separation

The world is a bit smaller than we thought.

In a continuation of the concept of "six degrees of separation," Facebook and the University of Milan announced tonight they had determined that the average number of people who separate any two individuals in the world is actually 4.74.

While Stanley Milgram's 1967 "small world experiment" drew on 296 volunteers and pegged the average number of people separating two individuals at 5.2, or six "hops," Facebook's findings were extrapolated during the course of a month from all of Facebook's 721 … Read more

In the classic Mac OS, colon characters were used to separate folders in a file path, but in Unix-based systems the folder separator is a forward slash character. These characters are prevented from being used in file names because it would confuse the system when trying to access the file. When Apple developed OS X, the use of the forward slash was adopted because of its Unix underpinnings, so in OS X you cannot include a true forward slash in a file name.

This may cause some confusion, since in the Finder you can rename files to include a forward … Read more

Onkyo may be best-known for its receivers and home theater-in-a-box systems, but the company planted deep roots in audiophile-grade hi-fi in the 1970s. As I recall, Onkyo had more street cred among audiophiles than Sony or Pioneer in the days before home theater ruled the roost.

Today at CES in Las Vegas Onkyo will debut a new range of elite stereo hi-fi components, with a style reminiscent of the company's classic models of the 1980s. All three components--the P-3000R preamplifier, M-5000R power amplifier, and C-7000R CD player--incorporate Onkyo's new Dynamic Intermodulation Distortion Reduction Circuitry (DIDRC), that is said … Read more

Motorola will finally split into two separate public companies next year on January 4, a move first announced in 2008.

The company said yesterday that its board has approved the separation of Motorola Mobility Holdings from Motorola. The new Motorola Mobility company will handle the mobile phone and set-top box business. Motorola will rename itself to Motorola Solutions and focus on the enterprise and network business products.

Sanjay Jha will run Motorola Mobility as CEO, while Greg Brown will assume the same role for Motorola Solutions. Both men have been running Motorola as co-CEOs.

Stockholders who own Motorola shares by … Read more

Got boys in the 6- to 10-year-old range? Hang out with immature people? Really like gross stuff? If you can answer yes to any of these, then you might actually enjoy the Peter Petrie egg separator.

Although this ceramic beauty will never grace my kitchen counters, you may feel differently. Use is straightforward--crack an egg into the separator and tilt it forward. The egg white drips through the nostrils (ewww!) and into your bowl, where you can whip it up into meringue or turn it into an egg white omelet, or do whatever it is that people do with egg … Read more

PhotoRazor provides users with a fast and efficient way of shrinking photos without diluting quality. With only a few commands and impressive results, this will be an asset for frequent photo editors.

The program's interface is an intuitive affair that most will feel instantly comfortable with. By only offering a few well-placed command icons, users will understand almost immediately how the program works. A useful Help file is available. The program begins by users selecting a folder they'd like to convert. Each of the photos is listed along the right side, with one featured in the center of … Read more

I make traditional chicken soup with matzah balls every Friday night for my family. I've tried going with easier soups that come from mixes or boxes, and the result is nothing short of an uprising. So every Friday morning, I find myself hovering over the stove, spooning off the fat as it bubbles to the top of the pot.

The OXO Fat Separator is a nice solution for my soup--and it works on gravies and sauces as well. It's easy to use: Pour the soup into the separator. The liquid settles to the bottom, and the fat rises … Read more

In a research paper from June 2007, titled "Worldwide Buzz: Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network (PDF)," Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research and Jure Leskovec of Carnegie Mellon University analyzed 30 billion conversations among 240 million people using Microsoft Instant Messenger in June 2006. It turned out that the average path length, or degree of separation, among the anonymized users probed was 6.6.

Six degrees of separation posits that a person is a step away from people they know and two steps distant from people known by the people they know--thus the magic number six.

Following is … Read more