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kimah6

Real-Life Decepticons: Robots Learn to Cheat | Science | WIRED - 1 views

  • nnocence didn’t last.
    • kimah6
       
      Funny how the author used the word innocence.  The writer used "innocence" to describe a robot.  Robots have feelings?
  • Soon the robots learned to follow the signals of others who’d gathered at the food. But there wasn’t enough space for all of them to feed, and the robots bumped and jostled for position. As before, only a few made it through the bottleneck of selection. And before long, they’d evolved to mute their signals, thus concealing their location.
  • “Evolutionary robotic systems implicitly encompass many behavioral components … thus allowing for an unbiased investigation of the factors driving signal evolution,” the researchers wrote Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The great degree of realism provided by evolutionary robotic systems thus provides a powerful tool for studies that cannot readily be performed with real organisms.”
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    Robots Learn to Cheat
Mirna Shaban

Egypt's Spring: Causes of the Revolution | Middle East Policy Council - 0 views

  • eemed that nearly all of the 90,000 people who had responded to the Facebook request to demonstrate on Police Day had filled the square, crowded into central Alexandria, and confronted the security forces in Suez City
  • An accidental president, who came to power because of Anwar Sadat's assassination on October 6, 1981, Mubarak initially calmed the public, stressed the rule of law, released political prisoners and encouraged parliamentary elections. However, as soon as he began his second term, in 1987, he refused to reform the constitution, extended the state of emergency, promulgated laws to exclude opposition parties from local councils and tightened the grip of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) over parliament. He denounced opposition groups for criticizing his policies and asserted, threateningly, "I am in charge, and I have the authority to adopt measures…. I have all the pieces of the puzzle, while you do not."1
  • after the Islamist groups renounced violence in 1997, emergency and military courts continued to operate. They prosecuted civilians charged with nonviolent infractions, such as Muslim Brothers who met to prepare for professional syndicate elections or journalists who "slandered" regime figures. Police increasingly harassed people on the street, demanding bribes from shop owners and minivan drivers and free food from vendors and restaurants. They seized and beat people in order to coerce false confessions or to pressure them to become informers. They harassed people who came to the police station to get IDs or other routine documents, and they nabbed those who "talked back" to them. Amnesty International concluded that torture was "systematic in police stations, prisons and [State Security Investigations] SSI detention centers and, for the most part, committed with impunity…. [Security and plainclothes police assault people] openly and in public as if unconcerned about possible consequences."
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  • 3 Even the government-appointed National Council on Human Rights, in its first annual report (2004), expressed deep concern about the 74 cases of "blatant" torture and 34 persons who had died in police or SSI detention that year.4 A U.S. diplomat cabled in 2009 to Washington that Omar Suleiman, director of the Ge
  • neral Intelligence Directorate, and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly "keep the domestic beasts at bay, and Mubarak is not one to lose sleep over their tactics."5
  • All aspects of public life were controlled, ranging from censorship of cultural and media production to the operation of labor unions.
  • Workers were banned from striking and, since the change in the labor law in 2003, were often hired on short-term contracts, under which they had no medical — or social — insurance benefits. The monthly minimum wage had not been raised since 1984, when it was set at LE 35 (in 2011 the equivalent of $6).6 The ETUF enforced government policy rather than represented its millions of members.
  • Private-sector workers suffered even more, as the 2003 labor law failed to provide any protection to employees negotiating length of contract, salary level, hours at work, overtime compensation, vacation or lunch breaks. Workers often lacked health and injury insurance. Many private-sector firms forced new hires to sign, along with the contract, Form No. 6, which allowed the employer to fire them without warning, cause or severance pay.
  • The exclusion of opposition forces from the political arena in fall 2010 was accompanied by systematic crackdowns on the media, cultural expression and university life. The regime wanted to prevent critical commentary from being aired in independent newspapers and on private satellite stations. The government closed down 19 TV and satellite channels, hacked or blocked several websites, and pressured private businessmen to cancel outspoken critics' positions as editors, opinion writers and talk-show hosts. The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) concluded: "The Ministry of Mass Media and Communication has tightened its fist over all media channels to markedly reduce the space for freedom of expression, especially [during and] after the last parliamentary elections."13
  • Already, press and cultural output were managed through myriad control boards. Journalists were beaten, jailed and/or fined if they investigated corruption or police brutality and were charged with incitement or libel when they criticized government policies or political leaders. AFTE also reported heavy-handed censorship of movies, plays and books.
  • The crackdown on university life accelerated after the 1979 student charter was amended in 2007 to give administrative bodies — and, behind them, the SSI — the right to bar students from running in university elections. By th
  • en, the SSI was interfering deeply in university operations: approving the appointment of rectors and deans, exercising a veto over teaching-staff employment and promotions, vetting graduate teaching assistants, determining the eligibility of students to live in dormitories, and interfering in scientific research, textbooks choices, and faculty permissions to travel abroad to participate in conferences.14 The SSI presence was overtly threatening; guards stood at the gates and at each building. Plainclothes SSI officers quelled demonstrations as well as threatening and arresting student activists. Then, in October 2010, the government refused to implement the Supreme Administrative Court ruling that banned SSI guards from the campuses and also blocked anti-regime candidates from contesting seats in the student-union elections.15
  • They sold significant portions of the public sector for their personal benefit and decreased public investment in agriculture, land reclamation, housing, education and health
  • Nearly half the residents of Cairo lived in unplanned areas that lacked basic utilities, sometimes living in wooden shacks
  • the World Bank reported that, by 2006, 62 percent of Egyptians were struggling to subsist on less than $2 a day
  • Given the overwhelming power of the state, the severe restrictions imposed by the State of Emergency on public gatherings, and the unchecked violence by police and security forces, people were fearful of protesting in the streets. Nonetheless, there were many efforts to expose the conditions. Novels and films highlighted corruption, police brutality, urban poverty and sexual harassment.29 Some art exhibits displayed in-your-face paintings depicting torture and military repression. Human-rights groups reported on poverty in the countryside and cities, deteriorating environmental conditions, harassment of women and activists, restrictions on the press, police coercion, and thuggery during elections.
  • There was public outrage at the very public beating-to-death just before midnight on June 6, 2010, of 28-year-old Khaled Said, seized as he entered an internet café in Alexandria.35 Late that night 70 young men and women gathered across from the police station, demanding that the police be brought to justice. They received the usual response: beaten, dragged along the street, attacked by police dogs, and arrested. Protests continued throughout the summer: funeral prayers at Sidi Gaber mosque, attended by 600 mourners who spilled out into the street afterwards; a vigil outside the Ministry of Interior headquarters in Cairo; a silent protest along waterfronts and bridges throughout Egypt; and numerous violently suppressed protests in downtown areas not only involving well-known politicians and protest groups but also people who felt that Khaled Said could have been themselves, their son, or their grandson. A teenager reflected this perspective, saying: "This is an extraordinary case. This guy was tortured and killed on the street. I did not know him but I cannot shut up forever."36 "For the sake of Khaled! For the sake of Egypt!" (ashan Khalid, ashan masr) became a rallying cry, voiced in fear as well as in the determination to restore individual and collective dignity (karama). On the fortieth day commemorating his death, people shouted outside the High Court: "Our voices will not be silenced… We've waited for 25 years, but our condition has not improved. Tomorrow the revolution will come."37
  • Dozens of Facebook groups supported the cause, of which "We Are All Khaled Said" became the most famous. They circulated reports about poli
  • ce brutality, many of which had been posted in the past but had not received such intense scrutiny. These included the video of police sodomizing a 21-year-old minivan driver in January 2006. Filmed by police officers in Boulaq al-Dakrour station, the police mailed it to the cell phones of other van drivers to intimidate them. "Everybody in the parking lot will see this tomorrow," they boasted.38 Hafez Abu Saeda, head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, noted: "Police brutality is systematic and widespread… The humiliation of the simple citizen has become so widespread that people are fed up."39 Their anger, he warned, could spark a rebellion.
  • Nonetheless, the protesters themselves agree that it took the swift removal of Ben Ali to make them think that, if sudden change was possible in Tunisia, it might be possible in Egypt.
  • Even when people broke the barrier of fear on January 25, played cat-and-mouse with security forces on downtown streets on January 26 and 27, and withstood the onslaught all day and night on January 28, they faced a formidable regime, supported by the security forces and the entrenched NDP. The revolution would have been much bloodier if the armed forces had stood by the president. President Mubarak and Interior Minister Habib al-Adly hastened their own demise by unleashing extreme violence on January 28, followed by Adly's abrupt withdrawal of all police forces that night. Enraged, the public created neighborhood watches to ensure the safety of their communities.
  • Mubarak miscalculated by ordering the armed forces into the streets, even though their loyalty was to the nation — not to the person. He further miscalculated that he could offer minor concessions — such as appointing a vice president, changing the prime minister, and saying that he would not seek another term — on January 28 and again on February 1 and yet follow those placating words by unleashing fierce attacks on February 2. Over the next week, protesters held their ground, thousands of people flooded to city squares to call for dignity and freedom, labor strikes spread, employees in public institutions joined the movement, and lawyers, doctors, and professors marched in their professional garb. Finally, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces ended its silent watch and forced Mubarak's hand. When Mubarak resisted leaving, the generals compelled the newly-appointed vice president to inform the president that, if he didn't step down, he would face charges of high treason.
  • Suddenly on Friday, February 11 — as millions of people surged angrily through the streets — Mubarak vanished. Anger transformed into tears of joy and celebration. And the next morning, young people cleaned up the public spaces, symbolically starting the huge task of cleansing Egypt of the corrupt regime and rebuilding the country. How they would rebuild Egypt remained uncertain, but their mobilization instilled a new and powerful pride, coupled with determination to take control over their future and not be cowed again by any authoritarian ruler.
mcandersonaj

On Men's Sexualization in Video Games - 0 views

    • mcandersonaj
       
      This picture just shows how we think as people and the differences gender can make on a situation. This is because to me this picture is just silly but if the picture was of women it would be a completely different feeling for everyone. 
    • mcandersonaj
       
      This article talks about why we don't see as much sexualization of male characters. 
  • The design of the game creates a silly context that the player doesn’t take seriously; instead, they laugh at the men and see the nudity as off-the-wall humor. These games don’t give the player room to fantasize or a roving eye to admire the characters’ bodies.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      Male sexualization in games is usual showed off as something funny and is almost never seen as "wrong". The reasons being that we simply don't care about the over-sexualization of men as much as we do women. 
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  • The lack of men’s sexualization is a product of the average straight guy’s impulse to avoid appearing or feeling gay.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      This is the core reason we don't see as much sexualization of men in games. The simple fact the people developing the game doesn't want to appear gay. Now though this may not be as true due to the fact that most developers no longer care about this feeling.
  • The player crosses into something pornographic when watching Madison but into something awkward when seeing Ethan.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      this is an excellent example of how two identical events can change drastically depending on gender. 
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    This article shows examples of male sexualization and gives some in game examples
  •  
    This article shows examples of male sexualization and gives some in game examples
kimah6

10 Robots That Will Probably Kill Us in the Coming Decade - Topless Robot - Nerd news, ... - 3 views

  • As our technology in robotics continues to improve, there's pretty much zero chance we'll avoid creating a robot that will kill humans -- the only two questions are 1) will we do this accidentally or on purpose, and 2) how many humans will these robots kill, some or all?
    • kimah6
       
      It's sad to find that we are creating robots with intention to kill humans.  Purpose of robots?
    • kimah6
       
      Examples of robots that have potential to kill humans.  The more I research on the types of robots, I can have more knowledge on the root and the cause of robotics technology advancement.
  •  
    ​Well, it's officially the future. We've passed the first decade of the 21st Century and are now moving forward into the years that much of science fiction speculated about. Of primary concern are robots (science fiction is pretty much 95% robot-related stories, and 5% giant insects).
kimah6

Robots Will Win Our Hearts Before They Destroy Us All | Mother Jones - 2 views

  • Workers fear being replaced by robots
  • higher ranking humans will tell lies about how the robots will never, ever take away your job.
  • robots are more persuasive when they refer to the opinions of humans and limit pauses to about a third of a second to avoid appearing confused.
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  • having its owner’s best interests at heart
    • kimah6
       
      Do we create robots to please us?  
  • They will pretend to care about our opinions
    • kimah6
       
      Look at how the writer writes, "pretend" to care about. His choice of words for robots
  • They will avoid eye contact. They will feign deference. They will simulate charming clumsiness. And, of course, they will mount a massive PR campaign aimed at getting Hollywood to portray robots not as the relentless killing machines they are, but as harmless, friendly little eco-bots. They will do all this while Skynet takes over behind the scenes. You have been warned.
  •  
    The Economist writes about robots: No matter how flexible, easy to program and safe they are, collaborative workers may not be welcomed by human workers to begin with. The experience of Alumotion, an Italian distributor of UR's robots, is illustrative.
Mirna Shaban

How an Egyptian Revolution Began on Facebook - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • une 8, 2010, has secured a rightful place in history. That was the day Wael Ghonim, a 29-year-old Google marketing executive, was browsing Facebook in his home in Dubai and found a startling image: a photo­graph of a bloodied and disfigured face, its jaw broken, a young life taken away. That life, he soon learned, had belonged to Khaled Mohamed Said, a 28-year-old from Alexandria who had been beaten to death by the Egyptian police.
  • Ghonim went online and created a Facebook page. “Today they killed Khaled,” he wrote. “If I don’t act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me.” It took a few moments for Ghonim to settle on a name for the page, one that would fit the character of an increasingly personalized and politically galvanizing Internet. He finally decided on “Kullena Khaled Said” — “We Are All Khaled Said.”
  • Two minutes after he started his Facebook page, 300 people had joined it. Three months later, that number had grown to more than 250,000. What bubbled up online inevitably spilled onto the streets, starting with a series of “Silent Stands” that culminated in a massive and historic rally at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo.
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  • Ghonim writes, the number of Web users in the country increased to 13.6 million in 2008 from 1.5 million in 2004. Through blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the Web has become a haven for a young, educated class yearning to express its worries and anxieties.
  • The Middle East is home to roughly 100 million people ages 15 to 29. Many are educated but unemployed
  • Technology, of course, is not a panacea. Facebook does not a revolution make. In Egypt’s case, it was simply a place for venting the outrage resulting from years of repression, economic instability and individual frustration.
  • Ghonim writes that in 2011, out of Egypt’s more than 80 million people, some 48 million were poor and 2.5 million lived in extreme poverty. “More than three million young Egyptians are unemployed,” he says.
  • Early on, he decided that creating the page, as opposed to a Facebook group, would be a better way to spread information. More important, he knew that maintaining an informal, authentic tone was crucial to amassing allies. People had to see themselves in the page. “Using the pronoun I was critical to establishing the fact that the page was not managed by an organization, political party or movement of any kind,” he writes. “On the contrary, the writer was an ordinary Egyptian devastated by the brutality inflicted on Khaled Said and motivated to seek justice.”
  • He polled the page’s users and sought ideas from others, like how best to publicize a rally — through printed fliers and mass text messaging, it turned out. (“Reaching working-class Egyptians was not going to happen through the Internet and Facebook,” he notes.) He tried to be as inclusive as possible, as when he changed the name of the page’s biggest scheduled rally from “Celebrating Egyptian Police Day — January 25” to “January 25: Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment.” “We needed to have everyone join forces: workers, human rights activists, government employees and others who had grown tired of the regime’s policies,” he writes. “If the invitation to take to the streets had been based solely on human rights, then only a certain segment of Egyptian society would have participated.”
  • Ghonim was arrested by the secret police. For nearly two weeks, he was held blindfolded and handcuffed, deprived of sleep and subjected to repeated interrogations, as his friends, family and colleagues at Google tried to discover his whereabouts. That he was released as quickly as he was demonstrated the power of Revolution 2.0.
Mirna Shaban

Tunisia: How Mohammed Bouazizi Sparked a Revolution - TIME - 0 views

  • Bouazizi was like the hundreds of desperate, downtrodden young men in hardscrabble Sidi Bouzid.
  • arned an income from selling vegetables, work that he'd had for seven years.
  • But on Dec. 17 his livelihood was threatened when a policewoman confiscated his unlicensed vegetable cart and its goods. It wasn't the first time it had happened, but it would be the last. Not satisfied with accepting the 10-dinar fine that Bouazizi tried to pay ($7, the equivalent of a good day's earnings), the policewoman allegedly slapped the scrawny young man, spat in his face and insulted his dead father.
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  • Humiliated and dejected, Bouazizi, the breadwinner for his family of eight, went to the provincial headquarters, hoping to complain to local municipality officials, but they refused to see him. At 11:30 a.m., less than an hour after the confrontation with the policewoman and without telling his family, Bouazizi returned to the elegant double-storey white building with arched azure shutters, poured fuel over himself and set himself on fire. He did not die right away but lingered in the hospital till Jan. 4. There was so much outrage over his ordeal that even President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, the dictator, visited Bouazizi on Dec. 28 to try to blunt the anger. But the outcry could not be suppressed and, on Jan. 14, just 10 days after Bouazizi died, Ben Ali's 23-year rule of Tunisia was over.
  • Just as the young woman Neda Agha-Soltan became a symbol of Iran's green movement after she was shot while watching a demonstration two years ago, Bouazizi has become a popular symbol among Arabs. He is being emulated as well. There have been almost a dozen copycat self-immolations in several Arab capitals including Cairo and Algiers.
  • Jaber Hajlawi, an unemployed 22-year-old lawyer and one of Bouazizi's neighbors, leaned against the graffitied wall as he lit a cigarette. "We were silent before but Mohammed showed us that we must react," he says.
  • The demand echoes across town. About 300 feet away from the spot where Bouazizi set himself alight, young men in the hundreds gather every day, eager to express their views to anyone who pulls out a notebook. They have erected handwritten banners near portraits of Bouazizi. "We are all prepared to sacrifice our blood for the people," reads one.
mcandersonaj

The One-Sided Problem of Oversexualization in Video Games - 0 views

    • mcandersonaj
       
      This article poses questions about the oversexualization in video games and gives some examples to back it up.
  • These are the “ideal forms” of each of these characters. Yet only one of them is ever viewed sexually to outsiders, the women.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      When both characters are created by the player and the story is almost identical in every way, why do we only say that the female character is sexualized. 
  • Both are genetic mutants, by any stretch of the imagination, but one is sexual, and the other isn’t.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      How can we only count one as sexual and the other as not. Is it because what we deem to be acceptable? a man walks around shirtless all the time but put a woman in that clothing and all of a sudden its sexual? i'm not really so sure
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  • I was playing through Playstation All-Stars last week and found that in the entire roster, there were two women. Fat Princess and Nariko, both from rather obscure games. The rest? All men. Even the cartoony ones. All 16 others. You’ll find a similar ratio in Super Smash Bros, another collection of video games’ most famous icons.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      This is one of the truest statements from the articles I've read that i never really noticed before. Its sad to hear that such a statistic is true we really do need more strong female characters.
  • The sexiness of the existing women in video games is not the problem. It’s really a subjective argument about why guys lust after Lara Croft, yet girls don’t have eyes for Nathan Drake.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      This is comparing two characters who are almost identical in every way except one is female the other is male. Both are treasure hunters and dress the same yet Lara is seen as sexual and Nathan is not. 
  •  
    This discusses the trends in games, fighting games in particular
  •  
    This discusses the trends in games, fighting games in particular
Mirna Shaban

Mediated Martyrs of the Arab Spring: New Media, Civil Religion, and Narrati...: EBSCOhost - 0 views

Mirna Shaban

World Development book case study: the role of social networking in the Arab Spring -- ... - 0 views

  • The start of the unrest was in Tunisia and the spark was the self-immolation of a market stallholder, Mohammed Bouaziz, on 10 December 2010.
  • he first reported use of social networking websites by dissident groups taking part in a civil revolt was in Moldova, a small country between Romania and Ukraine, in April 2009.
  • The internet is useful for information dissemination and news gathering, social media for connecting and co-ordinating groups and individuals, mobile phones for taking photographs of what is happening and making it available to a wide global audience and satellite television for instant global reporting of events.
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  • For dissident groups, all of these digital tools allow them to bring together remote and often disparate groups and give them channels to bypass the conventional media, which is usually state controlled and unwilling to broadcast any news of civil unrest and opposition to the government.
  • Rapid internet interaction through Twitter and Facebook gave information to the protesters about how to counteract the security forces as they tried to disperse the protesters, maps showing locations for protest meetings and practical advice about such things as what to do when teargas is used against groups of protesters.
  • The governments in Tunisia and Egypt were very unhappy about the often brutal images of repression of the protests by government security forces and both governments tried to block the social-networking sites. In Tunisia, the effect was to increase the size of protest demonstrations and the Tunisian president, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, was forced to change his strategy. He apologized for blocking the sites and reopened them. He offered to open talks with the dissident groups but by that time it was too late to save his government. He resigned on 16 January and an interim coalition government was set up.
  • The Egyptian government’s decision to cut all communication systems, including the internet and mobile phones, on the night of 27 January was widely perceived to be a watershed moment in the overthrow of the Mubarak government.
  • Egyptian protest sympathizers were unable to watch events on their computers and televisions and joined the demonstrators in Tahrir Square instead.
  • The Mubarak government stepped down on 12 February and was replaced by a military council purporting to support democratic change.
  • China has taken much firmer control of its internet as a result of events in Arab countries, fearing a contagion effect. After an internet call for popular revolt in February, over 100 activists are reported to have ‘disappeared’.
  • There is an argument to be made that the role of technology in these events has been overstated. The frequent cry is that it was not laptops that marched on Tahrir Square but people with a common cause that they had already identified. As far as they are concerned, revolution is nothing new and the impact of the new technology in the Arab Spring has mostly been reported by people who are using the technology themselves. Its importance, they say, has been exaggerated.
  • In the Western world, Twitter is a device that is most frequently used to comment on relatively minor media or personal events, such as the behaviour of a particular celebrity. In Egypt and Tunisia its use proved to be much more political and effective – not social networking, just networking.
  • The difficulties are immense: regional poverty, tensions over the use of resources such as oil and water, religious divisions within countries, rapid population growth and, more threatening than any of those, relationships between Israel and its Arab neighbours.
mcandersonaj

Dragon's Crown review: heavy metal - 0 views

  • The same can't be said for the female NPCs that fill Dragon's Crown's dungeons and other environments. Most of the women in the game are barely clothed, with heaving chests, backs twisted into suggestive positions, some with their legs spread almost as wide as the screen. They're presented as helpless objects, usually in need of rescue. It's obvious, one-sided and gross.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      The game has at least one of these scenes every level but they don't tell you that even some of the males in the game are sexualized as well. Granted not nearly as many are
  • Two player characters — the Amazon and the Sorceress — are explicitly sexualized, with breasts literally bigger than their heads with rear ends to match
    • mcandersonaj
       
      While the game does over-sexualize these two characters they at least do get powerful skills to match and the game tries to make up for their bodies by making them strong characters in game. 
  • Dragon's Crown was reviewed using code provided by Atlus. You can read more about Polygon's ethics policy here.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      Ultimately the game score was low but the fact that the website felt the need to post their ethics policy after the article really shocked me. 
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  • But I found its over-exaggerated art style alienating and gross in its depiction of women
    • mcandersonaj
       
      The game's review was looked at through a pretty harsh lens in my opinion. While I don't agree with the character designs I feel like the author had a grudge out against the game for the reason above and makes me wonder if other games got reviewed in the same way. 
    • mcandersonaj
       
      this article shows how the over-sexualization of characters can hurt a game. 
  •  
    This is a gaming review for a game known as Dragon's Crown
  •  
    This is a gaming review for a game known as Dragon's Crown
alyzh1

Getting Started Guide: Tumblr for Small Businesses - 0 views

  •  
    Tumblr is one of the fastest-growing social networks, with users spending more time per visit than they do on Facebook. On the outside, Tumblr is an easy and free way to host your company blog. This source shows that Tumblr offers features that could be used for small businesses and is expanding to have use in the professional world.
ewingjm2

What Makes Vine So Hot? - 0 views

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    It's the kind of moment that comes rarely, but tech journalists live for it: a service is launched with little fanfare and receives a sudden, energetic burst of genuine buzz. Developers start remixing it in all kinds of fascinating ways. It's supremely easy to use, and mobile, so we get hooked.
ewingjm2

Want to live longer? Carry on laughing - 0 views

  •  
    Laughing at Charlie Chaplin can be a serious business. Chortling at a funny film may seem to be an activity with few consequences for health, but research shows that it does more than exercise the 20 or so face muscles involved in laughing.
ewingjm2

Does Laughing Make You Live Longer - 0 views

  •  
    Ultimately laughter is good for your health. Laughter protects your heart by improving the function of blood vessels and increases blood flow. This can help prevent you from a heart attack or other cardiovascular problems. Laughter boots your immune system and improves your body's ability to fight off diseases.
Mirna Shaban

New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring | UW Today - 0 views

    • Mirna Shaban
       
      Yellow highlighting= Information about role of social media in the Arab Spring. Pink highlighting= Statistical information Blue highlighting= Possibility of link to more information. 
  • After analyzing more than 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, a new study finds that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring.
  • “Our evidence suggests that social media carried a cascade of messages about freedom and democracy across North Africa and the Middle East, and helped raise expectations for the success of political uprising,” said Philip Howard, the project lead and an associate professor in communication at the University of Washington.  “People who shared interest in democracy built extensive social networks and organized political action. Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom.”
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  • During the week before Egyptian president Hosni Mubaraks resignation, for example, the total rate of tweets from Egypt — and around the world — about political change in that country ballooned from 2,300 a day to 230,000 a day. 
  • Data for the UW project came directly from immense digital archives the team built over the course of several months.
  • the team located data about technology use and political opinion from before the revolutions. 
  • The Project on Information Technology and Political Islam assembled data about blogging in Tunisia one month prior to the crisis in that country, and had special data on the link structure of Egyptian political parties one month prior to the crisis there.
  • Political discussion in blogs presaged the turn of popular opinion in both Tunisia and Egypt.  In Tunisia, conversations about liberty, democracy and revolution on blogs and on Twitter often immediately preceded mass protests. 
  • Twenty percent of blogs were evaluating Ben Alis leadership the day he resigned from office (Jan. 14), up from just 5 percent the month before.  Subsequently, the primary topic for Tunisian blogs was “revolution” until a public rally of at least 100,000 people eventually forced the old regimes remaining leaders to relinquish power.
  • In the two weeks after Mubaraks resignation, there was an average of 2,400 tweets a day from people in neighboring countries about the political situation in Egypt. In Tunisia after Ben Alis resignation, there were about 2,200 tweets a day.
  • Ironically, government efforts to crack down on social media may have incited more public activism, especially in Egypt. People who were isolated by efforts to shut down the Internet, mostly middle-class Egyptians, may have gone to the streets when they could no longer follow the unrest through social media, Howard said.
ewingjm2

Laughing to Live Longer - 0 views

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    Story Number: NNS020610-02 Release Date: 6/10/2002 2:29:00 PM YOKOSUKA, Japan (NNS) -- Laughter research (yes, there is someone out there researching this) has shown that humor and especially laughter can help keep our bodies strong and disease resistant. Humor is equally helpful to our mental health and the way we deal with stress and worry.
ewingjm2

Does Humor Make You Live Longer? - 1 views

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    I just attended a "Laughter is Good Medicine" seminar put on by a local hospital. The speaker pointed to evidence showing that laughing has such good effects as: Reduce blood pressure Lower blood glucose Dull pain Alleviate stress and anxiety Improve feeling of well being ... and it even burns substantial calories.
mcandersonaj

clothes in FFXIV - 1 views

    • mcandersonaj
       
      This article is used as an example down to just an individual game. The clothes have no bearing on the story and do not take away from the game in any way. The game also added in a feature to wear any clothes you want regardless of its strength and always players the freedom and choice that the article talks about. 
  • In many titles show the most skimpy and revealing armor sets are be gender locked for ladies, or even worse, they’ll simply morph depending on the gender of the character wearing them.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      This fact holds true for many games in this genre where the look of your character changes as you change out your armor. The gender differences in these games can be stunning and does create this sense of sexualization of the female characters.
  • 99% of the gear sets featuring the same design when worn by both genders
    • mcandersonaj
       
      I don't see why developers don't do more of this where the armor looks the same for both genders. It would be easier for them to do and would not create problems for them if the clothes are found to be too revealing.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The positive example set by Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn doesn’t stop at gender equality in offering fanservice and eyecandy–it also extends to choice. You most definitely don’t need to show any skin if you don’t want to.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      This article helps to identify a possible solution to the problem by simply offering the players choice. By offering choices to the players you can satisfy both parties and create on overall better gaming environment.
  • They’re eyecandy gear sets, and they retain their eyecandy function regardless of the gender of the character wearing them.
    • mcandersonaj
       
      With more equal opportunities for both genders to wear the same armor and to have the same look regardless of gender, creates a more equal feeling in the game and helps to dissolve some of the stereotypes of gaming. 
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    This article discusses the clothing used in the mmorpg Final Fantasy XIV
  •  
    This article discusses the clothing used in the mmorpg Final Fantasy XIV
linaibrahim1

Afrika Bambaataa: Hip Hop Founding Father - 2 views

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    The godfather of hip hop Afrika Bambaataa may have been famously born in the Bronx, but the last few years have seen the legendary DJ make Ithaca something of a home away from home. In November, Bambaataa began his three-year term as Cornell University's first visiting hip hop scholar.
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