Month: September 2006

Largest economic entities

Rank	Country/Corporation	GDP/Revenue $ billions
1	United States	11668
2	Japan	4623
3	Germany	2714
4	United Kingdom	2141
5	France	2003
6	Italy	1672
7	China	1649
8	Spain	991
9	Canada	980
10	India	692
11	Korea, Rep.	680
12	Mexico	676
13	Australia	631
14	Brazil	605
15	Russian Federation	582
16	Netherlands	577
17	Switzerland	359
18	Belgium	350
19	Sweden	346
20	Turkey	302
21	Austria	290
22	Wal-Mart Stores	288
23	BP	285
24	Exxon Mobil	271
25	Royal Dutch/Shell Group	269
26	Indonesia	258
27	Saudi Arabia	251

these things are suspect, despite their wow / cyberpunk factor

Xenophobia

Anti-immigrant, racist hysteria is a common, and successful, tactic of political extremists in times of political and economic turmoil. It was used by the Nazis to great effect, and was also used by governments in most of the affluent nations of the world during the 1930s when that affluence suddenly disappeared and everyone was looking for a scapegoat. When the population is deeply unhappy, as is the case now in the US, there is a natural preference to blame the misfortune that has given rise to that unhappiness on ‘outsiders’ rather than accepting that the blame lies with deep flaws in the systems and values on which the very social fabric of the country is founded.

i will be very surprised if the republicans don’t win in 2008, frankly

Virgin Suborbital

Virgin Galactic has a cool concept movie buried within a stupid flash site. next: orbital light

2013-09-08: virgin suborbital has been eclipsed in the last 2 years by spacex, but it’s nice to know that they are making good progress to begin operations in 2014.

2018-08-24:

Branson and his grandchildren were huddled around an iPad at their mountain lodge in Verbier, Switzerland, watching a live stream of the flight. At the end of the rocket-motor burn, the room erupted with delight. “Artie, my 3-year-old grandson, asked me why I was crying when everyone else was cheering,” Branson recalled. “It was just such a beautiful moment.”

He knew that Virgin Galactic still faced plenty of challenges. After a few more powered flights—on July 26th, Mackay and Masucci completed a 42-second rocket-powered flight, reaching 50 km—the pilots would go all the way into space. Once that goal was met, they’d need to make several repeat flights, in order to assure the public that SpaceShipTwo was ready to begin commercial service. Branson, who had been funding Virgin Galactic for 15 years, felt that redemption was finally near. “We’ve proved skeptics wrong”.

2021-07-12: congratulations to Virgin Galactic for their first suborbital tourism flight.

Malware Psychology

We study malware propagation strategies which exploit user greed, malice and short sightedness. We demonstrate that interactive propagation strategies are effective mechanisms for malware to survive and entrench

Magic Planet

Global Imagination makes the Magic Planet digital video globe – the digital display with a sphere-shaped screen. We also supply software, content and services that enable you to present global information and promotional media in the most compelling and interactive way possible.

3d globes where you can visualize images on. this rocks super hard, and i want one

Google Earth COM API Documentation

not sure how relevant this will turn out to be, but nice nevertheless

Virtual Canoe

Heh. Sarah and I were told in costa rica that we are the worst kayaking crew ever. Maybe some practice would help

A real-time water simulator with a pre-computed database of 3D fluid dynamics. The system simulates a real-time wave model with a database for complex and fast-flow areas around objects that creates realistic wakes and force feedback of water resistance.

bloggingNEXT

cute. ge blogging about nextfest. they even have some non-ge posts

Plazes Feed

sadly, only the last 10. there should be a tweak to get the whole history out

Robot lab

Until now, people haven’t had the chance to meet robots. Social patterns between man and machines do not exist. Instead there are only images from science fiction literature and films. This is where robot lab comes in.

very thoughtful contemplation on robots.