Tech Today w/ Ken May

The most agonizingly complex language that I’ve ever tried to learn is OT Hebrew, which (among other challenges) expresses vowel intonations through a vast variety of tick marks, jots, and tittles surrounding the consonants. These are not constant; rather, the meaning of the different markings varies depending upon the order of the letter within the word, order within the syllable, the nature of the preceding consonant and the following consonant, and all possible combinations thereof. But I gather that Hebrew is comparatively simple to Mandarin. As a necessary result of that complexity, Mandarin typewriters are sophisticated machines:

As you can see, the typewriter is extremely complicated and cumbersome. The main tray — which is like a typesetter’s font of lead type — has about two thousand of the most frequent characters. Two thousand characters are not nearly enough for literary and scholarly purposes, so there are also a number of supplementary trays from which less frequent characters may be retrieved when necessary. What is even more intimidating about a Chinese typewriter is that the characters as seen by the typist are backwards and upside down! Add to this challenging orientation the fact that the pieces of type are tiny and all of a single metallic shade, it becomes a maddening task to find the right character. But that is not all, since there is also the problem of the principle (or lack thereof) upon which the characters are ordered in the tray. By radical? By total stroke count? Both of these methods would result in numerous characters under the same heading. By rough frequency? By telegraph code? Unfortunately, nobody seems to have thought to use the easiest and most user-friendly method of arranging the characters according to their pronunciation.

Link via Geekosystem | Photo: Victor Mair

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Chinese Typewriters

Drawingmachine by Eske Rex from Core77 on Vimeo.

I love the way this thing looks like a cross between some kind of medieval engineering project and the best playground equipment ever. Made by Eske Rex—a Swedish-born designer who'd never heard of the toy Spirograph—it's based on a piece of 19th-century technical equipment.

Instead, he was inspired by the harmonograph, a mid-19th century mechanical apparatus that produces Lissajous curves, a complex family of shapes studied by mathematicians. While the harmonograph uses one pendulum to control a drawing device and a second to control a canvas, Rex’s design calls for a two-pendulum device with a static canvas.

The Drawingmachine, Eske’s name for his device, which produces art but is also itself considered an installation piece, uses two pendulums supported by large structures that stand at two ends of a similarly large canvas. The pendulums are connected to support systems (drawing arms) that meet in the middle of the canvas at a 90-degree angle and hold a single ballpoint pen, as you can see in the embedded images.

Video Link

Via The Atlantic

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Room-sized spirograph

A LOT of people, not least my colleague Schumpeter, have been saying lately that the next bubble to burst is going to be in higher education. The idea is that people are spending too much on higher education, taking on too much debt, and failing to get the reward they expect. This bubble is bound to burst, and will leave American colleges and universities with huge over-capacity. One strong advocate of this view is Peter Thiel, a legendary investor in Facebook, who featured in the film, “The Social Network”. He says:

Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced and there must be an intense belief in it. Housing was a classic bubble, as were tech stocks in the ’90s, because they were both very overvalued, but there was an incredibly widespread belief that almost could not be questioned — you had to own a house in 2005, and you had to be in an equity-market index fund in 1999.

Probably the only candidate left for a bubble — at least in the developed world (maybe emerging markets are a bubble) — is education. It’s basically extremely overpriced. People are not getting their money’s worth, objectively, when you do the math. And at the same time it is something that is incredibly intensively believed; there’s this sort of psycho-social component to people taking on these enormous debts when they go to college simply because that’s what everybody’s doing.

It is, to my mind, in some ways worse than the housing bubble. There are a few things that make it worse. One is that when people make a mistake in taking on an education loan, they’re legally much more difficult to get out of than housing loans. With housing, typically they’re non-recourse — you can just walk out of the house. With education, they’re recourse, and they typically survive bankruptcy. If you borrowed money and went to a college where the education didn’t create any value, that is potentially a really big mistake.

Schumpeter is fiendishly clever and Mr Thiel is both clever and rich, so there’s plainly something to this bubble theory. But although I’ve only just started to look into it, it seems to me that the argument is not yet rock solid. For a start, the latest available numbers suggest that college enrolment continues to boom and that going to university still pays. According to data from last year’s census, average earnings in 2008 totaled $83,144 for those with an advanced degree (ie, a master’s professional or doctoral degree), compared with $58,613 for those with a bachelor’s degree only. People whose highest level of attainment was a high school diploma had average earnings of $31,283.

Here’s another way of looking at it:

When I put the bubble hypothesis to Norton Grubb, professor of higher education at the University of California, Berkeley, his response in an email was that the bubble hypothesis was “ridiculous”. He went on:

The problem is that there are no other routes to better occupations and higher salaries anymore, except for those who have odd skills (athletes, rock stars, starlets willing to reveal all) – which most of us don't have. Education has not stopped delivering its expected returns, not in terms of income or (un)employment. It has stopped delivering on the promise of a middle-class job = professions and managerial occupations, for which a BA was sufficient inthe 60s, and for which an MA is now necessary.

I have two things for overclockers scene. First, I find you guys awesome and inspiring. I haphazardly throw fans into my case and hope for the best. Not you guys. Hells no. You know the proper voltage settings and cooling techniques to max out your system. *High-five*

Second, the pic above is of a rig that just scored a record 79,364 composite 3DMark Vantage score. Modders Vince “K|ngP|n” Lucido and Illya “TiN” Tsemenko used a pair of Intel Xeon X5690 CPUs on an EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard with Corsair Dominator GT GTX2 memory modules along with four Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 GPU cards — all with liquid nitrogen cooling pots The result was record breaking as they took the CPUs up to 5.62GHz each and overclocked the GPUs to 1,190MHz. Sure, the whole thing isn’t practical and won’t likely increase your Team Fortress 2 skills, but overclocking leads to innovation, which eventually trickles into normal systems that you and I use. [XtremeSystems.org & Corsair Blog]

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Dual CPU, Quad GPU System Scores A Record 79k 3DMark Score Thanks To Plenty Of Liquid Nitrogen And Skill

That was quick: on Tuesday, Fujitsu unveiled the world’s smallest and thinnest palm vein sensor used for authentication purposes (which is sized at just 29mm on a side and 11.2mm high). And now the company announced [JP] the LIFEBOOK E741/C, a notebook that will come with said sensor on board (as an option).

Spec-wise, buyers can expect:

• 15.6-inch LCD screen with 1,366×768 resolution
• Core i7-2620M (2.70GHz) CPU
• Intel QM67 Express
• 1GB RAM
• 160GB HDD
• Windows 7 Professional (32bit)

In Japan, Fujitsu plans to roll out the LIFEBOOK E741/C in the middle of next month (price: $2,930/with the sensor).

Recyclebank is an innovative rewards program that turns your everyday recyclables into points redeemable for gift certificates and discounts at retailers. You can also earn points by taking on challenges, playing green-themed games, and more. More

Ivan Kaspersky, the 20-year-old son of the founder of Russian anti-virus firm Kaspersky Labs is missing and believed to be kidnapped. According to Russian news organizations, the kidnappers are asking for 3 million euros for his safe return.

Ivan was taken on his way to work on Tuesday. The boy’s father, Yevegny, is asking that the media not postulate on his son’s kidnapping as it may “cause damage to his company.”

No one from the company has commented on the situation.

via BBC

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Son Of Anti-Virus Maker Kaspersky Missing

I can’t remember the last time I put a disc in my laptop. Maybe an old mix CD. The world’s moving on from physical media! Great! But how about replacing that slot with something useful, and not a pico projector? More

IKEA is the world’s largest furniture store. In fact, the company is so big, it is estimated that around 10% of all Europeans alive today were conceived on an IKEA bed. Despite its success though, the company still has quite a few dark secrets, as well as a number of interesting trivia bits. Whether you love the flat-pack manufacturer or hate it, these 10 facts about the company are certain to spark your interest in the things that happen behind the scenes of IKEA.

Image via Calvin Teo [Wikipedia]

1. The Store Was Created By A Nazi Sympathizer. Founder Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943. He was only seventeen at the time. At the same time, he was also directly involved with fund-raising and recruitment for the New Swedish Movement, a pro-fascist, anti-Semitist group that emphasized Swedish Nationalism. When the matter came out in 1994, Kamprad claimed it was the biggest mistake of his life. He apologized for his involvement with the group and wrote a letter to every Jewish employee on his staff to personally apologize for his actions. Even so, the issue caused a minor controversy when IKEA opened its first store in Israel. In the end, the country seemed to forgive him and IKEA is now one of only a handful of companies to have stores in both Israel and other Muslim Middle Eastern countries.



Image via yassan-yukky [Flickr]

2. It Is Technically A Charity. If Nazism wasn’t bad enough, IKEA is also has one of the most elaborate tax evasion schemes of any company that still manages to operate within the law. IKEA is owned by INGKA Holding B.V., a Dutch corporation that is controlled by a non-profit Dutch foundation known as the Stichting Ingka Foundation, which was founded by Kamprad in 1982. This Foundation is headed by a five-person committee that includes Kamprad, his wife, and his attorney. IKEA’s intellectual property is owned by Inter IKEA Systems, which is owned, indirectly, by the Inerogo Foundation, which is also controlled by Kamprad and his family. IKEA has to pay 3% of its profits to the foundation to license its own trademarks. Because IKEA is owned by charities, none of its profits are taxed, making the Ingka Foundation the largest charity in the world, with a net worth of $36 billion. Of course, the charity isn’t nearly as generous as most (being as how it’s mostly just a tax evasion strategy), so it only gave away $65 million in 2010. To put that in perspective, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a net worth of $33 billion and they give away around $1.5 billion per year. The whole scheme is pretty complex, so if you want to read more about it, I recommend checking out this great Mental Floss article on the issue.
3. The Name Is Actually An Acronym. While most people assume IKEA is just a Swedish word or a nonsense word like Kodak, it is actually an acronym with close ties to Ingvar Kamprad’s heart. The letters stand for his initials, the initial for the farm he grew up in, Elmtaryd, and the town the farm was located in, Agunnaryd.



Image via DrJohnBullas [Flickr]

4. They Have A Very Specific Way Of Naming Products. Because Kamprad is dyslexic, he found it extremely difficult to manage an inventory that was made up of product codes, so he instead decided to name everything with words instead. I always thought that the products names were all Swedish words describing the objects, but as it turns out, that only applies to a handful of kitchen items. For the most part, all items are named according to a system developed by IKEA where each type of item carries a different name origin. For example, dining tables and chairs generally are named after places in Finland. Carpets are named after places in Denmark. For more examples, check out this article in The Guardian.
5. They Also Sell Houses. Ready to buy a new home? If you live in Scandinavia or the UK, don’t head to a real estate agent, head to IKEA and grab a flat-pack house for a fraction of the cost. The BoKlok houses were originally released in Sweden in 1996, and have since expanded to IKEA stores across Northern Europe.
6. Their Catalog Is More Popular Than The Bible. Ok, maybe that’s a little misleading, but every year, there are almost three times more copies of the catalog printed than the bible. They started printing the catalog in 1951 and it has since taken on a life of its own, consuming a full 70% of the companies marketing budget every year and developing a devoted fan base of people who analyze the images looking for obscure books in the bookshelves, Mickey Mouse references and cats hiding in the fake households. There are now 55 editions printed in 27 languages every year.
7. You Can Buy Their Merchandise For Your Virtual Family. If you’re running out of space in your home for all the great IKEA stuff you want, maybe you should consider shopping for your virtual home instead. Since 2008, players of The Sims 2 have had the chance to purchase the IKEA Home Stuff pack and deck out their character’s houses with the décor.



Image via thekellyscope [Flickr]

8. The Store Really Is A Big Deal. Most of you have probably become used to IKEA and no longer consider the store all that special, but for many people, the chance to shop in the Swedish furniture store is an exciting occasion –particularly when they are offering $150 gift certificates to the first people who shop there. This exact promotion actually lead to the trampling deaths of three people when the store opened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2004.
9. It Can Be A Great Way For Parents To Get A Break. Many stores offer free daycare centers with playgrounds and beepers that can be used to contact the parent if the child needs mommy or daddy before they finish shopping. Stressed out parents can then easily enjoy a nice meal, a nap in one of the bedroom displays or, you know, an actual shopping trip knowing their little ones are safe and secure within the same building.
10. They Were The First Company To Feature A Gay Relationship In a Commercial. While the commercial only ran once in 1994, it was still a big deal for such a major company to release an ad with a homosexual couple. Since then, the company had ran a number of ads targeting the gay community, including one of the first ads to feature a transgender person.

Do you like the company or hate it? More to the point, have you changed your opinion after learning about Kamprad’s dirty secrets or about their progressive ads targeted to homosexuals?

Sources: Wikipedia and Mental Floss

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10 Things You Didn’t Know About IKEA

As many self-healing polymers as we’ve seen roll across our screens, we never really tire of them — chalk it up to our unending quest for perfection, but we like our gadgets devoid of nicks and scratches. Lucky for us, a team of scientists that shares our need for clean has produced a material that fixes its imperfections in a mere 60 seconds when exposed to UV light. The typically rigid material basically melts down when exposed to rays of a specific wavelength, allowing it to fill in any nicks or dings. When the light is lifted, the polymer goes back to its original form, and voila — the surface is like new. Its creators say the material could be used on everything from cars to dining room tables, but we’ve already come up with laundry list of devices that could do with a truly scratch resistant surface. Video of the stuff in action after the break.

Continue reading Self-healing polymer serves up quick fixes under UV rays (video)

Self-healing polymer serves up quick fixes under UV rays (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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