace may reign supreme in North America, but we can’t forget that they don’t control every country in the world. Simply put, people from around the globe have different tastes and the major U.S. networks barely capture relevant market share in some countries.

Xiaonei is basically a Chinese Facebook clone. The site’s design is extremely similar to Facebook’s layout and profile options are quite similar, as well. But with a reported $430 million in funding raised earlier this year, it’s poised to keep its lead across the world’s most populated country, regardless of its similarity to the social network giant.

France: Skyrock

It’s difficult to call Mixi a social network considering such a few number of its members really want to be that “social”, but it’s considered one nonetheless. The company is sitting atop Japan’s group of networks, which includes both MySpace and Facebook, and so far, neither can gain significant ground.

South Korea: Cyworld

Once users sign up for the service, they can create their own profile and an avatar, which becomes their digital face to the world. That avatar can then be personalized to modify hair color and general look. Once that’s complete, Cyworld allows users to upload photos, exchange virtual gifts, or create a club where others who share the same interests can join and interact. According to the company, its intention is to create a “virtual world.” So far, that vision has proven relatively successful.

Xiaonei targets college-age Chinese students. According to figures it released earlier this year, the social network currently has 15 million registered users and almost 9 million active users visiting the site each day. Much like Facebook, the service allows users to share photos and videos and connect with friends at school. Xiaonei also provides a platform for users to share music and movies–a practice that shouldn’t come as a shock considering China is one of the leading sources of piracy in the world. Much like Japan’s top social network, Mixi, no third-party apps are allowed on the service, though.

StudiVZ is, well, an almost exact replica of Facebook, but without the company’s signature blue design. Instead, the German firm employs a red palette in an attempt to differentiate itself. Regardless, its profile pages look almost exactly the same as Facebook’s and its many features mimic the social network giant. Because of that, Facebook initiated an intellectual property infringement case against StudiVZ back in July. So far, nothing has come out of that lawsuit other than posturing on both sides and much to Facebook’s chagrin, StudiVZ’s 9 million users haven’t stopped using the site.

Say what you will about the prominence of MySpace and Facebook in the U.S., but in Japan, they barely compete. A major social network called Mixi reigns supreme and there’s nothing Facebook nor MySpace have been able to do about it.

While the extension was working, it showed up as a “Download 4 Free” link on the top of the Amazon product page if the content could be found on the Pirate Bay’s search index. This linked directly to the hosted .torrent tracker file, letting the user avoid having to make a purchase from Amazon in place of acquiring it illegally via BitTorrent.

However, on their Web site, the students now say the plug-in was meant as an artistic parody, part of their research for a media design course at the Piet Zwart Institute of the Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool in Rotterdam Holland. “It was a practical experiment on interface design, information access, and currently debated issues in media culture,” the students say.

The journey is over for Pirates of the Amazon, a new
Firefox extension that let users illegally download movies, games, TV shows, and MP3s for free by cross referencing Amazon.com’s product pages with torrent files from the Pirate Bay.

And while that might seem like a convenient story concocted by the students to stay out of trouble, the NYT reports that they have backup from their teacher, Florian Cramer, who defended them on an Internet mailing list called Nettime.

On Thursday, a day after Webware reported on the plug-in, lawyers for Amazon.com took action. They served the Internet service provider of the two students who released the extension with a take-down notice–and the students complied and removed the tool, according to The New York Times.

“With the take-down notice from Amazon.com, our students have been scared away from pursuing their art, research and learning in our institute,” Cramer wrote. “We do not want a culture in which students have to preemptively censor their study because their work confronts culture with controversial and challenging issues.”

Cramer said a majority of commentators failed to see the artistic nature of the experiment, and expressed concern that his students were being censored.

Beane–who admitted he is a big gamer himself, with a small obsession with games like Call of Duty and Age of Empires–said that he also put a lot of effort into helping to make sure that the game’s rules adhered as closely as possible to that of the real big leagues.

On the other hand, he said, the game is realistic enough, and teaches so much about the minutiae of running a baseball team that, “It wouldn’t surprise me if the next generation of baseball general managers grow up playing this game.”

Known for his wheeling and dealing, Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane–the celebrity spokesperson for the game–surreptitiously checks e-mail on his BlackBerry during a press event for the game at the Oakland Coliseum on January 22, 2009.

The ‘hub’ of ‘MLB Front Office Manager’ is a screen which gives players access to all the information they need to run their teams, including new scores, player information, contract details, rosters and more.

During the event at the Oakland Coliseum, several actual Oakland A’s players, including Cliff Pennington and Aaron Cunningham, got a chance to play ‘MLB Front Office Manager.’

Beane said a big part of his job as a consultant for the game was in helping craft the exact language of communications players get from an omniscient faux-Beane that helps out during the course of play with tips and other emails.

Indeed, as with the day-to-day responsibilities of real-life baseball general managers, this game is all about resource allocation. Players have limited budgets and have to decide where, and how, to spend. Every dollar spent on a hot free agent is a dollar less to spend on bench depth, or scouts capable of finding future stars in the sandlots of the Dominican Republic.

(Credit:
2K Sports)

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

OAKLAND, Calif.–For the countless of devotees of rotisserie and fantasy baseball, there’s a whole new game in town.

By bringing in Beane as the game’s celebrity spokesperson, 2K Sports is making a big bet that the baseball stat-heads out there will jump at the chance to impersonate Beane, instead of the more common video game proposition of taking on the role of big league players and swinging for the fences.

“If it’s possible, on an
Xbox or
PlayStation or PC, in a game to re-create the general manager’s position,” said Beane, “I don’t know that you can find anything that duplicates it better than this. This is the ultimate fantasy player’s outlet, because every decision, just like as with a real general manager, every decision costs something and is going to prevent you from doing something else. In most games, you draft anybody you want…This actually takes into account the depths of the game.”

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

Of course, as in real baseball, successfully pulling off trades is tricky business. And that’s one of the areas where Beane’s expertise came into play: helping the game’s designers build in an appropriate level of difficulty for achieving things like trades. Otherwise, it would all be too easy.

They will also be able to examine their own teams’ rosters, determine trades they’d like to make with other teams, and then attempt to make those trades.

“You choose the type of clothes you wear” as a GM, joked Beane, “and you choose who you are. Over 30 years, you lose your hair, and you put on weight as you do this job.”

The structure of the game is to go through a 30-year general manager’s career, trying to position yourself as a Hall of Fame candidate. And instead of playing out each individual contest in each season, pitch by pitch, this game is about making the behind-the-scenes decisions that put your team in position to outplay others in simulated game after simulated game.

The game also offers regular e-mail communications–tips, in other words–from an all-seeing Beane operating behind the curtain. And the language of these communications was another time-consuming piece Beane’s role in consulting on the creation of the game.

“A lot of the time (I spent) was really figuring out what would be the verbiage when talking about trades,” Beane said. “They aren’t as easy as just calling this guy and saying, ‘Will this trade work?’ It can be a frustrating process, and you can’t think of it as a linear process.”

And that means that the action is entirely about figuring out how to run the front office–something that really hasn’t been tried in a modern baseball video game.

Throughout the game, players will encounter situations where they have to use their brains–instead of just the quickness of their thumbs on joystick buttons–to succeed. Whether it’s intelligently negotiating a young shortstop’s contract, or putting enough emphasis on scouting to be able to draft well for next season, this is not your son’s baseball video game. This is, as Loo said, a thinking person’s game, and one that evolves slowly, and methodically.

(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET News)

The new 2K Sports game puts all the focus on what it takes to get a major league team going, and operates on a calendar that begins the moment the World Series ends and commences from there. That’s because that’s how it really is for each of the real-world big league general managers.

Of course, there is a cost to playing this game the way the designers want you to, given that it’s supposed to be a 30-year career simulation.

Part of the task of playing ‘MLB Front Office Manager’ involves choosing the attributes of your general manager. That includes determining his personal and professional background. The more emphasis he has on amateur scouting, the better he will be at developing a team from the ground up.

“It’s a thinking man’s baseball game,” said Edwin Loo, the game’s producer at developer Blue Castle Games. “It’s for all those people who play fantasy baseball (and who) spend hours making (their teams and making trades). That’s who we made this game for. This game is for those hard-core baseball fans.”

(Credit:
2K Sports)

Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (left) talks about ‘MLB Front Office Manager,’ the new stats-based baseball video game that he is promoting for 2K Sports. Beane was chosen as the consultant for the game because he is known as one of the smartest GMs in the game, and an expert at getting the most out of a small-market team.

On Tuesday, 2K Sports will release its MLB Front Office Manager, and for those addicted to the stat-heavy pastime of running fantasy leagues, being a Major League Baseball general manager may never get closer.

That means this game is not going to appeal to a large, mainstream audience. It is definitely a niche title. On the other hand, there are millions of fantasy league and rotisserie players, and MLB Front Office Manager is clearly aiming at picking off their business. Whether that will happen is impossible to know at this point, but if one thing is for sure, it’s that those who get a serious kick out of poring over baseball stats, transactions, standings and off season news could finally have a way to dive deep into the fantasy of being Billy Beane.

MLB Front Office Manager is all about trying to navigate the millions of little details that go into the operational side of running a baseball team. From scouting amateur players to drafting them to making trades to figuring out what to do when stars get injured to sucking it up after a losing season and trying again next year.

In fact, players have very little control over the actual play-by-play of each individual contest. Instead, they watch as the game’s simulation engine runs through, say, a Red Sox-Tigers matchup. There are ways to control some of the action, but there is none of the hitting, pitching, or fielding involved in most baseball games.

There is no end to the roster of baseball video games that pay homage to the complexities of building a team from the ground up. They have mechanisms for relying on stats to determine which players are best in different kinds of situations–and many have had the endorsement of real-life players and the blessing of big league baseball.

Some of the elements of the game involve daily briefs on happenings around the big leagues. Players will see trades made by other teams–simulated in a single-player run-through of the game, or for real in online league play.

(Credit:
2K Sports)

But MLB Front Office Manager isn’t like any of them. That’s because the game is really about the process of running a team rather than the play-by-play action in which gamers have to swing at pitches, try to dive in the hole for sharp-hit grounders, and master all kinds of joystick button combinations in order to steal a base or pick someone off first.

The new game–which is unlike any baseball video game I’ve ever seen–has perhaps the perfect pitchman, Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane. For those not familiar with him, the game probably won’t mean much, since as the main subject of Michael Lewis’ hit book, Moneyball, Beane has long been considered the most cerebral and efficient guy putting contending baseball teams on the field.

I know that brands are supposed to stay close to their core competence. But it would seem a shame if so much brainpower were merely concentrated on, well, selling advertising.

I ask because perhaps the last brand that carried with it as much young, positive emotional equity was Virgin.

There might be all kinds of fascinating self-protective reasons why Google is launching the Android phone in conjunction with T-Mobile. However, at least as interesting a development this past week is the company’s entry into Interbrand’s list of the top 10 brands in the world.

Virgin represented an intuitive understanding of youth–not just young boys, but the positive emotions that come from being young, free, and just slightly different. It also enjoyed a product that was clearly better than its rivals and senior management that was as happy to express its uniqueness by flying around in balloons as Google’s bosses are to disclose their personal DNA.

(Credit: CC Yodel Anecdotal)

So I am secretly hoping that this Android experiment will merely be a taste of one of the world’s top 10 brands contributing to the deep, abundant, and sensual pleasure we all get from various inanimate objects.

What about Google Health Farms, specifically created for those suffering laptop-induced repetitive strain syndrome and general brain freeze? What about Google Gear, specially engineered for the Cool-But-Not-Really look?

Google’s sudden appearance at No. 10 represents a jump of 10 places and puts the company at a, for some, surprising 14 places above Apple. And a few thousand places above Bear Stearns.

It’s clear that the Google brand has enormous equity. And, now that the company is beginning to associate itself with tangible objects rather than just fungible words, a thought comes to mind: what objects would you buy from Google?

Virgin thought it could use its brand equity to sell, amongst other things, cosmetics, clothes, financial services, flowers, and space flights. And, um, vodka. Oh, and health clubs, bridal wear, cell phones, cola, and video games. And stem cell storage. All with varying degrees of success.

Given that Google’s management seems to be fairly proficient at making money, might you one day be inclined to trust a Google Bank (a bank with a heart? a Democratic Bank?)? Or what if they launched some Odwalla-style healthy drinks that were originally created to enhance the brainpower of the company’s staff?

But what if Google got together with some other incredibly talented (and young, naturally) folks and launched, dare one even suggest it, a gPod?

Evidence of a Google foray into bathroom accessories?

Directly above Google is Disney and one rung below you’ll find Mercedes. Much further down you’ll find Nike, eBay, Starbucks and, something that shows a peculiar lack of taste among the judges, Prada.

If Philippe Starck is trusted enough to design a chair, an apartment, a toothbrush, and a house (oh, and a wind turbine), might the Google brand be successfully attached to anything that was clearly the product of an abnormal abundance of brains? Like an insanely green
car, a revolutionary laptop, or an intelligent city council?

Intel said in its annual report that Hewlett-Packard accounted for 20 percent of Intel’s revenue, up from 17 percent in 2007. Dell accounted for 18 percent in 2008, flat with 2007.

Net revenue for Intel’s major operating segments, the Digital Enterprise Group (DEG) and the Mobility Group (MG), presented as a percentage of its consolidated net revenue.

Research and development spending as held relatively steady for the last three years: $5.7 billion in 2008; $5.8 billion in 2007; and $5.9 billion in 2006.

(Originally posted at ZDNet’s Between the Lines)

(Credit:
Intel)

Intel headcount-83,900 employees in 2008-is down substantially from 2006’s tally of 94,100 employees.

(Credit:
Intel)

We believe that our network of manufacturing facilities and assembly and test facilities gives us a competitive advantage. This network enables us to have more direct control over our processes, quality control, product cost, volume, timing of production, and other factors. These facilities require significant up-front capital spending, and many of our competitors do not own such facilities because they may not be able to afford to do so or because their business models involve the use of third-party facilities for manufacturing and assembly and test. These “fabless semiconductor companies” include Broadcom Corporation, NVIDIA Corporation, QUALCOMM Incorporated, and VIA Technologies, Inc. (VIA). Some of our competitors own portions of such facilities through investment or joint-venture arrangements with other companies. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) intends to sell an interest in its manufacturing operations.

We have an ongoing authorization, amended in November 2005, from our Board of Directors to repurchase up to $25 billion in shares of our common stock in open market or negotiated transactions. As of December 27, 2008, $7.4 billion remained available for repurchase under the existing repurchase authorization. A portion of our purchases in 2008 was executed under privately negotiated forward purchase agreements. In the third quarter of 2008, we executed a forward purchase agreement with Lehman Brothers OTC Derivatives Inc. (Lehman Brothers) in which we prepaid $1.0 billion and received an equivalent $1.0 billion of cash collateral from Lehman Brothers. However, in the fourth quarter, Lehman Brothers failed to deliver shares of Intel common stock, and we foreclosed on the $1.0 billion collateral.

A look at Intel’s manufacturing footprint, which is being revamped for 32-nanometer manufacturing:

Intel's manufacturing plants. Click image for larger version.

Intel was snared in the Lehman Brothers fallout as it tried to buy its own stock. In its filing Intel said:

Intel’s mobility unit is becoming a bigger part of the chipmaker’s revenue mix:

The annual report didn’t hold many surprises-especially about how netbooks and Intel’s Atom chip would affect profit margins in the future.

Intel also maintained that keeping its manufacturing assets are a competitive edge:

Here’s a look at the highlights from Intel’s report.

No other customer accounted for more than 10 percent of sales, according to Intel’s annual regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fisker Automotive said on Monday that an arbitrator found an interim award in favor of Fisker Automotive and the auto design company which had done work for Tesla last year.

Electric
car company Tesla Motors will not continue its trade secret suit against rival car maker Fisker Automotive, following an arbitrator’s ruling in Fisker’s favor.

Tesla’s communications manager on Monday said that the company will not pursue the case because the arbitrator’s ruling was binding.

Fisker Automotive responded in May when it filed for arbitration. The contract between Fisker and Tesla had a clause that required that any disputes be handled through arbitration in Orange County, Calif., within 90 days, according to Fisker. Tesla filed its suit against Fisker in San Mateo Superior Court.

According to Fisker, the case’s arbitrator said that “Tesla’s assertion of violations of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act by Fisker were baseless and neither brought nor pursued in good faith.”

The case dates back to April of this year, when Tesla Motors filed a suit against famed designer Henrik Fisker’s design firm for allegedly taking confidential design information about Tesla’s upcoming luxury sedan during a consulting engagement.

The Tesla representative said the result does not affect Tesla’s operations. The company raised $40 million in convertible debt on Sunday in an effort to improve its low cash position and accelerate sales of its Roadster electric sports car.

Fisker Automotive said that it is still on target to release its plug-in hybrid high-end sports sedan by the end of 2009.

As you can see in the picture below, it came with an attached ZIP file.

As I’ve noted before: never decide to trust an e-mail message based on the sender. It is very easy to forge the “From” address when sending e-mail.

ZIP files are commonly used as a container to transmit malicious software. The number in the name of the ZIP file is probably there to evade detection by antivirus software; the numbers were different in the two messages received Thursday.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

A malicious email that was not from the UPS package delivery company

And, hopefully by now it should go without saying, Windows users should never run an executable file sent by e-mail.
Mac and Linux users (including the many new Netbook Linux users) can ignore this warning.

I have a lot of e-mail addresses and thus attract my fair share of unwanted and malicious e-mail. The latest malware spreading e-mail to land in my in-boxes has purported to be from the package delivery company UPS. Thursday, I received two of these, but there have been other similar messages recently.

The ZIP file contained a single EXE called UPSInvoice_997612.exe. I uploaded the file to VirusTotal.com, where 4 of the 36 antivirus applications detected it as malicious.