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+-   What the iPod Tells Us About the World Economy on Saturday November 28, @10:20AM Hugh Pickens

Submitted by Hugh Pickens on Saturday November 28, @10:20AM
business
Hugh Pickens writes "Edmund Conway has an interesting article in the Telegraph where he analyzes where the money goes when you buy a complex electronic device marked "Made in China" and why a developed economy doesn't need a trade surplus in order to survive. For his example Conway chooses a 30GB video iPod "manufacturered" in China in 2006. Each iPod, sold in the US for $299, provides China with an export value of about $150, but as it turns out Chinese producers really only “earned” around $4 on each unit. "China, you see, is really just the place where most of the other components that go inside the iPod are shipped and assembled." Conway says that when you work out the overall US balance of payments, it shows that most of the cash for high tech inventions has flowed back to the United States as a direct result of the intellectual property companies own in their products. "While the iPod is manufactured offshore and has a global roster of suppliers, the greatest benefits from this innovation go to Apple, an American company, with predominantly American employees and stockholders who reap the benefits," writes Conway. "As long as the US market remains dynamic, with innovative firms and risk-taking entrepreneurs, global innovation should continue to create value for American investors and wellpaid jobs for knowledge workers. But if those companies get complacent or lose focus, there are plenty of foreign competitors ready to take their places.""
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+-   Tapering Waveguide Captures a Rianbow-> on Saturday November 28, @10:19AM SubComdTaco

Submitted by SubComdTaco on Saturday November 28, @10:19AM
SubComdTaco writes ""In 2007, Ortwin Hess of the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK, and colleagues proposed a technique to trap light inside a tapering waveguide, which is a structure that guides light waves down its length. The waveguide in question would use metamaterials – exotic materials that can bend light sharply.

The idea is that as the waveguide tapers, the components of the light are made to stop in turn at ever narrower points. That's because any given component of the light cannot pass through an opening that's smaller than its wavelength. This leads to a "trapped rainbow"."

"While numerical models showed that such waveguides would work in theory, making them out of metamaterials remained a distant dream. Now Vera Smolyaninova of Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues have used a convex lens to create the tapered waveguide and trap a rainbow of light.

They coated one side of a 4.5-millimetre-diameter lens with a gold film 30 nanometre thick, and laid the lens – gold-side down – on a flat glass slide which was also coated with film of gold. Viewed side-on, the space between the curved lens and the flat slide was a layer of air that narrowed to zero thickness where the lens touched the slide – essentially a tapered waveguide.

When they shone a multi-wavelength laser beam at the open end of the gilded waveguide, a trapped rainbow formed inside. This could be seen as a series of coloured rings when the lens was viewed from above with a microscope: the visible light leaked through the thin gold film.""
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Comments: 1 +-   Engaging with Climate Skeptics-> on Friday November 27, @12:20PM Geoffrey.landis

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis on Friday November 27, @12:20PM
science
Geoffrey.landis writes "Andrew Rivkin of the NYT blog profiles Judith Curry, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech who-- unlike many climate scientists-- does not simply dismiss the arguments "climate skeptics," but attempts to engage them in dialogue. She can, as well, be rather pointed in criticizing her colleagues, as in a post on the skeptic site climateaudit where she argues for greater transparency for climate data and calculations (mirrored here). In this post she makes a point that tribalism in science is the main culprit here-- that when scientists "circle the wagons" to defend against what they perceive to be unfair (and unscientific) attacks, the result can be damaging to the actual science being defended.
Is it still possible to conduct a dialogue, or is there no possible common ground? Stay tuned."
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+-   Microsoft issues takedown notices over COFEE on Wednesday November 25, @04:35PM Eugen

Submitted by Eugen on Wednesday November 25, @04:35PM
microsoft
Eugen writes "According to Ars: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/11/microsoft-issues-take-down-notices-over-spilled-cofee.ars

Microsoft has issued takedown notices to multiple websites hosting the company's Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor (COFEE), which helps law enforcement officials grab data from password protected or encrypted sources.

Previous story about leak: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/08/1340208/Microsoft-COFEE-Leaked?art_pos=1"
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+-   Nvidia's DX11 GF100 graphics processor detailed-> on Monday November 23, @08:51PM J. Dzhugashvili

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili on Monday November 23, @08:51PM
graphics
J. Dzhugashvili writes "While it's played up the general-purpose computing prowess of its next-gen GPU architecture, Nvidia has talked little about Fermi's graphics capabilities—so much so that some accuse Nvidia of turning its back on PC gaming. Not so, says The Tech Report in a detailed architectural overview of GF100, the first Fermi-based consumer graphics processor. Alongside a wealth of technical information, the article includes enlightening estimates and direct comparisons with AMD's Radeon HD 5870. The GF100 will be up to twice as fast as the GeForce GTX 285, the author reckons, but the gap with the Radeon HD 5870 should be "a bit more slender." Still, Nvidia may have the fastest consumer GPU ever on its hands—and far from forsaking games, Fermi has been built as a graphics processor first and foremost."
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+-   Fair-price refund for declining XP EULA no more on Sunday November 22, @08:18AM mark0

Submitted by mark0 on Sunday November 22, @08:18AM
mark0 writes "Getting a fair-price refund from Amazon or Asus after declining the Windows XP EULA appears to be a thing of the past. In contrast to reports from the US and the UK from earlier in the year, Amazon simply refuses and provides information to contact Microsoft. Asus is offering US$6. Despite being confronted with publicly available information about the real OEM price of Windows XP Home Edition being $US25-US$30, Asus replies, "The refund price for the decline of the EULA is correct in it being US$6. This price unfortunately is not negotiable I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please be assured that it is not ASUS intentions to steer you away in any which way.""
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