General Gaming Article |
- Developer Learns What People Type into the Address Bar
- The Tech Behind: Prosthetics
- 71 Percent Of Online Adults Use Video-Sharing Sites
- Byte Rights: Kill -9 Due Process
- US Lagging In Global Average Connection Speeds
- Comic-Con 2011 Videos: An Interview With David Gerrold, And Our Final Look At The Show Floor!
- SanDisk Targets Consumers With Its "New" Ultra SSD
- Silicon Power Throws Hat in SATA III SSD Ring
- Beyond Bulldozer: AMD May Release a 10-core CPU in 2012
- Canon's Multi-talented Mouse Moves Your Pointer, Crunches Number
| Developer Learns What People Type into the Address Bar Posted: 26 Jul 2011 03:08 PM PDT
The top domain, by a wide margin was Facebook.com with 9% of all domains typed. The next closest was Google.com, but most people have Google search bars and don't need to visit the Google homepage. 63% of all top-level domains were '.com', followed by '.org', '.de', and '.net' all at 4%. Neither Google nor Facebook were tops in several locations including Russia, Finland, China, and Korea. The data also indicates that 49.5% of domains are still being typed with 'www.' in front, even though that is not required for most sites. Think of all those wasted keystrokes. Check out the source for the rest of the charts. Image via Christopher Finke |
| Posted: 26 Jul 2011 01:49 PM PDT
The most concise definition of a prosthetic is any device that replaces a missing body part, and whether you know it or not, prosthetics are a part of our daily lives. From banal applications such as dental crown, to complicated devices which compensate for a life altering injury sustained in an accident or enable an individual who lacks a fully functional body part due to an accident of birth, prosthetics are an awesome technology that the majority of us are fortunate enough to be able to take for granted.
The earliest mention of prosthetic devices date back to the Egyptian New Kingdom era (between 1600 BC and 1100 BC), with archeological evidence such as a wooden toe attached to the foot of a mummified Egyptian corpse proving that ancient man wasn't any more down with living without all of his physical faculties than we are today. Around the same time that Pompeii was devoured by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, there was said to be a Roman General bopping around with an iron arm he commissioned from a blacksmith so that he could still hold a shield during combat. Despite these impressive feats of early ingenuity, prosthetic devices as we understand them today didn't really start coming into their own until the 14th and 15th centuries during the Renaissance, when the development of man-made body parts underwent—let's just call it what it is—a renaissance. At that time, functional prosthetics were only obtainable by the most affluent of people, and were most often made of wood, steel, copper and iron. The most complex of their devices sought to not only replace a missing appendage, but in some cases, primitively mimic its functionality.
A confirmed example of this technology was used by Götz von Berlichingen: a German mercenary who saw active combat in the mid 1400s. von Berlichingen was said to have had a pair of iron hands that could be articulated into various positions through the tightening or loosening of springs contained within the prosthetics. This made von Berlichingen capable of using a fork, or when the situation warranted, swinging a sword. In the 1500's, Ambroise Paré, Royal Surgeon to a number of monarchs of the day, pushed prosthetic technology forward once again when he invented a wooden leg and foot prosthesis the user attached to his body with a leather harness and featured a knee joint that could be unlocked so that the wearer could in effect, kneel. It could be argued that innovations like this and the ones seen in von Berlichingen's hands were the progenitors of the modern limb prosthetic technologies that millions of people benefit from today—technologies that go beyond providing a specific function—such as holding a shield in battle—instead, offering their users a tool that can be applied to multiple applications every day of their lives.
Over the past 30 years, lower and upper extremity prosthetic technology has been glut with innovation and breakthroughs, thanks in no small part to organizations like The International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics, which was founded back in 1970 in order for physicians and researchers to share their prosthetics work and findings at conferences, meetings and via the organization's technical journal.
When you're talking about modern prosthetics, one of the first things that must be understood, is that playing pound it 'til it fits with an artificial appendage, just isn't cool. There's a reason why you can't just nip out to a pharmacy and pick up an artificial arm or leg: For the fullest range of viability, a prosthetic limb must be matched to its intended user, which isn't a simple task. Before a fitting can occur, the type of amputation that an individual has undergone must be assessed by a physician or prosthetist so that it can be decided what manner of artificial limb, if any, can be utilized. If a prosthetist finds that a device can be matched to an individual's upper or lower level amputation, the amputee will be sent for a fitting. No matter what manner of amputation a prosthetic is designed to deal with, the majority of modern prosthetic appliances incorporate a number of elements. A typical limb prosthetic will be fitted with a custom designed socket, which has been crafted to mate with a specific individual's residual limb (the part of an arm or leg left after an amputation has occurred). This socket is most often designed by a prosthetist utilizing a Computer Aided Design program to map an amputee's residual limb. The CAD information is subsequently paired with a Computer Aided Manufacturing process, to build a duplicate of the residual limb that is used to construct a positive segment of a mold from. In order to make the negative segment, a sheet of thermoplastic then heated until it becomes pliable, at which point it is place in a vacuum chamber with the positive mould. Once the chamber has been sealed, the air is removed, creating a—you guessed it—vacuum, that collapses the sheet of thermo plastic down around the positive mold, creating the mold's negative. The two halves of the mold are then used to make a socket for the limb. As an amputated limb may shrink or otherwise change its shape over time, it may be necessary for an amputee to have several sockets made for them as time passes.
Even with the socket being built thanks to CAD/CAM software and hardware, a socket may still prove uncomfortable for an amputee to wear. To mitigate this, many people opt to wear a suspension system that consists of Velcro or leather strapping and a liner—often made of silicone or urethane—which mates with the prosthesis' socket through the use of a series of pins. Under this, a tailored sheath is worn to sheath the residual limb where it interfaces with the prosthetic. Wearing this sheath, often referred to as a "stump sock", helps to prevent chaffing and inflammation due to bacterial infections caused by perspiration. To ensure the maximum benefit is received by a an amputee wearing a stump sock, the sheaths are often made using moisture-wicking materials such as Dupont's CoolMax fabric and can also incorporate an X-Static weave which utilizes pure silver, a materiel that retards bacterial growth… and werewolves. While the use of a liner and stump sock are often the de rigueur, some devices, such those worn by many above the knee amputees, may utilize what is called a standard suction socket, disallows for additional appliances to make it more comfortable. A custom-fitted socket isn't any good to anyone without something connected to it. Moving outwards from the socket, most modern prosthetics also include an internal skeleton, often referred to as a pylon. Traditionally, the pylon was made of steel. Fortunately, steel has given way to lighter, high-strength materials such as titanium, aluminum and most recently, carbon fiber. For aesthetic purposes, the pylon is often covered in polypropylene foam, which has been sculpted and colored to match the skin color and shape of the amputee's sound limb whenever possible. Surprisingly, despite the availability of any number of modern, light-weight materials some components, such as the foot on an artificial leg often still contain an internal wooden core with a urethane foam and rubber exterior, as the combination of materials provide for an excellent balance of shock absorption and durability. However, times are changing for fake feet as well, with many amputees favoring carbon fibre over traditional dead tree materials, as the use of the synthetic further reduces the weight of the device. And now for the cool stuff.
While socket and pylon prosthetics have allow their users the look and a limited amount of additional mobility or dexterity that comes from their application, they were no where near close to being a true replacement for the absence of a whole leg or a hand. Other than the materials utilized, not much could be said to have changed in the design of artificial limbs since the opening of the 20th century. At that time, an amputee by the name of D.W. Dorrance invented a prosthetic arm with a split hook for a hand, designed to allow the wearer to open and close the device's hand by tightening or loosening a set of heavy elastic bands running across his back to his other shoulder. While this basic design has been getting the job done for pedestrian assignments such as holding a tube of toothpaste or a drinking cup for over a century, it's not exactly a high-performance solution, even once the technology to augment the design with assistive motors and electric switches became available. Enter myoelectric devices. "Myoelectric", you ask? Yeah, myoelectric. Unlike mechanically controlled prosthetics, an artificial limb that utilizes myoelectrics is controlled by voluntary muscle contractions in the wearer's residual limb. The electrical activity caused by the user's muscle activity is captured by sensors in contact with the flesh of an amputee's residual limb. By taking the time to train the muscles in a residual limb, a skilled owner of a myoelectric-controlled limb could effect the rotation of their mechanical wrist, open or close their prosthetic's hand or move an artificial elbow with nothing more than a few minute muscle twitches.
But the science doesn't end there: In the 47 years since the first crude myoelectric arm was built by the former USSR's Central Prosthetics Research Institute, scientists have been hella busy refining and improving upon the basic soviet design; refining the arm over the years as breakthroughs in material science, microprocessors and other technologies became available for inclusion in their research. One of the coolest breakthroughs in recent years comes to us thanks to funding provided by the U.S. Army Research Office and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to Deka, a company founded by the man who gave us the Segway, Dean Kamen. The fruit of Deka's labor is the DEKA, or "Luke" (named after Star Wars' Luke Skywalker) Arm, a device that's as awesome as anyone on a Segway is snicker-worthy.
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| 71 Percent Of Online Adults Use Video-Sharing Sites Posted: 26 Jul 2011 11:23 AM PDT
The numbers stay largely the same regardless of sex, income or geographic location: a female in NYC is just as likely as a male in Kansas to check out the latest Lady Gaga vid online. In fact, the biggest differentiator in video-sharing usage seems to be age; the older you get, the less likely you are to be on YouTube. Ninety-two percent of people under the age of 30 frequent the sites, as do 80 percent of people between 30 and 50. That number drops to 54 percent, or just over half, of people aged 50 to 64. And if you're over 64? Fuggedaboutit. Only one in three senior citizens get their video kicks online. One key difference between urban and rural watchers is their frequency of video-sharing use. A third of urban and suburban correspondents told Pew that they'd visited a video-sharing site "yesterday." That number dropped to only 14 percent for rural netizens. The 71 percent usage rate is a major jump in five years. In 2006, only 33 percent of Americans utilized the services of YouTube and their ilk. You can check out the full report online, but be warned; there's a ton of numbers and graphs. Image credit: interactiveinsightsgroup.com |
| Byte Rights: Kill -9 Due Process Posted: 26 Jul 2011 11:15 AM PDT After more than 90 legally questionable domain seizures for the non-crime of criminal contributory copyright infringement, the Department of Justice is facing its first suit from Puerto 80, the Spanish owners of Rojadirecta. The complaint tells the disturbing story of trying to discuss the seizure with the government and being ignored for months. Only after filing suit did the DOJ start returning phone calls, but even then the government's compromise was the illogical and impossible request that Rojadirecta's users never post a link to U.S. content. The New York Department of Homeland Security needs to take some Internet classes at their local community college.
Puerto 80 says the seizures of the mostly forum, discussion-based website's domains count as "prior restraint," a form of censorship and violation of the First Amendment. Violating First Amendment rights requires a much higher standard of evidence than what DHS had in its warrants, which were issued in the first place for a crime that doesn't, and never has, existed in U.S. law. While they're down at the CC, they might want to look into a basic law class.
In the meantime, the same DHS requested the extradition of college student Richard O'Dwyer from the UK for running linking site TVShack, despite the fact that, as with Puerto 80, sites similar to his have been found legal in domestic courts. O'Dwyer never visited the U.S., never hosted servers here, and—I can't seem to say this enough times—he faces extradition for something that isn't even criminal here. The case is driving questions in the UK parliament about its whole extradition treaty with the U.S.—just one more way DHS is unloading a clip into its own foot. Are the paranoid whims of big media companies really worth damaging the First Amendment, our relationship with two allies, and the credibility of our law enforcement? Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications. |
| US Lagging In Global Average Connection Speeds Posted: 26 Jul 2011 10:55 AM PDT
The US has the largest presence in the online world, claiming 142,605,731 of the 584,821,069 global unique IP addresses (China comes in 2nd with a scant 73m+). Unfortunately, the strength lies only in numbers, not in speed. The US falls into the 14th slot as far as pure Internet speed goes, with an average connection of 5.3Mbps. That lags far behind South Korea, which sits in the top spot with an average connection speed of 14.4Mbps. So how do the numbers add up Stateside? Delaware, apparently, is full of speed demons; it's the state with the fastest average connection speed, at 7.5Mbps. Interestingly, four of the top ten states with the speediest connections fall in the New England Region. Staten Island, NY and the California cities of Riverside and San Jose are the cities to move to for raw power; citizens there enjoy brisk average connection speeds of about 7.8Mbps, the fastest in the nation.
Japan's the place to move to if you want to stream tons of Netflix videos. The country holds the top nine spots in Akamai's list of the cities with the fastest peak connections in the world, with all of them topping speeds of 40Mbps. All in all, 54 Japanese cities claim a slot on the list; the US only holds 25 spots. Are you a number geek? You can dig into the full report at Akamai's website, but you'll need to register with the firm first. Image credit: Akamai |
| Comic-Con 2011 Videos: An Interview With David Gerrold, And Our Final Look At The Show Floor! Posted: 26 Jul 2011 10:50 AM PDT All good things must come to an end--with that sentiment in mind, we bid a fond farewell to Comic-Con 2011. To round out our Comic-Con coverage for this year, how about some video? The first is Nathan's exclusive interview with famed Star Trek writer, David Gerrold, while the second is our final overall look at the show floor. And our final look at the floor...
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| SanDisk Targets Consumers With Its "New" Ultra SSD Posted: 26 Jul 2011 10:13 AM PDT
"The new SSD can extend the life of desktop and notebook PCs, and offers greater performance, durability and power efficiency than a hard disk drive," SanDisk proudly boasts in its press release. (See? We told you they said it.) Calling the Ultra SSD "new" is a bit of a stretch; the same hardware has been offered to OEMs for a while now. The SATA 2.0 interface used by the Ultra SSD delivers a 280MB/s sequential read speed and 270MB/s sequential write speeds. "Up to 3 Gb/s random speeds surpass other SATA II SSDs and enable faster system boot and application launch times," SanDisk claims. The company also brags about the Ultra SSD's low power consumption – appealing to laptop users – and claims to have achieved a 1 million Mean Time Between Failure rating during internal stress tests. "Replacing a computer's hard disk drive with the SanDisk Ultra SSD is more cost effective than buying a new PC," said Kent Perry, SanDisk's Director of Product Marketing. You can pick up a 60GB, 120GB or 240GB Ultra SSD for prices ranging from $130 to $450. |
| Silicon Power Throws Hat in SATA III SSD Ring Posted: 26 Jul 2011 09:30 AM PDT
The V30 offers read and write speeds of up to 550MB/s and 500MB/s, respectively, putting it roughly in line with other high-end SATA III SSDs. Other features include TRIM and Garbage Collection technology, DuraWrite and wear leveling that Silicon Power says will extend the endurance of MLC memory, built-in SMART monitoring system, and ECC technology. Silicon Power offers the V30 Series in 60GB, 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB capacities, all of which come with a 3-year warranty. No word yet on price or availability. Image Credit: Silicon Power |
| Beyond Bulldozer: AMD May Release a 10-core CPU in 2012 Posted: 26 Jul 2011 09:12 AM PDT
That depends on what software developers are able to accomplish between now and then. As it stands, today's software doesn't make the most out of multi-core processors, though the situation is decidedly better than it was when the landscape was dominated by single- and dual-core processors. Ready or not, 10-core chips are en route, at least according to a leaked roadmap. Chinese website zol.com.cn posted the confidential roadmap (click our thumbnail image to enlarge) outlining AMD's 2011 (what's left of it) and 2012 platform plans. Based on the roadmap, AMD plans to follow up the launch of its Scorpius platform in 2011 (which will culminate with the release of Bulldozer) with Corona in 2012. Corona will include "Komodo" CPUs with up to 10 Piledriver cores, Turbo Core 3.0, and a new socket dubbed FM2. Corona also includes AMD's Hudson D4 FCH chipset with an upgraded southbridge that supports eight SATA 6Gb/s ports, RAID 0/1/5/10, ten USB 2.0 ports, and four native USB 3.0 ports. AMD's next generation discrete graphics -- Radeon 7000? -- will also be part of the platform. In the mainstream market, the roadmap shows AMD's Fusion-powered Lynx platform being replaced by Virgo. This will consist of Trinity APUs with up to 4 Piledriver CPU cores, Turbo Core 3.0, DirectX 11 GPU core, and DDR3 support. Trinity chips will also utilize AMD's upcoming FM2 socket. Sitting at the bottom is Deccan, the platform AMD will replace Brazos with. Deccan will feature Wichita APUs with up to 4 Bobcat CPU cores and an FT2 infrastructure. Image Credit: zol.com.cn |
| Canon's Multi-talented Mouse Moves Your Pointer, Crunches Number Posted: 26 Jul 2011 08:20 AM PDT
The X Mark I Mouse Lite is one of two new rodents to Canon's X Mark I series, the other being the X Mark I Keypad. They're intended for laptop users looking to extend their standard keyboard, which may not include a numpad. What's cool about the X Mark I Mouse Lite is that it combines a laser mouse with a keypad and 10-digit calculator all into one. "The addition of the X Mark I Keypad and X Mark I Mouse Lite marks Canon's entry into a new product category," said Yuichi Ishizuka, executive vice president and general manager, Imaging Technologies and Communications Group, Canon U.S.A. "Canon recognizes that business professionals are always on the search for tools that help improve work efficiency and we feel these new products will certainly accomplish this task." A little less flexible is the X Mark I Keypad, which combines a keypad with a 10-digit calculator, but doesn't come with a built in mouse laser. Both products utilize Bluetooth 2.0 and are compatible with Windows and Mac. Look for both the X Mark I Mouse Lite ($60) and X Mark I Keypad (also $60) to ship in August and September, respectively. Image Credit: Canon |
Developer Christopher Finke has a nice bit of data to show off today. He makes a browser add-on called URL Fixer that automatically corrects common typing errors, and recently added an opt-in setting for anonymous data collection. The resulting data shows us just what people are 
Us Americans may not enjoy the same 
Just ask Lightning McQueen; it's all about speed. Pure, unadulterated, untapped Internets, flowing through your mouse finger and delivering all the Netflix, MOG and MaximumPC.com you could ever want, before you know you even wanted it. We just told you yesterday that 
We've heard it before; solid state drives are the wave of the future. Spinning platters and read/write heads are so, like, 2008. In the recent weeks, we've heard about 
Silicon Power today 
If you find yourself at Sea World, be sure to check out the Pets Rule show. You'll see a variety of animals perform some amazing tricks, like a cat walking a tightrope. There are ducks, dogs, and even a pig all prancing around acting like humans. But one thing we've never seen before is a mouse that can do math. Canon's latest rodent -- X Mark I Mouse Lite -- can do that, as well as perform a few other tricks.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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