So not only have they gone away from unlimited mobile internet AND increased the prices dramatically, KPN has now also fucked customers by severely limiting the upload speeds. My advice: bail out and move to another provider!
KPN knijpt upload mobiel internet | Webwereld.
This should cost them a lot of customers. People will probably change to other providers which do offer them unlimited mobile internet for a reasonable price. This comes as a response to the Dutch parliament not allowing mobile internet providers to cut off certain services, such as whatsapp, viber and skype from mobile internet.
KPN jaagt mobiele dataverstokers op kosten | Webwereld.
Ultimate Stunts: Not just another racing gameUltimate Stunts is a remake of the famous DOS-game stunts. Racing in Ultimate Stunts involves some really spectacular stunts, like loopings, corkscrews, bridges to jump over, etc., but the best thing is that you can design your own tracks!
The game Ultimate Stunts is not yet finished, but it already has some important improvements compared to the original game. Stunts was an old DOS game with simple CGA/EGA/VGA graphics, but Ultimate Stunts is a modern multiplatform application it works on windows, Linux and several UNIX systems with OpenGL graphics. It also has some new features, like 3D sound and internet multiplaying. And, while Stunts can nowadays be downloaded for free as abandonware e.g. on the XTC site, Ultimate Stunts is completely free software!
via Ultimate Stunts – A free racing game.
An interesting article who’s main premise is that feminists thought being a man was better because they were all over the place in top jobs, but forgot that men were also all over the bottom of society (in jail, being junkies, etc). Now there’s a load of anti-man / men are worse than women literature out because women are comparing themselves to the men at the bottom of the food chain.
Is There Anything Good About Men.
Time cloaking is possible because of a kind of duality between space and time in electromagnetic theory. In particular, the diffraction of a beam of light in space is mathematically equivalent to the temporal propagation of light through a dispersive medium. In other words, diffraction and dispersion are symmetric in spacetime.
That immediately leads to an interesting idea. Just as its easy to make a lens that focuses light in space using diffraction, so it is possible to use dispersion to make a lens that focuses in time.
Such a time-lens can be made using an electro-optic modulator, for example, and has a variety of familiar properties. “This time-lens can, for example, magnify or compress in time,” say Fridman and co.
This magnifying and compressing in time is important.
The trick to building a temporal cloak is to place two time-lenses in series and then send a beam of light through them. The first compresses the light in time while the second decompresses it again.
But this leaves a gap. For short period, there is a kind of hole in time in which any event is unrecorded.
So to an observer, the light coming out of the second time-lens appears undistorted, as if no event has occurred.
In effect, the space between the two lenses is a kind of spatio-temporal cloak that deletes changes that occur in short periods of time.
via First Demonstration of Time Cloaking – Technology Review.
Incredibly these were awarded, despite this technology being in use since the 1990s!
Apple Wins Two Original iPhone Patents Regarding Rotation Heuristics – Patently Apple.
Het Hof geeft preciseringen over de aansprakelijkheid van ondernemingen die op internet een elektronische marktplaats beheren voor de door hun gebruikers gepleegde merkinbreuken De nationale rechter moet deze ondernemingen kunnen gelasten om niet alleen maatregelen te nemen om de inbreuken op de intellectuele-eigendomsrechten te doen eindigen, maar ook om nieuwe inbreuken van die aard te voorkomen eBay exploiteert een wereldwijde elektronische marktplaats op internet waar particulieren en ondernemingen een breed assortiment goederen en diensten kunnen kopen en verkopen.
via Arrest in zaak C-324/09 L’Oréal e.a. / eBay.
There’s a fundamental flaw with fan-and-heatsink cooling systems: no matter how hard the fan blows, a boundary layer of motionless, highly-insulating air remains on the heatsink. You can increase the size of the heatsink and you can blow more air, but ultimately the boundary layer prevents the system from being efficient; it’s simply a physical limitation of fan-and-heatsink cooling systems in specific, and every kind of air-cooled heat exchanger in general, including air conditioning and refrigeration units.
But what if you did away with the fan? What if the heatsink itself rotated? Well, believe it or not, rotating the heat exchanger obliterates the boundary layer, removes the need for a fan, and it’s so efficient that it can operate at low and very quiet speeds.
via The fanless spinning heatsink: more efficient and immune to dust | ExtremeTech.
The Air Force’s fleet of F-22 super-jets has been grounded for more than two months now, but service officials had no details Friday about when the F-22s may fly again or even when engineers could finish the investigation into the fighters’ onboard oxygen systems.
via DoD Buzz AF: No word when F-22s could fly again.
After the F-15 fleet grounding the USAF fleet is looking more and more ramshackle!
The space sim genre is not dead! New stuff does come out, and some of it looks very good indeed.
SpaceSimCentral | Your space and scifi gaming community.
Atlantis and its four astronauts left Earth for the final space shuttle mission, which will cap off an amazing 30-year program of exploration, which launched great observatories, built an International Space Station, and taught us more about how humans can live and work in space.
With the International Space Station flying 220 miles high and east of Christchurch, New Zealand, Atlantis left Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:29 a.m. EDT. There was a slight delay at T-31 seconds while retraction of the Gaseous Oxygen Vent Arm, or “Beanie Cap,” was verified. Atlantis will dock with the space station on Sunday.
via NASA – Space Shuttle.
Over 900 police officers and staff in the UK were subject to internal disciplinary procedures for breaching the Data Protection Act (DPA) over the past three years, the Big Brother Watch revealed.
After putting in a host of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests with forces across the UK, the Big Brother Watched discovered 98 police officers and staff were fired for breaching the Act.
The data also showed 243 received criminal convictions for breaking laws set down by the DPA.
This shows another reason why we should stay away from centralised databases.
via Police database abuse ‘hugely intrusive’ | IT PRO.
As for what kinds of tricks the labels use, well, Frascogna notes “breakage fees” of 20%, which are based on breakage rates for vinyl from half a century ago. That CDs don’t break so much and that digital files don’t break at all, doesn’t matter. The labels still try to get a super high breakage rate that they get to deduct. For them, it’s pure profit. Then there are “uncollected account” withholdings, on the basis that some retailers go bankrupt and don’t pay for the stock they had. The way it’s described here, that’s often just a set number, rather than based on any actual, documented cases of uncollected fees. Next up? “Free goods.” Now, we talk about the importance of free goods all the time. But here it’s used in a different manner. Basically the labels deduct the “cost” of providing reviewers/radio stations/etc. with “free” copies of your album. That money comes straight out of the gross that the royalty is calculated on. The fact that you could just email the mp3 to those folks yourself? Well, pay no attention to that newfangled technology.
Next up, there are “container charges.” That’s for things like the jewel cases and inserts for CDs. Again, the fact that digital music doesn’t have such expenses is pretty much ignored. Also, the fact that all of these expenses get deducted from the artists’ share? That also seems wrong. Even more insane? Apparently the standard “container charge” is an additional 30% off the revenue. Again, in many cases that’s just pure profit for the labels.
Finally, there’s the ever lovely and totally amorphous “reserves.” As Frascogna notes: “no one really knows what reserves entail.” It’s basically a blank check for the record labels to claim they have to keep some of the money themselves for “other stuff,” which is mostly undefined. In this case, some labels simply set a straight percentage, up to 20% more of the gross that artists never get to see as part of their own royalties.
via RIAA Accounting: How To Sell 1 Million Albums And Still Owe $500,000 | Techdirt.
KinectNUI is a Natural User Interface for Windows, built on the Kinect SDK. If you have a Kinect and a modern Windows PC, you should be able to get it to work.
via KinectNUI: Kinect SDK NUI Hack.
Driving distractions, primarily by cellphones and other electronic devices, are associated with up to 25 percent of U.S. car crashes, according to a report released on Thursday.
The study by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), a nonprofit group that works to improve traffic safety, assessed research from more than 350 scientific papers published since 2000.
It showed that drivers are distracted up to half the time and that crashes caused by distractions range from minor damage to fatal injury. Cellphone use raises the risk of crashing, but texting is likely to increase crash risk more than cellphone use.
via Gadgets tied to 25 percent of car crashes: report – Technology & science – Wireless – msnbc.com.
vReveal 3 for Windows is the best solution to manage and fix the videos from your cell phone, HD camcorder, digital camera, or any other video device. It sharpens, it brightens, it twists and twirls and tweaks and steadies your video to crystalline perfection.
On May 12, the Visegrad Group (Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary) announced the formation of a “battlegroup” under the command of Poland. The battlegroup would be in place by 2016 as an independent force and would not be part of NATO command. In addition, starting in 2013, the four countries would begin military exercises together under the auspices of the NATO Response Force.
This is interesting as it expresses the views held in these countries that the European Rapid Reaction Force, NATO and the US are not interested enough in them to defend them. It expresses a fragmentation of European foreign security policy.
via Visegrad: A New European Military Force | STRATFOR.
Preventing fog and steam is simple – just add a small amount of glycerin, or wash with soap and water, and watch your troubles disappear! You can also ensure that all outside ventilation sources in your home are open and flowing, so that moist air can exit.
Streaks on a freshly cleaned window can be incredibly frustrating. Nobody wants to see their hard cleaning work obscured by an unsightly streak! Fortunately, we’re here to help you prevent those streaks, for a see-through shine.
Wash your glass areas with vertical strokes on one side and horizontal strokes on the other. This will allow you to quickly identify which side of the glass surface the streak is on. Then you can return to the window once the streaks have arrived, and easily dispatch them. This will save you plenty of time identifying where those streaks are!
Using a newspaper to wipe your windows is also a great way to prevent streaking. Newspapers won’t leave behind the same residue and film that paper towels do. Using a small amount of cleaner also helps prevent streaking. If you use more cleaner than necessary, streaks will be left behind.
How to Clean Windows: Molly Maid Residential House Cleaning Tips.
I used OpenSSL to create keystore and self-signed cerficiate. Then used this to get developer certificate from apple. With OpenSSL I could then create the iOS certificate which I needed together with my apple provisioning certificate to export to a valid iOS installer file (*.ipa). Hooked up the iPad to my windows machine and installed it through iTunes. Tadaaa!
thanks to: Marcus Graf
For the first time, engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) have now developed a process to create “CIGS” solar cells with inkjet printing technology that allows for precise patterning to reduce raw material waste by 90 percent and significantly lower the cost of producing solar cells with promising, yet expensive compounds.
The researchers focused on chalcopyrite, or “CIGS” – so named for the copper, indium, gallium and selenium elements of which it’s composed – due to its high solar efficiency. A layer of chalcopyrite one or two microns thick has the ability to capture the energy from photons about as efficiently as a 50-micron-thick layer made of silicon.
The researchers were able to create an ink that could print chalcopyrite onto substrates with an inkjet approach, with a power conversion efficiency of about five percent. While this isn’t yet high enough to create a commercially viable solar cell, the researchers say they expect to be able to achieve an efficiency of about 12 percent with continued research.
via Researchers cut waste and lower cost of ‘CIGS’ solar cells using inkjet printing technology.