News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
It seems like copyright holders go ballistic every time a new medium is developed, then that medium ends up becoming a major revenue source. Ars Technica did some research and has determined this is not a new phenomenon.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Ever wondered why human babies take so long to become functional, while many animals are able to walk and take care of themselves shortly after birth? It comes down to brain and pelvis size. If the baby’s brain was large enough for it to be self-sufficient, both the mother and the baby would die during birth.
When our ancestors started walking on two legs, it reduced the size of the human pelvis, thus making the birth canal smaller. In addition, the human brain got bigger, requiring a larger birth canal. Obviously something had to give. What happens is that the baby is born with an immature brain that’s small enough to allow passage through the birth canal. Then the brain continues to develop afterward.
Link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/…
(via Neatorama)
Here at the Chad’s News network command center, we have long been aware of the difference between the hard disk capacity reported in decimal bytes by the manufacturer and the the same capacity reported in binary bytes by Windows. In fact, I was once published in a print magazine after the editors incorrectly answered a question on the subject.
Most computer programmers and system engineers already know why one kilobyte (KB) can either be 1000 or 1024 bytes, and the more experienced ones know that a kibibyte (KiB) is always 1024. For others, the linked article explains all. I found the most useful part of the article to be Tables E and F, which list the measurement type used for various protocols and computer components.
The linked article has some real gems that come from actual job interviews, like “What is your company’s policy on Monday absences?” and “I was fired from my last job because they were forcing me to attend anger management classes.”
Link: http://jobs.aol.com/…
(via The Consumerist)
The linked article has ten extreme locations in the United States. (Actually a couple of them are the exact opposite of “extreme,” but it’s still a neat list.)
In Indonesia, an active volcano emits vapors with high sulfur content. The fumaroles are capped, causing the sulfur to condense into the familiar yellow rock. Once a laborer has collected enough raw sulfur (up to 200 pounds), he carries it in baskets for several kilometers—up the side of the crater and down to a weighing station. The daily pay for this is about $5.00.
Link: http://www.boston.com/…
(via The Presurfer)
By one measure, the English language recently broke the one million words mark. And which word, you may be asking yourself, was the lucky number 1,000,000? Why “Web 2.0” of course.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
Need some extra time to write that term paper? At the linked site, you can purchase a corrupted file to email to your professor. By the time he/she notices, you’ll have finished writing the -real- paper and can “re-send” it. This is so bizarre—I wonder if it’s actually worked for anyone.
Link: http://www.corrupted-files.com/
(via The Presurfer)
From the article:
With King shot just the day before in Memphis, Elliott encouraged her third-graders to discuss how something so horrible could happen.
“I finally said, ‘Do you kids have any idea how it feels to be something other than white in this country?’”
The children shook their heads and said they wanted to learn, so Elliott set the rules. Blue-eyed children must use a cup to drink from the fountain. Blue-eyed children must leave late to lunch and to recess. Blue-eyed children were not to speak to brown-eyed children. Blue-eyed children were troublemakers and slow learners.
Within 15 minutes, Elliott says, she observed her brown-eyed students morph into youthful supremacists and blue-eyed children become uncertain and intimidated.
Brown-eyed children “became domineering and arrogant and judgmental and cool,” she says. “And smart! Smart! All of a sudden, disabled readers were reading. I thought, ‘This is not possible, this is my imagination.’ And I watched bright, blue-eyed kids become stupid and frightened and frustrated and angry and resentful and distrustful. It was absolutely the strangest thing I’d ever experienced.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/…
(via Neatorama)
The Houston Chronicle allows you to build a custom page from the comics it publishes, updated daily. Similarly, comics.com is now free of charge, and will serve up comics and editorial cartoons to your email inbox or RSS feed. This is great stuff!
Turns out that American cheese is the sausage of cheese making—you don’t want to know how it’s made. And there’s the fact that it’s legally named “a homogeneous plastic mass.” Despite this, American cheese is still my favorite.
I’ve read about organized copper theft in third-world countries, but now it’s made it’s way to the United States. Fortunately there is some amount of natural selection going on.
Link: http://www.networkworld.com/…
(via Slashdot)
