2010
Year of the Tiger
Islamic calendar 1430-31

2000 million Internet users
21st Olympic Winter Games in Winnipeg
Sea level risen 10cm in last 12 months; Maldives land-area reduced by 40%

Test Drive: On-line Volvo 2010 is a ***** winner!
Singapore orders compulsory emotional rehabilitation for long-term prisoners
CDCuisinette - bringing the computer to the kitchen: the recipe for automated gourmet cooking!
Finally! Nokia's "monster" memoryphone meets Data Commission criteria - shares up 12%
Anti-doping medicine in crisis - nanomolecules improve performance and oxygen intake

Car & Driver 18.7.2010

Test Drive: On-line Volvo 2010

**** (*)

It's not often in this job that a tester comes up against a situation where he uses the word "dream car". Still, the new Volvo 2010 comes awfully close.

One of the best moments for me was when we were sitting in the stationary vehicle in a windowless carport - and could see the rural Provençal landscape flashing by on both sides or hear the twittering of birds in the hedgerows. This is just one example to show that the boys at Volvo have succeeded in combining the very latest in onboard audiovisual technology with a 7-seater space wagon offering excellent handling, performance and fuel economy.

The Volvo 2010 uses the same chassis and body as the highly-successful Wagonmaster 2008 model (see our 100,000km test in 4/2008). The control systems, however, have been developed in the past two years - and it really shows! The mapping console and satellite positioning system now work smoothly, without any of the clunky feel and occasional awkward cut-outs experienced in forested areas in earlier versions. The electronic suspension and road radar software are also in quite a different class from the original model, and this time we had no trouble with the coffee-cup test, even at motorway speeds. The emergency braking instigated by the road radar in a simulated elk-test was also smooth and effective.

The online Volvo's real gems lie in the onboard computer and in the car's smart windows. The windows throughout are of high-quality diapositive glass, onto which the computer can project visual information. In normal use, the infobars on the lower part of the windscreen show the traffic signs and speed regulations in effect, as well as the direction signs for the plotted route in their order of appearance. Possible changes in traffic conditions ahead are also reported instantly in clear audio messages.

In order to practice routes in advance and examine sites worth visiting along the way, the system now includes a full-scale simulator, which proved to be far better than we dared hope. We almost forgot that we were sitting in a small carport at the Volvo works as the villages and coastline of the Côte d'Azur flashed by us. The electronic suspension reproduced the winding up and down effects of the small French highway, and the speaker systems delivered a convincing imitation of the engine sounds as we changed gear to negotiate hairpin bends or drove through one of the many short tunnels along the way. In actual fact we enjoyed ourselves so much that we postponed some of our formal testing until the next day, choosing instead to take part in a special stage of the San Remo Rally that left both me and my navigator in a cold sweat. Thereafter we downloaded several virtual routes from SatWeb and put the simulator through its paces in a variety of settings from rural Ireland to rush-hour on the M25 London Orbital, and we finished with a quick 220km/hour spin down the Nuremberg-Munich autobahn.

When we finally took the Volvo out on the road, it performed flawlessly as expected. The icing on the cake was when Volvo sales executive Sven Johansson suggested we subject the onboard computer to what he called "a little blind-testing". We drove in the small hours through the centre of Gothenburg, under what were basically the conditions of "instrument flying". Our driving was guided by a virtual landscape that was projected on the windows via satellite navigation and digital cameras, just as though we were driving in broad daylight. The only small difficulty we encountered came from traffic signs, since the onboard radar stopped the car twice when we drove too close to warning signs. Johansson admitted that there had occasionally been problems with the claimed 20 cm accuracy of the virtual landscape, but he argued that the cause might as easily be that the signs in question had been placed on the road only very recently. The few cars we met on the streets were shown clearly in the windscreen and side-windows, and the radar system pulled the car smartly over to the kerb when an ambulance appeared behind us, lights flashing.

The Online Volvo comes within a cat's whisker of scoring an unprecedented five stars on the test. Although this IS a vehicle to die for, about as near as you can get to a dream car, that last star just has to be bracketed for reasons of price. Given its current price-tag, the Volvo 2010 is going to be beyond the reach of all but a handful. Nevertheless, we can live in hope that some of the special features incorporated here will trickle down into family sedans before too long. Traffic safety authorities and highway police should relish that thought, too, as here is the ultimate vehicle for the "boy-racers" among the driving population. With a set of wheels like this, they can indulge their "pedal to the metal" fantasies without ever leaving the safety of their own front yard!

Cyber Times 13.8.2010

Singapore orders compulsory emotional rehabilitation for long-term prisoners

Singapore has introduced emotional conditioning simulators as a feature of all prison sentences over six months. The aim of the conditioning is to improve prisoners' behaviour while they serve out their time, and also to facilitate speedy rehabilitation on their release into society.

In the simulations the user is fitted with a virtual reality helmet, through which he encounters a variety of real-life situations. The programme contains built-in acceptance and rejection responses to the behavioural models offered by the prisoner to each situation, and either rewards or punishes answers with audio or visual stimuli. In addition the simulation contains subliminal signals designed to prompt subconscious associations and reinforce the expected behavioural responses. Prison authorities are enthusiastic about early results of the scheme, and believe that simulator training will cut down on unwanted behavioural models.

Singapore's Junior Interior Minister Tung Daio, who has responsibility for the city-state's prison system, is at a loss to explain the international furore that has followed the announcement of the scheme. In his view, the Americans are the last who should be complaining about it. "Their idiotic TV-programmes have caused addiction all over the world and have brainwashed and conditioned millions into a state of moral degeneracy. We are simply trying to pick up the pieces after them", shrugged Tung.

According to Tung, the procedure will be used only in prisons. "The basic principle of prison is the withdrawal of personal freedom and self-determination. For example the roles of the educational system is quite different, and emotional conditioning has no place in teaching. Naturally in our schools - as in those of other countries - there are rewards for good performance and swift reminders for errors and failures, since this is either directly or indirectly the very foundation of the learning process."

UNESCO behavioural expert Brian Epson has warned of the dangers inherent in the new simulation methods. Epson has pointed to the possibility that people can be conditioned into behaving in totally unpredictable ways, particularly if the simulation is reinforced by smart psychopharmaceutical drugs. Conditioning can also easily lead to a state "beyond the zero", in which the manipulated patient does not even recognize that he or she has been controlled in this way.

Epson suggests therefore that school curricula should include an introduction to basic conditioning techniques, in order that a child may learn to recognise when he is subject to such influences or particularly prone to them. "It is also very worrying that in spite of repeated international calls for a complete ban on these things, we have seen increasing signs of ethically questionable conditioning techniques in play in the marketing field. I refer for instance to the insertion into feature films of short subliminal advertising clips, which the eye does not notice but which will inevitably register on the subconscious."

Advertisement on WorldNet 15.8.2010

CDCuisinette - bringing the computer to the kitchen: the recipe for automated gourmet cooking!

Now you can make your every meal into a gastronomic delight - at the press of just a few buttons! While making a delicious dinner for four, you could be relaxing with a cool drink in front of the video-wall. You can also surprise your friends with the sort of dishes you have normally only experienced in first-class restaurants - but now at a fraction of the cost! How is all this possible?

The answer lies in the CDCuisinette! CDCuisinette brings together the kitchen and the computer. You already have a computer - all you need is a little renovation to that kitchen of yours. The Cuisinette kitchen is a complete food preparation and cooking module, featuring everything you'll ever need: storage cupboards for ingredients, a grill/rôtisserie, twin ovens, ceramic hob cookers, automatic cleaning functions, even a robotics unit for those cutting and measuring chores. And you can control all these components simply and smoothly from your own PC.

How it's done... OK, imagine you'd like to eat Indian tonight. Simply click on the CDCuisinette icon and call up the "Indian Cuisine" disk from your CD-ROM collection. Let's take Tandoori Chicken, shall we? CDCuisinette keeps a real-time record of what you can make from the ingredients on your kitchen shelves - fresh items, preservatives, spices, oils, and all. You simply tell CDCuisinette what you'd like to eat and when, press ENTER, and that's it!

CDCuisinette goes straight to work, first finding the chicken breasts from the cold cabinet, then dicing them, then mixing selected spices and yoghurt into a delicious marinade which is poured over the chicken pieces. A robot arm carries the chicken to one side, and it is left to marinate while CDCuisinette gets on with the other dishes - vegetables, rice, naan bread, a delicious raita sauce, perhaps a tossed salad - until it is time to slip the chicken pieces under the grill. Wine selection is just as easy, and CDCuisinette will always notify you when your stock of that saucy little '96 Gevrey-Chambertin is getting low, or when particularly good buys are available from a range of NetCellar wine outlets. A charming gong alarm calls you to the table two minutes before the food is ready to be served, and all you have to do is say "Bon Appetit"!

How to get your own CDCuisinette! Simply contact our sales staff and architects from our web-site. Your own personal architect will design your kitchen according to your own specifications and wishes, and see to the optimal layout of the CDCuisinette units. There are over 40 different styles to choose from, and 22 colour and finish alternatives. Installation takes place when you choose, and takes a maximum of around six weeks.

Thousands of mouth-watering appetizers, main dishes, and desserts. So far, the CDCuisinette recipe collection runs to 24 CD-ROMs, and the range is constantly being expanded.

CORDON BLEU DELICACIES
WINNING WAYS WITH VEGETABLES
INDIAN CUISINE (1-3)
BALTIC BUFFET
COGITO DIM SUM: I THINK, THEREFORE I EAT CHINESE (1-4)
THAILIGHTS
TRADITIONAL FOODS OF THE HORN OF AFRICA
WEST AFRICAN CULINARY GEMS
JEWISH COOKING, ALREADY
CUISINE MINCEUR
TRADITIONAL FINNISH GAME & FISH RECIPES
THE MIGHTY SALMON
LET'S DO CAJUN!
TEX-MEX MADE EASY
GETTING YOUR JUST DESSERTS (1-3)
THE BARTENDER'S ALMANAC (1-2)

Each disk contains around 200 recipes and cooking programmes - in other words you'll kick off with more than 4,000 guaranteed winning dishes. Each dish has been selected and tested by a panel of some of the world's finest chefs. It will take you at least ten years to try them all - and new CDs are appearing every month.

CDCuisinette is what you've always wanted but never been able to dream of in your own home - your own personal cordon bleu chef! Order now and give your tastebuds a treat!

Our net address is WNET:cdc.com

Culinary greetings,

CDCuisinette Inc. Basil Scullery Head of International Sales

WallStJournal 6.12.2010

Finally! Nokia's "monster" memoryphone meets Data Commission criteria - shares up 12%

Nokia's memoryphone is finally available in the stores. The long lines outside telecoms retailers lifted the Finnish company's shares, which have been in the doldrums lately, and trading was brisk in New York.

The special feature of the 7220 Memoryphone - dubbed in the media as "Talking Kong", "The Elephone", and even "The Monsterphone" - is that it hears and records everything that is spoken in the immediate vicinity. Earlier, industry confidence in the memoryphone had already begun to fade as the prototypes repeatedly failed to meet the requirements of the EU and USA Data Security Commission. According to DSC regulations, all devices linked to the UN-administered Internet must be subject to control by the authorities. Nokia has lobbied desperately for months to get exemption, claiming it was acting on behalf of the privacy of its customers, but the company has been obliged to surrender and install a port to allow surveillance by DSC agencies.

The Nokia 7220 uses 1Gb memory chips and is capable of storing in memory several days of conversations. While charging, the physical phone receiver empties its memory into that of the home station, from where the user can collect all conversations recorded by the phone either directly or via a conventional mobile connection. The Personal AltaVista 4 search engine application that was developed jointly by Nokia, Geoworks and Digital can be employed both in the home station or on the memoryphone itself.

Researchers estimate that home computers will soon have become so fast that within only a couple of years the standard PC will be capable of absorbing and digesting everything that the memoryphone owner and his discussion partners ever say around the phone.

DPA and DSC regulations prohibit centralized audio registers

AltaVista has acquired the commercial rights to monitor all major NetRadio stations and analyse sound & voice samples and links to all Internet pages. International data protection laws nevertheless limit the use of the material gathered. AltaVista has the capacity for instance to form a register of human voice samples, from which memoryphone users could request the phone to record the names of those taking part in the conversations and also links to their other network conversations. The DPA has come down firmly against this, however. As a result, AltaVista is distributing for the personal use of 7220 users the software required for analysing individual speakers' names from the sound samples.

The keenest advocates of the new memoryphone are people who have hitherto had to wrestle with such things as the minutes of meetings or seminar transcripts. The device is also invaluable in those awkward shopping situations where you forget what it is you were told to buy on the way home: the user only has to listen through the relevant conversations, first inserting a filter to screen out items that are obviously not shopping-related. The only difficulty might be if the user cannot remember keywords or key phrases from the conversations required.

Forgetting - a civil right?

The 7220 has not been welcomed unreservedly in all quarters. One of the first opponents was the influential British author and social scientist Lawrie Fitzpatrick, who was the first to coin the term "monsterphone". Fitzpatrick has urged the relevant EU authorities to press for the compulsory installation in each phone of an electronic indicator, so that the targets of recording by memoryphone could be aware of the presence of the device. Fitzpatrick has argued forcefully on the issue of "the basic civil right of having an imperfect memory", and he feels that it is not necessary that all speech be recorded for posterity or for officials to pore over at their leisure, as in some "Big Brother is Listening to You" scenario.

In spite of the concerns voiced by Fitzpatrick, the new phone has prompted excitement in the telephone market. There were long lines outside several New York stores as the first 7220s went on sale, and it was the same story in London, Paris, and Tokyo.

Many other members of the scientific community have expressed fears over the likely impact on society of the new memoryphone. Researchers into artificial intelligence and cultural analysts have been carefully optimistic, however, along with many historians. They look forward to being able to examine significant conversations in their natural form and not as regurgitated by political columnists, Hollywood, or MSNBC.

Douglas B. Lenat, developer of the world's leading autodidactic computer CYC, has stated that the acquisition of real-time conversations by CyCorp will greatly expand CYC's areas of understanding. CYC is learning all the time, and will on this basis be able in due course to discuss matters under almost any circumstances whatsoever and answer questions on a practically unlimited range of topics.

"We will be happy to pay the datacomms charges of a memoryphone owner for each and every interesting subject conversation, if we can acquire the rights to all conversations for CYC to listen in to them." Lenat believes that capacity will not present a problem, since the CYC system is capable already of eavesdropping several thousand conversations simultaneously.

SportWeb 22.12.2010 15.35 EST

Anti-doping medicine in crisis - nanomolecules improve performance and oxygen intake

One of the biggest headaches facing researchers and physicians attending the XXVIIth FINA World Sports Medicine Congress in Ottawa this week was the issue of nanomolecules, or programmed nanorobots introduced into the athlete's bloodstream.

The use of nanomolecules has increased rapidly, particularly in applications where oxygen intake is decisive. The quantity of oxygen molecules they carry with them is greater than that contained in red blood-cells (erythrocytes), and the nanomolecule level in the bloodstream can be substantial with no adverse reactions. The vital electrolytic reaction of the oxygen molecules carried by the nanorobots, in which oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water, is also clearly faster than that achieved by oxygen molecules carried in blood-cells.

Nanomolecules are a tough nut for the sports physicians and the anti-doping fraternity. They do not meet the conventional doping agent criteria, since they are neither a pharmaceutical preparation nor any other chemical. They are admittedly relatively easy to detect under microscopic analysis of blood samples, but since nanomolecules are also employed to cure and treat several illnesses and diseases, the actual reason for the use of the nanomolecules in the case of a particular athlete can only be ascertained by assays with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Acquiring such a device for onsite testing at all sports events is quite out of the question. Furthermore, current research is perfecting a nanomolecule that dissolves itself into the blood plasma within a few minutes of completion of a strenuous performance involving considerable oxygen depletion.

On the opening day of the Congress, many physicians expressed the view that the use of nanomolecules be tolerated in sports. Opponents of the move quickly pointed out that sports medicine is a constant struggle against the use of unnatural agents and substances that tend to make competitors less than equal on the starting-line. They also argued that the branch had faced crises before - most recently some years ago when certain manufacturers developed psychostimulants that collect only in the brain, where they were impossible to detect using conventional testing methods.

The Congress resolved to establish a working group with the task of rapidly developing new definitions for prohibited substances affecting sporting performance. The group will also be charged with finding ways of detecting the presence of oxygen-bearing nanomolecules and isolating them from other acceptable nanomolecules.

Hannula I. & Linturi R. 1998: 100 Phenomena.
Yritysmikrot Oy, Helsinki 1998. Copyright notices ISBN 952-9508-18-2