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USB flash drive showdown

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:11:49 GMT

It's easy to forget, but all USB thumb drives are not created equal. There's a difference between the plastic cheapies tech companies are constantly ennuggeting and then crapping their press releases into and, say, a Super Talent 200x... and even amongst the big boys, different file systems get wildly different results.

Kristofer Brozio took nine of the best USB flash drives around and put them in a head-to-head performance test. Overall, the OCZ and Super Talent drives come out ahead. This may all seem pretty useless: you usually don't need a flash drive to do more than transfer a document or two between colleagues. But as someone who has been installing a good chunk of OSes on his Asus 1000HA netbook lately (more to come!), this has me looking to pick up a Super Talent.

Burn after listening: Man finds military secrets on MP3 player

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:47:35 GMT

A New Zealand man has landed himself in a real-life version of Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers' film about two fitness centre employees who get their hands on a disc containing the memoirs of a CIA agent, with comic - and deadly - consequences.

Chris Ogle inadvertently found 60 US military files, including names and telephone numbers for American soldiers after buying an MP3 player in a secondhand shop in Oklahoma, USA. He came across the data when he connected the $18 (£12) device to his computer - hardly the rock tunes, snapshots and video one might expect to find on a secondhand MP3 player.

The military data included US social security numbers and even which female troops were pregnant, TV One New Zealand reported.

Details of equipment deployed to bases in Afghanistan and a mission briefing were also found on some files, displaying names such as "Bagram", a US base in Afghanistan. Most of the files are dated from 2005, so are unlikely to compromise US security, experts said. However, when a TV One reporter called some of the phone numbers listed, he found some still active.

The US military suffered a similar security breach in 2006 when shopkeepers outside Bagram said they were selling USB sticks with military data that had been stolen by some of the 2,000 Afghans employed as cleaners, office staff and labourers at the base. The information on some memory drives contained the social security numbers of hundreds of soldiers, including four generals, and listed troops who had completed nuclear, chemical and biological warfare training.

Official data loss from laptops left in taxis and bars, discs and memory drives seems to be the downside to digital government. In a particularly egregious case in the UK, the personal records of 25 million individuals, including their dates of birth, addresses, bank accounts and national insurance numbers on discs went missing in the post.

As for Ogle, he told TV One News that he would hand the files to US officials if asked.

The more I look at it, the more I see and the less I think I should be looking, Ogle said, mindful perhaps of what happened to the hapless Brad Pitt character in Burn After Reading.

Sony struggles as PSP, PS2 and even PS3 sales fall

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:44:07 GMT

Sony says it sold 4.46 million PlayStation 3 games console in the Christmas quarter (October-December), which was down 9% from 4.9 million units in the same period last year. That's pretty unusual or, I suspect, totally unknown for a successful games machine.

But Sony scored a hat-trick of declines. PSP sales of 5.08 million units were down by 68,000, while sales of the old faithful PS2 more than halved: they were down by 2.88 million units to 2.52 million.

Sales of PSP game sales fell by 2.8 million units to 15.5 million, while sales of PS2 games plunged by 31.2 million to 29.7 million units. The only bright spot was that sales of PS3 games climbed by 14.8 million units to 40.8 million.

Not surprisingly, the games division's sales fell by a third to ¥393.8 billion ($4.36bn), while operating profits fell by 97% to ¥400 million ($4.42m).

The whole company didn't do much better. Sony's revenues fell by 25% to ¥2.15 trillion, and profits by 95% to ¥10.4 billion ($115.6m).

AP reports that Sony "also reiterated its forecast for a net loss of 150 billion yen ($1.67 billion) for the full fiscal year through March — its first loss in 14 years."

"From the second half of September last year, there has been a sudden deterioration in the economy, and with the effects of foreign exchange it has had severe consequences on our business," Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda said.

The strength of the yen against the dollar had a devastating impact. Whether it should have been quite that bad is an interesting question. FinanceAsia.com says:

if you delve deeper into the figures, it does not seem possible that currency shifts were the principal cause of the company's losses. Sony's initial guidance for FY08 was ¥450 billion in operating profit, based on an exchange rate of ¥100 to the dollar. According to brokerage CLSA, yen appreciation would have had an impact of around ¥100 billion, meaning a profit of ¥350 billion. Instead, the company is now forecasting an operating loss of ¥260 billion, or a swing of ¥610 billion on top of the currency losses.

People who share this view may want Sony boss Sir Howard Stringer to be replaced.

Will I lose the will to read? by Stuart Walton

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:39:28 GMT

Poring over the Guardian's 1000 novels everyone must read list last week was one of those exercises that left many of us sighing, Marvell-like, "Had we but world enough and time …" The imperative in the series title created a thousand little trade-offs in the head: no, dammit, I still haven't read Vanity Fair, but I did get through Mark Z Danielewski's House of Leaves on a Barbados beach as I was about to turn 40.

It all evoked once again the unanswerable question so often put to readers: "Where on earth do you find the time?" The worry is that the answer might involve some kind of guilty confession. People who genuinely can't find the time to read are not necessarily unequal to the task; more likely they're bringing up children, working late, or cleaning the windows instead of lolling on the sofa turning pages.

Where did I find time to read Middlemarch last year, or the three Henry James novels a couple of years before? In truth, I'm really not sure. Most of us, I imagine, squeeze our reading into long train journeys, morning commutes or quiet lunch breaks when the noise of the office is tuned out for a precious hour of soup and Murakami. This is reading for those who can't do without it; the kind that outlives the days of student torpor, continues through lives crowded with incident and duty, and hardly ever feels like either a chore or a self-indulgence.

Will there come a time when reading really does seem like a prodigal waste of time? Despite the intellectual stimulus we might derive from even the literary equivalent of junk food, is there not a sense in which reading is the original couch potato non-activity? Might settling down for the afternoon with a new novel come to seem a lazy indulgence that should be forsaken in favour of a bracing walk along the seafront? Assuming clement weather, reasonable health and a few quid to buy yourself a coffee, isn't there something spiritually more nourishing about getting out into the world than taking the solipsist's line of least resistance and staying home with Edith Wharton?

No, I'm not talking myself into it either. Nor do I intend to take Edith along the prom, however much she might benefit from filling her lungs. But I do wonder whether a moment might arrive when the must-read impulse falters: when you accept that your life has not included The Death of Virgil, that there is neither world enough nor time, and that the once monstrous edifice of unread books was just a trick of the light. Until that time should come, though, I still have reading to do.

What makes for a children's classic?

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:34:36 GMT

Around our neighbourhood at the moment there are a lot of kids sitting exams. Inevitably, the conversation at the kitchen table has been turning to what they're reading. The recent award of the Newbery medal (a major prize) to Neil Gaiman for his children's page-turner The Graveyard Book makes this subject extra topical.

A straw poll of two 11-year-olds throws up these names: Jacqueline Wilson, Louis Sachar, Judy Blume, Melvin Burgess, Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman, Anthony Horowitz, Stephanie Meyer - and a hot debate about JK Rowling. Then someone mentions Anne Frank (see the excellent recent BBC TV adaptation) and all at once we're spinning off into a discussion of classics for kids.

In this arena, several urgent questions crop up. Firstly, how soon should children be introduced to Austen, and Dickens? Secondly, and related to that, when the moment comes to launch into a classic from the English literary tradition, where should they start? Thanks to Rowling, who comes out of another English tradition, we probably also have to consider what's to be done about CS Lewis, Tolkien and that quasi-Christian Oxonian tradition that's now out of fashion?

Obviously, the answer to the first question is that it should depend on the reading age of the child, and that the debut Austen or Dickens is bound to be highly subjective. So it's probably an impossible choice. Nonetheless, optimistically, I offer Pride and Prejudice (or Northanger Abbey) for Austen and The Tale of Two Cities (or A Christmas Carol) for Dickens. The answer to the last question, I think, is that JK Rowling fans, especially, should read Tolkien and Lewis, if only to learn something about the imaginative prehistory of Hogwarts.

Finally, I'd like to throw in, for good measure, some classic crime (Christie), classic adventure (Stevenson, Buchan), and great pre-contemporary children's classics such as Noel Streatfield (Ballet Shoes), Dodie Smith (I Capture The Castle), Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird), EB White (Charlotte's Web) and Richard Adams (Watership Down).

This is not a blog about lists (truly!), more an invitation to reflect on what makes a good book for children, who are the children's literary greats, and (ideally) what the mix of new and old should be. One issue that arises must be story versus style. Can you have a children's classic that is a wonderful, and inspiring, piece of prose but which fails as a narrative? And vice versa: there are (no doubt) some enduring kids'-book masterpieces which, on closer examination, are atrociously written. And then there's the "Alice Conundrum": a book written and published for kids which really fails with most nine-year-olds, but continues to have a wonderfully vigorous afterlife with philosophers and logicians!

Kids’ TV Viewing Shapes Eating Habits Years Later

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:23:57 GMT

Does TV make you fat? There’s a growing body of evidence connecting more TV watching with poorer diets.

The latest study in the field has found that kids who watch more TV than their peers while in middle and high school have less healthy diets five years later. As young adults, they eat more fried foods, fast food and sugary drinks and consume fewer vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

“We can’t say we know the specific mechanism linking TV and diets, but we see this relationship,” says Daheia Barr-Anderson, lead researcher of the study and a scientist at University of Minnesota’s School of Kinesiology. (Kinesiology is the study of human movement.)

Barr-Anderson offers some common-sense explanations for the TV-diet connection. She says that many snack and soda advertisements are aimed at children and can influence their food choices. Plus, many lifelong behaviors are formed in adolescent years, including the preference for snacking while watching TV.

American adolescents are a noticeable part of the national obesity boom. In the mid-1960s, fewer than 5% of 12-19 year olds were overweight. Today, some 17% are overweight and another 17% are obese.

Harvard researchers have previously found that that for each hour of TV viewing, kids consume an extra 167 calories a day, largely because they eat more junk food and fewer fruit and vegetables, Barr-Anderson tells the Health Blog. Separately, research from the University of Missouri-Columbia suggests that eating family meals and cutting down on TV viewing can help keep kids from becoming overweight.

The latest study is based on a survey of 2,000 middle and high school children in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. Unlike many previous analyses on TV and diets that compared subjects’ behavior at the same point in time, the latest effort tracks behavior in two separate periods. It appears in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.

Good news at the office?

stayclose — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:21:02 GMT

Totally incredible. The boss told us “Don’t worry if you hear strange noises at the office these days, a construction company was hired to add more room to the building. This way, we’ll be able to hire more people!”

Interesting, right? Normally, we don’t hear good news like these at the office, especially in time of financial crisis, where many people are afraid to lose their job. So if the boss wants to hire more people at the office, chances are you will not get fired!

Well, that was not such good news after all… See by yourself the pictures of the office furniture when the construction began…

YouTube Comes To The Wii And PS3, But Not Xbox

KANE — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:03:34 GMT

YouTube wants to be on your TV set bad. It’s squeezing its way in through Apple TV, TiVo, and now videogame consoles: the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PS3. Just point those videogame browsers to www.youtube.com/tv and you can now watch a customized version of YouTube from your couch. The YouTube Blog reports:

Currently in beta, the TV Website offers a dynamic, lean-back, 10-foot television viewing experience through a streamlined interface that enables you to discover, watch and share YouTube videos on any TV screen with just a few quick clicks of your remote control. With enlarged text and simplified navigation, it makes watching YouTube on your TV as easy and intuitive as possible. Optional auto-play capability enables users to view related videos sequentially, emulating a traditional television experience. The TV Website is available internationally across 22 geographies and in over 12 languages.

Absent from the list of supported game consoles, of course, is the Xbox 360. That’s owned by Microsoft, so no YouTube for them. Of course, it would help if the Xbox had a browser.

What's Your Team Sports Resolution for 2009?

stayclose — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:15:11 GMT

Last year I wrote about my resolution to be a more effective (or simply effective) pitcher in my rec league. While I was confident of my chance at success, I missed the mark for a variety of reasons (injury, time, laziness, a complete lack of physical talent, etc.)

As it turns out I'm not alone. A recent resolution study indicated that 52 percent of participants were optimistic they would reach their goals, yet only 12 percent actually achieved their goals. According to the study, "An extra 22 percent of men achieved their resolution when they engaged in goal-setting, and women were almost 10 percent more likely to be successful when encouraged to persist in the face of setbacks."

So here's my (second) attempt at creating a lasting team sport resolution through goal-setting:

Start lifting weights 2x a week to strengthen arm
Read an article a week about pitching mechanics
Ice after every time I pitch
Do soft-toss 1x a week

Now that I've put myself out there for public humiliation, I'd love to know what everybody else is gonna work on. Whether you're a coach or a player we've all got things to improve on--especially when you're sporting a 65mph fastball.

Good luck everybody!

The 10 Biggest Diet and Health Stories of 2008

stayclose — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:08:43 GMT

Here are some of the stories, studies, fads and other foibles of the dietary world that made headlines in 2008.

Diet Books: There is never a shortage of diet books hitting the shelves. A few noteworthy ones were; Toxic fat by Barry Sears, The GenoType Diet, by Peter D'Adamo, In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. The latter gets my vote for food-related book of the year. For exercise-related books, Lou Schulers' New Rules of Lifting for Women and Eric Cressey's Maximum Strength are two stand-out strength training books.
The Economy and how it affects our dietary habits: It may be too early to tell how the economic meltdown will influence our eating habits and health, but needless to say, people are certainly going to be thinking about scaling back their spending. Ali wrote a wonderful 4-part series called "Dieting on a Budget".
Cancer and exercise: Weight training, high intensity cardio and other exercise can have major impact on various cancers both from a preventative standpoint as well as improving survival.
Oprah's bad year: A triple whammy for Oprah in '08; being subjected to a raw food diet , gaining all kinds of weight and being honored by PETA. "O" looked to be a McCain victory away from teetering on the edge of a tall building with Dr. Phil trying to talk her down.
Michael Phelp's horrendous diet: Don't try this one at home, folks. Sports Illustrated's "Sportsman of the Year" downs a reported 12000 calories a day - most of it high glycemic carbs. Turns out it wasn't as bad as we were led to believe, afterall. Still, one would hope that when Phelps hangs up those aerodynamic speedos, he considers cutting back a bit. On a related Olympic note, the world's fastest human and triple gold medalist Usain Bolt slammed chicken mcnuggets and yams on race day and could have cartwheeled the last 25 meters and still would have broken the record.
Exercise in a Pill?: In the never-ending quest to see if we get something for nothing, scientists have proposed the possibility of a pill that can replace exercise. Lazy mice all around the world are rejoicing.
Mediterranean and low carb shine in big study: In a very well conducted 2-year study, Mediterranean and low carb diets showed promising results compared to low fat diets, although the weight loss in each group was underwhelming.
Alternatives to gastric by-pass surgery: Some cutting edge procedures are either in the later stages of development such as the Tantalus II weight loss implant or have already been implemented, such as the first incision-free gastric surgery. Then of course, there is the absolutely absurd "alternative to gastric bypass" known as the 5 Bite Diet.
Exercise and the Brain: A handful of studies showed exercise to be a powerful tool in fighting brain-related conditions such as Alzheimer's and cognitive impairment.
The importance of waist management: A rather monstrous trial showed that a large waist (independent of body mass index) doubles the risk of premature death.

I have no doubt that 2009 will provide much opportunity to dissect the fads, research, success stories and such.

Are there any diet or health-related stories that stood out for you this past year?