Stumble it!
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The listening post - Iran’s media: Part 2
July 28, 2008 — dre12first Virgin Galactic White Knight II
July 28, 2008 — dre12
WhiteKnightTwo, which will shuttle SpaceShipTwo into suborbital space, is about to be unveiled in the Mojave desert. I believe that’s SpaceShipTwo under the veil. Update: More Photos of WhiteKnightTwo below. Interview with a spaceship pilot. galleryPost(’virgingalacticunveil1′, 3, ”);
Actually it’s a flight simulator for pilot training. Virgin America pilots will be trained to fly Virgin Galactic flights, which makes them the luckiest commercial pilots in the country.
Before the ship rolls out, I might as well scribe a few of the details we learned earlier.
• WhiteKnightTwo is completely carbon fiber composite, save for the engines and landing gear.
• We were flown out from LAX on a new Virgin America plane called, “My other ride is a spaceship”
• Virgin American is 30% more fuel efficient than other domestic airlines.
• Virgin America is giving away a ride on Virgin Galactic to one of its customers in a contest called “The Race for Space”
Bob Morgan, Lead engineer at Scaled Composites, is speaking now.
He’s said that the vehicle is triple the weight but has capacity for 12 more passengers. The plane’s cabling system is also carbon fiber.
Their unveiling it now.
galleryPost(’virgingalacticunveil2′, 3, ”);
galleryPost(’virgingalacticunveil3′, 3, ”);
Burt and Sir Richard are doing a Q&A now…
• WhiteKnight and SpaceShipTwo can launch higher in altitude than the first ships, but the SpaceShip can’t grab enough atmosphere any higher than the previous launch point, so can’t go as high this way. So they drop the SpaceShip payload at the same altitude.
• As far as bases go, after New Mexico, they’ll open a spaceport in Sweden, and they’re talking to Spain and the Far East.
• Who can go on this? Because its suborbital, we can make the flight only 2-3Gs instead of 5Gs and so older people like Sir Richard’s parents, Stephen Hawking and others are going to try going.
• Food? Their solution is not feeding you at all. Probably for vomit concerns.
• The wingspan has no seams, its one piece tip to tip. Composites don’t bolt together well, so they don’t use them.
• This is about seeing the curvature and beauty of the earth and experience weightlessness.
• 270 people are signed up and many have begun training in centrifuges to resist G forces.
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More Facts:
• The first ships will be called “Spirit of Steve Fosset” after Sir Richard’s friend and his mother, “Eve”
• SpaceShipTwo is 60% done.
• Similar construction and design to SS1
• Will carry six Passengers and two pilots; could carry 11, but Sir Richard only wants to sell window seats.
• Whole fuselage used for passenger cabin
• Reclining seats to max cabin space in zero g and re-entry.
• SpaceShipTwo can do 6Gs front to back, and 3.8Gs head to toe.
• Zero G WILL be out of seat. I hope they have tethers.
• WhiteKnightTwo can ferry SS2 coast to coast in the US.
• Hugging the WhiteKnightTwo is emotionally satisfying, but the hull tastes dusty.
• The port cabin is a mockup with painted windows.
(Gizmodo)
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Learning a lesson: 5 ads that died for their sins
July 28, 2008 — dre12
Perhaps you’ve heard the news that Nike has pulled its “That Ain’t Right” balls-in-face ads after an outpouring of outrage sparked largely by this very website (though we weren’t the first to address it). Are you proud of yourselves, commentariat? You are feared in all corners of corporate America. But the larger point here is that advertising is getting to be a very touchy business; companies are making fools of themselves nearly every week because of the crackheaded work of one of their ad agencies. After the jump, we look at five ads that had to be yanked recently, where they went wrong, and who came out ahead. Read and learn:
Nike’s balls-in-face Hyperdunk poster
What happened: Nike’s ad depicting a b-ball player getting posterized sports an unfortunate tagline to go with the unfortunate image, and plays on a baseline of macho homophobia. The ad is pulled just days after the company feels the awesome power of mildly piqued blog readers.
The lesson: Sports must be slightly more gay-conscious.
Winners: Gays, basketball fans (in the long run), Adidas, which makes cooler shoes.
Losers: Nikes, macho guys, those who will be deprived of this perspective on Hyperdunk technology.
What happened: Snickers ad shows Mr. T in a pickup truck, shooting at a swishy speed walker with a gatling gun. Tagline: “Get some nuts!” Gays cry foul, company folds.
The lesson: Anti-gay image or tagline alone leaves deniability; both together is too much.
Winners: Gays, speed walkers.
Losers: Snickers, alpha males, remnants of Mr. T’s career.
JC Penney’s Teen Sex commercial
What happened: An ad agency wins an award for a shocking (in context) commercial for JC Penney that sympathetically shows two teenagers sneaking around having sex under mom’s nose. The company sputters that the ad isn’t authorized; the ad agency apologizes; lots of people get their ass handed to them (we imagine); an opportunity for mainstream progressivism is lost.
The lesson: Your ad agency will sell you out, big time.
Winners: The type of people who buy mom jeans.
Losers: Teens, society, ad agency rebels.
Heinz’s Gay Mayo ad
What happened: Heinz ran an ad in the UK showing a man kissing a deli guy because his mayonnaise is so good. Bill O’Reilly declared the ad “obviously a gay thing,” and the company decided to pull it.
The lesson: The world is still not ready to see men kiss.
Winners: Shouting heads.
Losers: Gays, deli guys, gay deli guys.
Salesgenie.com’s Asian Panda Bears
What happened: Company runs Super Bowl ad featuring cartoon panda bears who speak in an exaggerated Asian accent. Outcry of anti-Asian racism ensues. Company hastily pulls the ads.
The lesson: If you’re gonna fuck up, don’t do it during the Super Bowl (ALSO GOES FOR FOOTBALL PLAYERS).
Winners: Asians, the New York Giants.
Losers: The idiot CEO who wrote the ad himself, his friend Bill Clinton, the New England Patriots.
(GAWKER)
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Cool - Cuil - New Search Engine!
July 28, 2008 — dre12So, there is a knew search engine available called Cuil. It offers an alternative to Google and seems sleeker in design. Try it out and see what you think…
Cuil - The Dark, Mysterious Version of Google
July 28, 2008 — 03:19 AM PDT — by Stan Schroeder —
I’ve got a theory: no one can create a better search engine than Google, simply because Google does not only search websites, but - through its domination of the market - the entire web bends to Google’s will because every web site wants to be positioned well on Google. Therefore, any competitor that may arise - however large its index, however good its algorithms - can only hope to be nearly as good as Google. Being the best search engine in the world today literally means being Google, and it’s hard to beat Google at that.
The theory is wild and far-fetched, I know, but the dozens of general purpose search engines that came my way during the last couple of years have been a far cry from Google. So, I’m merely trying to create a theory based on observational facts.
Enter Cuil
, a very serious competitor, packed with ex-Googlers (Tom Costello and Anna Patterson are the backbone of Cuil, and they’ve both worked at Google), and claiming to have the largest index of websites - 120 billion - in the world.
It doesn’t end there: Cuil pulls pretty much every trick in the book. Big claims about the biggest index, privacy concerns (IP addresses of users aren’t saved, making it impossible for a third party to request it from them), semi-semantic approach (Cuil’s engine recognizes the relations between certain words on a web site, which helps it rank pages better). Hell, they even pulled the energy-saving trick: the front page of Cuil is completely black, in contrast to Google’s eye-poking whiteness.
The search results are organized drastically different from Google’s, and I give credit to Cuil for trying something new here. Instead of the standard long list of results, you get results with much longer, instantly visible descriptions, organized into two or three columns. For every search you’ll be offered a choice of additional categories which should help you narrow it down. For certain searches, this works great, and the categories really help; for others, you’re just going to waste time clicking as you won’t get any additional meaningful results for most.
Which brings us to the main thing: the quality of search. Let me say right of the bat that Cuil is not better than Google. It’s solid, but not better, and based on my limited testing, I’d even go so far to say that it’s not even that close. A search for “Mashable” yielded solid results, with mashable.com being the first one, but others were mostly links to articles. Google, on the other hand, intelligently put Mashable’s Twitter account and our social network, my.mashable.com
Another thing I like to try when I test out new search engines is simply type in some piece of my hardware, perhaps even incorrectly, to see if I’ll get drivers, manuals, and similar useful information. I do it because Google is so unbelievably awesome at it, that I can’t imagine anyone topping them in this area. Searching Cuil for “DFI Nforce 4” was extremely disappointing, as it yielded zero results. Google, on the other hand, gave me the official DFI site, plus a bunch of reviews, all related to the actual product I was interested in. No contest there.
In fact, the more I tried, the more I was convinced that Google is, quite simply, a vastly better search engine. This is unfair, I know: Cuil is a very new product, and Google has been around for quite a while. But, unfortunately, my theory from the first paragraph still stands. I’ll be happy to revisit Cuil after it ages a bit, but right now it’s only a solid try.
From: Mashable!
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Food for thought…
July 28, 2008 — dre12In an effort to appease PETA and other angry vegetarians, KFC recently began selling a vegan, “Unchicken” sandwich in its Canadian locations. Guess what? It’s not vegetarian.A reader at “green gossip” website Ecorazzi reported that the local KFC says it fries its vegan patties in the same fryers and oil that it uses to cook its chicken. It’s doubtful that they’re the only location that does this, but even if they were, there are several other reasons why this sandwich isn’t vegan, and might not even be vegetarian. The obvious one is the use of mayonnaise as a condiment, which contains egg products unsuitable for vegans. We couldn’t find any nutritional information on this sandwich at KFC or KFC Canada’s website, so we can’t speculate on what secret animal products (like enzymes or “natural flavors”) are in the bun. Having worked at a few fast food restaurants in high school, we know that gloves and utensils aren’t changed between preparing meaty and vegetarian items, so you’re probably getting some chicken fat in your KFC Vegetarian Sandwich one way or another.It’s nice that KFC made the attempt to offer a non-meat menu item, but vegans and vegetarians shouldn’t be eating at fast food restaurants. Even the highly touted Burger King Morningstar Burger is imperfect: the patty itself contains milk and egg, the mayo contains eggs, and the cheese contains milk (and probably animal rennet). Burger King’s nutrition info brochure contains the following disclaimer: “Burger King Corporation makes no claim that the BK VEGGIE® Burger or any other of its products meets the requirements of a vegan or vegetarian diet.”
If you’d like to learn more about how cheese is made with veal stomach, sugar is bleached with animal bones, and other depressing reasons not to ever eat anything ever again, check out the Vegetarian Resource Group’s Frequently Asked Questions About Food Ingredients
From: Consumerist
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