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Wacky News Stories

Manufacturer In China To 'Employ' 1M Robots
12:37pm UK, Monday August 01, 2011


A Taiwanese manufacturer of parts for Apple, Nokia and Dell is planning to replace staff on assembly lines in its Chinese factories with robots.
16041222.jpg
Increasingly expensive staff on assembly lines will be replaced by robots



Foxconn also counts Hewlett-Packard and Sony Ericsson amongst its clients.

The company presently "employs" 10,000 robots, but plans to increase this to 300,000 in 2012 and one million by 2014, its chairman was quoted as saying in the China Business News.

A source close to the company confirmed the comments, and said an announcement was made just before a staff event on a Friday night.

Analysts say rising labour costs in China are prompting some manufacturers to move towards greater automation.

"This year's wage increase has been quite significant and I do not expect the pace to slow down next year," said CK Lu, a Taipei-based senior analyst at research firm Gartner.

"If they do not do this, they will have to move their factories elsewhere."

Foxconn currently employs around 1.2 million workers, one million of whom are based in mainland China.

In March, it reported a net loss of $218.3m in 2010 - about eight per cent lower than the previous year.

Staff suicides have been reported at a number of Foxconn's Chinese factories since 2010.

At least 13 employees died last year, which activists blamed on tough working conditions, although this was disputed by the firms concerned.

Labour-related issues are becoming an increasing problem in China where strikes have hit factories run by Honda and Toyota in the past year.




http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16041203
 
i fairly recently dug up some more info in diablo 3.

Diablo 3 still doesn’t have a release date, but the highly-anticipated action RPG from Blizzard is now in beta, and details are starting to come out.

•Diablo 3 will require players to stay connected to Battle.net at all times, not just for authentication.
•Consequently, bots and mods — which were extremely popular in Diablo 2 — have been expressly banned in Diablo 3. Kind of a bummer for single-player campaigners.
•The skill system and item crafting have been totally reworked for more adventure and fewer trips back to town.
•Speaking of items: Diablo 3 will have two separate auction houses. One lets you buy equipment with in-game gold, and one lets you spend real currency. Blizzard won’t be selling items directly, but it will charge a flat fee for players to auction their gear.
That’s all on top of the previously-announced new classes, including the Witch Doctor, Monk, Wizard and Demon Hunter.
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this is not actually so bad as it sounds. the auctioning is something people already did for quite a while for diablo 2. they've just made it an official way of getting items. the constant net connection, along with the legalisation of item auctioning and prevention of mods, prevents players from doubling expensive items offline. it was a pretty common cheat, so all they've tried to do here is eliminate cheating. besides that, blizzard is known for upholding customer support quite reliably, so it might actually be possible to introduce improvements to gameplay through the company.

as far as hardware requirements are concerned, i'm not too worried. this thing's been indevelopement for several years already, and blizzard usually keeps them quite low to begin with.
 
Death: Extra Crispy? said:
In March, it reported a net loss of $218.3m in 2010 - about eight per cent lower than the previous year.
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Hmmm, interesting, they seem to leave out the fact that in April Foxconn announced that it's total gross profit in 2010 hit 58.5% over 2009! How dare those greedy Chinese workers, actually expecting to make enough money to make a living as well! :rolleyes:

Hard working taskmaster Terry Gou is sure to please Foxconn investors in its latest earnings report.

Despite inconveniences like having to pay workers a slightly larger pittance, and provide them with better working conditions, Foxconn has announced a 53 percent rise in consolidated revenues for 2010.

Figures for the year topped NT$2.99 trillion for 2010, up from NT$77.15 billion.

Net income also went up by 1.9 percent to NT$77.1 billion for the year, while
the company’s gross profit for the twelve months increased by 58.5 percent to NT$100.9 billion from NT$63.6 billion in 2009.

The company also did well when it came to its earnings per share, with a total of NT$2.22 for the fourth quarter of 2010. This was despite the average gross margin for the quarter dropping 0.1 percent to 7.9 percent.

Foxconn described the year as uncertain and "challenging". It however said that despite the general uncertainty the "results were as expected and remain seasonal."

It also confirmed several new investments in China. According to the Taiwan Economic Daily this includes an interest in investing in solar cell manufacturer Neo Solar Power .
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Original story HERE!
 
Get It Straight: Bert & Ernie Are Sexless Friends, Says Sesame Street
BertAndErnieSideBySide.jpg
A group pushing their gay agenda on the lives of innocent children have tried to sully the sexless friendship of "Sesame Street" puppet pals Bert and Ernie by circulating a petition to have the two guys get married on an episode of the long-running show.

Now Sesame Street has lobbed back via a terse statement issued on their Facebook page, aimed at setting the record straight. Or neutral. Or just not gay.

Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.

​
There's not meant to be even a hint of 'mance' between these bros. They are BFFs, not BFs. Sheesh, guys.




http://laist.com/2011/08/11/get_it_straight_bert_ernie_are_sexl.php
 
Silicon Valley billionaire funding creation of artificial libertarian islands

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.

Thiel has been a big backer of the Seasteading Institute, which seeks to build sovereign nations on oil rig-like platforms to occupy waters beyond the reach of law-of-the-sea treaties. The idea is for these countries to start from scratch--free from the laws, regulations, and moral codes of any existing place. Details says the experiment would be "a kind of floating petri dish for implementing policies that libertarians, stymied by indifference at the voting booths, have been unable to advance: no welfare, looser building codes, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons."

"There are quite a lot of people who think it's not possible," Thiel said at a Seasteading Institute Conference in 2009, according to Details. (His first donation was in 2008, for $500,000.) "That's a good thing. We don't need to really worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible they won't take us very seriously. And they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late."

The Seasteading Institute's Patri Friedman says the group plans to launch an office park off the San Francisco coast next year, with the first full-time settlements following seven years later.

Thiel made news earlier this year for putting a portion of his $1.5 billion fortune into an initiative to encourage entrepreneurs to skip college.

Another Silicon Valley titan, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced in June that he would be funding the "Clock of the Long Now." The clock is designed to keep ticking for 10,000 years, and will be built in a mountain in west Texas. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...140840896.html
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Btw check this out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Minerva
 
This.....

Teen With Rare Condition Could Die From Brushing Hair
Published August 18, 2011

A teenage girl in Scotland with an extremely rare medical condition was told by doctors that brushing her hair could kill her.
Megan Stewart, 13, suffers from hair brushing syndrome, which means that contact with static electricity could cause her brain to shut down, the Scottish Daily Record reported Thursday.
Her condition came to light in 2008 as she got ready for school in Wishaw, central Scotland.
Her mother, Sharon, said, "I was brushing her hair in the living room when she flopped over and her lips turned blue. I thought she was having a fit, which she'd never had before, so we called the paramedics. It was really scary."
Doctors at Glasgow's Yorkhill Hospital for Sick Children told her parents that they had only ever heard of one other case of the syndrome, which causes vital organs to shut down if there is a buildup of static.
The 41 year old added, "When we comb her hair, we have to lay her down and cover her head with water to stop any static building up. She can't rub balloons on her head at parties, and she can't wear any shiny clothing."
It is thought that the condition is a result of birth complications.
Sharon Stewart was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia three months before she was due to give birth, and Megan weighed just two pounds and five ounces when she was born and could fit in the palm of her dad's hand.
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...=SOCNETTXT6966


Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists
Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report
Ian Sample, science correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 August 2011 19.04 BST
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When they see what a mess we've made of our planet, extraterrestrials may be forced to take drastic action. Photograph: PR

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim.

Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain.

This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.

Shawn Domagal-Goldman of Nasa's Planetary Science Division and his colleagues compiled a list of plausible outcomes that could unfold in the aftermath of a close encounter, to help humanity "prepare for actual contact".

In their report, Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis, the researchers divide alien contacts into three broad categories: beneficial, neutral or harmful.

Beneficial encounters ranged from the mere detection of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI), for example through the interception of alien broadcasts, to contact with cooperative organisms that help us advance our knowledge and solve global problems such as hunger, poverty and disease.

Another beneficial outcome the authors entertain sees humanity triumph over a more powerful alien aggressor, or even being saved by a second group of ETs. "In these scenarios, humanity benefits not only from the major moral victory of having defeated a daunting rival, but also from the opportunity to reverse-engineer ETI technology," the authors write.

Other kinds of close encounter may be less rewarding and leave much of human society feeling indifferent towards alien life. The extraterrestrials may be too different from us to communicate with usefully. They might invite humanity to join the "Galactic Club" only for the entry requirements to be too bureaucratic and tedious for humans to bother with. They could even become a nuisance, like the stranded, prawn-like creatures that are kept in a refugee camp in the 2009 South African movie, District 9, the report explains.

The most unappealing outcomes would arise if extraterrestrials caused harm to humanity, even if by accident. While aliens may arrive to eat, enslave or attack us, the report adds that people might also suffer from being physically crushed or by contracting diseases carried by the visitors. In especially unfortunate incidents, humanity could be wiped out when a more advanced civilisation accidentally unleashes an unfriendly artificial intelligence, or performs a catastrophic physics experiment that renders a portion of the galaxy uninhabitable.

To bolster humanity's chances of survival, the researchers call for caution in sending signals into space, and in particular warn against broadcasting information about our biological make-up, which could be used to manufacture weapons that target humans. Instead, any contact with ETs should be limited to mathematical discourse "until we have a better idea of the type of ETI we are dealing with."

The authors warn that extraterrestrials may be wary of civilisations that expand very rapidly, as these may be prone to destroy other life as they grow, just as humans have pushed species to extinction on Earth. In the most extreme scenario, aliens might choose to destroy humanity to protect other civilisations.

"A preemptive strike would be particularly likely in the early phases of our expansion because a civilisation may become increasingly difficult to destroy as it continues to expand. Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilisational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, via greenhouse gas emissions," the report states.

"Green" aliens might object to the environmental damage humans have caused on Earth and wipe us out to save the planet. "These scenarios give us reason to limit our growth and reduce our impact on global ecosystems. It would be particularly important for us to limit our emissions of greenhouse gases, since atmospheric composition can be observed from other planets," the authors write.

Even if we never make contact with extraterrestrials, the report argues that considering the potential scenarios may help to plot the future path of human civilisation, avoid collapse and achieve long-term survival.

• This article was amended on 19 August 2011. The subhead said the report was "for Nasa". This has been corrected.

© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
 
i think they're forgetting that those aliens would have no previous data on those gasses unless they'd be observing us for several centuries already, and thus be unable to conclude that those gasses were increasing in their amount.
 
Kind of arrogant to assume that a species just barely out of its cradle would be considered a threat to alien civilizations that live probably hundreds of light years away if not more. We haven't even been able to get back to the moon in forty years much less travel to another planet for a quick peek around. Doubtful we're even being watched on any consistent basis. Right now were probably a dime a dozen and most of these developing civilizations that i guess we can be classified as probably blow themselves up long before they can pose a threat to anyone else. My guess is we won't attract attention until we either start colonizing other planets or moons in our own solar system or achieve the ability to build some sort of spacecraft that would allow us to successfully leave our solar system altogether. And if the only way to motivate us to stop degrading Earth's environment is the fear we may be pissing off "green" aliens out there then we may be doomed anyway.
 
not to mention that it's long been proven that those radiowaves we keep sending out into space are scrambled way too quickly to be useful over any significant distance.
 
I would think any aliens that have visited the planet would probably think us to insignificant to worry about.
 
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