Showing unbelievable balls by MS, incredible incompetency by the US Patent Office, and why software patents are such a manifestly bad idea, MS has managed to patent a method of privilege escalation commonly known among almost all *NIX users since almost the inception of *NIX as sudo.
Groklaw – Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!.
This article is from a facebook advertiser, who explains how to make lots of money using false adverts, getting your email address, telephone number, or getting you to download a toolbar using less than exactly honest means.
How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession.
8 graphics outputs on one card? That’s insane!
Matrox Graphics, the leading manufacturer of specialized graphics solutions, today announced the launch of the Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 Octal graphics card, capable of supporting eight DisplayPort or DVI Single-Link outputs from a single workstation. The Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 offers 2GB of memory, resolutions up to 2560×1600 per output, and advanced desktop management features—such as independent or stretched desktop modes
via Matrox Announces World’s First Single-Slot Octal Graphics Card – HotHardware.
Finally an alternative for the crutch! The freedom leg (crummy name) offloads your weight onto its’ structure allowing you to walk vaguely like a normal human whilst not having to kill off the use of an arm.
The Audeo captures electronic signals between the brain and vocal cords and synthesizes clear, spoken words
This has obvious implications for people who can’t speak, but also military, civil and commercial applications: be able to converse over long distances silently without using your mouth.
It still has teething problems, such as it takes a few days to learn to use and it’s about 5 times slower than normal speech, but still…
via Invention Awards: A Real-Life Babel Fish For the Speaking Impaired | Popular Science.
They’ve managed to grow full penises and implant them in rabbits. The peni were fully functional and the implanted rabbits seemed to be more horny than non-implanted rabbits, presumably because they needed to check their new equipment worked.
They’re expecting to be able to use this technique for human useage.
Engineered Rabbit Penises Raise Human Hopes | Wired Science | Wired.com.
Web applications have evolved from simple HTML pages into rich, interactive applications that provide a great user experience. Today’s web apps pose a challenge for developers, however: how do you create and maintain efficient JavaScript code that downloads quickly and works across different browsers?
The Closure tools help developers to build rich web applications with JavaScript that is both powerful and efficient. The Closure tools include:
A JavaScript optimizer
The Closure Compiler compiles JavaScript into compact, high-performance code. The compiler removes dead code and rewrites and minimizes what’s left so that it downloads and runs quickly. It also also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript pitfalls. These checks and optimizations help you write apps that are less buggy and easier to maintain. You can use the compiler with Closure Inspector, a Firebug extension that makes debugging the obfuscated code almost as easy as debugging the human-readable source.
A comprehensive JavaScript library
The Closure Library is a broad, well-tested, modular, and cross-browser JavaScript library. You can pull just what you need from a large set of reusable UI widgets and controls, and from lower-level utilities for DOM manipulation, server communication, animation, data structures, unit testing, rich-text editing, and more.
The Closure Library is server-agnostic, and is intended for use with the Closure Compiler.
An easy templating system for both Java & JavaScript
Closure Templates simplify the task of dynamically generating HTML. They have a simple syntax that is natural for programmers. In contrast to traditional templating systems, in which you use one big template per page, you can think of Closure Templates as small components that you compose to form your user interface.
Closure Templates are implemented for both JavaScript and Java, so that you can use the same templates on both the server and client side. For the client side, Closure Templates are precompiled into efficient JavaScript.
via Closure Tools – Google Code.
DTN (Delayed-Tolerant Networking) was invented to allow packets with huge lags to be sent and received – this is especially important when sending packets to, say, Mars, but is also very useful in mobile environments (where packet delays when changing base stations sometimes cause a drop from the network). Android incorporates it and satellite based Cisco routers will be testing it for use here on earth.
Buitenaards net-protocol komt naar Aarde | Webwereld.
Not only can you move this hand, you can feel pressure in the fingertips too!
Swedish cyborg gets haptic hand • The Register.
Apparently these batteries last around twice as long as other rechargeable batteries and aren’t as insanely expensive.
PowerGenix NiZn rechargeable AA batteries: finally, some cells worth buying.
Turns out that there is malware out there that downloads kiddie porn to your PC without you knowing – until the police pay you a friendly visit. Fortunately the download rate is something like 40 sites per minute, which is humanly impossible, but try explaining that away!
AP IMPACT: Framed for child porn — by a PC virus by AP: Yahoo! Tech.
This is a very comprehensive flight test review of the Rafale.
FLIGHT TEST: Dassault Rafale – Rampant Rafale.
Epic Games has released the Unreal engine for free! You can develop your own game using the Unreal engine and do with it whatever you like. This should cut down massively on game development costs and because it’s such a huge platform, should give you loads of possibilities.
UDK – Unreal Development Kit – Epic Games.
The U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) recently demonstrated autonomous operations by multiple “swarms” of unmanned air and ground vehicles, unattended ground sensors, video cameras and other devices linked together in an intelligent network powered by EdgeFrontier platform technologies from Augusta Systems, Inc.
via NAVAIR And Augusta Demo Operations Of Multiple Swarms Of UAVs And Sensors.
Basically using one operator to control a fleet of aircraft.
The RAF did tests on swarm UAV operations from an airborne controller in a Tornado in 2007 using QinetiQ technology called Autonomy
I wonder if they were using the fluid dynamics model to control these swarms?
An interesting article – if you have bank customer information, which you’ve stolen from a bank, governments will pay you for that information.
If you’re a spy you’d be shot for it. It’s not right that the Dutch government is using tax payers money on criminally attained information to find people who have foreign cash assets. In a court of law, evidence obtained this way is also not allowed and for good reason.
Booming business, steal and sell to governments « Frederik Van Lierde.
Any car built this century has an OBDII interface. This allows mechanics to plug in their laptop and get real time engine data. Lots of information about the running of the car. Nowadays there are quite a few USB / Bluetooth OBD-II connectors, which allow streaming of this data to your laptop, Garmin navigation system or iPod / iPhone.
PLX Devices Inc. sells the PLX Logger Software, as well as devices to show the data on.
ODBCOM has software going for only $85,-
Scantool sells software as well as displays. The software goes for $120,-
Its dashcommand software ($40) allows you to create custom skins and settings for your own digital dashboard
Auterra has the DynoScan Windows software going – including a google earth interace
It also sells a display unit
Then there’s PCMScan by Palmer
All these tools have different featuresets and support different cars…
They are on now, and the first teams are already succesful, being able to climb 899m at 3.9 m/s!
The game is to get a robot up a line being held by a helicopter in flight. The robot is powered by just a laser beam.
Japan is committed, now NASA has 3 teams qualified to try to get their laser powered robot to climb a cable hanging from a helicopter one km in the air.
Elevator to space? They’re really trying :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Nation.
This means you can use your Pre outside the O2 network by using a special SIM card produced by Rebel.
GSM Palm Pre unlocked with a little Rebel assistance.
This article explores why computers can’t do floating point maths, which is what makes Excel and all those online calculators such lousy mathematicians – basically because computers are binary, they can’t calculate anything after a decimal point, so the workaround is to put the number including the decimal point in a register of a certain size (say 32 bits) and reserve a few parts of the register for the decimal. Should the number you need to calculate become too big for the register, you run into trouble with rounding errors, which can compound. It then shows how nasty compound errors can become by citing the example of why a Patriot missle battery missed a Scud attack, resulting in the deaths of 24 people.
Why computers suck at maths | News | TechRadar UK.
DTIC Online Access Controlled is the central facility for the acquisition, storage, retrieval and dissemination of scientific and technical information supporting the Research and Engineering needs of the Department of Defense. Maintained by the Defense Technical Information Center DTIC, a recognized leader in information and knowledge management. This site provides access to DTIC’s collections, online subscriptions, R&E Resources and more.
via DTIC Logon.
Fantastic – this guy port scans the T-Mobile range and finds the jailbroken iphones on the network, then SSH’s in using the default password and blips a message to the iphone telling the user the iphone has been hacked. Users can find out how to close the hole by visiting a website and paying EUR. 5,- using Paypal. He states that users don’t have to pay and he won’t do anything bad to them, so it isn’t exactly ransom.
What’s the hole? Most idiots who jailbreak fail to change the default root password. Duh!
Terraherz waves, used to make x-ray type machines that can look through clothes and walls and more are also being deployed in airport scanners that look through your clothes. It turns out that under certain circumstances, they can resonate with your DNA, thus destroying it. Lovely.
Slashdot Science Story | How Terahertz Waves Tear Apart DNA.
The Kor-fx plugs into your audio jack, drapes around your shoulders and makes gaming and movie watching more immersive by vibrating directly into your chest cavity. You can tell where sounds are coming from more accurately and you can play with lower volume levels.
A Physics Rebel Shakes Up the Video Game World, Literally | Xconomy.