10 Interesting Links From February 24th
February 25th, 2009
- When Consumers Cut Back – An Object Lesson From Japan – NYTimes.com – The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.
Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.
- EU denies Intel an oral hearing in ongoing antitrust case – Ars Technica – The court sided entirely with DG-COMP and dismissed Intel's argument on January 28; Intel's formal response to the EU was sent on February 5. The EU's investigatory process is much less transparent than the US model, as a result we do not know the contents of the original SSO nor do we have information on how Intel responded. One point of interest, however, is that the DG-COMP has denied Intel an oral hearing. Normally Intel would have the right to such a hearing; DG-COMP may be censuring the company for taking seven months to respond to an original two-week deadline.
- KOB.com – Jimmy Carter writes to NM gov about death penalty – As Governor Richardson weighs his position on death penalty repeal, he's getting prodded by a former president.
Jimmy Carter sent a letter to the governor Monday. In it, he praised bills pending in the state Legislature that would abolish the death penalty and help crime victims. - AT&T Feeling Pressure To Lower iPhone Plan Pricing – On Monday, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu said the price of carrier data plans, not iPhone hardware, has caused a slowdown in iPhone sales, opening the door for Sprint and T-Mobile to gain a foothold in the smartphone market.
- Hands on with Microsoft My Phone: pretty neat, actually – Ars Technica – My Phone can sync pretty much all the data on a phone. The full list is: Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Text messages, Photos, Videos, Music, and Documents. For phones with memory cards, My Phone can be used to sync the photos, videos, music, and documents on the cards, as well as those in the phone's main memory.
- Safari 4 UI breakdown – Using it casually, I found there’s also some other, more subtle changes and additions that made me really enjoy giving this beta a spin, and perhaps will sway me into using Safari a lot more (provided I can find a working Adblock extension).
Safari is representative of a ‘smooth’ browsing experience; it starts up quickly, and presents you a very Apple-like intro movie (yes, an intro movie, with a fancy animated Safari icon, and I’ve heard that it seems the intro is largely composed using images and CSS. Very neat).
- NASA Baffled by Failure of Straw Shuttle | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source – Toshikima does not believe such a small imperfection could have caused the massive explosion. "We are still trying to determine why it suddenly burst into flames," he said. "In all the pre-fueling tests, the procedure went perfectly, but as soon as we ignited the fuel, it exploded. Why?"
- No longer a gray area: Our hair bleaches itself as we grow older | Science Blog – Wash away your gray? Maybe. A team of European scientists have finally solved a mystery that has perplexed humans throughout the ages: why we turn gray. Despite the notion that gray hair is a sign of wisdom, these researchers show in a research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that wisdom has nothing to do with it. Going gray is caused by a massive build up of hydrogen peroxide due to wear and tear of our hair follicles. The peroxide winds up blocking the normal synthesis of melanin, our hair's natural pigment.
- Idaho Press-Tribune Micron slashes more Idaho jobs – BOISE — Micron Technology, the state's largest employer, announced Monday it will make up to 2,000 more layoffs.
Already reeling from decreased demand for its specialty DRAM products and from a 15 percent companywide workforce reduction announcement in October, Micron officials said the company will soon cut about 500 jobs and another possible 1,500 positions by the end of the company's fiscal year. The cuts will affect workers in the company's wafer manufacturing operations at its Boise facility.
- Father/daughter relationships lead to more girls following dad’s career path | Science Blog – Good news, dad! All those times your daughter appeared to be tuning you out? She was probably paying more attention than you thought. In fact, a new study co-authored by a researcher from North Carolina State University says the relationship between fathers and daughters is leading to an increase in the number of daughters who are pursuing careers in the same field as their dads.
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Categories: News And Links Antitrust Case, Ars Technica, Bath Water, Cars Sales, Crime Victims, Dg Comp, Economic Malaise, Formal Response, Former President Jimmy Carter, iPhone, Japanese Households, Kaufman Bros, Kob, Letter To The Governor, Nytimes, Point Of Interest, President Jimmy Carter, Stock Prices, T Mobile
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