Paralyzed teen to kick World Cup's first ball, mind-controlled exoskeleton

Paralyzed teen to kick World Cup's first ball with mind-controlled exoskeleton

This year's World Cup could be host to something more exciting than a bicycle kick scoring the winning goal. Thanks to an international collaboration between universities such as Colorado State University, the Technical University of Munich and the Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience of Natal in Brazil, a paralyzed teen is set to open the sporting event by kicking a football while wearing a motorized exoskeleton controlled by his or her brain. Colorado State University in particular recently published a video of its portion of the Walk Again Project, describing just how the mind-control helmet was 3D-printed layer-by-layer in order to fit the wearer's head and connect the electrodes. Take a peek after the break to see the video in question, which also offers a fascinating look into how advances in robotics and 3D printing can improve people's lives. Which is a hell of a lot more entertaining than watching Nigel de Jong roughing up Xabi Alonso again

Samsung smartwatch concept can be controlled by waving your hands

Samsung smartwatch patent with touchless gestures

Touchscreens on smartwatches are limited by their very nature; there's only so much you can fit on a tiny piece of glass. However, Samsung might overcome that surface area limit if it ever implements a recently published patent application. Its smartwatch concept would let you perform relatively complex tasks just by waving your hands in front of a built-in camera. You could send content to a TV just by flicking your hand, for example, or select something by pointing your finger.
That wouldn't be the only party trick. The watch would recognize wrist gestures beyond the simple screen activation you find in Samsung's Gear line, for a start. It would also have a Moto 360-style circular display with both an optimized touchscreen interface and a rotating ring for tasks like scrolling. It's an ambitious, do-it-all design, and it won't be surprising if Samsung only uses some of the technology -- if it's used at all. When Samsung is already big on gesture control and plans to support Android Wear, though, there's a real chance that future smartwatches will let you do much more than poke at buttons and issue simple voice commands.

China bans Windows 8 to open doors for domestic OS

Windows 8 ban may open door for China's domestic OS

With Windows 8 now banned from being installed on Chinese government computers, domestic operating system (OS) developers are itching for a niche in the world's biggest PC market.
The country's relatively large OS developers, including China Standard Software Co. and NFS China among others, have fresh opportunities, but their products face long and tough tests.
Windows 8 was banned from all desktops, laptops and tablet PCs purchased by central state organs last week. The announcement made by the Central Government Procurement Center did not make clear whether other Windows products were prohibited as well.
China's ambitious OS makers, that are developing products based on Linux, took immediate action in response to the government ban.
"There are differences between Windows and Linux, but we are trying to make consumers feel almost the same when using our products," said China Standard Software Co. in a statement.
The company is a joint venture of China Electronics Corporation and China Electronic Technology Group Corporation, two state-owned enterprises.
China Standard Software Co. said its Neokylin Linux OS is "a safe and controlled product that meets the security demands for government, defense and other confidential fields".
Another OS maker NFS China, which is affiliated with the Software Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is also actively marketing its products featuring "high security and special design for Chinese consumers".
"Domestic OS can support basic functions like processing texts and pictures, playing music and videos and providing Internet services, although the user experience is not as good as Windows," said Ding Liping, a researcher with the institute.
One of the advantages that China's OS makers have is that their products usually have open source code, which allows programmers to design any software they need, according to China Standard Software Co.
The country's rapidly expanding tablet PC and smart television market also creates room for domestic OS makers as most of these devices run Linux-based Android OS, said Yang Yilong, vice CEO of IT company Knownsec.
In fact, it is not uncommon for the country's self-developed softwares, which are created in accordance with Chinese people's habits, to beat foreign rivals.
Tencents's messaging software QQ proves to be more popular than Microsoft's MSN. Baidu does better than Google in searching in Chinese language. Kingsoft's WPS wins a large user base against Microsoft's Office. More importantly, most of the domestic softwares are free or much cheaper and very easy to download.
However, previous failures showed that success in the business is not that easy as development of an OS entails money and time.
Red Flag Software Technology Co., one of China's most promising OS makers, went bankrupt in February partly because of a snapped money chain as its products were not well received.
Tan Xiaosheng, a senior manager in charge of privacy with IT company Qihu 360, said whether domestic OS developers can make a difference relies on the opening up of the market.
"Many of China's IT giants have enough money to conduct OS business. What they expect is preferential policies," said Tan, adding that failures may recur if the country's OS market is dominated only by a few state-owned companies.
A Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesman signaled last month that the ministry would strengthen support for the development and application of Linux OS.
But a detailed plan is yet to be revealed.

SECURITY CONCERNS
Although there is no official explanation of why Windows 8 was excluded, analysts believe that security issues may be the major concern.
Windows 8 boasts built-in Windows Defender and Windows SmartScreen that "can help guard your PC against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software in real time".
This means that users risk being monitored and national security is at danger when it is installed on government computers, said Ni Guangnan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Disk drives play the 'Back to the Future' theme.

Hear disk drives play the 'Back to the Future' theme.

Think, McFly, think! What's a crazy-fun way to cover the theme from the 1980s classic sci-fi comedy flick "Back to the Future"? With disk drives, of course.

Eighties pop culture buffs may feel a tinge of nostalgia hearing the "Back to the Future" theme song, especially when played by the moving parts of disk drives. To make this video happen, YouTuber Arganalth attached a Raspberry Pi computer to a bunch of floppy and HDD drives, placed the whole getup inside a suitcase, and programmed the drives' mechanisms to play songs. And because he built his personal sound machine inside of luggage, he'll able to take most anywhere. Smart!
Put your souped-up DeLorean in drive and take a listen to this.

Via Tastefully

BlackBerry fights back with $190

BlackBerry fights back with $190 Indonesian smartphone

A model shows a BlackBerry Z3 ‘Jakarta edition’ smartphone during a ceremony in Indonesia. (AFP)

BlackBerry on Tuesday launched a new budget handset in Indonesia, one of its last bastions, a major step in the ailing smartphone maker’s fightback against titans Samsung and Apple.
The Z3, designed with Indonesia in mind but expected to be introduced in other emerging markets later, is the first new BlackBerry phone since chief executive John Chen took the helm of the crisis-hit company in November.
The handset is also the first to be produced from the Canadian firm’s partnership with Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, which makes gadgets for Apple, and is a key test of whether the new strategy will work.
BlackBerry believes the Indonesian model - whose full name is the Z3 ‘Jakarta Edition’ - will be a hit in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, where the company maintains a loyal following despite losing ground in recent years, thanks in part to the popularity of its BBM messaging service.
Like many other global companies, BlackBerry is also targeting Indonesia due to its huge population of 250 million and its rapidly emerging middle class, who increasingly have cash to spend on gadgets following years of sustained economic growth.
“From conception to delivery, the BlackBerry Z3, Jakarta Edition, was designed specifically with our Indonesian customers in mind,” Chen said during a visit to the Indonesian capital to launch the phone.
The phone will be available in shops from Thursday and will cost 2,199,000 rupiah ($190), BlackBerry said in a statement.
But analysts think it is already too late for a comeback by the company that pioneered the modern smartphone culture but has been unable to keep up with competition from Apple’s iPhone and handsets using the Google Android operating system.
Recent years have been dismal for BlackBerry, and it has suffered heavy losses and slashed thousands of jobs.
The company even put itself up for sale last year but abandoned hopes of finding a buyer several months later, and ousted chief executive Thorsten Heins.
Since Chen took over, there have been small signs of improvement. The company reported a loss of $423 million in the three months to March 1, which was not as bad as had been feared.
As part of its turnaround strategy, the smartphone maker announced the tie-up with Foxconn in December.
It involves transferring manufacturing and inventory management to the Taiwanese company, while allowing BlackBerry to focus on software and services.
The Z3 has a five inch (13 centimetre) touchscreen, without the physical keyboard of the older devices.
The Jakarta Edition’s BBM messaging service comes loaded with pictures of local cartoon characters for users to send to one another.
There is also a limited edition with the inscription “Jakarta” on the back.
BlackBerry’s most recent phones have not fared well in Indonesia but the company believes the Z3 will be popular, in particular due to its lower price.
Retailers say that online pre-orders, which began on April 28, have been healthy.
BlackBerry has refused to say which emerging markets it might take the phone to next, but analysts speculated it would likely be others in Southeast Asia.
But even the picture in Indonesia, one of the company’s healthiest markets, is increasingly dire and the Z3 may be too little too late, analysts warn.
“The launch of this device is really BlackBerry’s final stand in the Indonesian market,” Sudev Bangah from telecoms consultancy IDC told AFP.
IDC says BlackBerry’s market share peaked in Indonesia in 2011 at about 43 percent and remained healthy in 2012, only to suffer a collapse in 2013 when it slumped to around five percent in the final quarter, in the face of stiff competition from Samsung in particular.

Samsung unveils 1.5TB wireless media drive for smartphones

Samsung and Seagate have joined forced to create a new wireless media drive. The drive lets you store all your media content, which can then be wirelessly streamed to a mobile device or a computer.

The device has a 1.5TB hard drive that should provide plenty of space for most of your content. You can connect a mobile device running Android 2.3 and above directly to it to stream the content. You can also stream to a Windows or OS X computer.
The drive can be connected to directly over Wi-Fi without the need of a wireless network. It can, however, be connected to an existing wireless network and up to five devices can be connected to it.
The media drive has its own built-in battery, which other than powering the drive can also charge the battery of your Android smartphone.
Lastly, there is a USB 3.0 port on the drive to transfer content to it.
The Samsung Wireless media device is priced at $179 and will be available globally.

What Are Fractals, And Why Should I Care?

Fractal geometry is a field of maths born in the 1970s and mainly developed by Benoit Mandelbrot. If you’ve already heard of fractals, you’ve probably seen the picture above. It’s called the Mandelbrot Set and is an example of a fractal shape.
The geometry that you learned in school was about how to make shapes; fractal geometry is no different. While the shapes that you learned in classical geometry were ‘smooth’, such as a circle or a triangle, the shapes that come out of fractal geometry are ‘rough’ and infinitely complex. However fractal geometry is still about making shapes, measuring shapes and defining shapes, just like school.
There are two reasons why you should care about fractal geometry:
1. The process by which shapes are made in fractal geometry is amazingly simple yet completely different to classical geometry. While classical geometry uses formulas to define a shape, fractal geometry uses iteration. It therefore breaks away from giants such as Pythagoras, Plato and Euclid and heads in another direction. Classical geometry has enjoyed over 2000 years of scrutinisation, Fractal geometry has enjoyed only 40.
2. The shapes that come out of fractal geometry look like nature. This is an amazing fact that is hard to ignore. As we all know, there are no perfect circles in nature and no perfect squares. Not only that, but when you look at trees or mountains or river systems they don’t resemble any shapes one is used to in maths. However with simple formulas iterated multiple times, fractal geometry can model these natural phenomena with alarming accuracy. If you can use simple maths to make things look like the world, you know you’re onto a winner. Fractal geometry does this with ease.
This blog post shall give a quick overview of how to make fractal shapes and show how these shapes can resemble nature. It shall then go on to talk about dimensionality, which is a cool way to measure fractals. It ends by discussing how fractal geometry is also beneficial because randomness can be introduced into the structure of a fractal shape. The post requires almost no maths and includes lot of pretty pictures

How to make a fractal shape

In normal geometry shapes are defined by a set of rules and definitions. For instance a triangle consists of three straight lines that are connected. The rules are that if you have the length of all three sides of the triangle it is completely defined, also if you have the length of one side and two corresponding angles the triangle is also defined. Though the rules defining a triangle are simple, huge amounts of useful maths has come out of it, for instance Pythagoras’ Theorum, sin() cos() and tan(), the proof that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, etc.
Fractal geometry also defines shapes by rules, however these rules are different to the ones in classical geometry. In fractal geometry a shape is made in two steps: first by making a rule about how to change a certain (usually classically geometric) shape. This rule is then applied to the shape again and again, until infinity. In maths when you change something it is usually called a function, so what happens is that a function is applied to a shape recursively, like the diagram below.

After it has repeated an infinite amount of times, the fractal shape is produced. What are these functions then? What do you mean by repeating infinitely? As always, this is best explained by an example…
A good fractal shape is called the von Koch curve. The rules, or function, are extremely simple. First you start with a straight line. This is your ‘initial shape’:

The rules are as follows:
1. Split every straight line into 3 equal segments.
2. Replace the middle segment with an equilateral triangle, and remove the side of the triangle corresponding to the initial straight line.
The process is shown in the figure below:

This is what happens to the straight line, our initial shape, when it goes through the function the first time, the first iteration. Now, the shape it has produced is fed back into the function again for a second iteration:

Remember the rule was that any straight line would be split into thirds, so now 4 lines are split up and made into triangles. The shape that is produced after the second iteration is then fed through the function for a third time. This gets hard to draw in MS paint so I’ve used a couple of pictures from this website for the next few stages:

After this has iterated an infinite amount of times the fractal shape is defined. This may sound bewildering but it is still possible to analyse it mathematically and visually you can see what the shape starts to look like. The GIF below (from Wikipedia) is a good illustration of what the curve looks like by zooming in on it:

The von Koch curve is a great example of a fractal: the rule you apply is simple, yet it results in such a complex shape. This kind of shape is impossible to define using conventional maths, yet so easy to define using fractal geometry.
So who cares about the von Koch curve? Isn’t it just mathematicians wasting time on weird shapes? I guess that depends on how you look at it, but I’m convinced it’s useful because it looks exactly like a snowflake. This is made more clear if the initial shape you start with is a triangle rather than a straight line:

There’s a whole debate to be had on the purpose of maths, but as an Engineer I am inclined to say that one of its purposes is to try and replicate the world around us. The shapes that come out of fractal maths are so different to conventional mathematical shapes and so similar to the world around us that I cannot help but be seduced by this topic. Two other shapes that are favourites of mine are the Barnsley Fern:

And fractal trees:

These aren’t drawings or pictures, but mathematical shapes. If you look at the shapes you can see what function repeats itself. For instance on the Barsley Fern the function is to draw 30 or so perpendicular lines out of each straight line. The function repeats itself to and looks like a fern. On the tree you can see that each line branches out twice, which will be the function that repeats itself. Another property about these shapes (though strictly not for all fractals) is that they are self-similar. This means that the shape looks like itself however much you zoom in or out. For instance on the tree above, if you snapped a branch off it and stood it up, it would look like the original tree. If you took a twig from the branch and stood it up, it would still look like the original tree. Again, this is a property that occurs in nature, but until fractal geometry there was not a good way to put it into maths.
Not only do these shapes look like natural objects, but the process of iteration sounds intuitive when thinking about nature. When a tree is growing, its trunk will create branches, these branches create further branches, these branches create twigs. It’s as if the function is a genetic code telling the branch how to grow and repeat itself, eventually creating shapes that are ‘natural’. This may sound like pseudo-science (it definitely is) but I think these are concepts worth considering when you are able to imitate nature so closely.
Right enough about nature, time to talk about how fractals have crazy dimensions.

Dimensions

So now we know what fractal shapes are and how to make them, we would like to know a few things about them. One of them first things to try and figure out is the length of some of these shapes. Let’s go back to the von Koch curve.
In order to figure out how long the full von Koch curve is (after being iterated an infinite amount of times), it is useful to consider what happens at the first stage again:

The line is split into three, then the middle section is replaced by two lines that are as long as it (as it’s an equal triangle). So if the original straight line had a length of 1, the length of the curve after the first iteration is 4/3. It turns out that every time you iterate the shape, it gets 4/3 longer. So the length of the curve after the second iteration is 4/3 x 4/3 = 16/9:

As 4/3 is greater than 1, the line gets longer every time it is iterated through the function. As you iterate the function an infinite amount of times, the full von Koch curve has a perimeter that is infinitely long! This is the case for all fractal shapes: they have infinitely long perimeters. That isn’t useful for mathematicians so they don’t measure the perimeter of the shape. Now the next few paragraphs require a bit of abstract thought, but if you think a bit outside the box it does make sense.
The perimeter measures the length around something. Length is a one-dimensional measure of space. Length is 1D because it only measures a straight line. A 2D measure of space is area, 3D is volume. Now we’ve shown that it isn’t useful to measure fractal patterns in one-dimension as they are infinitely long, but what is odd is that fractal shapes are not 1D, 2D, or 3D. Each fractal shape has it’s own unique dimension, which is usually a number with a decimal place.
The dimension of a fractal shape is a measure of how quickly the shape becomes complicated when you are iterating it. What do we mean by becoming complicated? Well in the von Koch curve you can see that the first few iterations produce quite simple shapes, however at about iteration 4 it starts to become quite small and complex.
The way to measure how fast a shape becomes complicated, and hence its dimension, is to measure how much longer the perimeter gets after each iteration. This makes sense intuitively, as if the line gets much longer after each iteration it is probably becoming very complicated very fast, whereas if the line stays pretty much the same length after each iteration then it probably isn’t getting very complex.
As we’ve already shown, the von Koch curve gets 4/3 longer each iteration. This means that the von Koch curve is 4/3 D, or 1.3333…D. Pretty crazy right? It exists somewhere between 1D and 2D. But this measure is really useful to mathematicians as it gives information about the shape (whereas perimeter doesn’t, it’s always infinite). For instance if there was another fractal shape which was 1.93D, you could say with confidence that that shape gets complex quicker than the von Koch curve, as the perimeter gets 1.93 times longer after each iteration rather than 1.3333, implying it gets complex more quickly. When studying a fractal shape, knowing its dimension is of integral importance.

Randomness

The last thing I’m going to talk about is the fact that randomness can be inserted into fractal shapes. Random (or seemingly random) events occur in nature all the time and affect different things in a variety of different ways, for instance a large part of Information Engineering is dealing with noise, which randomly fluctuates an electronic signal. When trying to replicate this, you usually add randomness on top of a signal. For instance in electronics you would create a nice sine wave and then add noise on top of it (borrowed from this website):

The bottom image is the ‘pure’ wave, and the top image is the wave with noise added on. An inherent assumption when doing this is that there is an underlying ‘pure’ signal which is randomly altered. While this may be true for a lot of electronics, the same cannot be said for nature. Often there isn’t a ‘pure’ shape that is randomly altered around the edges (for instance there are not many fuzzy squares in nature), but rather randomness effects the structure of the shape itself at each stage of its evolution. Classical geometry is not good at incorporating randomness into shapes, whereas fractal geometry can do it easily. For the last time lets turn to the von Koch curve. However this time we will insert randomness into it.
We know the rule is that for each iteration a triangle is created in the middle third of a line. However every time the triangles always faced “outwards”. We could insert randomness by saying that for each triangle created, it goes either above the line or below the line depending on a coin toss:

Now the shape will develop at random according to the coin toss. For instance after multiple iterations the von Koch curve can look like this:

Or it can look completely different. What is cool about this is that you can insert randomness into the shape itself rather than adding it on top of an existing shape. This has exciting potential, for instance (going back to nature) this may be a good way to model random genetic mutations.
This blog post has provided a brief introduction to fractal geometry. I hope you’ve found it interesting!

Nokia, Docomo working together on 5G technology

Nokia and NTT Docomo to work together on 5G research projects

Finnish telecom giant Nokia and Japan's NTT Docomo are partnering for research and standardization of 5G technologies. The companies will jointly work on a 5G proof of concept (PoC) system. The move is based on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the two companies in January 2014 to research future radio access experimental systems.

Nokia stated that in order to meet the demand for extreme capacity and performance, future 5G networks will need to overcome the challenges that will become relevant for operators, like providing cell-edge rates in excess of 100 mbps and reducing latency by a factor of 10."Nokia and NTT Docomo have agreed to collaborate on research and standardization of 5G technologies and to work jointly on a 5G proof of concept (PoC) system," Networks or NSN, the network division of Nokia said in a statement today.According to a press release, the companies will continue to cooperate on the research of future radio access systems and will have an initial focus on exploring the potential of the millimeter wave technology at the 70 GHz spectrum band."Expanding our cooperation with NTT Docomo on 5G radio technology is an important step towards defining future mobile networks," said Hossein Moiin, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer of Networks."We chose Nokia as our partner for the 5G research project based on its clear vision as well as its extensive mobile broadband experience and technology leadership," NTT Docomo Chief Technology Officer Seizo Onoe said

The Gospel singing Bank robbers

Most bizarre bank heist in Kenya’s History

In July-August 1999, Mashreq Bank at the imposing ICEA building on Kenyatta Avenue was robbed twice.
The first time was on July 1, 1999 when robbers stormed the branch at midday and made away with 0.5 million bob. The second time was on the morning of August 17, 1999. This time the six robbers took their time and robbed the bank of KShs. 9 million bob-or 7.5 million, depending on whether you believe the bank or the police.
But that is the boring part of the story.
ICEA as a concert hall? Who would’ve thunk?
At some point during the robbery, one gunman started singing. Not humming but singing out loudly. Singing the lyrics to the Christian hymn Abide with Me.
He was the one assigned to the boring job of watching over the horrified hostages who included banking staff, security guards and a few unlucky customers. When he noticed the bewildered looks on his hostages’ faces, he explained that singing calmed him down. Because even robbers need a place of peace, maybe more than you. It’s a hard job ey? Too many uncertainties, no job security, erratic pay, such and such.
Then the others joined in. What the fuck? Nothing beats a God-fearing lot of robbers huh? Well, it seems we can stop being too hard on pastors now. In 1999, Nairobi had its original ‘Hallelujah hoodlums’ with their gun-toting, hymn-singing, titanium-balls-bearing, bank-robbing ways.
The music got so good that the singers even started clapping and jumping. Had they had been transformed in the middle of a crime, like Saul’s transformation to Paul in the biblical tale? No, the sight of one gunman using his gun as a guitar the same way you used a broom stick to imitate rock bands told you this was part of their routine. Clearly, the thugs had been whiling away their time by watching too much Air Guitar.

1: Rob a bank.
2: Wow them with your baritone and maybe a bullet.
3.Start to be badass and continue to be badass.

Combine the music with the fact that the six ‘Sadaka sadists’ were wearing hotel doormen’s uniform and you have a band in need of a drummer and morals. Customers walked in to the harmonious sound of the popular offertory song ‘♪♫toa ndugu, toa dada, ulicho nacho wewe and ‘…tooooa toa sadaka yako, umtolee bwana mungu wako…♪♫♪” and one robber at the door collecting the ‘offertory’ and ‘tithe.’
According to the victims, the ‘robber baritones’ had remarkably good harmony. They sang many hymns through the last hours of the ordeal. There’s nothing like being robbed and thoroughly entertained at the same time, right? Is this what concertgoers feel?
There have been many questions about this second heist because it had clear markers of an inside job. The robbers knew the choreographed morning routine of Vitalis Opiyo, the security guard supervisor and his men. They accessed the branch at 6.15 am and lay in wait for the employees who arrived at 8, unaware that they were walking into the hymn-version of a reggae concert.
The two administration police who normally guarded the bank branch arrived at 10 am claiming no one had picked them up in the morning as usual. The police arrived way after the singing gang had made away. Even more curious, the gangsters knew who had the keys to the safe, and some employees by full name and title. They even had an approximate figure of how much was supposed to be in the safe and grumbled when they did not get that amount there.
The overly polite thugs took their time, three whole hours, to properly loot the bank and the hostages. On their way out, they invited the hostages to a bash to celebrate the loot and promised that they would take their time to go through the jewellery and return any that had sentimental value. Even more bizarrely, they returned Shs. 3000 bob they had stolen from one of the guards.
Oh, and to show the level of nongiveafuckery they had, they told the staff where the party would be held.
Still, it was hard for a bank robbery to stand out in Nairobi in the late 1990s. From around 1996, Kenya had been plagued with clinically executed bank robberies. In 1999 alone, there were over 30 bank robberies and only 13 foiled attempts. The most attacked was Standard Chartered, with six robberies in 1999 including one in June where the Mombasa branch was robbed on a Sunday.
But then the men an editorial in the East African Standard called the choirboy gangsters stand out like the sore thumb of a former altar boy. The editorial, published on August 19, 1999, captures the many names that the six men came to be known by: “lyrical gangsters, the hallelujah hoodlums, the choir-boys, the robber baritones, the sadaka sadists”
No shot was fired during the 3 hour harmonious madness, and the only person hurt was the bank manager who was roughed up a bit. Zero chills were given that day.
 
One Story is Good,
Till Another is Told.

How to Open .webloc files in Windows

How to Open .webloc files in Windows

Don't download and install some sketchy unknown converter .exe program to "convert" it for you.
A .webloc file is a shortcut or bookmark that is created when Apple users send each other bookmarks. (Don't blame them, Apple users don't know any better.)

All you have to do:

• save the file
• If you can see that the file name ends in .webloc:
• just change the .webloc to .txt
• open it
• If you can't see the file extension (.webloc):
• right-click the file
• Open With 
• Notepad  (you might have to select "Choose Program..." first).

Copy the stuff that's in between <string> and </string>, and paste it into the address bar of your web browser.

FYI:  A .webloc file just a simple text file formatted in XML (if you don't know what that means, don't worry about it).