Comcast to cap online use

The cap will be set at 250gb. If you go over that, you get a courtesy call from Comcast as a first warning. The second time that you go over, your account will be immediately suspended for an entire calendar year. People that watch movies or video’s online are going to be hit hard because you can go over your daily limit in minutes.

And don’t forget that companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and others are offering online (cloud) storage. Some applications such as Google’s http://docs.google.com/ are online and would be completely inaccessible to small business’s or home offices.

Plus there are X-box, Playstation, Nintendo and many other consumer boxes that require the internet to access online games, calenders, address books, and even clocks.

clipped from news.cnet.com Comcast to cap monthly consumer broadband Comcast notes that the median usage for most residential customers falls somewhere between 2GB and 3GB, a number that is regularly broken within a matter of hours and sometimes minutes by customers taking advantage of streaming HD video and online backup services. The company breaks down basic usage numbers similar to what’s seen on the marketing materials on a consumer hard drive: * Send 50 million e-mails (at 0.05KB/e-mail) * Download 62,500 songs (at 4MB/song) * Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2GB/movie) * Upload 25,000 high-resolution digital photos (at 10MB/photo)

How does it feel to die?

This article takes the guess work out of death. How does it feel to drown? How long does it take? Is Lethal Injection painless? Do you die from strangulation or from a broken neck?

This article explains the most common ways to die, what it likely feels like and how long it takes in most cases.

clipped from www.newscientist.com Death special: How does it feel to die? Drowning The “surface struggle” for breath Heart attack One of the most common forms of exit Bleeding to death Several stages of haemorrhagic shock Fire It’s usually the toxic gases that prove lethal Decapitation Nearly instantaneous Electrocution The heart and the brain are most vulnerable Fall from a height If possible aim to land feet first Hanging Speed of death depends on the hangman’s skill Lethal injection US-government approved, but is it really painless? Explosive decompression It takes your breath away

Do animals have emotions?

A nice article with some example of why some people believe that animals have emotions.

clipped from www.newscientist.com Do animals have emotions? Spite After a fight in which he trounced another young male, Reuben, the latter retreated with “his ass up in the air”, a sign of submission. Instead of letting him be, Nick slashed Reuben’s rump with his canines. “He harassed the females, swatted at kids and bullied ancient Gums and Limp,” writes Sapolsky. One day, Nick took exception to a female baboon, Ruth. When threatened by a male, a female usually runs up a tree and to the end of a flimsy branch, where the heavier male cannot follow her. “So Ruth gallops up the tree, Nick after her, and Ruth leaps out to a safe edge,” Sapolsky recounts. “Nick promptly climbs onto a stronger, thicker branch directly above her. And then urinates on her head.”

Spammers are hiring firms to defeat CAPTCHA’s

You send the firm the CAPTCHA’s and a real person solves it and send it back to the customer. Apparently the employee solving the puzzle only gets paid if the puzzle is:

Solved correctly
Solved within 60 seconds (even though the rule is under 20 seconds)

The firm charges $1 for every 1,000 CAPTCHA’s that you send. They also sell Gmail and Yahoo mail accounts in bulk

clipped from voices.washingtonpost.com Web Fraud 2.0: Thwarting Anti-Spam Defenses Spammers have made great strides this past year in defeating CAPTCHAs, the distorted text used as a security test to ensure a person and not a machine is behind a computer screen. But automated programs that spammers use to thwart CAPTCHAs still aren’t nearly as successful as the practice of hiring thousands of people to do nothing but remotely solve the puzzles for clients.

The iPhone is Apple’s solution to the Enterprise,

Even though most every one agrees when it comes to Apple and Enterprise, the iPhone is helping Apple reach into Enterprise. Apple had only had 1% in Oct. 2006 and jumped to 4.5 just 9 months later. It is no coincidence that the iPhone was announced in Jan. 2007 and started shipping that summer.

This is significant because Enterprise adoption of Mac’s had been at a stand still.

clipped from blogs.eweek.com The iPhone Halo Effect The surprising findings come in a report Forrester Research released today. The long-winded title: “Corporate Desktop Operating System Trends, Q4 2007 Through Q2 2008: Windows Vista Deployments Are Finally Ramping Up, While Mac Continues Its Slow March on the Enterprise.” The analyst firm monthly surveyed more than 50,000 enterprise end users from 2,500 organizations to compile the operating system trends.

Girl Produces Crystals With Her Eyes

Amazing! These crystals (about seven a day) are very sharp but do not hurt the 12 year-old Lebanese girl who has baffled medical experts. Could be a hoax, but even so the video is worth a look.

clipped from break.com Girl Produces Crystals With Her Eyes Watch Video

The future is going to be better than you think

The future is not all doom and gloom, there is hope after all. This UN “State of the Future” report says, “The future continues to get better for most of the world, but a series of tipping points could drastically alter global prospects.”

Despite Global Warming, racial tensions, war, famine and other real problem’s we face, things are getting better for humanity as a whole and can continue to do so.

Dinosaurs were not seriously studied until just little over 100 years ago. Just 50 years ago, blacks and white were still segregated. Women still had very little in the way of rights in business, courts, and even their homes.

We have global communications on such a massive scale that anyone anywhere can practically talk to any one of 8 billion people.

The microchip, microbiology, space travel, flight, automobiles, home computers, satellites… all of these things (and more) have been available for a hundred years or less.

We have a bright and prosperous future… if we don’t screw it up.

We are still developing and learning. In Switzerland, they have built a particle accelerator that is so powerful that some scientist’s believe that it will cause microscopic black holes to monetarily.

And what is this particle accelerator for? To understand the physics and the conditions seconds after the universe was formed among other things.

clipped from www.millennium-project.org 2008 State of the Future While it is not possible to predict the future, the 2008 State of the Future report enables us to think analytically about crucial global challenges, such as environmental security.

Don’t they look Alike?

Comparison pictures showing how much alike some people are to odd things:
Tom Selleck looks like the Red Baron
Mick Jagger looks like a batfish
Britney Spears looks like Mr. Freeze

clipped from www.funniez.net Don’t They Look A Like?