Archive for August 6th, 2008SpaceAdmiral writes “Scientists have discovered a virus that can infect another virus. The fact that viruses can essentially get sick may change the debate over whether they are alive or not. Check out Nature for a slightly more technical article about the ‘virophage.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Googlesaysmysiteisdangerousanditisn’t! writes “A recent article in Science states that researchers in China and the US have found big carbon uptake in the world’s deserts. The effects of this are big. 35% of the Earth’s land surface is desert, and the uptake equates to 5.2 billion tons of carbon sequestered each year. This is more than half of the carbon released by humans. In these ‘dry oceans,’ the grains of sand grant the carbon dioxide to enter and react with alkaline soil to become carbonates. Another scientist suspects that biotic desert crusts, alkaline soils, and increased precipitation may be driving the uptake.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. anzha writes “The X Prize Foundation announced on Monday the competing teams for the 2008 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. This year there are ten teams competing for the two prizes. The XPF has a nice matchup utility to compare the different teams’ rockets. The one downside to this year though is that the competition will not have an accompanying X Prize Cup. It will be webcast, though. Full disclosure: I’m on a team.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. AnonymousCoward writes “US researchers have made a digital imaging system designed like the human eyeball — its image sensor is on the inside of a hemisphere like your retina. Resolution is so far low, but finding a way to use silicon sensors this way offers a way around the unavoidable distortion that results from projecting a wide angle view onto a flat sensor.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Millie Kelly was born with a condition that required an immediate operation. During this operation her kidneys started to fail and since she was too small for dialysis machines, physicians told her parents that she was unlikely to live. Luckily for Millie, Dr. Malcolm Coulthard and a colleague tried to build a much smaller kidney machine on their own and they were successful. Her mother said, “It was a green metal box with a few paint marks on it with quite a few wires coming out of it into my daughter - it didn’t look like a normal NHS one.” The girl was hooked up to the machine over a seven day period to allow her kidneys to recover. Two years later, her mom Rebecca says she’s “fit as a fiddle.” You should see what Dr. Coulthard can build using a postage stamp, a tuning fork, a lawn chair and a jellyfish. Read more of this story at Slashdot. Sallust writes “Flightglobal has an interesting article about the testing of a new electrically powered plasma engine called the Vasimir. It’s being developed by former astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz and promises to greatly reduce the time and fuel required for interplanetary journeys. According to the article: ‘The Vasimir involves the injection of a gas such as hydrogen into an engine that turns it into a plasma. That plasma is then energised further using radio signals as it flows through the engine, a process controlled by electromagnetic waves from superconducting magnets. Accelerated and heated through this process the plasma is focused and directed as exhaust by a magnetic nozzle. Vasimir is many times more efficient than conventional chemical rockets and far less fuel is needed.’ The developers are finalising an agreement with NASA to fit a scaled-down version of the engine to the ISS to conduct operational tests. There is also a concept video on YouTube suggesting a journey time for a manned craft to Mars on the order of 60-70 days.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Palestinians Deny Obama Returned Illegal Contributions, Says Reporter - ForbesPosted by: admin in Today NewsPalestinians Deny Obama Returned Illegal Contributions, States Reporter - Forbes Next Mega Money jackpot an estimated $2 million - Miami Herald Doyle says power plant probe was waste of money - Chicago Tribune Green news harvest: Solar iPhone case, clean tech bucks economic blues - CNET News As oil falls, Valero should rise - CNN Money Abington, Washington Twp. make ‘Best Places’ list - Philadelphia Daily News Money for overpasses is lacking if Canadian National Railway buys rail - Chicago Tribune Morgan Stanley to freeze home-equity credit lines: report - Reuters Brier, Wash., Awards Video Franchise to Verizon - MSN MoneyCentral Where Now For UK Interest Rates? - Ananova
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Ford (F) sued for making too many ‘limited edition’ MustangsPosted by: in Products and ServicesFiled under: Products and services, Ford Motor (F), Marketing and advertising
Ford claimed that only 100 of the 2007 Roush Stage 3 BlackJack Mustangs would be made in 2007, and fans snatched them up as they went on sale. The automobile, which cost $59,000, was continued in 2008 and another 100 were made by Ford and Roush Performance Products. That fact didn’t sit well with those who had bought the 2007 model. (I remember the Chevy Camaro and Ford Mustang fanatics of the 70s and 80s — and fans of both can be quite intense and still dote on their treasured vehicles to this day.) in the end, though, “limited” doesn’t really mean anything — the number can refer to 10 or 1,000. The lawsuit states that the value of each of the 2007 Mustangs was harmed by the additional 100 automobiles made in 2008. But is this what true fans are really worried about? I doubt it — it’s hard to think of these cars as long-term investments. Their attraction comes more from being something very special. Perhaps it’s a bit of both. The lawsuit, though, is claiming more than $12 million in damages. Doing the math, 100 cars times $59,000 equals just over $5.9 million. Multiply that by two and you get something close to $12 million. Apparently, the entire value of all 200 Mustangs from 2007 and 2008 are at issue here. Could it really be just about money? Or is it more a matter of bruised egos? Either way, it could be costly for Ford, which can’t afford to lose another penny. eldavojohn writes “In an effort to combat air pollution, a Dutch town has paved some of its streets with air-purifying concrete. It contains a titanium dioxide-based additive that utilizes sunlight to turn vehicle exhaust into harmless nitrates. It was shown to do this in a lab and now the scientists are interested in just how much this will affect the air quality around the road. They’ll sample the air quality by a normal road and by this newly paved one.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. Dekortage writes “If you watch the Olympics gymnastics this year, you might be confused by the new scoring system which will let athletes score 14, 17, or even higher. The new rules are “heavy on math” and employ two panels of judges: one for technical difficulty, which adds points up from a score of zero; the other for execution and technique, which starts at 10.0 and subtracts for errors. The two numbers are then combined for the final score. As one judge put it, “The system rewards difficulty. But the mistakes are also more expensive.” The new rules were adopted after South Korea protested a scoring at the 2004 Olympics.” Now I’m sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any “sport” that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon twirling thing. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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When you sell something as a “limited edition,” you superior mean it. But it turns out that a recent limited edition of the 
