Guillermo Santamaria's Public Library

26 Dec 09

the average U.S. Internet user spent 13 hours per week online
Overall, the average time online for U.S. Internet users has gone up from 7 hours in 1999 to close to 9 hours in 2003 and up to 11 hours in 2007. We should note that these numbers only include adults. According to Nielsen, which looked at all U.S. Internet users, the average usage per week is closer to 17 hours.
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- In total, 184 million adults regularly surf the Internet at work, home or at school. While the number of adults who are online has not changed, the number of adults who access the Internet at home has increased from 66% in 2005 to 76% in 2009. Ten years ago, only 56% of all adults accessed the Internet from home. In total, 98% of all computer users are now online.
- While users between 30 and 39 are the most active Internet users, those between 25 and 29 are the most likely to spend more than 24 hours per week online. 25% of 25 to 29-year-olds surf the Net between 24 and 162 hours per week - sadly, Harris Interactive doesn't tell us how many of these users actually spend every minute of the week online.

Book Review - History of Darpa - 'The Department of Mad Scientists,' by Michael Belfiore - Review - NYTimes.com

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DARPA shock and awe cyborgs

The revolution is happening before our eyes, but we don’t recognize it, because it’s incremental. It starts with driving. Cruise control transfers regulation of your car’s speed to a computer. In some models, you can upgrade to adaptive cruise control, which monitors the surrounding traffic by radar and adjusts your speed accordingly. If you drift out of your lane, an option called lane keeping assistance gently steers you back. For extra safety, you can get extended brake assistance, which monitors traffic ahead of you, alerts you to collision threats and applies as much braking pressure as necessary.
With each delegation of power, we become more comfortable with computers driving our cars. Soon we’ll want more. An insurance analyst tells Belfiore that aging baby boomers will lead the way, enlisting robotic drivers to help them get around. For younger drivers, the problem is multitasking. Why put down your cellphone when you can let go of the wheel instead? Reading, texting, talking and eating in the car aren’t distractions. Driving is the distraction. Let the car do it.
The Army needs vehicles that can move cargo without exposing human operators to bombs or enemy fire. To encourage development of such vehicles, Darpa sponsored a 2007 contest in which cars designed by 35 teams navigated a simulated urban war zone. The cars used systems like those already in consumer vehicles: GPS, lane guidance, calibrated braking. But instead of routing their information and advice through human drivers, the cars simply acted on it.
Belfiore recounts several low-impact crashes caused by the limited ability of current software to understand complex traffic situations. But with each successive contest since Darpa’s first robot-car race, the Grand Challenge, in 2004, performance has improved. In some respects, the robot cars already surpass us. Their reaction speed is better. They can see at night, thanks to laser range-finders. They have no blind spots. And when networked, they can read one another’s intentions.
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- So maybe we’ll let robots drive our cars. But would you let a robot cut you open? That’s Darpa’s next project. In minimally invasive surgery, doctors insert very thin instruments through keyhole-size incisions. This minimizes pain, blood loss, infection risk and recovery time, but it’s hard. Surgeons have to manipulate their instruments indirectly and watch them on a video monitor. They might as well use a machine. It could execute their commands, give better video feedback and hold the instruments more steadily.
  More than 850 hospitals already use such operating machines. Surgeons sit across the room from patients, connected to their instruments by game-style controls and three-dimensional video binoculars. When the machines meet resistance, the surgeons feel it. The goal is to engage the doctors’ senses as fully as if the mechanical eyes and hands were theirs. In fact, they are theirs. The surgeons’ minds map, orchestrate and experience the machine like an infant taking possession of its own body.
  But if sensory feedback can extend a surgeon’s body across a room, why stop there? A new version of the machine adds Ethernet, freeing the doctor to inhabit a mechanical body anywhere with a good cable or wireless connection. By digitizing surgical commands, we’ve already created transitional moments in which maneuvers have been described but not executed. Why not extend this transition, playing out the surgery in virtual reality and then editing out any errors? That’s the next step: surgery with a word processor, so to speak, instead of a typewriter.
- Soldiers get wounded in faraway places without broadband or doctors, and they need help fast. That’s why Darpa wants mobile machines that can do surgery without human guidance. Such robots are in the works, according to Belfiore. Their initial repertory will be limited, but that’s O.K. They just have to keep the wounded alive for the hour it takes to reach a hospital. And with every life they save, they’ll begin to earn our trust.
- They’re cyborgs.
  The next step is mutual adaptation. Amputees have always had to learn how to operate their new limbs. Now the limbs are returning the favor. Their software studies each user’s electrical signals, gradually becoming more accurate at interpreting commands. And though the user’s brain remains in charge, his body has become negotiable. Amputees are getting surgeries to make their motor signals more readable by myoelectric arms. The human is being reconfigured for the machine.
- In its 2007 car contest, Darpa took elaborate measures to stop robots from going rogue. Each vehicle was outfitted with multiple shutdown devices and trailed by a human driver with a kill switch. The penalty for the slightest disobedience was immediate disqualification. But at least one team, according to Belfiore, liked to run simulations with its car’s “software aggression level cranked up into what they jokingly called Rambo mode.”
- Imagine your arm in Rambo mode. Something like that has already been reported: Michael Weisskopf, a journalist who lost his right hand in Iraq, was making a turn in rush-hour traffic sometime later when, as Belfiore describes it, Weisskopf’s new hand “clenched the wheel of his car in a death grip and refused to let go.” It was just a misunderstanding. But electronic limbs are being programmed to make more and more decisions. After all, it isn’t just your body anymore. It’s theirs, too.

23 Dec 09

Mobile_Internet_Report_Key_Themes_Final.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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mobile phones Morgan Stanley iphone

2SETUP_12142009_RI.pdf (application/pdf Object)

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iphone mobile phones Morgan Stanley

Non-Pc Devices Make Up For 14 Percent of iPlayer Use - NYTimes.com

"Non-PC devices are clearly starting to have an impact on the iPlayer’s overall use, which has grown close to 90 million requests in November. Also interesting are device-specific usage patterns. Turns out, the iPhone is starting to replace the Sunday newspaper as well as the book in bed."

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iplayer nonpc television iphone mobile phones

Non-PC devices are clearly starting to have an impact on the iPlayer’s overall use, which has grown close to 90 million requests in November. Also interesting are device-specific usage patterns. Turns out, the iPhone is starting to replace the Sunday newspaper as well as the book in bed.

17 Dec 09

Leprosy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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leper leprosy

Black Death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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plague black death

15 Dec 09

Saracen was a term used by the ancient Romans for certain people(s) living in the vicinity of the Roman province of Syria. The earliest reference is in Ptolemy's Geography, which refers to a Sarakenoi people living in the north-western Arabian peninsula, and distinct from Arabs. Later, Europeans in the Middle Ages used the term more broadly for Arabs and for all who professed the religion of Islam.

14 Dec 09

Saladin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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saladin franks islam muhammad arabic

Spanish Pronto!: Arabic Words in Spanish

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moors spanish arabic

For Viral Crooks, Social Networks Are Prime Targets - NYTimes.com

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facebook virus

Developing Its Own Phone, Google Is Taking On Apple - NYTimes.com

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google nexus

13 Dec 09

Books of The Times - In ‘Googled,’ Ken Auletta Explores Company’s Inner Workings - Review - NYTimes.com

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google

Google has become such a household term that its name has morphed into a verb. “Its index contained one trillion Web pages in 2008,” Mr. Auletta writes, “and according to Brin, every four hours Google indexed the equivalent of the entire Library of Congress.” Having acquired YouTube, the largest user-generated video Web site, in 2006, and DoubleClick, the foremost digital marketing company, in 2007, he goes on, Google boasted 40 percent of both the $23 billion spent to advertise online in the United States and the $54 billion worldwide online advertising. He adds that the company conducts some three billion searches a day, stores two dozen or so tetabits (about 24 quadrillion bits) of data and plans to digitize more than 20 million books.