`What high-tech product advances the fastest? It’s probably the hard drive. The capacity doubles easily every two years and sometimes every year, faster even than the chip progress described by Moore’s Law. The first drives took up storage closets. Now, a 5GB drive can fit in a phone. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, which has made drives for years and also now owns IBM’s drive division, recently collected pictures from hard drive history and made a calendar. Here are some highlights.’
`The USS Ronald Reagan can single-handedly take on a nation’s armed forces but met its match in Moreton Bay’s jellyfish.
The slimy invertebrates were being sucked into the 97,000 tonne ship at such a rate generators were constantly switched over and local fire crews placed on stand-by as the creatures disabled full on-board capacities. [..]
The world’s largest aircraft carrier was due to leave Brisbane at 8am today after the 6000 crew enjoyed five days of shore leave.
The jellyfish have exposed the giant ship’s weakness, a humble button, screw or piece of litter can bring the 332-metre behemoth to a standstill. ‘
`The USA based mobile operator, Cingular Wireless has managed to get a patent on the concept of using emoticon on mobile phones. While the aim of the patent is to enable the displaying of MSN style graphics on handsets, they also managed to patent the delivery of text based emoticon – so presumably sending :) via an SMS – if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.’
`In the beginning…
…there was light. And that light was the fuel-propelled explosion of a fighter plane slicing right through a US carrier, which was forced to make an emergency landing on Chinese ground. And following on from the untimely demise of the (unfortunately named) Chinese pilot Wang, due to his dubious collision with an American plane that, as one American Hacker so eloquently put it, had all the agility of “A flying dildo”, so began a “World Hacker War” that has been somewhat lost to the mists of time. I’m looking to put that right.’
`West Virginia, which has one of the nation’s worst obesity problems, is expanding a project that uses a video game to boost students’ physical activity.
All of the state’s 157 middle schools are expecting to get the video game “Dance Dance Revolution,” and officials hope to put it in all 753 public schools within three years. A pilot project began in 20 schools last spring.’
`One of America’s most experienced astronauts has denounced the space shuttle as a deathtrap and accused US space officials of stifling all concerns raised about its safety. [..]
Veteran astronaut Mike Mullane’s outburst therefore comes at a deeply embarrassing time for the Nasa. Apart from dealing with the Challenger anniversary, it is now struggling to save its remaining space shuttles so they can complete the international space station.’
`Here’s a question for you: what have the Nazi wartime test facility at Peenemunde and the Australian city of Perth got in common? Well, the first thing (and just about the only thing, truth be told) which springs to mind is that they are both next to large bodies of water. This is useful if you’re going to test things which might go bang. Like V-2 rockets and – wait for it – flying cars’
`We hope you enjoy J-Track 3-D. It should appear in its own window and begin loading a database of over 500 satellites.
What you will see (assuming your system supports this JAVA applet) is a plot in 3-dimensions showing the position of these satellites. Be sure to try the “Satellite” pull-down menu to choose which satellite you wish to view.’
Lots of photos of a computer built out of relays.
`A typical morning in the year 2001: You wake up, scan the custom newspaper that’s spilling from your fax, walk into the living room. There you speak to a giant screen on the wall, part of which instantly becomes a high-quality TV monitor. When you leave for work, you carry a smart wallet, a computer the size of a credit card. When you come home, you slip on special eyeglasses and stroll through a completely artificial world.
Incredible, but all very possible. “In the next 11 years, you’ll see incredible breakthroughs in the home,” says Robert Simon, director of Lotus West, the West Coast R & D center of Lotus Development, maker of 1-2-3.’
`In this tutorial you will create a website payment gateway for content. In this example we will assume that you are selling access to a portion of a website. We will create a database to hold our login information and the payment data that Paypal returns. We will cover activation of an account within a very small system, which is a trimmed down example. To keep this tutorial brief we will not cover Paypal subscriptions or auction payments.’
One day I might start charging for access to those biphallic pictures that everyone seems to love so much. Heh. :)
`Television cricket and tennis coverage is making a lasting impression on plasma screens.
The logos used by Channel 7 and Channel 9 during long days of sporting action are burning themselves into the delicate digital monitors.
With the hi-tech TVs costing thousands of dollars, some owners have threatened legal action saying their screens have been ruined.’
`I decided this weekend to try and quiten my PC by following some other members lead and going down the water cooling road. The fans on my PC were really starting to drive me mad
The first thing that I did was to remove all the fans. The one on the processor and graphics card were no problem but the one in the power unit was a bugger to get out.
The most difficult part was sealing all the ventilitation openings in the PC case with silicon. I also put silicon all around the joints on the PC case. The smell of silicon was dreadful but when my wife complained I told her to be patent as it will be worth it when we have a completely silent PC.
Because I had completely sealed the PC case the only opening near top was the DVD drive. So I opened that and put the small hose I had purchased specially for the job into the DVD drive as far as it would go. With what I can only describe as great excitement and anticipation, I turned on the water. [..]’
Hilarious. :)
`The warhead of a long-range missile test-fired by North Korea was found in the U.S. state of Alaska, a report to the National Assembly revealed yesterday.
“According to a U.S. document, the last piece of a missile warhead fired by North Korea was found in Alaska,” former Japanese foreign minister Taro Nakayama was quoted as saying in the report. “Washington, as well as Tokyo, has so far underrated Pyongyang’s missile capabilities.”‘
‘Last September, the 23rd to be exact, I got a speeding ticket. 47 m.p.h. in a 30 m.p.h. zone, in an area well known for busting speeders. Yesterday, I went to court for it. I won, and by saying that I won, I mean I won. This isn’t plead down to a lesser charge, cited for equipment failure, or something else. This is winning, as in ‘dismissed without prejudice,’ which is what it says on the findings sheet given to me when it was all said and done. No fine, no points, just a little time spent and six bucks for parking at the courthouse.
Want to know how? Read on�’
`Since the first rumors of an Apple switch to Intel, everyone has been wondering about the potential speed of Intel-based Macs. Last week’s announcement of the first shipping Intel-based Macs brought with it the promise of a major speed boost: Apple’s Web pages suggest that the new iMac, powered by the Intel Core Duo processor, is twice as fast as its G5 predecessor.
Macworld Lab’s tests do show that the new Intel-based iMac is faster than the iMac G5 when running native applications. However, we found that those improvements are generally much less than what Apple claims is a 2x improvement in speed.’
`BellSouth and Verizon have been trying to force big Web sites to pay extortion-type fees if the sites want adequate bandwidth, with Google a prime target. But Google has news for them: It won’t pay.
Google told Networking Pipeline’s Paul Kapustka in no uncertain terms that it won’t give in to the cyberextortion. And despite reports to the contrary, Google says, it isn’t talking with any carriers about the issue.
Google’s Barry Schnitt told Paul in an email: “Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations.”‘
`Iceland has energy to spare, and the small country has found a cutting-edge way to reduce its oil dependency. Volcanoes formed the island nation out of ash and lava, and molten rock heats huge underground lakes to the boiling point.
The hot water — energy sizzling beneath the surface — is piped into cities and stored in giant tanks, providing heat for homes, businesses and even swimming pools.
The volcanoes melted ice, which formed rivers. The water runs through turbines, providing virtually all the country’s electricity.
Iceland wants to make a full conversion and plans to modify its cars, buses and trucks to run on renewable energy — with no dependence on oil.’
`It turns out the officers’ in-car computers interfere with Dunkin’ Donuts computer system. Police using the drive-through have to disconnect their computer modems to avoid clashing with the restaurants’ system.
That’s not the only problem with the city’s police computer system, says Sergeant Eliezer Rivera. Rivera says the network is spotty and only as fast as a dial-up connection.’
This is unacceptable. How can people expect police to diligently and efficiently protect the community without donuts? Crazy.
‘Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic.
Instead of letting the government waste tax money by going through complicated procedures to get user and search data from Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves or Google, users of Patriot Search make sure their queries end up right where they belong — in the databases of the government and its various agencies.’
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
`Microsoft has issued a security Relevant Products/Services from Microsoft patch for it’s as-yet-unreleased operating system, Windows Vista. The patch, issued over the weekend, repairs the same graphics-rendering flaw discovered in Windows XP late last month. [..]
Microsoft issued the patch for the Vista beta with a warning that the new operating system is vulnerable to the same remote-code execution flaw found in XP.’
Broken before it’s even released. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from Microsoft. Good job, Bill. :)
`Today, 19 January is the 20th anniversary for the appearance of the first PC virus. Brain, a boot sector virus, was let loose in January 1986 and spread via infected floppy disks.
This virus is thought to have originated in Pakistan and at the time there were suspicions that it was created as a way to promote a company called Brain Computer Services, as its name and address would appear inside of the virus.’
`The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google Inc. to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases. [..]
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for one million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search engine opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government’s effort “vigorously.”‘
`Oval Office
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.
There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.
What do you want to do now?
> INVADE IRAQ
You are not able to do that, yet.
> LOOK MIRROR
Self-reflection is not your strong suit.
> PET SEAL
It’s not that kind of seal.’
`Windows has encountered and unknown error.
The error is unknown because the guy who wrote this part of the code quit a while back and he was like really really smart and the rest of us are not really sure how this works or what to do.
BTW, if you are that guy, please give us a call and let us know what to do.’
`A 16-year-old boy invented a hamster-powered mobile phone charger as part of his GCSE science project. [..]
“I thought the wheel could be made to do something useful so I connected a system of gears and a turbine,” he said.
“Every two minutes Elvis spends on his wheel gives me about thirty minutes talk time on my phone.”
The teenage inventor was given a C for his project and has been awarded a D overall for the course.’
`Darren Brothers reports that Alex Polyakov, the target of his Kick a Spammer in the Nuts Daily retaliatory campaign, has cried uncle.
Brothers says he got a call early this morning from Polyakov. [..] On the tape, an excited Polyakov complains that Brothers’ “Refi Retaliator” program is “killing my business.”
“How much money do I have to pay you? Surely we can work out something together!” says Polyakov.’
`State investigators have stumbled onto a basement office in the West Virginia Capitol outfitted with computers, video and audio gear, and software used to pirate movies and music recordings, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.
“Specifically, one hard drive contained approximately 40 full-length motion videos,” state Chief Technology Officer Kyle Schafer said in the Jan. 5 memo to Administration Secretary Robert Ferguson. “Two other hard drives contained over 3,500 MP3 music files consuming more than 14 [gigabytes] of hard drive space.”
Hundreds of blank DVDs, CDs and jacket covers were also found, as was software “commonly used to crack header codes on copyrighted materials such as movies and music to allow duplication,” Schafer’s memo said.’
`A big brown cockroach crawls across the table in the laboratory of Japan’s most prestigious university. The researcher eyes it nervously, but he doesn’t go for the bug spray. He grabs the remote. This is no ordinary under-the-refrigerator type bug. This roach has been surgically implanted with a micro-robotic backpack that allows researchers to control its movements. This is Robo-roach.
Unfortunately spammers are emailing the roaches when they broadcast to cell phones. “We had an incident last week where we sent a roach into an duct to test for an air leak, when we asked the roach to turn right, it responded by asking for our email addresses and offered to send us viagra in return.” said Assistant Professor Isao Shimoyama, head of the bio-robot research team at Tokyo University.’
`Lightbulb explores two phenomena I find interesting, the stabilization of unstable systems using feedback, and wireless power transmission. Feedback systems often levitate objects, stabilize inverted pendulums, and the like. Wireless power transmission has been around since Tesla’s invention a century ago, although it is still not widely utilized. I wanted to explore these effects together.’
