Civilization' creator: Games are taking over the world

(CNN) -- Sid Meier's "Civilization" is now 20 years old.

But for someone who has been involved in video games since the mid-'80s, one of Meier's early prophesies is just now coming true because of mobile and social gaming technologies, he told CNN.

"I've always said that games will someday take over the world and that seems to be happening," he said.

Meier is considered to be one of the great game designers. He serves as director of creative development for Firaxis Games. He sat down with CNN to reflect on the short history of video games and what he hopes will be their long future.

comment: Meier is considered to be one of the great game designers. I think that the prediction of Sid Meiers, is correct because everyone is using call of duty and other games. And in the future everyone is going to play games.

Counting the carbon cost of bringing water to the desert

From Nick Glass and George Webster, CNN

January 20, 2012 -- Updated 1236 GMT (2036 HKT)

The carbon footprint of water

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• UAE consumes 550 liters of water per head each day -- more than any other country
• With no fresh water supplies, it depends on carbon-intensive desalination process
• Resource experts talk to CNN about their concerns for UAE's future water security

Abu Dhabi, UAE (CNN) -- During the summer months, in the arid, subtropical coastal plains of the United Arab Emirates, temperatures rise to 40 Celsius plus -- while average rainfall is a desolate four inches a year.
And yet, in the years since the discovery of vast oil reserves in the late 1950s, a forest of skyscrapers, luxury apartments, verdant green gardens and golf courses has risen from the sand.
It's been made possible only with recourse to unimaginably large amounts of water. Indeed, at 550 liters a day, Emiratis consume more per head of population than anyone else on earth.
"It just evaporates very, very quickly," explains Ivano Iannelli, CEO of the Dubai Carbon Center of Excellence. "Then when you add the lifestyle requirements -- the giant swimming pools; the cooling systems; the big gardens that need irrigating four times a day ... it goes some way to explain why the water consumption is so high."

What is desalination?

Desalination is the process of removing salt and other minerals from saline water (such as seawater). On an industrial level, there are a number of different methods in operation, all of which require some input of energy.

In the UAE, the most common desalination process is known as "multi-stage flash distillation." This applies the principles of evaporation and condensation, whereby vaporized seawater is passed through a series of increasingly cool condensing chambers and freshwater is accumulated as a distillate.

With scarce native freshwater supplies, Iannelli says the oil-rich nation spends hundreds of million of dollars a year purifying coastal seawater. For a country that, according to OPEC, boasted over $74 billion crude-oil export revenue in 2010, the financial burden may seem relatively light. But the cost to the climate, says Iannelli, is certainly not.
"Desalination requires a lot of power ... we estimate that about four tonnes of carbon are emitted per million gallons of freshwater produced here," he says, with reference to the energy-intensive process of removing salt from seawater (see factbox).
To put that figure in context, Iannelli says that the energy required to pump freshwater from underground (which, he says, is the most common source of drinking water in the West) typically produces just over 1.5 tonnes of CO2 per million gallons.
Read related: From polluter to protector: The UAE's 'Green Sheikh'
While large-scale desalination is not uncommon in those parts of the world where natural water resources are scarce -- such as Texas and Australia -- the UAE is by some margin, according to Iannelli, the industry's most active player. In fact, 50% of all the world's desalination takes place in the Gulf.
The Fujairah desalination plant in Abu Dhabi has a freshwater generation capacity of 492 million liters a day, making it the biggest single producer on the planet, according to Iannelli, who notes that it "totally dwarfs anything found in the West."
For Dr Mohammad Dawoud, of the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency, this spells trouble for the future. "If we don't conserve our water ... I fear about our resources in the future for the next generation," he says.
However, standing in one of the country's 30 solar plants -- overlooked by sand dunes on all sides, Dawoud tells CNN that he hopes that solar technology may eventually offer a viable alternative energy source to power the UAE's huge desalination needs.
"There are no carbon emissions while using photovoltaic cells to produce electricity -- then (we can) use electricity to operate desalination plants to produce freshwater," he predicts.
But on this point Iannelli is not convinced: "At the moment, solar panels are not fit for purpose in the UAE ... the dust and the sand in the atmosphere prevent (sun) rays from hitting the panels efficiently ... and the high temperatures also reduce performance," he says. "For me, solar is not the answer."
Instead, Iannelli believes that the most practical solution is for the desalination process to become more energy efficient, in conjunction with an effort by the Emiratis themselves to curb their "lavish" water consumption habits.
"There is almost no regulation concerning water or power use, no minimum standards for water-consuming appliances ... and very few energy requirements for buildings," he laments. "Whatever we do, from now on it has to be cost-effective, lean and clean."

Comentary: These country needs a lot of water dairy because of the heat in that place. The amount of water that they dasalinate is like 492 million liters a day, that is a huge amount. They also need to conserve very well the water to have enough water to the future.

2 more bodies recovered from Costa Concordia

Giglio, Italy (CNN) -- Two more bodies have been recovered from the wreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, Italian officials announced Monday, bringing the number of confirmed victims of the accident to 15.
The two women were found on Bridge 4, near the ship's Internet cafe, said Franco Gabrielli, the official in charge of the operation.
About 17 people remain missing after the ship collided with rocks January 13 off the coast of Tuscany, according to a CNN count.
Salvage workers are to begin pumping fuel out of the liner Monday, Gabrielli said.
"Salvage will start any minute," Adm. Ilarione Dell'Anna said Monday afternoon. It will take 28 working days to remove all the fuel from the ship, the admiral said.
The search for survivors and victims will continue alongside the salvage, said Gabrielli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency.
The man in charge of the rescue operation said the divers faced a grim task.
"Imagine that you left for holidays and that the power went off in your house. What would you find in your fridge? The divers are in there," Ennio Aquilino said.
Two more bodies were found over the weekend -- one woman on Saturday and one on Sunday, both wearing life jackets.
Divers used explosives Monday morning to blow more holes in the side of the ship to allow easier access.
The parties involved in the rescue told reporters and residents on the island Sunday that search and rescue efforts will continue -- but that the environmental risk is also becoming urgent.
Officials said they cannot predict how long it will take to clear the wreckage, since that depends on maritime conditions and technical difficulties, but all legal, environmental and human factors will be taken into account.
"It's time for Italy to show it can do something right and do it well," said Gabrielli.
Gabrielli warned that the task ahead was complicated and daunting, not least because it takes about 45 minutes to search each cabin, using special cameras and divers.
The giant Costa Concordia had 1,500 cabins on board.
A class-action lawsuit will be filed in Miami against Costa and its parent company, Carnival Corp., the Italian consumer group Codacons said on Saturday. The suit, in collaboration with two U.S. law firms, is "aimed specifically at getting compensation for all damages to the boat passengers," Codacons said in a statement. The class-action suit is open to passengers of any nationality, it said.
"We've been contacted by hundreds of victims and the numbers are growing moment by moment," said Mitchell Proner, senior partner at Proner & Proner, one of two firms involved. He said crew members have also contacted the firm, "and their stories that are coming in are horrific -- from lifeboats that were stuck halfway, passengers debating whether to jump or not, this was not an orderly evacuation."
The suit, he said, will request at least 125,000 euros (about $160,000) per passenger.
The suit has not yet been filed, said Marc Bern, senior partner at the other firm, Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, but "it will probably be in the billions of euros and dollars."
"The sheer terror of being on a ship of that magnitude going down, you can imagine the psychological damage," Bern said.
Gabrielli said no fuel oil had yet leaked from the ship -- only kitchen and engine oil -- and that he did not see an immediate risk of the 2,400 tons on board escaping.
Booms have been put in place around the ship to stop the spread of oil and other pollutants such as detergents and sewage chemicals. With more than 4,000 people aboard, the ship was the size of a small town, Gabrielli said.
Fuel will be replaced with water as it is removed from the ship's tanks, keeping the ship balanced, said Dell'Anna, head of coastal authorities for the port city of Livorno.
Gabrielli said Costa Cruises, the company that owns the cruise ship, is cooperative and was proving responsible, despite past errors.
Both Costa Cruises and authorities have criticized Capt. Francesco Schettino, who is under house arrest and faces possible charges of manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship.
Prosecutors said they planned to appeal the judge's decision to grant Schettino house arrest, arguing that Schettino should remain in jail because he is a flight risk and because of the gravity of his alleged crimes.
Alessandro Antichi, partner of Schettino defense attorney Bruno Leporatti, said the defense plans to file its appeal Wednesday on the judge's ruling. The defense maintains Schettino should not be in custody.
An audio recording obtained by Italy's Repubblica newspaper and published Saturday shows that the captain, at least at the outset of the incident, assured authorities he would do the right thing.
Prosecutors have accused the captain of piloting the ship too fast to allow him to react to dangers, causing the shipwreck, according to legal papers.
There were roughly 4,200 people on the Costa Concordia when it ran aground -- about 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew members. The vast majority fled the ship safely.

Commentary:
I think that is good that two more bodies are found, but they have to make an effort to find the other bodies.

iPad solid eductaion

Apple's new iBooks 2 app is demonstrated for the media at the Guggenheim Museum on January 19.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Pilot study done by textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Apple
• Middle school students studied from 2010 to 2011 using HMH's Fuse: Algebra I app
• During study, iPad seemed to help students better connect with the content

(WIRED) -- More and more schools are jumping on the digital bandwagon and adopting iPads for daily use in the classroom. Apple's education-related announcements last week will no doubt bolster the trend, making faculty tools and student textbooks more engaging and accessible.
But today another data point emerged, demonstrating that the iPad can be a valuable asset in education. In a partnership with Apple, textbook publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt performed a pilot study using an iPad text for Algebra 1 courses, and found that 20% more students (78% compared to 59%) scored 'Proficient' or 'Advanced' in subject comprehension when using tablets rather than paper textbook counterparts.
The study was conducted at a Riverside, California, middle school from Spring 2010 to Spring 2011 using HMH's Fuse: Algebra I app. Similar pilot courses and iPad programs have cropped up all over the country, primarily in private and boarding schools, and select universities. In the public school sector, more than 600 school districts have adopted a 1:1 iPad program.
The iPad seems to help students better connect with the content at hand.
"Students' interaction with the device was more personal. You could tell students were more engaged," said Coleman Kells, principal of Amelia Earhart Middle School. "Using the iPad was more normal, more understandable for them."
Tablets could be less daunting to students, too. Marita Scarfi, CEO of digital-focused marketing agency Organic, says that moving textbooks to mobile devices will reinvent learning.
"Now you don't know if a book is super huge and formidable," Scarfi says. "Learning can be done in snackable chunks. It could be reoriented."
Another study centered on an iPad game, Motion Math, has shown that the iPad can help with fundamental math skills. Fifth graders who regularly played the game for 20 minutes per day over a five-day period increased their test scores by 15% on average (you can check out more about this study on Wired's GeekDad).
Digital textbooks haven't enjoyed the same success as app-based learning tools thus far, however. E-textbooks have been a transitional product, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps wrote in a November 2011 report. They make up less than 3 percent of textbook sales, and don't offer much over their paperbound counterparts.
Apple's new and updated products — iTunes U (an app-based hub for virtual classrooma), as well as iBooks 2, the iBookstore and iBooks Author — should help provide solutions for educators looking to provide more engaging experiences than plain, old PDFs, all without the heavy investments required of building apps from scratch.
"With iBooks, learning will be a lot more experiential," Scarfi told Wired in an e-mail. iBooks also have the potential to ease some of the financial burden of schools, as ebooks could save on textbook costs. "Other benefits include more timely and relevant content, and the ability for students to interact and share this content with ease. Textbooks will now become social in a variety of ways."
However, even if e-book prices themselves won't break the bank, iPads are still a $500-plus investment per tablet. Funding is still a problem, particularly for public schools. Luckily, there are sites like DonorsChoose.org that can help offload the costs from teachers and school districts.
And a program called SA500 Kids is helping to accelerate funding for technology resource requests on the site. Thus far, iPad requests have been fairly low: SA500 Kids has funded 24 iPad-based project requests since Nov. 25. Currently there are 418 iPad-related requests on DonorsChoose, out of the 20,000 projects listed on the site.
When the next iPad debuts, if Apple goes with a similar pricing scheme as it has with the iPhone — as rumored — then schools will be able to pick up iPads on the cheap and really be able to utilize the company's new education related products.
But regardless, it looks like the iPad is starting to do an impressive job of improving the education space. And now that publishers and instructors have these iBooks tools at their disposal, students can continue to reap the benefits of increased understanding and greater participation.


I think that when the iPad 3 will be ready a lot of schools will have that tool because all of its important feautures and his alliances with the editorials of the school books.But also students gonna have a great responsability with the iPad because is very fragil so if they drop it will be ruined. The iPad is a very cool tablet because is very practic and its design i like it a lot. If apple makes the schools buy they iPad will get a lot of money.

Comment: I think that is  disappointment  for the player (Serena Williams), the 5 times champion of these competition now its elimined of the tourament.
Its disappointment for him because his a good player and all people think that she will make history in these Grand Slam.
Serena Williams upset by unseeded Makarova in Melbourne

(CNN) -- Unseeded Russian Ekaterina Makarova upset five-time champion Serena Williams of the United States 6-2 6-3 on Monday to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open.

The fourth-round match was played as temperatures hit above 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).

Makarova's two previous grand slam appearances -- at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year -- ended with losses in the first round as she faded from a career-high 29th in the rankings -- a position she reached with last-16 appearances in Melbourne and at the French Open.

"I'm surprised because she's a great player and it's really tough to play against her," said the 23-year-old Makarova, who will next play her fourth-seeded compatriot Maria Sharapova.

Nishikori makes history for Japan

"But, I don't know, I was just feeling so good and so focused. So I played my game, and that's it. I won against Serena. That's amazing."

60 apps launch with Facebook auto-share

San Francisco (CNN) -- Joining "likes" on Facebook, the social network has added dozens of new types of posts, including "bought," "read" and "want."

Sixty applications that let users publish information automatically to Facebook launched at a news conference held at a trendy nightclub here on Wednesday. Many of these are new versions of existing online services or mobile apps.

Apps for foodies, like Foodspotting and Foodily, can publish to a user's Facebook profile when she updates her digital diary of meals. Ticketmaster can publish to Facebook when customers buy concert tickets.

Like with Facebook Music, the social network may create monthly personalized reports that are posted to a person's profile showing how the app was used at any given time. For example, someone could see the places a friend traveled to last summer, thanks to TripAdvisor.

Since the launch of Facebook Music in September, participants such as MOG and Spotify have reported large increases in membership. Some 400,000 people coming from Facebook have signed up for MOG accounts since September, and each day, Facebook sends an average of 4,000 people who have never visited MOG before, David Hyman, the music company's CEO, said in a phone interview.

The platform itself is the biggest traffic generator we've ever had," Hyman said. "It is very significant."

Facebook programmers have created a mathematical algorithm that will examine the types of posts a person has chosen to give prominent placement to on his or her profile, Facebook CTO Bret Taylor said in an interview.

Whether food, movies or exercises logged into Facebook, the site will try to predict what you're most passionate about based on past choices, similar to how the system determines its news feed based partly on the people you contact most often, Taylor said. Each user will be able to manually override these profile placements, he said.

"People care a lot about the way their profile looks," Taylor said.

These features are only available to those who have enabled theFacebook Timeline, which opened to everyone about a month ago. Eventually, every user will be required to use that version of the site profile.

Taylor described the new app features as part of a maturation of Facebook, which goes beyond the initial perspective of its co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who coded the website in his sophomore year at Harvard University. Zuckerberg, who is now Facebook's CEO, did not attend the event Wednesday.

"Previously, the profile was all the things Mark Zuckerberg was interested in in college," Taylor said. "You know, movies, music and books."

(Zuckerberg, 27, only lists one book on his Facebook profile: Ender's Game, which came out the year after he was born.)

Facebook will review each new action, as it's called, that's proposed by developers in order to screen for profanity or other unwanted words, Mike Vernal, the company's platform engineering director, said in an interview. Software developers will be able to create an unlimited number of these actions, he said.

That would be useful for something like iTunes, which allows users to "listen," "watch" and "buy" things, although Apple is not participating in the program. A spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment.

Despite some early opposition, Facebook wants to encourage all developers to adopt the new tools.

"We've got a whole new set, a whole new class, of applications that we think we're enabling with this platform," Carl Sjogreen, a Facebook product director, said onstage during the announcement. "When we say anything, we really mean anything."

In characteristic Facebook ambition, Sjogreen added, "We're even more excited about the thousands of apps to come."

my opinion

mi opinion is that the facebook is growing a lot and it would arrive at a point until you would have to pay for get in facebook there are many of peoples that donsen t have gets in a facebook so it would be a beast!!

jose rodrigo villalba lopez

When Tropical Storm Washi ripped through the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro last weekend, it dumped in one day more than the city's entire average rainfall for the month of December.
According to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, a total of 181 millimeters of rainfall was recorded in the area last Friday, compared to the expected 99.9 millimeters for the whole month.
The devastating flash floods, which have so far claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, arrived just weeks after a report from the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change indicated that global warming has significantly increased the number of people at risk from flooding globally.
The report, "Climate: Observations, projections and impacts," examined how climate change will modify the weather in 24 countries around the world.
While findings vary from region to region, it forecasts an overall increase in this century of coastal and river floods, extreme weather events and a global temperature rise of between 3-5C, if emissions are left unchecked.
According to climate change experts, cities from New York in the U.S. to Dhaka in Bangladesh are likely to be heavily affected.CNN INFORMATION

i think that the wethear that is like that is very dengerous becouse the people can have accident becouse they canot see or somthing like that the wethear like that is very cold i think that the people that live in that country have to ve bery ceorfuli in what they are doing.