Infotrade

This is a short overview concerning differnet forms of corporations... A TRADITIONAL CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income. AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead. A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon(tm) and market them world-wide. A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves. A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad. AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch. A ...

Mobile phones and computers with wireless internet connections pose a risk to human health and should be banned from schools, a powerful European body has ruled. A Council of Europe committee examined evidence that the  technologies have "potentially harmful" effects on humans, and concluded that immediate action was required to protect children. In a report, the committee said it was crucial to avoid repeating the mistakes made when public health officials were slow to recognise the dangers of asbestos, tobacco smoking and lead in petrol. The report also highlighted the potential health risks of cordless telephones and baby monitors, which rely on similar technology and are widely used in British homes. Fears have been raised that electromagnetic radiation emitted by wireless devices can cause cancers and affect the developing brain. The findings were seized on by campaigners who oppose the spread of wireless devices.

An announcement from Google on Friday that it has  added a feature called “News Near You” to the mobile version of its news platform  isn’t that surprising; the regular web version of Google News has had a similar feature  since 2008 . But the move is another step toward offering news that is personally relevant to readers, something newspapers and other media outlets continue to struggle with. As more people consume news and other content on mobile devices, location is becoming a bigger part of the picture, but most traditional news entities are stuck on the desktop. The idea behind the new Google News mobile feature is pretty simple. You allow the service to use your location — which your iPhone or Android device already knows, thanks to GPS and cellular network triangulation — and then  Google selects from stories of interest  that are close to you geographically. You can also do the same kind of selection by topic you would with the regular desktop interfac...

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) ’s Web Services cloud- computing unit was used by hackers in last month’s attack against  Sony Corp. (6758) ’s online entertainment systems, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Hackers using an alias signed up to rent a server through Amazon’s EC2 service and launched the attack from there, said the person, who requested anonymity because the information is confidential. The account has been shut down, the person said. The development sheds light on how hackers used the so- called cloud to carry out the second-biggest online theft of personal information to date. The incursion, which compromised the personal accounts of more than 100 million Sony customers, was “a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack,” Sony has said. Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Seattle-based Amazon, declined to comment. Amazon didn’t respond to a request to speak with Chief Executive Officer  Jeff Bezos . “We’re continu...

This is a presentation from Eli Pariser on what he calls  filter bubbles , the algorithms employed by the biggest online players — Google, FB, Yahoo — to tailor the information you’re exposed to to what they  predict  you’ll want to see. As an example, he compares the Google results two of his friends got when they searched “Egypt.” They’re completely different, with one set focusing on the recent  revolution  and the other on more generic travel and trivia data. The problem with this, says Pariser, is that whereas we like to think of the Internet providing unlimited access to information and connecting individuals around the world, filter bubbles are actually curating this information for you, based not on what’s most “important” but rather on your past patterns of online consumption and those of others “like you.” And worst of all, they’re doing this without your knowledge. This moves us very quickly toward a world in which the Internet is showing us what it ...

The technology industry needs to think long and hard about ethics, according to Googler Damon Horowitz. Horowitz has co-founded several startups, and he’s currently a director of engineering at Google (which acquired his latest startup Aardvark ). But he also has a Ph.D. in philosophy and apparently holds the title of “in-house philosopher” at the search giant. He spoke today at the TEDx Silicon Valley event at Stanford University, where he offered a slightly more nuanced view than Google’s famous mantra of “Don’t be evil” (which is often used to slam the company when it does something critics consider unethical). To illustrate how ethics are getting short-shrift in the tech world, Horowitz asked attendees whether they prefer the iPhone or Android. (When the majority voted for the iPhone, he joked that they were “suckers” who just chose the prettier device.) Then he asked whether it was a good idea to take data from an audience member’s phone in order to provide various (and mostly be...

If you could snap your fingers and invent something that would cure a pressing global problem, what would it be? A cheap way to extract salt from seawater so we can drink it? Several countries  are already dealing with the impact of rising populations and shrinking lakes and wells. For example, in Amman, Jordan, the  pipes go dry on some days due to a lack of water. Droughts in China, Australia and Ukraine have led to crop failures, rising food prices and dwindling grain stocks. In the middle of the 20th century, the world had about 4,000 cubic meters of fresh water per person per year, according to  DHI Water Group . Now we’re close, globally, to 1,000 cubic meters per person per year — and 1,000 cubic meters per person per year is defined as water scarcity. Since 97 percent of the world’s accessible water is in the ocean, inexpensive green technology like desalination — the process of turning seawater into fresh — would open up vast new sources. What is the ultimate gr...

COULD the structure of space and time be sketched out inside a cousin of plain old pencil lead? The atomic grid of graphene may mimic a lattice underlying reality, two physicists have claimed, an idea that could explain the curious spin of the electron. Graphene is an atom-thick layer of carbon in a hexagonal formation. Depending on its position in this grid, an electron can adopt either of two quantum states - a property called pseudospin which is mathematically akin to the intrinsic spin of an electron. Most physicists do not think it is true spin, but  Chris Regan  at the University of California, Los Angeles, disagrees. He cites work with carbon nanotubes (rolled up sheets of graphene) in the late 1990s, in which electrons were found to be reluctant to bounce back off these obstacles. Regan and his colleague Matthew Mecklenburg say this can be explained if a tricky change in spin is required to reverse direction. Their quantum model of graphene backs that up. The spin ari...

Browse by date ... 21st century An increasingly globalised humanity is faced with climate change, dwindling resources, overpopulation and technological upheaval. 2000-2009 2010  |  2011  |  2012  |  2013  |  2014 2015  |  2016  |  2017  |  2018  |  2019 2020-2029  |  2030-2039  |  2040-2049  |  2050-2059 2060-2069  |  2070-2079  |  2080-2089  |  2090-2099 22nd century Diverging paths for humans and transhumans, as conditions on Earth continue to deteriorate. 2100-2149   |   2150-2199 23rd century Humanity spreads throughout the local stellar neighbourhood, as Earth is restored to its former beauty. 2200-2249   |   2250-2299 The Far Future Post-biological humanity begins to spread throughout the Galaxy, transforming dead worlds into computational substrates. 2300-10,000 AD Beyond 10,000 AD... A future tim...

The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture. There are many people today who are concerned with the serious  problems that face our modern society: unemployment, violent crime, replacement of humans by technology, over-population and a decline in the Earth's ecosystems. As you will see, The Venus Project is dedicated to confronting all of these problems by actively engaging in the research, development, and application of workable solutions. Through the use of innovative approaches to social awareness, educational incentives, and the consistent application of the best that science and technology can offer directly to the social system, The Venus Project offers a comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium. Read more @  THE VENUS PROJECT

While most vending machines serve their canned drinks cold, you sometimes pick up warm cans of soda from the supermarket or a nearby convenience store, and chilling those in the office pantry have you run the risk of having some unscrupulous colleague nick your drink without your knowledge. The  USB Mini Fridge  helps keep things personal, keeping your can drink cool right where you can watch it – by your computer. This (literally) cool device can also be used to keep cold drinks cool, even after all the ice inside has melted away. Just make sure you have an available USB port before picking up this  $33  USB Mini Fridge. I would suggest purchasing a waterproof keyboard though, as the last time I checked, generic keyboards and liquids don’t mix too well.