Don’t know if this will work in Europe, but in the US, a starter gun is considered a weapon. You simply declare you are carrying a weapon at baggage check in, they issue a little label you sign and they stick on the bag, and the bag doesn’t get rifled or checked, because the TSA most definitely doesn’t want to lose weaponry in the airline system.
Pack a Gun to Protect Valuables from Airline Theft or Loss – Security – Lifehacker.
GSM encryption is falling apart at the seams! Using an unoptimised implementation of a proof of concept on a PC, Israeli researchers managed to break the KASUMI system in under 2 hours.
3G GSM encryption cracked in less than two hours — Engadget.
Apparently the inability to live as a 9 foot tall, blue, cat humping alien is driving some people to suicide.
James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.
“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ “
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/11/avatar.movie.blues/index.html
It turns out that not only can they store and send the images they make, if you invert the colours of the scan in photoshop, you get a proper colour image of the body scanned.
US airport body scanners can store and export images • The Register.
This court is legal and runs entirely through the internet, meaning it’s cheaper, fixed price and can dispense justice a whole lot faster than the regular courts.
e-Court – De Eerste Nederlandse Online Rechtbank.
They have applied for a patent to change billboards in Street View to whatever Google advertisers want, instead of the real content of the billboard.
Google Plans to Upgrade Old Billboards in Street View.
It turns out that you can use Google Earth to find whole civilisations in places that people have always thought could never be inhabited by large groups of people. The City of Z or El Dorado has been found this way, it will take archaologists decades to clear it and view it all.
Google Earth helps find El Dorado – Times Online.
This is a collection of css, images, icons, javascripts, form fields etc to easily make iphone websites which have the look and feel of iphone apps.
iWebKit – Make a quality iPhone Website or Webapp.
This foot switch can be programmed for a unique key or multiple key combination.
These speakers screw into light bulb sockets, make light and use wireless connections to play music. No more hassly speaker wiring over the house.
creating a folder with the following name:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
creates a control panel which contains all the other weirdly placed, hard to find control panels.
Understanding Windows 7’s ‘GodMode’ – windows 7 – Gizmodo.
“Scientists and engineers can use the 3D bio printers to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3D,” Murphy said. “Researchers can place liver cells on a preformed scaffold, support kidney cells with a co-printed scaffold, or form adjacent layers of epithelial and stromal soft tissue that grow into a mature tooth
via New Device Prints Human Tissue | LiveScience.
But only if you lightly smack them, and you really should stop smacking them after the age of 6 – 11.
Smacked children more successful later in life, study finds – Telegraph.
This adds a whole slew of possibilities for the camera: self timer, rapid fire, grid overlay, time lapse, press anywhere to take a picture and a bubble level.
Best of all, it’s free!
Gorillacam app for iPhone – Joby.
Dr. Anthony Zuppero has managed to find a way that we could affordably make the push into outer space and get to inhabit the solar system. A physicist, he’s got the whole thing calculated out, this guy is the real deal. He’s written a very very readable book about his undertaking, which you can download for free in PDF form.
How does he do it? He uses a simple steam rocket which can haul immense loads of water (which is everywhere in the solar system – there are loads of near earth objects (comets / asteroids) and moons – even our own) with a massive crew area made out of water. It’s a serously interesting exploration through one man’s career and the troubles he ran into, as well as the triumphs of discovering that we can actually leave our planet, if we want to.
This is a huge Crysis mod which allows you to run vehicles, infantry and of course mechs in the war between the Inner Sphere and the Clans. It’s free and now in open beta. You can configure the mechs any way you like, upgrade them, repair them and you can shoot off parts of them. It’s hugely multiplayer and has different modes of play.
A female scientist was fed up of hearing comments on the parking abilities of women and found that not only do they take 20 seconds longer on average to park, they’re 5% worse at it than men.
Men really ARE better at parking… and that’s a woman professor talking | Mail Online.
Using ECoG (electrocorticography) and overlaying electrodes directly on the surface of the brain, scientists can record reactions when letters are flashed on a screen and then play back the letters when that thought pattern is brought up. It’s around 8 letters per minute, but it’s something.
There’s also a piece where they translate thought patterns into music. An interesting article.
By Thought Alone: Mind Over Keyboard | h+ Magazine.
It turns out that there is a universal human method for doing insurgency, when it comes down to the number of casualties and the timing of events. This pattern is distinct and is based on an approximate power law.
Slashdot Science Story | Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern.
First this story: a guy has been sentenced to probation, where the officer gets to spend the next three years deciding if and who he’s allowed to date
Wis. teen will need legal permission to date girls – wtop.com.
And then we have this story where US soldiers are threatened with jail time if they impregnate or are impregnated.
WTF?
It looks like the Iranians have found out that the video feeds from Predator drones are in some cases unencrypted and can be tapped into using a $26,- program called Skygrabber.
FOXNews.com – Iranian-Backed Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones.
Now it turns out that the ROVER system, a hand held video system for infantry, also recieves unencrypted video from all kinds of airborne sources, from U2’s to Harriers, Tornado’s, F-15’s, F-16’s, etc. And can be tapped in the same way.
Now this is nothing new – some guy was tapping into unencrypted military satellite feeds during the Iraqi wars – and is due in part to bandwidth limitations: the militaries are huge bandwidth hogs and there just isn’t enough to go around for all the tasks they’d like to use, let alone if it was all encrypted.
The question is, can Skygrabber tap targetted drones or is it a haphazard affair?
This mouse has gold plating, swarovski crystals, leather covering, hand stitching and works over wifi – for only $60,-!
GIGABYTE – Product – PC Peripherals – Mouse – Products – GM-M7800S.