Thailand is buying twenty armored limousines, for $177,000 each. These will be used by senior government officials. Since September 11, 2001, there has been a sharp increase in the use of such bullet proof automobiles. The wealthy are buying most of them. Usually they are modified SUVs and sedans, and there are now many car dealerships specializing in these vehicles.

The vehicles must, at a minimum, be protected against pistol bullets. But most now are resistant to sniper and assault rifles. Some manufacturers will also build vehicles that provide some protection from roadside bombs.

Turning a civilian sedan or SUV into an armored vehicle is a labor-intensive job. First, you have to strip the vehicle down to the bare frame. Then you install Kevlar and steel plate armor and bullet-proof glass. The standard tires are replaced with run-flat models. The additional weight (up to a ton or more) requires the installation of enhanced shocks and a more powerful engine. It takes a few hundred pounds of armor to provide protection from pistol bullets. Protection from rifle bullets requires half a ton. For protection against heavy machine-gun (12.7mm) and bombs, you need a ton or more. The first armor kits for military vehicles, like the hummer, weighed a ton. Soon that was up to two tons.

Once you have put the newly armored vehicle back together, you have to make more modifications  to insure that the vehicle has the same handing characteristics as before the extra weight was added. This is crucial so that your driver does not have to learn new driving techniques to handle the rapid maneuvers needed to escape an ambush.

{ Strategy Page | Continue reading }

Researchers in Italy had a female confederate visit a disco and approach 176 random people asking for a smoke. Clubbers were about twice as likely to hand one over if the request was directed at the right ear, whether or not the clubber was male or female. Whether these findings will hold good for other types of request is unknown.

These findings confirm previous studies which have found a right-ear preference for attending to and processing verbal stimuli. It is thought that this is because language is preferentially processed by the left side of the brain, which receives its input from the right ear. (…)

People’s preferred ear when using a telephone, though, has proved more controversial.

{ PsyBlog | Continue reading }

photo { Kate Moss by Michael Thompson }

Enthusiasm for flying cars reached a peak in the 1950s when the Ford Motor Company almost started mass-producing one. Studies done at the time showed such a vehicle was technically feasible, was fairly easy to manufacture and had commercial appeal. The markets identified for it included the police, ambulance and other emergency services plus the armed forces and wealthy individuals.

The problems then, as now, were more regulatory than technical or economic. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was aghast at the volume of additional air traffic Ford had in mind. The air-traffic control systems of the day would have been overwhelmed. Ford promptly abandoned the idea, even though its flying car would have been cheaper to build and operate than the helicopters that subsequently took over most of their intended roles.

Since then, a number of diehards and dreamers have laboured on. (…) There are those who believe the best—though, technically, the most challenging—way to build a flying car is to adopt a vertical take-off and landing approach. One enthusiast, Canadian-born Paul Moller of Davis, California, has spent an estimated $250m of his own and other people’s money over the past 45 years trying get his fan-powered Skycar off the ground. So far, none of his vertical take-off and landing prototypes has risen much more than a few feet. (…)

There are at least four reasons why motorists are unlikely ever to take to the skies. Planes like the Transition are not glorified cars; they are aircraft strictly for licensed pilots. Admittedly, a sport pilot licence will get an owner airborne. But without a proper instrument rating, owners will be restricted to daytime flying, in good weather and in uncongested airspace below 10,000 feet. The Transition and its ilk are niche products, alongside other light sport aircraft, for people willing to spend time and money getting a pilot’s licence.

And forget about taking off or landing on public roads. The only place in America where that is legal is Alaska—a place notorious for its air crashes. Most other countries have similarly strict rules about operating aircraft on public roads.

Then there is the air-traffic control problem.

{ Economist | Continue reading }

Intelligence is a big deal. Humanity owes its dominant position on Earth not to any special strength of our muscles, nor any unusual sharpness of our teeth, but to the unique ingenuity of our brains. It is our brains that are responsible for the complex social organization and the accumulation of technical, economic and scientific advances that, for better and worse, undergird modern civilization.

All our technological inventions, philosophical ideas and scientific theories have gone through the birth canal of the human intellect. Arguably, human brain power is the chief limiting factor in the development of human civilization. (…)

There are multiple paths to greater intelligence. By “intelligence,” I here refer to the panoply of cognitive capacities, including not just book smarts but also creativity, social intuition, wisdom and so on.

There are traditional means of enhancing intelligence, like education, and newer means like biotechnology. Perhaps the smartest and wisest thing the human species could do would be to work on making itself smarter and wiser. In the longer run, however, biological human brains might cease to be the predominant nexus of earthly intelligence.

Machines will have several advantages: most obviously, faster processing speed. An artificial neuron can operate a million times faster than its biological counterpart. Machine intelligences may also have superior computational architectures and learning algorithms. These “qualitative” advantages, while harder to predict, may be even more important than the advantages in processing power and memory capacity.

Furthermore, artificial intellects can be easily copied, and each new copy can–unlike humans–start life fully fledged and endowed with all the knowledge accumulated by its predecessors. Given these considerations, it is possible that one day we may be able to create “superintelligence,” a general intelligence that vastly outperforms the best human brains in every significant cognitive domain.

{ Forbes | Continue reading }

July 2007: Online DVD rental outfit Netflix caused a real buzz last October when it announced the competition. If anyone can come up with a recommender system for predicting customer DVD preferences that beats its own algorithm (Cinematch) by a certain amount, Netflix will hand over $1million. The prize got a lot of attention because it exemplifies the idea of crowdsourcing. Not only does Netflix rely on crowdsourcing of DVD ratings (user ratings of DVD titles) but the competition itself is an attempt to use crowdsourcing to develop the algorithms to make the most of those ratings. Instead of doing the work itself, or hiring specialists, Netflix lets whoever anyone enter their competition and pays the winner.

{ Whimsley | Continue reading }

June 26, 2009: Today our team submitted our solution to the Netflix Prize, resulting in a score of .8558, which corresponds to an improvement over Netflix Cinematch algorithm of 10.05%.  This is the first submission in the competition to break the 10% barrier and sets off a 30 day period where all competitors are invited to submit their best and final solutions.

{ BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos }

After nearly three years and entries from more than 50,000 contestants, a multinational team says that it has met the requirements to win the million-dollar Netflix Prize.

The online movie rental service uses its Cinematch software to analyze each customer’s film-viewing habits and recommends other movies that customer might enjoy. Because accurate recommendations increase Netflix’s appeal to its customers, the movie rental company started a contest in October 2006, offering $1 million to the first contestant that could improve the predictions by at least 10 percent.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

A research project cuts the electric cord, wirelessly charging an electronic device.

The idea of wireless power transfer is, of course, not new. Physicist Nikola Tesla proposed it in the late 19th century. However, funding for his projects ran out at about the same time that the modern world decided to take a wired approach. And for more than a century, wires have done the job well enough. But with the advent of portable electronics that seem to need constant charging, wireless electricity is coming back in style, and researchers are exploring ways to make it practical. In addition, plug-in electric vehicles are another motivating factor, as plugging in a car (or forgetting to plug one in) is a burden that consumers may not want to bear. (…)

Intel’s wireless power project uses magnetic fields to transfer energy.

{ Technology Review/MIT | Continue reading }

related { From sand to silicon in ten easy steps: Discover how cutting edge science transforms a day at the beach into Intel Core i7 processors. How silicon chips are made. }

Even as it facilitates our ability to connect, the collective social-networking culture changes our way of thinking about everything from friendship to death. And not in a good way. As a technological medium that fetishises individualism, Facebook invites disaster.

Perhaps this is why Facebook may have finally jumped the shark. The surest indication of Facebook’s impending doom is the enthusiasm of my demographic - Baby Boomer professionals - which is usually the kiss of death. We are joining Facebook in droves, and arriving just in time for the last dance. (…)

To boost your number of friends (and we all know our number), consider boarding a friend-whore train. (…) As ego-gratifying as becoming a “friend whore” may be, keep in mind that your number of ersatz Facebook friends may be in inverse proportion to your number of “real” friends. I have friends I don’t know at all and friends I hate. A Facebook “friend” is not necessarily your friend. And above all, your mother is not your friend. (…)

Sure, Facebook enhances communication. But social-networking websites provide solitary ways to be engaged. As my son puts it, on Facebook we’re posting to the gaze. Since someone may (or may not) be watching, we have the sense that we are in company, even if nobody’s home. Facebook is a double-edged sword that isolates at the same time as it (over)exposes. And the potential for embarrassment is impressive.

{ Times Higher Education | Continue reading }

The growth of social networks indicates a fundamental shift in patterns of human behavior. The unsustainable practice of ever-increasing consumption of physical goods, and expressing oneself through what one purchases and displays, is being replaced by increasing consumption of virtual goods through virtual channels.

Thorstein Veblen, in his groundbreaking work The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, posited that humans use displays of wealth to broadcast status to society. Veblen argued that, since the beginning of history, once basic needs were met, elites have “conspicuously consumed” to reinforce class. This has not been without consequence. As illustrated in Jared Diamond’s controversial book Collapse, this seemingly inevitable behavior of the ruling classes led to cultural demise.

Throughout the last century conspicuous consumption meant buying cars, boats, larger houses, jewelry, art, and meals in restaurants. Keeping up with the Joneses required a lot of energy—and produced a lot of carbon and waste.

{ Good | Continue reading }

related { Surfing alone: Is digital technology destroying relationships? | Privacy. Protecting an inalienable right in the age of Facebook. }

image { Habbo Hotel console, 2001 }

A kosher version of Google called Koogle, has been developed in Israel for Hebrew-speaking Orthodox Jews. (…) Nothing can be posted on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath, as Jews are banned from all types of work and business activity.

{ Telegraph | Continue reading | Koogle }

YouTube provides a steady stream of inspiration to advertising creatives, but it also leaves young directors vulnerable to having ideas stolen and agencies open to accusations of plagiarism. How can both directors and agencies protect themselves?

In 1998, director Mehdi Norowzian sued the Irish advertising agency Arks Ltd for copyright infringement. He claimed Arks had copied a substantial part of his short film, Joy, in its hugely successful Anticipation advert for Guinness which featured a man performing a flamboyant dance as he waited for his pint of the black stuff to settle. Norowzian lost, the case setting a precedent over the legal rights of directors and artists when claiming the artistic content of their work had been ‘appropriated’ by an agency.

The tense question of plagiarism has become a regular part of advertising life ever since. Accusations from artists and directors crop up periodically in the media, where a discussion on their validity will take place before the subject is usually dropped. The agency in question may be left with a minor stain on its integrity but with no major ill-effects to its client relationship or bank balance. The rise of internet sites such as YouTube has made this issue even more pertinent, however. Suddenly a research tool is available to advertising creatives giving access to millions of films and ideas from all over the world, leaving the makers of these films vulnerable to having their ideas stolen.

{ BusinessWeek | Continue reading }

In an eye-opening essay, Bernstien Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay proposes a radical idea on how Google might address the business model problem that now afflicts YouTube: charge people listing fees for uploading video to the site.

Lindsay writes in a note to clients today that YouTube in 2009 should generate revenue of $200 million to $250 million, but with costs in the $400 million to $700 million range. (…) Lindsay notes that the service as currently structured effectively has nearly unlimited costs.

“Is it really a good idea to allow users to upload video of anything?” he asks. “One or our colleagues regularly uploads video of his pet mouse. Some members use YouTube as a way to share family videos with relatives. Hosting these videos forever has real cost. Is the community really enriched by this service?”

He thinks it might make sense to consider levying low but non-zero listing fees so people “stop listing rubbish and cover at least some of the hosting cost.” Lindsay proposes that videos that score well in user metrics could get a break on their fees which could go to zero for popular and advertising-friendly clips. Ad revenue could be split with content providers, but a hosting fee would apply if if revenue fell below specified levels.

Lindsay notes that people are uploading clips at the rate of 15 hours of video every minute, and that many are being watched overseas where ad revenues are meager if they exist at all. He notes that the service is highly popular in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa. He doubts that major brand advertisers would pay to stream ads in, say, Uzbekistan. He also notes that very few Uzbek videos will likely have large viewership, “eliminating the value of any edge-serving strategy and so destroying any economies of streaming at scale. Can Google ever make any money in these markets with YouTube?”

“Yes, usage would plummet, but this would stop the irrational uses of the service and it would quickly make clear what people really valued,” he writes. “If altruism and community service is a goal, Google could continue to allow educational and public service videos to be uploaded and watched for free - and maybe even be able to claim a tax break or two for doing so.”

{ Barron’s | Continue reading | via Barry Ritholtz }

related { YouTube making jump to TV screens }

Dual Function Design, November 10, 2008
By B. Govern “Bee-Dot-Govern”

This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called meth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

{ Amazon.com }