Broken Controllers Central

AIDS, malaria eclipse the biggest child-killers

Marxi Julien — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:33:40 +0000

Source: Yahoo!

Yahoo! - HANOI, Vietnam – Diarrhea doesn’t make headlines. Nor does pneumonia. AIDS and malaria tend to get most of the attention.

Yet even though cheap tools could prevent and cure both diseases, they kill an estimated 3.5 million kids under 5 each a year globally — more than HIV and malaria combined.

“They have been neglected, because donor or partnership mechanisms shifted their emphasis to HIV and AIDS and other issues,” said Dr. Tesfaye Shiferaw, a UNICEF official in Africa. “These age-old traditional killers remain with us. The ones dying are the children of the poor.”

Global spending on maternal, newborn and child health was about $3.5 billion in 2006, according to a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. That same year, nearly $9 billion was devoted to HIV and AIDS, according to UNAIDS.

Pneumonia is the biggest killer of children under 5, claiming more then 2 million lives annually or about 20 percent of all child deaths. AIDS, in contrast, accounts for about 2 percent.

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“Unfriend” named word of 2009

TJ Wasiuk — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:49:46 +0000

Source: Yahoo!

“Unfriend” has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent.

Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a “friend” on a social networking site such as Facebook.

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford’s U.S. dictionary program, in a statement.

“In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year.”

Other words deemed finalists for 2009 by the dictionary’s publisher, Britain’s Oxford University Press, came from other technological trends, the economy, and political and current affairs.

In technology, there was “hashtag,” which is the hash sign added to a word or phrase that lets Twitter users search for tweets similarly tagged; “intexticated” for when people are distracted by texting while driving, and “sexting,” which is the sending of sexually explicit SMSes and pictures by cellphone.

Birth of New Finch Species

TJ Wasiuk — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:22:13 +0000

Source: WIRED

On one of the Galapagos islands whose finches shaped the theories of a young Charles Darwin, biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species splits in two.

In many ways, the split followed predictable patterns, requiring a hybrid newcomer who’d already taken baby steps down a new evolutionary path. But playing an unexpected part was chance, and the newcomer singing his own special song.

This miniature evolutionary saga is described in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s authored by Peter and Rosemary Grant, a husband-and-wife team who have spent much of the last 36 years studying a group of bird species known collectively as Darwin’s finches.

The finches — or, technically, tanagers — have adapted to the conditions of each island in the Galapagos, and they provided Darwin with a clear snapshot of evolutionary divergence when he sailed there on the HMS Beagle. The Grants have pushed that work further, with decades of painstaking observations providing a real-time record of evolution in action. In the PNAS paper, they describe something Darwin could only have dreamed of watching: the birth of a new species.

Verizon Fires Back at AT&T: “The Truth Hurts”

TJ Wasiuk — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:25:06 +0000

Source: Mashable

About a month ago, Verizon started running ads that mocked AT&T’s 3G coverage and, needless to say, AT&T didn’t take it well, responding with a lawsuit and a request to have the ads pulled immediately. Last week, they publicly called the ads “blatantly false and misleading.”

Now, Verizon’s responded, basically saying that AT&T doesn’t have a problem with them, but with the truth. From the court filing:

“AT&T did not file this lawsuit because Verizon’s “There’s A Map For That” advertisements are untrue; AT&T sued because Verizon’s ads are true and the truth hurts… AT&T now is attempting to silence Verizon’s ads that include maps graphically depicting the geographic reach of AT&T’s 3G network as compared to Verizon’s own 3G network because AT&T does not like the truthful picture painted by that comparison.”

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Water Found on the Moon

TJ Wasiuk — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:02:09 +0000

Source: Space.com

Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called “unambiguous evidence” of water across the surface of the moon.

The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA’s LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon’s south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.

The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. One ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, researchers said.

“If the water molecules are as mobile as we think they are — even a fraction of them — they provide a mechanism for getting water to those permanently shadowed craters,” said planetary geologist Carle Pieters of Brown University in Rhode Island, who led one of the three studies in Science on the lunar find, in a statement. “This opens a whole new avenue [of lunar research], but we have to understand the physics of it to utilize it.”

Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.

Google Poised to Become Your Phone Company

TJ Wasiuk — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:15:26 +0000

Source: WIRED

Google is set to become your new phone company, perhaps reducing your phone bill to zilch in the process.

Seriously.

Google has bought Gizmo5, an online phone company that is akin to Skype — but based on open protocols and with a lot fewer users. TechCrunch, which broke the news on Monday, reported that Google spent $30 million on the company.

UPDATE: After this post was originally published, Google announced the Gizmo acquisition on Thursday afternoon Pacific Time. Gizmo5’s founder Michael Robertson, a brash serial entrepreneur, will become an Adviser to Google Voice.

It’s a potent recipe — take Gizmo5’s open standards-based online calling system. Add to it the new ability to route calls on Google’s massive network of cheap fiber. Toss in Google Voice’s free phone number, which will ring your mobile phone, your home phone and your Gizmo5 client on your laptop.

Dell unveils Android-based Mini 3 smartphone

TJ Wasiuk — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:08:10 +0000

Source: CNN Tech

CNET- Dell said Friday that it’s ready to enter the smartphone business with the Android-based Mini 3.

Long rumored to have such a device in the works, Dell said that the first two carriers to sell the Mini 3 will be China Mobile and Brazil’s Claro.

The Mini 3 will apparently use OPhone, China Mobile’s customized version of Google’s Android operating system. “We are excited for Dell to be among the first manufacturers to introduce new technology based on the OPhone platform,” an unnamed China Mobile representative said in Dell’s press release.

We’ve got a call out to Dell to seek clarification on the operating system software.

Dell did not provide technical specifications or pricing information for the phone, saying those would be revealed when the device arrives in stores–probably late November for China Mobile and by year’s end for Claro. It also did not say when the phone would arrive in the U.S. or other markets.

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‘Modern Warfare 2′ breaks day-one entertainment sales record

TJ Wasiuk — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:05:17 +0000

Source: Yahoo! Games

According to internal figures released by Activision, opening day sales for its heavily-anticipated game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 smashed records, generating $310 million in 24 hours in North America and the U.K. to become the “the biggest launch in history across all forms of entertainment.”

The game shipped worldwide on Tuesday, although Activision has not released sales data from regions other than the U.S. and U.K. The company estimates that roughly 4.7 million copies of the game were sold in the first day of availability in just those two territories.

The previous record-holder, Grand Theft Auto IV, sold 3.6 million copies and generated $310 million worldwide in its first day. If Activision’s numbers are correct, Modern Warfare managed to eclipse those figures in only two regions, meaning the game’s final worldwide tally is likely to be significantly higher.

And that’s simply staggering, as the U.S. and U.K. figures alone dwarf both the record-setting $150 million opening weekend of last year’s “The Dark Knight” and the $300 million earned by fellow first-person shooter, Halo 3, in its first week.

Mike Griffith, CEO of Activision Publishing, celebrated.

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NFL star wants UFC fight

TJ Wasiuk — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:55:30 +0000

Source: Yahoo! Sports

Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco is on pace to have a banner season, much like he did in 2007, but he already has his eye on the offseason. He spent Wednesday asking, nay, begging, Dana White over Twitter to sign him to the UFC for a fight with middleweight champion and pound-for-pound king Anderson Silva.

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Wave of bans hits Xbox Live

TJ Wasiuk — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:20:50 +0000

Source: Yahoo!

As many as 600,000 Xbox 360s were banned from the Xbox Live service this week in the latest in a series of crackdowns by Microsoft on illegally modified consoles.

The banned machines — a “small percentage” of the millions of Xbox 360s around the world — are alleged to have been modified in ways that violate Xbox Live’s terms of service, but Microsoft won’t say exactly how they can tell, nor exactly how many users were affected. Banned consoles can still play games, but can’t connect to the Xbox Live service for multiplayer gaming, content downloads or software updates.

“All consumers should know that piracy is illegal, and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs, violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox Live,” Microsoft said in a statement today.

The bans were apparently timed to coincide with yesterday’s release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, expected to be by far the biggest gaming event of the year. One affected Call of Duty fan, a self-confessed software pirate called “Raz,” told the BBC about his disappointment.

“It was a big day yesterday, the latest game we’ve been waiting months and months for. We’ve played the whole series and this one’s come out, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2…I sign in online and next thing I see, ‘Your console has been banned from Xbox’…now I don’t know what to do,” he told the BBC’s Newsbeat.

Most law-abiding gamers will have little sympathy for Raz — but at least one banned Xbox owner claims to have been targeted by accident, and that Microsoft won’t listen to his excuses.

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