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Branson unveils space tourism jet
Reads: 40
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| The British business tycoon Richard Branson has unveiled an aircraft in the US that will be used for his project to launch tourists into space.
The high-altitude jet will act as the mothership for a spacecraft, releasing it in mid-air to take two crew and six passengers on sub-orbital flights.
More than 250 people have already paid $200,000 (£100,000) each to be among the first making the tourist trips.
Mr Branson predicts the maiden space voyage will take place in 18 months.
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 It represents... the chance for our ever-growing group of future astronauts and other scientists to see our world in a completely new light 
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A crowd of engineers, dignitaries and space enthusiasts gathered inside a hangar in the Mojave Desert in California for the unveiling of WhiteKnightTwo "Eve".
Virgin Galactic has contracted the innovative aerospace designer Burt Rutan to build the mothership and spacecraft at his Scaled Composites factory in California.
But some hurdles remain before Virgin Galactic customers can experience zero gravity.
WhiteKnightTwo must undergo a rigorous flight testing programme, beginning in the autumn.
The mothership is a white, four-engined jet designed to cradle SpaceShipTwo under its wing and release it at 50,000 feet (15,200m) in the air.
Once separated, SpaceShipTwo will fire its hybrid rocket and climb some 60 miles (100km) above the Earth.
Engineers still need to finish building SpaceShipTwo, which is now about 70% complete, according to Virgin Galactic.
Mr Branson said the name of the WhiteKnightTwo reflected the pioneering spirit of his space tourism venture.
"We are naming it Eve after my mother, Eve Branson, but also because it represents a first and a new beginning, the chance for our ever-growing group of future astronauts and other scientists to see our world in a completely new light," he said.
Rutan and Branson have high hopes for WhiteKnightTwo, and its carbon composite technology, that go beyond merely lofting SpaceShipTwo to its launch altitude.
Scaled and Virgin have set up a new joint venture, called The Spaceship Company, which will exploit the wider capabilities of the aircraft.
The capabilities of this mothership are unbelievable," Sir Richard told the BBC. "For instance, we could put satellites in space at a fraction of the price that satellites are currently put up there. It has enormous weight capability, so if there were a [humanitarian] crisis in Africa it could carry enormous loads [for aid]."
SpaceShipTwo should be finished in about a year's time. Sir Richard said he intended to take his family into space but would not fly them until a thorough testing programme had "been completed and every box has been ticked".
Longer-term, Sir Richard envisages many tens of thousands of people taking holidays in space.
"Let's go 20 years forward, if all of this goes to plan, I hope that we will have a hotel in space; and in that hotel I hope we will have small spaceships that can go around the Moon - an excursion," he explained.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 @ 18:29:35 BST ) |
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Running on home-brewed hydrogen
Reads: 80
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UK Firm ITM Power has developed a way of making hydrogen at home to fuel a car.
Chief executive Jim Heathcoate says it has made a new type of plastic for the production process.
ITM believes the plastic could be mass produced relatively cheaply and would allow people to create the gas at home using their normal electric supply or greener sources such as solar power.
However, some industry experts have said that electric power and not hydrogen could be more cost effective and energy efficient.
They have also questioned how safe it is to create fuel at home.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Wednesday, July 09, 2008 @ 18:05:33 BST ) |
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IBM aims to cool chips with water
Reads: 58
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The water cooling technology was built into IBM's 3D chips
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A network of tiny pipes of water could be used to cool next-generation PC chips, researchers at IBM have said.
Scientists at the firm have shown off a prototype device layered with thousands of "hair-width" cooling arteries.
They believe it could be a solution to the increasing amount of heat pumped out by chips as they become smaller and more densely packed with components.
The technology was demonstrated in IBM's 3D chips, where circuits are stacked one on top of the other.
Laying chips vertically, instead of side by side, reduces the distance data has to travel , enhancing performance and saving critical space.
"As we package chips on top of each other....we have found that conventional coolers attached to the back of a chip don't scale," explained Thomas Brunschwiler at IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory.
"In order to exploit the potential of high-performance 3D chip stacking, we need interlayer cooling."
Cool running
Heat is seen as one of the major hurdles of producing ever smaller and quicker chips.
It took IBM a decade to work out how to build 3D chips
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It is the by-product of the movement of electrons through the tiny wires connecting the millions of components on a modern processor.
As more and more components are packed on to chips - Intel recently launched a processor with two billion transistors, for example - the problems become worse.
As a result, researchers around the world are engaged in a search for the most efficient way to take the heat off the chip industry.
For example, in 2007, US researchers built tiny wind engines that created a "breeze" made up of charged particles, or ions, to cool computer chips.
But the problems are exacerbated in the multi-storey chips which IBM, as well as others, believe offer "one of the most promising approaches" for building future processors.
Each 4 sq cm sandwich is just 1mm thick but pumps out close to 1kilowatt - 10 times that generated by a hotplate.
Conventional cooling techniques such as fans and heat sinks do not work as well with the 3D technology, particularly as heat has to be drawn away from between the individual chips.
To get around this, researchers piped water through sealed tubes just 50 microns (millionths of a metre) in diameter, between individual layers.
Water is much more efficient than air at absorbing heat and so even with tiny amounts of liquid flowing through the system the researchers saw a significant effect.
The idea of pumping liquids around computers is not entirely new. Early mainframe computers had water pumped around them.
High end computers have been "modded" for a number of years with water coolers and various researchers and companies have put forward proposals for directly cooling chips with fluids.
In 2003, Stanford University spin-out company Cooligy showed off its Active Micro-Channel Cooling (AMC) technology which allowed fluids to circulate through hundreds of tiny channels on the upper surface of a chip.
The technology was used in some versions of Apple's Power Mac G5 desktop computer, released in 2004.
IBM has said its water-cooling technology could be in products within five years.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Sunday, June 08, 2008 @ 21:36:49 BST ) |
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Rural homes 'lead broadband UK'
Reads: 62
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Rural homes 'lead broadband UK'
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By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology Correspondent, BBC News
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Is the UK rural/town digital divide over?
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Rural households are now more likely to have a broadband connection than residents of towns, says Ofcom.
The regulator's regional communications market report shows that 59% of rural households have broadband compared to 57% of urban homes.
It is the first time that the country has overtaken the town, according to the report.
Four years ago urban dwellers were twice as likely to have broadband as those living in the country.
Ed Richards, Ofcom's chief executive, said: "Our report highlights a closing of the geographical digital divide in the UK. Rural households are today as well connected to broadband as their urban neighbours."
The report also reveals big differences in take-up of modern communications across the UK.
Sunderland appears to be the UK's most connected city, with 66% of households having broadband and 96% using digital television. Glasgow has the lowest take-up of broadband in the UK at 32%.
Ofcom could not explain why Sunderland was at the top of the broadband league but said Glasgow's position probably reflected low levels of household income and computer ownership.
By contrast, in the Highlands and Islands, 62% of homes have broadband, and Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Dundee are all well ahead of the UK average.
There has been a major drive to bring broadband to every corner of Scotland, partly to sustain the economies of isolated communities where many residents can now work from home.
Ofcom's report also shows just how rapidly new mobile technology is changing Britain. About 20% of UK households now rely solely on a mobile phone, and in Greater Manchester 28% of homes use a mobile but have no fixed line telephone.
And 3G phones are also taking off rapidly. Dundee is the city with the highest levels of 3G phone use, with nearly three in 10 people using one. Ofcom also provides evidence that the mobile internet is now beginning to take off.
One in five UK adults has surfed the web on the move, but use is highest in London and Birmingham. In Devon and Cornwall, where 3g phone coverage is pretty sparse, just 7% of people have used the mobile internet.
Large numbers are also watching TV or video online, with a national rate of 30%, but again there are big regional variations. In London, 40% have tried services like the BBC iPlayer, while the figure in Greater Manchester is just 16%.
One more fact from the thousands sprinkled across this comprehensive survey of media habits across the UK - there are now 14,000 Wikipedia articles in Welsh, more than twice as many as the number in Gaelic. Which is not a bad effort, considering that Wales has a lower rate of broadband take-up than the rest of the UK.
DIGITAL BRITAIN
Most connected parts of UK
| Digital TV households (top) |
| Sunderland |
96% |
| Glasgow |
95% |
| Plymouth |
92% |
| Mobile-only households |
| Greater Manchester |
28% |
| Wales |
19% |
| UK average |
12% |
| 3G phone owners |
| Dundee |
29% |
| London |
26% |
| Liverpool |
13% |
| UK average |
17% |
| Watching online TV |
| Edinburgh |
45% |
| Newport |
19% |
| UK average |
30% |
| VOIP (voice call over the internet) |
| Aberdeen |
26% |
| London |
20% |
| Swansea |
18% |
| Birmingham |
14% |
| Liverpool |
4% |
| UK average |
12% |
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 19:50:50 BST ) |
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Web users 'getting more selfish'
Reads: 60
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Nielsen: "Search engines rule the web"
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Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online, reveals research.
The annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows people are becoming much less patient when they go online.
Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave.
Most ignore efforts to make them linger and are suspicious of promotions designed to hold their attention.
Search rules
Instead, many are "hot potato" driven and just want to get a specific task completed.
Success rates measuring whether people achieve what they set out to do online are now about 75%, said Dr Nielsen. In 1999 this figure stood at 60%.
There were two reasons for this, he said.
"The designs have become better but also users have become accustomed to that interactive environment," Dr Nielsen told BBC News.
Now, when people go online they know what they want and how to do it, he said.
Beating Google requires someone to do search better
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This makes them very resistant to highlighted promotions or other editorial choices that try to distract them.
"Web users have always been ruthless and now are even more so," said Dr Nielsen.
"People want sites to get to the point, they have very little patience," he said.
"I do not think sites appreciate that yet," he added. "They still feel that their site is interesting and special and people will be happy about what they are throwing at them."
Web users were also getting very frustrated with all the extras, such as widgets and applications, being added to sites to make them more friendly.
Such extras are only serving to make pages take longer to load, said Dr Nielsen.
There has also been a big change in the way that people get to the places where they can complete pressing tasks, he said.
In 2004, about 40% of people visited a homepage and then drilled down to where they wanted to go and 60% use a deep link that took them directly to a page or destination inside a site. In 2008, said Dr Nielsen, only 25% of people travel via a homepage. The rest search and get straight there.
"Basically search engines rule the web," he said.
But, he added, this did not mean that the search engines were doing a perfect job.
"When you watch people search we often find that people fail and do not get the results they were looking for," he said.
"In the long run anyone who wants to beat Google just has to make a better search," said Dr Nielsen.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 17:31:50 BST ) |
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Top 10 PC Games Chart
Reads: 143
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Footie keeps its grip on number one, but strategy games make a strong return.
The league football season may be almost over, but virtual fandom is clearly alive and kicking as Football Manager 2008 enjoys a third week at number one. Despite this, Championship Manager 2008 has dropped out of the Top 10 entirely. It’s not such a good week for The Sims franchise, either, as The Sims 2: Bon Voyage also says au revoir to the leader board for the time being. The Sims’s loss is Medieval II: Total War Gold Edition and Civilisation IV’s gain. The strategy game genres have made a healthy return to the Top 10, and Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm is holding steady at 5. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare continues its slow creep up the chart, with another single step to the second slot.
See the full top 10 below:
01 Football Manager 2008 (No change)
02 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Last week: 3)
03 The Sims 2: Freetime (Last week: 2)
04 Assassin's Creed (No change)
05 Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War Soulstorm (No change)
06 Civilization IV Complete (Last week: 14)
07 The Sims 2 (Last week: 6)
08 World of Warcraft: Battle Chest (Last week: 10)
09 Medieval II: Total War Gold Edition (Last week: 15)
10 The Sims: Castaway Stories (Last week: 7)
Delving deeper into the top 20, Unreal Tournament III continues its flirtation with chart-topping sales, returning at position 20. The Orange Box clearly also has some juice left, re-entering at position 19. But new in at 18th place is – yep, you guessed, another Sims game. In this case, it’s The Sims 2: Double Deluxe. Just in case you didn’t have enough of The Sims.
See this week's top 20 below:
11 The Sims 2: Bon Voyage (Last week: 8)
12 Crysis (Last week: 14)
13 Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars (No change)
14 Championship Manager 2008 (Last week: 9)
15 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (Last week: 12)
16 Microsoft Flight Simulator X Deluxe (No change)
17 Frontlines: Fuel of War (Last week: 20)
18 The Sims 2: Double Deluxe (New entry)
19 The Orange Box (New entry)
20 Unreal Tournament III (New entry)
Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, © 2008 ELSPA Ltd
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 12:29:51 BST ) |
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Exploding star caught in the act
Reads: 76
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By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News
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The outburst was spotted by the Swift space telescope
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Astronomers have been able to capture and record the first moments when a massive star blows itself apart.
After decades of searching, researchers have used the world's top telescopes to observe the remarkable event.
Previously, scientists had only been able to study these "supernovas" several days after the event.
The results, published in the journal Nature, show that within two hours of the blast, a giant fireball scattered radioactive debris across space.
The phenomenon was detected by the Swift space telescope, a collaboration between the US space agency (Nasa), the UK and Italy.
Supernovas are some of the most spectacular events in the Universe, producing the same amount of energy as trillions of nuclear bombs detonating simultaneously.
Typically, they occur when a massive star - more than eight times the mass of the Sun - runs out of fuel and collapses to form a hot relic called a neutron star.
Their extreme brightness allows them to be seen in distant galaxies.
But observers cannot pick up this optical emission until several hours or days after the explosion, so a supernova's first moments are shrouded in mystery.
Death of a star
The event in the constellation of Lynx was captured by pure chance.
Alicia Soderberg, from Princeton University in New Jersey, and her colleagues were using Swift to survey the spiral galaxy NGC2770.
They saw an extremely luminous X-ray outburst in an area of sky that had shown nothing bright just two days earlier.
They attribute the outburst to the breaking out of the supernova shockwave, which ploughs its way through the star's gaseous outer layers - blowing it to smithereens.
"We were in the right place, at the right time, with the right telescope," Dr Soderberg explained.
Dr Kim Page, from the University of Leicester, who led the X-ray analysis, commented: "This observation is by far the best example of what happens when a star dies and a neutron star is born."
Swift's X-ray instrument was largely developed at Leicester by a team led by Professor Alan Wells. He told the BBC that Swift had been designed from the outset to tackle issues such as the early behaviour of supernovas.
The initial observations were followed up by some of the world's major telescopes. They observed the blast for more than 30 days to rule out the possibility this event could be anything other than a supernova.
"We were able to observe the evolution of the explosion right from the start,” said co-author Edo Berger, from the Carnegie Observatories in California.
"This eventually confirmed that the big X-ray blast marked the birth of a supernova."
Astronomers say that supernovas are part of the story of how we came to be, because these tremendous explosions created many of the heavy elements from which planets are made.
The authors say the event will help astronomers fill in gaps about the properties of massive stars, the birth of neutron stars and black holes, and the impact of supernovas on their environments.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 12:26:23 BST ) |
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Net downloads to get age ratings
Reads: 59
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The BBFC already issues ratings for games aimed at adults
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Age ratings for downloaded video content and video games are to be introduced in the UK.
Overseen by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the scheme will see certificates appear on websites, via set-top boxes and portable players.
Disney, Warners and Fox have signed up to the scheme with other "key industry figures... poised to join the scheme".
The BBFC said independent research showed 74% of parents were concerned about the lack of ratings on downloads.
More than 1,000 videos will have online certificates by the end of May.
The voluntary scheme will also require online services and video on demand schemes to have "age verification or gate-keeping systems in place for parents to monitor and control underage viewing".
Peter Johnson, head of policy at the BBFC, said the body would police the age verification systems.
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I'm hoping there won't be any need for legislation to underpin this scheme
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"It's up to individual systems to work out how to introduce these technologies," he said.
"But we will police it through test purchases."
Online gaming
Mr Johnson said the scheme, called BBFC.online, was not an attempt to censor the internet, nor to regulate online video gaming.
David Cooke, director of the BBFC, said the organisation continued to work with the game industry's self-regulatory body Pegi to find solutions to classifying the burgeoning range of online gaming.
The BBC could enter iPlayer into the scheme
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"We don't need to set up in rivalry with Pegi online. We can work cooperatively," he said.
The scheme could also be rolled out to include online services such as Microsoft's Xbox Live, Sony's PlayStation Network and Nintendo's WiiWare, all of which offer video and games for download.
While the BBFC system has not been designed with TV catch-up services, like the BBC's iPlayer, in mind, said Mr Johnson, organisations like the BBC and ITV were welcome to join.
Content providers
Without providing specifics, Mr Johnson said the BBFC expected all the "leading content providers and aggregators to sign up to the scheme in the coming weeks and months".
"We are talking to everybody who is likely to be a significant player in this industry," he said.
Mr Cooke said he hoped the voluntary scheme would obviate the need for any legislation to cover downloadable video content in the UK.
The BBFC reported that parents it had consulted had expressed surprise that online video content did not legally have to be classified in the UK.
"I'm hoping there won't be any need for legislation to underpin this scheme," he said.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 12:24:34 BST ) |
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Changes Coming For ETC's & Game Time Cards
Reads: 101
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To simplify the ETC reseller program and attune our product offerings with industry standards, CCP will introduce new 60-day EVE Time Codes (ETC) and Game Time Cards (GTC) for $34.99 USD. These will replace the 30- and 90-day cards that were previously available through authorized resellers and the 50- and 100-day cards sold in the EVE Store. This will affect both online ETC's and Game Time Cards sold in the EVE Online Store. Orders may still be placed for time cards of all increments while supplies last or until the changeover to the new 60-day cards goes into effect on June 15, 2008.
This change will not affect other payment options such as credit cards etc.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 12:22:01 BST ) |
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5th Anniversary BIG Lottery winners
Reads: 98
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BIG Games 5th Anniversary Lottery is over and the lucky winners are:
- Lena Masca - 20B ISK.
- Mandrain - 10B ISK.
- General Dahak - 5B ISK.
- florinde - 2B ISK.
- Alog Balog - Dominix BPO, ME20.
- Jason Hazardous - Two run Nomad BPC, ME2.
- Master YingTong - The Art of EVE book, signed by CCP.
- Klyn - EON One Year Subscription.
- Rubelicon - 100 Day GTC.
- Ignatzmaximov - 50 day GTC.
- Black Cumin - EVE USB flash drive 1GB.
- Soulronin - EVE USB flash drive 1GB.
- Ron Jade - Two Daredevil ships.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Please note that while CCP contributed to the prizes with swag from the EVE Store, this event was completely run by players who also provided the in-game prizes, and we'd like to give a big thank you to the people behind this event from all of CCP.
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(Posted by Admin-DoC on Saturday, May 24, 2008 @ 12:20:17 BST ) |
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