"Chef George Crum made the interesting discovery of potato chips after a customer complained to him about his potato fries being cut way too thick. Being a wise guy he sliced a potato paper thin and then fried it to a crisp. The diner loved it, thus creating the world's very first potato chip."
If you want to know more products which were discovered by accident then head over to Trifter.com.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Oops... Lucky Me! 10 Accidental Product Discoveries
Insider reveals the truth about Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" failures
From 8bitjoystick.com:
Since it's launch in Fall of 2005 Xbox 360 systems all over the world have had major hardware failure problems resulting in millions of costumers having to mail their Xbox back to Microsoft. No one really knows what has been causing these problems since the official lines never divulged the specific problems or rates of failure. All a person has to do is to press the power button on their Xbox 360 and there is a chance that it will just up and fail to boot up and shine the "Red Rings of Death". Microsoft decided to extend the warrantee for the Xbox 360 but the cloud of fear and uncertainly still hang around the game system.
Q: So what do you think the real failure rate of the Xbox 360 is? Some have estimated it as high as 30%. I got my Xbox in early 2007 and so far so good but what do you think the chance is that it's going to die on me one day.
It's around 30%, and all will probably fail early. This quarter they are expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat failures. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means it's not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of years, while a bad unit can fail in hours.
Q: How many times does an Xbox 360 unit have to be sent in and repaired before they will replace it with a completely new unit?
That's not how it works. You send in a broken box, you get back a working box (hopefully). So there is a rotating stock of the original units that get repaired and returned to service. Plus, they keep finding these cashes of launch units here and there and using them too. Didn't you hear during the holidays that bundles were found with units made in 06? Those were pulled back from the retail channel last spring when the new heatsink was done, and had the new heatsink placed on them and then put into the shipping flow like any other box.
Read the whole interview here:
http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives/jake_inside_source_reveal_the_truth_about_xbox_360_red_ring_of_death_failures.php
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Scientist becomes the first person to clone himself
From Daily Mail UK:
A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself.
In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg.
The embryos were the first to be made from cells taken from adult humans.
Although they survived for only five days and were smaller than a pinhead, they are seen as a milestone in the quest for treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
But critics fear the technology could be exploited by mavericks to clone babies and accused the scientists of reducing the miracle of human life to a factory of spare parts.
Researchers from the Californian stem cell research company Stemagen employed the same technique used to make Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, to create the embryos.
If you want to know more then you can read the full story here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=508887&in_page_id=1965
Top Ten Best Discontinued Soft Drinks
Stew Miller put together an amazing list of the top 10 soft drinks which were discontinued. If you want to know more about "Coke II" and "Raging Razzberry Pepsi" then head over to his blog:
http://stewwriter.blogspot.com/2008/01/top-ten-best-discontinued-soft-drinks.html
Friday, January 18, 2008
Gamer saves life thanks to his virtual medic training
Paxton Galvanek, who never received any "live" medical training, was driving home when he saw an SUV lose control and flip over. While his wife called 911 he ran to the car to help. He immediately freed the two people in the car and brought them to safety. One man had little injuries but the other man was heavily bleeding since he lost fingers. He also appeared to have a head trauma.
Paxton found a towel and pressed it against the man's lost fingers. He examined the head injury and concluded that it wasn't serious. He decided to take care of the hand and asked the person to sit down, relax and lift the hand above his head. Soon later a soldier arrived and took over of the first aid. He told Paxton that he did everything right and with the ambulance on the way Paxton went home.
Later Paxton wrote to the people which developed the computer game America's Army and thanked them for the medical training which he received in the game. He told them that because of the training he was able to save the injured men.
He wrote that in section four of the game's medic training he learned to evaluate situations and decide on priorities while in section two he learned about controlled bleeding.
Read the whole story on: http://gamernode.com/news/5647-gamer-uses-virtual-medic-training-to-help-save-a-life/index.html
Ancient "lost city" discovered in Peru
According to experts ruins which were discovered in Peru could be the ancient lost city of Paititi. On January 10 the states news agency reported that an archaeological fortress had been discovered in the district of Kimbiri. According to Mayor Guillermo Torres the ruins which were found are a 430,000 square foot fortification. He said that the area will be immediately declared as a cultural tourism site.
The Peruvian National Institute of Culture is dispatching a team to investigate the site and more details should emerge soon.
If you want to read the whole story then follow this link: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080116-lost-city.html
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Thursday, January 17, 2008
Robbers Leave Money For Fear Of Jesus
Read the full article here: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009716382
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Did insects kill dinosaurs?
There are many theories why dinosaurs became extinct and the most popular one is that they were killed from a chain reaction which was initiated from an asteroid which hit the earth. Other theories say that they died from diseases, allergies or volcanoes.
Two scientists from the Princeton University Press support the disease theory in their new book "What Bugged the Dinosaurs". Authors George and Roberta Poinar which specialized in fossilized dinosaur poop found ticks, nematodes, biting flies and other sorts of nasties, including intestinal parasites, dating back to the Cretaceous period. They extracted microbes that cause leishmania and malaria - evidently new pathogens back then, against which dinosaurs wouldn't have had much resistance.
To read the full story follow this link: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1702501,00.html
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