Apparently giant rainbow explosions all across the sky weren’t entertaining for CBS producers, who digitally superimposed Boston landmarks across the screen in a strange, disingenuous attempt to augment the show. Why’s that okay? Because it’s entertainment, not news! How patriotic. More
While CERN researchers are busy potentially obliterating the Earth by creating a black hole in France, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Lab have their own Doomsday machine: a 10-story laser that may well create a miniature star over Northern California. More
Photographer William Carrick and his partner John MacGregor traveled throughout Russia between 1857 and 1878 taking portraits of Russians of all stations and occupations. These pictures form an ethnographic overview of Russia in the 19th century, and are a historical treasure. This picture shows a young vendor with his hand-carved wooden abacuses for sale. See a varied collection of Carrick’s photographs at Environmental Graffiti. Link
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Incredible Photos of Russian Peasants
Mac: The Mac Blu-ray Player from Macgo will read a Blu-ray disc from an attached drive and play it in Mac OS X. It works and it’s the only option currently for Blu-ray playback on the Mac, but there are tradeoffs for the convenience. More
The long-awaited debut of PCI Express 3.0 is finally here, and it’s come aboard MSI’s Z68A-GD80 (G3) motherboard. Rocking Intel’s latest design standard, this board’s packing two PCIe 3.0 — one x16 and one x8 — and three PCIe 2.0 slots, two USB 3.0 ports, and four DIMM slots. What’s more, the board offers Click BIOS II, for a consistent interface whether you’re tweaking at boot time or boosting clock speeds in Windows, and Virtu’s switchable graphics. Unfortunately, for you mother lovers, there’s still no word on pricing or availability for the Z68A-GD80 (G3). Full PR after the break.
Continue reading MSI unveils Z68A-GD80 (G3) PCI Express 3.0 motherboard
MSI unveils Z68A-GD80 (G3) PCI Express 3.0 motherboard originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
20,000 songs? Not nearly enough. $24.99 a year? Way too spendy. Unlimited and $20 a year? That’s a little better, at least, and that’s what Amazon just moved to. Taking a step up from its previous $20 for 20GB plan, the former bookseller is now letting new subscribers get any amount of storage they want for that price — unlimited for .mp3 and .m4a files, anyway. Naturally this means any songs purchased through Amazon MP3 will also be stored for to an infinite extent, not counting against your all-important quota. This is a “limited time” kind of deal, so if you’ve been on the fence now’s the time to click that cart, but there’s another new feature that isn’t going away: Cloud Player for Web on iPad. This lets you play your cloud tunes through Safari and that, combined with the whole unlimited storage thing, should ease any nagging feelings of regret you’ve been suffering since budgetary pressures talked you into the 16GB model.
Amazon Cloud Player hits iPad, adds unlimited storage, scoffs at constrained competition originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Microsoft took the beta label off of Office 365 last week, and many consider the cloud-based productivity suite a potshot at Google and Google Apps. Office 365 may offer cloud-based document, storage, and collaboration services that look like Google Apps, but the user experience and price tag are very different. Here’s a look at the major differences between them. More
The United States Treasury didn’t print any $10 bills last year. Shocking, but true. It’s because we use less and less cash every year. Which doesn’t mean we’re going to be a cashless society anytime soon. That’s great. More
Mmechanic sez, “Andrew Marantz wondered how BPOs [ed: Business Process Outsourcing, AKA call centers] train Indians who have never even known a Westerner to sound and act like one. Since the call centers wouldn’t let a journalist in to their culture-training sessions, Marantz decided to become a trainee himself. The resulting article from Mother Jones magazine is alternatively funny, sad, and thought-provoking.”
During our second day of culture training, Lekha dissected the Australian psyche. It took about 20 minutes.“Just stating facts, guys,” Lekha began, as we scribbled notes, “Australia is known as the dumbest continent. Literally, college was unknown there until recently. So speak slowly.” Next to me, a young man in a turban wrote No college in his notebook.
“Technologically speaking, they’re somewhat backward, as well. The average person’s mobile would be no better than, say, a Nokia 3110 classic.” This drew scoffs from around the room.
“Australians drink constantly,” Lekha continued. “If you call on a Friday night, they’ll be smashed–every time. Oh, and don’t attempt to make small talk with them about their pets, okay? They can be quite touchy about animals.”
“What kind of people are there in Australia?” a trainee asked. “What are their traits?”
“Well, for one thing,” Lekha said, “let’s admit: They are quite racist. They do not like Indians. Their preferred term for us is–please don’t mind, ladies–‘brown bastards.’ So if you hear that kind of language, you can just hang up the call.”
My Summer at an Indian Call Center
(Thanks, Mmechanic!)
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Life in an Indian call center
