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Your Computer and Cell Phone Are Lying To YouAnt with a story from Dan's Data, which says that the battery meter and connection-strength displays in your portable electronics are lying to you, "and not just when they whisper to you in the night." Quoting: "Mobile phones, and most modern laptops, have signal strength and battery life displays. One or both of these displays has probably been the focus of all of your attention at one time or another. Neither display is actually telling you what you think it's telling you. The signal strength bars on a mobile phone or laptop do, at least, say something about how strong the local signal is. But they don't tell you the ratio between that signal and the inevitable, and often very considerable, noise that accompanies it ..."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 2:00 pm Endgame: Scrabulous Gets Wiped Off FacebookLong outplayed by two Indian brothers, Hasbro finally delivers a massive counter blow to Scrabulous, one of the most loved games on Facebook. Scrabulous fans in North America will see the following message...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:58 pm Photoshop Lightroom 2 released as Adobe's first 64-bit Mac app - Apple Insider
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:49 pm Dell Studio Hybrid Is Lean and Green - PC Magazine
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:47 pm iPhone apps: 1001 and counting - CNNMoney.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:41 pm UK. Texting and data dominate phone useThe latest data on mobile phone use in the UK has revealed a huge spike in text messaging and data-based communications, often at the expense of the conventional phone calls. ITPro reports. "Nearly 1...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:40 pm Canada. Class Action Suits Target Text ChargesTwo of Canada's cellphone giants face possible class action lawsuits in Quebec over controversial plans to charge customers for incoming text messages, reports mediacaster magazine. "The suits claim both...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:31 pm Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba results mixed (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:26 pm Nintendo Leads Lawsuit Against DS Piracy In Japan - Gamasutra
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:23 pm Coral Reef "Glue" May Not Stick Under Climate Change - Discovery Channel
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:09 pm Software Price Gap Between the US and EuropeKensai7 writes "A quick comparison between same versions of mainstream software sold in the USA and the EU markets show a big difference in the respective price tags. If you want to http://store.adobe.com/buy online, let's say, Adobe's Dreamweaver CS3, you'll have to pay $399 if you live in the States, but a whopping E570 (almost $900 in current exchange rates!) if you happen to buy it in Germany. Same story for Microsoft's newest products: Expression Web 2 in America costs only $299 new, but try that in Italy and they will probably ask you no less than E366 ($576!). How can such an abyssal difference be explained? I understand there are some added costs for the localized translated versions, but I also thought the Euro was supposed to be outbuying the dollar. Where's the catch?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:08 pm Forrester report labelled schizo - Inquirer
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:05 pm Beijing’s “Sauna Haze” Won’t Last Through Olympic GamesAuthorities in China said the city’s recent sauna-like weather conditions are not expected the last through the upcoming Summer Olympic games, which begin August 8.However, according to state media reports, organizers are still considering further pollution controls for the Olympic host city. As of Tuesday morning, Beijing’s skies remained grey, but an overnight breeze had dispersed some of the haze that has Olympic organizers concerned that current industry and vehicle restrictions may not be adequate to stem pollution. And officials have considered further pollution controls in addition to those that keep nearly half the city’s 3.3 million cars off the roads and close many of the area’s factories and plants.However, in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the Beijing Meteorological Bureau's climate center director, Guo Wenli, said that historic weather patterns showed that the "sauna" weather conditions of July will not persist throughout the Games."During the Beijing Olympics, the weather won't be the worst compared to the same period historically, and there won't occur the kind of sustained 'sauna fog' of late," Guo told the People’s Daily.The Beijing Meteorological Bureau is forecasting possible showers and light breezes on Tuesday, conditions that should help lighten the haze.Beijing’s chronic pollution includes an pungent mix of vehicle exhaust, construction dust and fumes from factories and power plants. It has been a critical concern for Games organizers.Many athletes have delayed their arrival in Beijing until the last minute to avoid the bad air, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said it may need to reschedule endurance events such as the marathon if pollution is bad to prevent health risks to athletes.Monitors of the city’s pollution reported Grade II air quality on Monday, qualifying it as a "blue sky day" despite the grey haze. Particulate matter was the main pollutant.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:03 pm Happy 50th Birthday NASA! - Times of the Internet
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:03 pm Vortex Fountain Is Perfect For Those Whove Always Wanted A Giant Toilet In Their Front YardBy Andrew Liszewski Now don’t get me wrong. This vortex fountain known as ‘Charybdis’ which is located in Seaham Hall, Sunderland (UK) definitely catches the eye, but it’s oddly...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:01 pm Coral Reef 'Glue' Damaged by Climate ChangeThe cement that binds the skeletons of reef structures is lost under climate change.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:01 pm India Developing US$10 Laptop (PC World)PC World - India is developing a laptop that will cost US$10, for use in higher education.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:00 pm Strap-A-HandleI picked up my first Strap-A-Handle while helping my brother move into his dorm room. Before we got started, I saw these for sale outside his building. It's an adjustable strap rated for...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:00 pm Facebook Shuts Down Scrabulous - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:58 pm Comcast, other providers told they can't interfere with large ... - San Francisco Chronicle
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:58 pm Sony profit down on mobiles, Matsushita up (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:37 pm Red Steel 2 Confirmed To Use Wii MotionPlus Accessory - dBTechno
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:35 pm New Park Space Opens UpIt happens so rarely in NYC that when it does, I always get excited. A whole swath of new park space opened up this past week on the Hudson River Park between Laight Street and Houston Street, just...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:31 pm Animals attack in 'Hail to the Chimp' (AP)AP - The video-game universe is bursting with cuddly animals. Characters like Sonic the Hedgehog, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet, Daxter, Sly Cooper and the entire Pokemon family have built solid careers on a mix of athleticism and adorability. And they're all much cuter than their real-life counterparts.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:30 pm Scientists Use Aerial Photos To Research Ancient TracksResearchers are shooting aerial photos of dinosaur tracks near southern Utah’s Coral Pink Sand Dunes in hopes of learning more about the large animals that left them behind millions of years ago.Scientists crisscrossed the Moccasin Mountain track site shooting photos of fossilized footprints in a specially equipped helicopter.According to Bureau of Land Management paleontologist Alan Titus, it’s the first time a helicopter has been used to take detailed images of the site.The tracks were left nearly 180 million years ago by at least six species of dinosaurs. Some of the species are believed to have three toes, while the others are believed to have five.Scientists are now able to gain a bird’s-eye view of the footprints dotting the 3-acre site. The camera is able to locate tracks as small as a centimeter.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:25 pm American expats caught up in Indian bomb blast inquiryWhen Indian police investigating bomb blasts which killed 42 people traced an email claiming responsibility to a Mumbai apartment, they ordered an immediate raid. But at the address, rather than seizing...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:19 pm Retroactive Telco Immunity Opponents Buying TV AdI Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Whether they're mad at the Republicans for creating the mess, the Democrats for caving in, or both, many are still pissed off over the grant of retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens for no reason. And now some of them are trying to do something about it — they're buying an advertisement on cable TV. While it's not entirely clear what good, if any, this will do given that it's too late, at least it's cheap to participate — they're looking for $6 donations. The ideas is that, if more grass-roots groups do this kind of thing, their 'representatives' won't be able to afford to blow them off as easily."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:19 pm Carbon Emissions Price Tag?Could the government one day put a price tag on carbon emissions? Top U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:16 pm Dear Bob,You caused a lot of discussion in your OtM piece about comments — and that discussion itself — in the comments on WNYC’s blog, in the comments on mine, and in blogs elsewhere —...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:15 pm Cory Doctorow: Filesharing deal will drive swapping undergroundThis month's announcement of a back-room deal between ISPs (internet service providers) and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and reduce the quality of their internet connections...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:10 pm Sirius says completes acquisition of XM SatelliteNEW YORK (Reuters) - Sirius Satellite Radio on Tuesday said it completed its purchase of rival XM Satellite Radio Holding Inc , forming a broadcasting company that competes with...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:04 pm UK tech-czar's ridiculous, fatuous podcast interview -- hilarious gag interviewBecky sez, "FishNChip blog couldn't work out if this podcast with Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, a top British civil servant and the Brown government's technology czar, was a joke or not. It would be funny...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:17 am UK tech-czar's ridiculous, fatuous podcast interview -- hilarious gag interviewBecky sez, "FishNChip blog couldn't work out if this podcast with Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom, a top British civil servant and the Brown government's technology czar, was a joke or not. It would be funny... if it wasn't so true."He talks about transformational government - just listen to his two examples (a 4-year old with HIV offered extra rice pudding a recently bereaved widow who is prompted to pay for her TV license - I kid you not).Link to podcast, Link to FishNChip blog on the podcast (Thanks, Becky!) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:17 am Sans Spiderman, Sony SlumpsWith no substitute for last year's tremendous Spiderman 3 income, and faltering results in its cell division, Sony reports about half the earnings it did a year ago in Q1. It also lowers it full-year profit outlook, blaming the Sony Ericsson joint venture and a pessimistic outlook in electronics.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:08 am GGICO Acquires a Leading Process Equipment Manufacturing Co.GGICO Acquires a Leading Process Equipment Manufacturing Co. Gulf General Investment Co. PSC (GGICO) announced acquisition of Quality International Co.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am INX Announces Contract Win for Data and Telecommunications Infrastructure Project for the New Buffalo Thunder Resort and Cities of Gold CasinoINX Inc., (NASDAQ:INXI) announced today that it has been selected to design and deploy a Cisco unified network platform for the new Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Delivering the Paper, By Way of CellphoneBy Claire Cain Miller The thud of the morning newspaper landing on the front porch may one day be replaced with the beep of a download onto a cellphone. Verve Wireless believes it can save the dying local newspaper in the United States by making it mobile.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Volantis Announces the "Social" StorefrontSocial networking is quickly moving from the desktop to the mobile Web. As people's mobile phones become their primary access point to the Internet, these devices have also become the hub for social networking applications.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Motorola Splits Home and Networks Unit into ThreeMotorola has announced its plans to split its Home and Networks Mobility division into three groups: Broadband Home Solutions, Cellular Networks, and Broadband Access Solutions.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Sify Technologies Selects Redline's Products for Multi-City WiMAX Network in IndiaRedline Communications Group Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am NeXplore Search Tops One Million Unique Visitors in May and JuneNeXplore Corporation (PINKSHEETS: NXPC) today announced that NeXplore Search had more than one million unique visitors in both May and June according to web-analytics company Compete.com.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Japan to Offer More Aid to Africa, Asia Amid Soaring Food PricesText of report in English by Japan's largest news agency Kyodo Tokyo, July 29 Kyodo - Japan decided Tuesday to extend a total of 6.62 billion yen in grant aid to 10 countries in Africa and Asia such as Congo, Liberia and Bangladesh as a relief measure against soaring food prices, the Foreign Ministry said.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am DigitalPost Interactive Launches New Online Photo Editor for Its Digital Media-Sharing PlatformDigitalPost Interactive (OTCBB: DGLP) (www.dglp.com), a leader in the digital media-sharing and social networking space, announced today the launch of Qwik-Edit(SM) -- a new, user-friendly photo-editing solution for its re-brandable digital media-sharing platform.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am PG&E Selects Silver Spring Networks for Smart Grid NetworkingSilver Spring Networks announced today that it has been selected by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to provide advanced networking products and services to serve its 5 million electric customers in California.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am With Cuil, Ex-Google Designer Touts a Search Engine With Added DepthBy Miguel Helft In her two years at Google, Anna Patterson helped design and build some of the pillars of the company's search engine, including its large index of Web pages and some of the formulas it uses for ranking search results.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Xceed Molecular to Launch New Inflammation Xpress Chip(TM)for the Ziplex(R) Automated Gene-Expression Analysis System at Clinical Lab Expo 2008, Booth 2155WASHINGTON and WELLESLEY, Mass., July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Xceed Molecular, a pioneer in the development of cost-effective, easy-to-use gene-expression analysis systems, will launch its new Inflammation Xpress Chip, a pre-configured array for use with the company's Ziplex automated gene-expression analysis system, at the 2008 AACC/ASCLS Clinical Lab Expo (booth 2155).Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Wildlife Survey WelcomedWARWICKSHIRE' S wildlife experts are welcoming a massive survey of creatures and their habitats. Environment secretary Hilary Benn has launched a two-year project to build the most comprehensive picture of wildlife and natural environment the UK has ever seen.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am Government Should Have an Economic Theory - PaperText of editorial by Mirza Baba Motaharinejad headlined: We believe theory is the most necessary requirement published by Iranian newspaper Mardom Salari on 26 July Among the important events of last week was the joint meeting of president with a number of economic and industrial activists.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 11:00 am SAP 2Q profit falls 9 percent despite sales growthSoftware maker SAP said Tuesday its second-quarter profit fell although the company saw strong growth in sales and service revenue.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:49 am CGI expands Q3 2008 Net earnings from continuing operations by 28% fueled by growth in revenue and bookingsStock Market Symbols GIB.A (TSX) GIB (NYSE) Q3 2008 year-over-year highlights from continuing operations: - Revenue of $950.5 million, up 6.5% on a constant currency basis; -...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:30 am Teltronics, Inc. Collaborates With GE Security to Help Improve Communication and Security for Educational FacilitiesTeltronics Cerato(R) IP voice communications platform offers productivity enhancing features, applications and a clear and cost-effective migration path to Voice over Internet...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:30 am Autodesk Vice President Finance Sue Pirri to Present at Pacific Crest Technology Leadership ForumSAN RAFAEL, Calif., July 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- WHAT: Autodesk, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK) today announced that Sue Pirri, vice president finance, willSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:30 am U.S. to pilot Internet travel authorization scheme (Reuters)Reuters - The United States will launch a pilot scheme on Friday which will require travelers covered by its visa waiver programme to get prior Internet authorization before boarding flights to America.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:25 am Uni of Nottingham: Grad students researching terrorism aren't allowed to look at terrorist documents on US anti-terror gov't sitesMike sez, "The University of Nottingham has decided that its students and staff have 'no "right"' to possess terrorism-related materials for the purposes of research, such as al-Qaeda training manuals...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:24 am Uni of Nottingham: Grad students researching terrorism aren't allowed to look at terrorist documents on US anti-terror gov't sitesMike sez, "The University of Nottingham has decided that its students and staff have 'no "right"' to possess terrorism-related materials for the purposes of research, such as al-Qaeda training manuals freely available for download from US Government websites. You may know that one Nottingham postgrad student and a clerk were held under the Terrorism Act for doing just this earlier this year, before being released without charge (though the clerk now faces deportation)- the uni has now made it clear that it fully supports these actions, and says that the student has no reason to possess such material. He's researching Islamic terrorism."The student, Rizwaan Sabir, who is studying Islamic terrorism, said he had downloaded a copy of an al-Qaeda training manual for use in his MA dissertation and PhD application and had forwarded it to the administrator, Hicham Yezza, for printing. After six days in detention, neither was charged.God, what an embarrassment for the poor bastards who spent years getting a degree at University of Nottingham, forevermore known as "The University of Too Stupid to be Believed." Link (Thanks, Mike!) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:24 am Virgin Galactic shows off mothership aircraft (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:22 am RIchard Solo Smart Backup Battery Pack rocks for iPhone 3GAnyone who has picked up an iPhone 3G knows that the battery, while great for a 3G phone, still leaves a lot to be desired. It’s simply no fun when your phone warns you that you have 20% power left...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:22 am Simply Wireless Deploys SMS Messaging Campaigns and Mobile Internet Sites to Drive Customer Acquisition and RetentionWireless retailer to use 2ergo's Via and Swift mobile technology products to power mobile marketing initiatives ARLINGTON, Va., July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Simply WirelessSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:00 am comScore Media Metrix Ranks Plentyoffish.com #1 Dating Site in North America and U.K. by Total VisitsVANCOUVER, Canada, July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest comScore Media Metrix numbers now rank the free dating site Plentyoffish.com as the leading dating site in both...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:00 am Netlist Sets Date for 2008 Second Quarter and Six-Month Results Release and Conference CallIRVINE, Calif., July 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Netlist, Inc. (Nasdaq: NLST) announced today that it will report its financial results for the second quarter and six...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:00 am Mentoring Success Group Launches 'We Mentor Success' Conferences for Small and Medium-Sized BusinessesBusiness experts help business owners find their competitive edge in a difficult economy. DETROIT, July 29 /PRNewswire/ -- Mentoring Success Group LLC announces a ...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:00 am NeXplore Search Tops One Million Unique Visitors in May and JuneNeXplore Marketing Strategies Drive Visitors to New Search Engine FRISCO, Texas, July 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NeXplore Corporation (Pink Sheets: NXPC) today...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:00 am Permabit and Atempo Join Forces to Bring User-Initiated Disk-Based Archiving to Large EnterprisesAtempo Digital Archive Software and Permabit Enterprise Archive Combine to Benefit Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Unix Users CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and PALO ALTO,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 10:00 am Excerpt From Arthur C. Clarke's Last WorkUbuntukitten writes "The Telegraph is running an excerpt from Arthur C. Clark's last work, called 'The Last Theorem.' Fellow writer Frederik Pohl helped out. It's a reassuring chunk of old-fashioned sci-fi, describing an Olympics that's set on the moon. Typically for Clarkian sci-fi, is very much about the practicalities of mounting a Lunar Olympics, rather than any wild fantasy." The excerpt's centerpiece is a trip to the moon that begins with a space elevator ride. The book will be published on Aug. 1.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 9:35 am Oracle Issues Warning Over Dangerous WebLogic Flaw (PC World)PC World - Oracle is scrambling to create an emergency patch for a severe vulnerability in the company's WebLogic server, as exploit code...Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 9:20 am Dad's Biological ClockBy Anonymous SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY THE SOURCE: "Dad'sHidden Influence'by Tina Hesman Saey, in Science News, March 29, 2008. DON'T HAVE BABIES WHEN you're too young, or too old. Avoid alcohol, and watch the coffee. No long hot baths and no drugs or even a single cigarette.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 8:01 am City Condemns BillboardBy Marcus, Samantha The La Crosse Common Council on Thursday voted to seize a billboard on Copeland Avenue after negotiations between a private developer and sign company proved futile.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 8:01 am Hundreds of Vessels Still Stuck By Oil SpillNEW ORLEANS - Several dozen ships and hundreds of barges are waiting to be cleaned before they can leave the area where a massive oil spill closed down part of the Mississippi River at New Orleans, a Coast Guard official said Sunday.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 29 Jul 2008 | 8:01 am Richard Branson unveils his space planeAt an airfield in the Mojave Desert, Branson rolls out the Burt Rutan-designed launch vehicle that is supposed to help take paying passengers into space. ...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 7:00 am Business BriefingINTERNET FCC to bar ISP block of file sharingSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 7:00 am Video Surveillance Tech Detects Abnormal ActivityRepton writes with news of a company, Behavioral Recognition Systems, that has received 16 patents on a new video surveillance application that can convert video images into machine-readable language, and then analyze them for anomalies that suggest suspicious behavior in the camera's field of view. The software can 'recognize' up to 300 objects and establish a baseline of activity. It should go on sale in September. "...the BRS Labs technology will likely create a fair number of false positives, [the CEO] concedes. 'We think a three-to-one ratio of alerts to actual events is what the market will accept,' he says. 'We could be wrong.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 6:50 am Networking site Bebo beams message to Earth-like planetBebo and the TV company behind Wife Swap have teamed up one of the world's experts in interstellar radio communication, Dr Alexander Zaitsev, to beam 500 messages from users into space in a digital time...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 6:47 am BBtv: Multi-millenial Mechanical clocks - Long Now "Mechanicrawl" pt. 1Boing Boing tv guest correspondent Todd Lappin (R) and cameraninja Eddie Codel (L) trek to the Long Now Foundation's first-ever Mechanicrawl event, and bring back tales of early analog computing, fantastic timepieces, and impossibly eccentric mechanical things. First, Todd speaks with the Long Now Foundation's Alexander Rose about a 10,000-year mechanical clock dreamed up by supercomputer designer Danny Hillis. Next, we listen to a prototype chime mechanism that will ring ten bells in a different sequence each day over the next 10,000 years. Brian Eno and Danny Hillis came up with the algorithm, and a team of tinkerers crafted the contraption to tap out time on a series of Tibetan bowl gongs.
Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion, downloadable video, and instructions on subscribing to the daily BBtv video podcast. Todd has a photoset with snapshots from the Mechanicrawl adventures. See also this previous Laughing Squid post. (Special thanks to Karen Marcelo for image shown in video still) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 6:29 am Web Zen: video killed the radio zen
underground bands
Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 5:38 am Virgin Galactic shows off mothership aircraftThe space tourism race marked a milestone Monday as British mogul Sir Richard Branson and American aerospace designer Burt Rutan waved to a crowd from inside the cabin of an exotic jet that will carry...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 5:38 am Swedish radio cops caught in warrantless surveillance scandalDaniel sez, "A mass-surveillance law has almost been passed in the Swedish parliament (it has been passed but needs to be fully granted). We are seeing a huge opposition about this right now and hundreds of blogs and news paper articles are giving it heavy critiscism. The latest news is that the Radio Defense Agency (FRA) are trying to silence a blogger by reporting him to the Justice Chancellor and the police to get him arrested for exposing secret FRA-documents showing that innocent citizens are already being monitored by them (since 12 years ago). The Swedish opposition with the Pirate Party and major bloggers has returned fire by publishing the document on hundreds of blogs and further criticise the actions of FRA."The document describes communications between a Russian company and a Swedish small business owners.Link (Thanks, Daniel!) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:55 am Super Man and the Bugout reading: what if Superman had been a nice Jewish boy from TorontoRoy Trumbull has performed an excellent reading of my short story The Super Man and the Bugout -- a story about Superman as a Jewish boy raised in Toronto's suburbs (Superman's creators being, of course, nice Jewish boys from Toronto!), put out of work by the arrival of benevolent aliens who welcome Earth to the Galactic Federation.“Mama, I’m not a super-villain,” Hershie said for the millionth time. He chased the last of the gravy on his plate with a hunk of dark rye, skirting the shriveled derma left behind from his kishka. Ever since the bugouts had inducted Earth into their Galactic Federation, promising to end war, crime, and corruption, he’d found himself at loose ends. His adoptive Earth-mother, who’d named him Hershie Abromowicz, had talked him into meeting her at her favorite restaurant in the heart of Toronto’s Gaza Strip.MP3 Link Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:54 am Alaska Looks To Volcanos For Geothermal EnergyIddo Genuth writes "Alaskan state officials have recently announced their intention to begin funding the exploration and surveying of Alaska's largest volcanoes in hopes of utilizing these as a source of geothermal energy. They say this volcano could provide enough energy to power thousands of households, and according to some estimates, Alaska's volcanoes and hot springs could supply up to 25% of the state's energy needs."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:05 am Blogger Gorshkov Will Dish Dirt on Russian Politicians — for a PriceIt was a freakishly warm February morning in Moscow, eight days before Russia's 2008 presidential election. Green army trucks packed with bleary-eyed soldiers crawled through the city streets, a sign of a paranoid government mobilizing itself against an election-eve revolution. But Sergey Gorshkov didn't notice. He was hunched in his apartment, frantically trying to fix his Web site. Gorshkov publishes kompromat.ru, a scandal page that has antagonized the ruling elite since 1999 and made him one of his country's top Internet personalities. He doesn't write his own stories but provides links to muckraking reporters whose work would otherwise be overlooked or silenced. Over the years, Gorshkov has posted embarrassing exposè's on some of the most powerful members of the Russian government: He linked to articles accusing Kremlin officials of funneling state money into personal offshore accounts, charging Boris Yeltsin with hiding the existence of an autistic grandson, and alleging that Vladimir Putin ordered politically motivated assassinations as director of the Federal Security Service, or FSB. That kind of indiscretion has won kompromat.ru a loyal monthly audience of more than a million Russian journalists, politicians, business types, and assorted media vultures. But it has also inspired a pattern of government harassment against Gorshkov. Since 2000, police squads have raided his ISP, customs officials have seized his laptops, and FSB thugs have made a number of surprise visits to his apartment. Now the Kremlin was at it again. A half dozen of Russia's largest ISPs — all with government ties — had blocked kompromat.ru. Readers who tried to access the site were redirected to a blank screen, with no explanation or error message. As a result of this sabotage, Gorshkov's readers weren't able to peruse his latest posts in the lead-up to the election, including many items concerning Putin's handpicked successor to the presidency, Dmitri Medvedev — charging him with illegal use of the presidential plane for campaign purposes, or of ritually ego-browsing the morning news for mentions of his name. The trouble from the government couldn't have been a big surprise. Under the Putin regime, Russia's independent media — once run by rival oligarchs who used their newspapers and TV stations to promote their own agendas and fling mud at their foes — had been nationalized or bought out by Kremlin loyalists, their editorial teams gutted and their coverage softened to toe the government line. Around election time, critical political coverage all but ceased. And yet, at least officially, the government welcomed the unfiltered communication that the Internet promised. In China, dissident blogging can get you thrown in prison. In Russia — a petri dish of soft authoritarianism, commercialism, and shady cronyism — the rules are not so clear. Bloggers may be harassed, but Russia does not formally outlaw the online airing of antigovernment views. Indeed, a little more than a week before Gorshkov found his site blocked, Medvedev himself publicly proclaimed the virtues of a free, uncensored Internet. (He even joked about the number of fake Facebook pages set up under his name.) But Gorshkov's crippled Web site suggested that Medvedev's commitment to free speech wasn't as wholehearted as it appeared. His public pronouncements may have sounded encouraging, but in Russia vocal proponents of an independent press have a way of giving in to their own authoritarian impulses. "The government will try to enact some sort of censorship," says Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, a free-speech advocacy group. "That's just the way it is. Our government does not know any other way to act." The ISPs kept their blocks on the site through the election, despite Gorshkov's threat of legal action, attributing the filtering to a technical glitch or denying it outright. On March 2, Medvedev won with 70.2 percent of the vote. The suspiciously healthy turnout rate hit 99 percent in some regions. Four days later, all but one of the ISPs dropped the block on Gorshkov's site. Kompromat.ru was back in business. Gorshkov suggests we meet at a posh Japanese spot around the corner from his palatial apartment in Moscow's priciest neighborhood. Outside the restaurant, there's a row of BMWs, Mercedes, and Porsches. Inside, an after-work crowd has gathered, lounging on shiny black couches, drinking, and ignoring the generic techno blaring from the speakers. Gorshkov, dressed in a worn long-sleeved T-shirt, is thumbing a message on his Motorola phone. He looks like a younger Slavic version of Larry King. He orders a carafe of the house red and a sashimi combo plate. It's a swank scene, especially considering the fate of other famous Russian dissidents — author Alexander Solzhenitsyn got an eight-year stint in the gulag; Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years of hard labor in Siberia. Gorshkov doesn't seem to have sacrificed much, lifestyle-wise, for his work. The best estimates indicate that kompromat.ru brings in the equivalent of nearly $1 million a year. Gorshkov won't confirm those figures, but he values his business at $15 million. "When people read my site, they imagine a person who's angry at everything and everyone, an activist, an idealist. But that's not me. This is just a business," he says between bites of maguro. And a mysterious business at that. The site carries no ads, so where does the money come from? Gorshkov admits to accepting payment to publish some of his items, offering a pay-per-post service to anyone who wants a cheap, untraceable way to smear their opponents. Gorshkov won't discuss details, but his fee is said to run between $600 and $800 per item, depending upon the libel risk, and half of the site's dozen or so daily posts are estimated to be zakazukha, industry slang for paid, "made to order" journalism — although it's impossible to know which half. Gorshkov readily defends the practice as its own form of free speech. "I never take sides," he says. "Besides, the nature of the business is such that when one side of a conflict orders an article, their opponents inevitably respond, usually before the day is out. This way, all sides of the conflict are aired, and objectivity is maintained." The practice may have made Gorshkov rich, but it has not made him loved. Sergey Sokolov, a longtime rival of Gorshkov and editor in chief of FreeLance Bureau, an online investigative journalism magazine, accuses Gorshkov of sacrificing the social contract between him and his readers for the sake of a quick ruble. "His information is not reliable and always needs to be double-checked," Sokolov says. Gorshkov shrugs off the criticism. "A lot of people from every side are mad at me," he says. "That's what I have to live with." Gorshkov came up with the idea for the site in 1999 when Yuri Skuratov, Russia's top prosecutor, was caught in a sex scandal. Skuratov was investigating possible corruption in the Yeltsin administration until a grainy surveillance tape, purportedly showing the prosecutor in bed with two much younger prostitutes, aired on Russian television. The investigation bogged down and was eventually forgotten. Soon, a new word had edged its way into Russia's popular lexicon: kompromat, the growing practice of using smear tactics to settle the country's business, political, and personal disputes. "It is the same as tabloids," says Boris Kagarlitsky, a columnist for the Moscow Times. "There was no celebrity culture, so political rumors and gossip took its place." The country's new appetite for scandal suggested a business opportunity to Gorshkov, a former currency trader. The financial collapse of 1998, the decline of the Yeltsin administration, the looming 2000 presidential election: There was no shortage of grist for calumny. Meanwhile, the dotcom boom had just hit Russia, and Gorshkov couldn't wait to take part. "There were particular kompromat wars between rival factions in various media outlets, but nothing that collected all of it in one place," Gorshkov says. "Gorshkov was very smart. He was one of the first to figure out that you can make money off of something like this," says Vladimir Pribylovsky, a political analyst and famous dissident writer. The timing was perfect. Putin was elected president just months after kompromat.ru was launched, and he quickly set about clamping down on Russia's media policy — bad for free speech, great for Gorshkov. "The greater the government control over the media, the greater the demand for kompromat," Gorshkov says. His big break came in April 2001, after a source handed over an unbelievable scoop: surveillance footage of someone who looked an awful lot like broadcast journalist Yevgeny Kiselev, Russia's most respected news host, involved in an orgy. Kiselev was a Muscovite Walter Cronkite; Gorshkov knew that people would be scandalized when they saw the esteemed anchor in flagrante. The video was an obvious Kremlin leak, an attempt to crush one of the last vestiges of independent television reporting. But Gorshkov had no qualms about distributing it. He cut up the lengthy tape and posted a few of its juiciest segments — no more than 3 megabytes at the largest, so as not to overload his puny server. It didn't help; there were so many hits, the server still crashed. Gorshkov had created a media sensation and established his site as the go-to place for kompromat. Kompromat.ru continues to attract readers, even though it's hardly an objective news source. In Russia, nothing is. "It is a known fact that here, many newspaper articles are written to order," Vladimir Semago, a former deputy in the country's parliament, tells me. "Real reporting existed for a few years in the early '90s; it stopped as soon as journalists started dying because of it." That's why even Gorshkov's harshest critics defend his right to publish. They also laud his decision not to edit items or remove them from his archive, no matter how much pressure he receives. Pribylovsky, who runs anticompromat.ru, an anti-Gorshkov Web site, has been one of Gorshkov's loudest detractors. Still, Pribylovsky says, in a country where most independent newspapers have been taken under Kremlin control and had their archives scrubbed of unfavorable coverage, a site containing an unedited slice of political activities is an extremely valuable resource. "I respect him and would be the first to complain if Gorshkov got shut down," he says. Gorshkov may not have been shuttered yet, but he has been the victim of several attempts. In 2006, two waves of denial-of-service attacks took the Web site offline for two weeks. There was the February 2008 shutdown. And then there are the lawsuits. Some of the biggest names in Russian politics have sued him for defamation: Sergey Mikhailov, the suspected boss of Russia's most powerful Mafia family; Elena Baturina, the wife of Moscow's mayor; and Oleg Deripaska, a metals tycoon and Russia's richest man. "I have about five cases going on at any given time," Gorshkov says. "I've had a total of, maybe not a hundred, but many dozens of lawsuits." Yet Gorshkov continues to publish. Most of the legal actions against him have been thrown out, and the ones that have succeeded have merely compelled him to remove the offending post — the only time he has taken down content. He has mirrored his site on a server located and registered in the US, effectively taking the material out of Russian jurisdiction. "If they have a problem, they can sue me in America," he says with a smile. So far no one has. Gorshkov has also made it harder to launch a DDoS attack on his site by expanding to four servers, each hosted by a different company. The trick makes kompromat.ru more elusive; Gorshkov says it would cost about $2,000 a day to bring him down. Nobody has tried to kill him, either. That's remarkable considering that Gorshkov has lived through a period during which suspicious murders of muckraking journalists were — and still are — all too common. Many attribute Gorshkov's survival to a high-powered protector, some government official or oligarch who needs kompromat.ru to slag his enemies and has put out the word that harming Gorshkov would be akin to taking down a made man. Gorshkov insists that nobody is shielding him — and that his targets haven't attacked him because they know he's the conduit of information, not the writer. He is an equal-opportunity opportunist. In Russia, that's the closest anyone comes to objectivity. Yasha Levine (yasha.levine@gmail.com) is a writer living in Moscow.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:00 am New Harley-Davidson Museum Is Heaven for Hells Angels : The Harley-Davidson is more than a two-wheeled miscreant-hauler; it's one of America's most important indigenous technologies. The 45-degree V-twin engine has remained remarkably unchanged since it was introduced in 1909. Now the Harley has its own museum, which opened on July 12 in Milwaukee, the bike's birthplace. Inside the steel-framed compound, you'll find plenty of antique bikes and memorabilia, including the original outlaw: Serial Number One. There's also a "family tree" that shows how engineers modernized the distinctive two-cylinder engine without sacrificing its signature raw rumble. But confining all that heavy metal thunder indoors would be sacrilege. So Pentagram, the chief design firm on the project, turned 20 acres of industrial land into hog heaven: The three buildings containing galleries, archives, and the obligatory store are arranged around an intersection of 60-foot-wide roads — broad enough for four rows of parking and two traffic lanes, just like at Sturgis — creating an ever-changing exhibit of visitors' bikes. "It's important to have a real museum," Pentagram architect James Biber says, "but also to have a kind of museum on the street." There's car parking as well, but the lots are a bit of a hike from the entrance; this is one stretch of pavement where motorcycles always have the right of way.  : Harley-Davidson has produced more than 400 types of rides in more than a century, but this is the bike that started it all: Serial Number One. Constructed in 1903, it's the very first Harley-Davidson "motorcycle."  : One of the company's most visible cheerleaders is Willie G. Davidson, the grandson of cofounder William A. Davidson. After joining Harley-Davidson in 1963, he helped design the FX Super Glide, which ushered in an era of factory-built motorcycles that had the style of more popular custom motorcycles. Seen here with onlookers and construction workers, he was on hand for the signing ceremony of the final beam of the museum's framework, just before it was hoisted into place. : In early 1969, American Machinery & Foundry purchased the Harley-Davidson company. Despite much investment from AMF, a declining workforce, labor strife, and poor manufacturing decisions led to inferior bikes and disappointing sales. In 1981, on the verge of bankruptcy, AMF sold the company to a group of 13 investors, including Willie G. Davidson. This iconic ad represents the buyback, alerting the world that Harley-Davidson had returned to its roots. : Hard-shell helmets? Stuffy leather outfits? Brakes? Bah. At the turn of the century, real speed racers roared down two-by-fours at more than 100 miles an hour on tracks banked up as high as 60 degrees. : The museum will feature a genuine replica of a board track, complete with classic board track motorcycles planted around it. Don't expect much in the way of racing though — fatalities among riders and spectators signed the sport's death sentence more than 70 years ago. : Customization is at the heart of the Harley-Davidson experience, and this particular bike exemplifies the art. Thirteen feet long, equipped with two Knucklehead engines, and weighing more than 1,000 pounds, the King Kong is Harley-Davidson enthusiast Felix Predko's labor of love. With the initial work requiring 4,000 hours of labor between 1949 and 1952, this engineering marvel finds a home within the museum's hallowed halls. : The Electra Glide, introduced in 1965, is now a staple in the touring line of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. A regular sight on the open road, these long-haulers exemplify the road-hog experience.  : A symbol of connection between Harley-Davidson and its devotees, personalized, engraved rivets will be on permanent display around the museum. A 3-inch rivet will run $250, while the 6-inch version will cost cost $1,500. : Personalized rivets will be on display around the museum grounds. The 3-inch variants will adorn curved steel walls, while the larger 6-inch rivets will be laid in the ground in concrete within a plaza of their own. All rivet owners will be provided with a map, listing the location of their personal rivet. : Nearly 40 years ago, actor Peter Fonda rode a star-spangled red, white, and blue custom chopper on his cross-country trek with Dennis Hopper in the seminal film Easy Rider. Replicas of their iconic bikes will be on display at the museum. : A ground-breaking ceremony as only Harley-Davidson could do it. On June 1, 2006, nine-time AMA Grand National Champion Scott Parker put down the traditional shovel in favor of something with a bit more oomph, ripping through the dirt on an XL 883R Sportster. : Amid all the classic hogs, many hip-shaking fans will flock immediately to a 1956 KH model owned by none other than Elvis Presley. (The museum even has the receipt to prove it!) A full three months before his memorable performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the King appeared with his ride on the cover of The Enthusiast, the hottest motorcycle mag of its time. : Part thoroughfare, part exhibition space, the "parking gardens" at the Harley-Davidson Museum will allow riders to rest their bikes and ogle everyone else's.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:00 am July 29, 1958: Ike Inks Space Law, NASA Born in Wake of Russ Moon1958: President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The plot had thickened months before. Beep … beep … beep … They were steady, almost metronomic, signals coming from a tiny radio beacon orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes aboard an aluminum sphere measuring a mere 22-inches across. In an instant, everything changed. It was Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet news agency Tass announced to a stunned world that the Soviet Union had successfully placed Elementary Satellite 1, known by its diminutive "Sputnik," into an elliptical orbit some 550 miles above a Cold War-wracked planet. American scientists attending a reception at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., that day knew their Russian colleagues were close. With luck, the thinking went, the USSR might launch a satellite sometime in 1958. But the Americans were close, too. Their Vanguard program, run by the Naval Research Laboratory, was beset by cost overruns and various delays, but they were confident that they would be first into space. That illusion was completely shattered October 4, which is remembered as "Sputnik Night." While getting Sputnik into orbit didn't suddenly confer technological supremacy upon the Russians, it was nevertheless a remarkable achievement -- and an enormous propaganda coup. For the moment, at least, communism had trumped capitalism on a major front, and the conceit that America stood unequaled in the technological sphere was shaken. When, less than a month later, the Russians put the larger and much-heavier Sputnik 2 into orbit, with the dog Laika aboard, genuine alarm set in. Now there was talk of a growing technology gap. There were also fears in U.S. military circles that these satellites might be capable of pinpointing targets for a Soviet nuclear-missile attack. The Space Age was dawning badly for the United States. The pressure for a U.S. riposte grew. It only intensified with a failed attempt to launch the Vanguard TV3 satellite in December 1957. It was the Army that finally got the United States off the schneid. Wernher von Braun, a key scientist in Nazi Germany's rocket program, was now working for the U.S. Army, along with a number of his former German colleagues brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. They convinced the Pentagon to set Vanguard aside and bet the ranch on the Army's still-untested Project Explorer. Explorer 1, launched atop a Juno 1 rocket January 31, 1958, was the first American satellite to achieve orbit. Although it was much smaller than Sputnik 2 and only a few pounds heavier than the original Sputnik, Explorer 1 was a badly needed success. It also marked the beginning of the space race in the national consciousness. Explorer 1, and the subsequent launching of Vanguard 1, mitigated, but did not efface, the sting of Sputnik. And it did nothing to stave off a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S. space program. The Eisenhower administration, working with an often-fractious Congress, got nowhere, so Ike (in between tee times, his detractors would say) directed his science adviser, James Killian, to convene a committee and come up with a game plan. The first step was to reinvigorate the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA, a rather geeky and elitist civilian panel that had been around since 1915, by handing it all nonmilitary responsibilities connected to space exploration. As NACA's charter grew, the decision was made to expand it into a full-fledged government agency taking direct responsibility for the nation's space program. President Eisenhower signed the legislation creating NASA on July 29, and it officially became a functioning entity October 1, with T. Keith Glennan as its first administrator. There were 8,000 employees, inherited from NACA; three research laboratories -- Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory -- and an annual budget of $100 million. (That's about $750 million in today's money, compared to a 2008 budget of more than $17 billion.) The agency's mission statement will have faint echoes for Star Trek fans: "To improve life here, to extend life there, to find life beyond."
To mark the 50th anniversary of NASA's birth, Wired.com has created a special package of features:
Source: Various
Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:00 am Gallery: Virgin Galactic Unveils 'White Knight Two' Launch Vehicle : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comMOJAVE, California -- After years of secretive construction, Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic presented the first stage of its commercial launch platform, White Knight Two, today at the Mojave Air and Space Port. After Scaled Composites put the rocket plane Space Ship One (SS1) into suborbital spaceflight twice in 2004, thus winning the Ansari X-Prize, Virgin Galactic placed an order for 12 similar spacecraft capable of carrying six passengers and two crew members into space. Before those ships can get into space, however, they will need a lift up -- which is what White Knight Two will provide. White Knight Two is a dual-hull quad-engine aircraft roughly three times larger than the original White Knight. WK2 employs a different tail construction, using a cruciform instead of the WK's "T" style. The engines and cockpits are also located in different areas compared to the original White Knight. Virgin America flew Wired.com out to the Mojave Air and Space Port in their new plane christened My Other Ride's a Spaceship. We grabbed these photos for your viewing enjoyment. Left: Sir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan hang out of the cockpit windows of White Knight Two.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comA proud Burt Rutan looks over the window of White Knight Two during its unveiling at the Mojave Air and Space Port on Monday morning.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comSir Richard Branson gives an ecstatic thumbs-up during White Knight Two's unveiling Monday.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comVirgin Galactic's new suborbital launch platform sits ready on the tarmac at the Mojave Air and Space Port.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comBuzz Aldrin and his wife, Lois, step onto the tarmac in front of Virgin America's new plane, named My Other Ride's a Spaceship.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comSir Richard Branson hops out of the cockpit door of White Knight Two. Being constructed entirely of carbon fiber and other composites, a typical door is not included.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comRichard Branson and his mother, Eve, officially name the White Knight Two, which bears her name. No photographers were injured during the christening.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comWhite Knight Two's nose art features a scantily clad buxom blonde whom Branson said was modeled after his mother when she was younger.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comOne of the few parts not constructed completely from carbon composite is this Pratt & Whitney PW300 engine.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comInside the wheel well. a hatch was left open providing a glimpse into the internal construction of White Knight Two.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comThe smooth lines of the wheel well show the lack of fasteners that differentiate composite construction from the standard aluminum fuselage most airplanes employ.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comA portion of the carbon fiber composite that the plane is built out of can be seen clearly.
The cruciform tail is one of the differences between White Knight Two and White Knight One, which had a T-shape tail.  : Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.comSir Richard Branson and Burt Rutan sit side by side during the unveiling of White Knight Two at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:00 am FCC will bar Web firms from blocking file sharingWASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission will adopt rules barring Internet service providers such as Comcast Corp. from interfering with their customers' ability to share videos and other online...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 4:00 am Modern LaTeX Replacement?javierzinho writes "For many years I have been using LaTeX to compose scientific documents, but truly I am getting tired of its complexity. You have to install new packages for new features, compatibility issues are everywhere, you need to know commands for everything, table composition is torture, image insertion is an odyssey if you don't have the 'right' format, and you need to be a LaTeX Jedi master to create a new document class. I'm looking for a document processor (not a word processor) that is a viable replacement for LaTeX, possessing all of its advantages — consistency between text and math text, automated cross references, direct PDF creation, etc. — but that is not stuck in the 1980s with the compiler metaphor and weird font technology. An application with visual interface and so on. I've tried Scientific Word and Lyx but both are front-ends for LaTeX. Publicon only produces PDF files by exporting to LaTeX and subsequently using pdflatex. Add-ons for MS-Word are a joke, and webEq is intended for web publishing, not for PDF production. Does anybody know of a decent, scientific-structured document processor that is a modern application?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 2:02 am Online threats materializing faster, study shows (AP)AP - The bad guys on the Internet are narrowing the time frame they need to unleash computer attacks that take advantage of publicly disclosed security holes, new research shows.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:45 am How to Win at the CarnivalCarnies. They're scary and they have a reputation for rigging carnival games. It's only a game and there are some tips to turn the tables and win. Play to your strengths on the sideshow circuit -- you'll win a giant stuffed animal for your date, and maybe even a kiss too.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 29 Jul 2008 | 1:00 am Book: Night Visions: The Art of Urban Exploration Todd Lappin says: Photographer Troy Paiva has a new book out, and it's chock full of superb nighttime photos taken at abandoned military bases, aircraft boneyards, auto junkyards, and other wonderfully desolate places. Troy's book is called Night Visions: The Art of Urban Exploration, and it makes heavy use of his favorite photo technique: Iong-exposure nighttime shots that uses only natural moonlight and simple flashlights to capture ruined night scenes in spooky detail. The pictures in Night Visions look great, and this Friday, August 1, Chronicle Books is throwing a party to celebrate the its release in San Francisco at the 111 Minna Gallery from 7 to 9 pm.Night Visions: The Art of Urban Exploration Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:53 am 'New car smell' becoming less toxic, report says (CNET)CNET - Car interiors and car seats are becoming less toxic, although "new car smell" continues to carry poisons linked to allergies and cancer, according to a report last week by the Ecology Center.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:35 am Sasquatch sighting in Northern OntarioGord says: It's on the CBC's website, so it must be... (dun dun duuuun)... T R U E ! ! !"Two Ontario women say they saw what might have been the legendary sasquatch in northwestern Ontario last week.Berry-pickers report sasquatch sighting in northern Ontario (cbcnews.ca) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:33 am Law prof and cop agree: never ever ever ever ever ever ever talk to the cops about a crime, even if you're innocentIn a brilliant pair of videos, , Prof. James Duane of the Regent University School of Law and Officer George Bruch of the Virginia Beach Police Department present a forceful case for never, ever, ever speaking to the police without your lawyer present. Ever. Never, never, never.
It's a long commitment -- 45 minutes to watch them both -- but boy is it worth it. Might save you 5-10 some day, too.
Eight reasons even the innocent shouldn't talk to the police
(via Waxy)
Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:24 am All about "Eve": Virgin Galactic mothership unveiled. Today was an amazing day out at Mojave Spaceport. Burt Rutan, Sir Richard Branson, and a bevy of space celebs (including Dr. Buzz Aldrin) gathered for the launch of Virgin Galactic's twin-hulled mothership, "Eve," named after Sir Richard's own mom -- who formally christened WhiteKnightTwo with the pop of a champagne bottle. Branson explained that the spaceliner was also named "Eve" because she was conceived as an historic first for humankind. The Boing Boing tv crew was there, and we'll be airing video hijinks later this week. For now... here are a few random iphone snaps, and I twittered until my daggone fingers fell off (first tweet in series, and last tweet in series). Here is coverage from other blog-pals we ran into out there:
(Space-helmet-tip of thanks: Charles Ogilvie and Abby Lunardini) Source: Boing Boing | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:23 am FCC Commissioner Urges, Don't Regulate the InternetBrett Glass writes "In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell makes a case against government regulation of the Internet, opining that 'engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems.' With state governments pressuring ISPs to pull the plug on Usenet, and a proposal now in play for a censored public Internet, McDowell may have a very good point." McDowell is one of the two FCC commissioners who did not vote with the majority to punish Comcast for their BitTorrent throttling.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:12 am Earnings roundup: Amgen, Hartford FinancialAmgen Inc.'s second-quarter profit slipped 7.6 percent as a series of restructuring and other charges further stunted a second quarter already hit by a continued decline in anemia drug sales.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:01 am Movers roundup: Pilgrim's Pride, Micron TechShares of Pilgrim's Pride Corp. , the nation's largest chicken producer, dropped more than 9 percent on Monday after rival meat producer Tyson Foods Inc. saw its quarterly profit plunge 90 percent on the...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 29 Jul 2008 | 12:01 am Oracle touts proof SAP stole software (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Jul 2008 | 11:26 pm Apple Still Has Not Patched the DNS HoleSteve Shockley notes an article up at TidBITS on Apple's unexplained failure to patch the DNS vulnerability that we have been discussing for a few weeks now. "Apple uses the popular Internet Systems Consortium BIND DNS server, which was one of the first tools patched, but Apple has yet to include the fixed version in Mac OS X Server, despite being notified of vulnerability details early in the process and being informed of the coordinated patch release date."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 28 Jul 2008 | 11:17 pm New RIAA Lawsuit Defense Tactic: Admit Liability, Challenge the LawA new defense to a Recording Industry Association of America lawsuit emerged on Monday. The new tactic: Admit guilt and challenge the constitutionality of the Copyright Act. The fines range from $750 to $150,000 per violation for each song. The lawsuit claims the act's fines are excessive.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Jul 2008 | 10:53 pm How Do You Deal With Sensitive Data?imus writes "Just wondering how most IT shops secure sensitive data (customer records). Most centrally managed databases seem to be monitored and maintained very well and IT workers know when they are tampered with or when unauthorized access occurs. But what about employees who do legitimate selects from these databases and then load CSV files and other text files onto their laptops and PDAs? How are companies dealing with situations where the database is relatively secure, but end-use devices contain bits and pieces of sensitive business data, and sometimes whole segments? Does anyone use sensitive data discovery software such as Find_SSNs or Senf or other tools? Once found, how do you deal with it? Do you force encryption, delete it or prevent extracts?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 28 Jul 2008 | 10:32 pm Opposed to Wiretap Amensty? Run a TV Ad for Six BucksGrassroots activists are using a new ad placement system to enable individuals to buy television time for a new ad against telecom immunity legislation.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Jul 2008 | 10:27 pm Secure Your Domain Name Server With OpenDNSYou use Domain Name Servers every time you type an address in your browser, and you probably never think about it. Hackers do. A vulnerability found recently could allow them to take over your DNS. You can hope your internet provider is prepared for the attack, or you can use a service immune to such attacks, like OpenDNS.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Jul 2008 | 9:20 pm Tree Shrew Lives on Nature-Brewed BeerTree shrews can apparently drink anyone under the table, find researchers.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 9:10 pm 'Afroninja' Turns Bungled Stunt Into Big-Screen 'Destiny'When stunt man Mark Hicks blew a back flip, the embarrassing audition video became a bona fide web hit. Now, the Hollywood pro has turned a professional nightmare into a feature film.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Jul 2008 | 9:00 pm Submarines to Plunge to Deepest Lake BottomTwo submarines will plunge more than 5,000 feet to the bottom of Lake Baikal.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 7:34 pm Total Solar Eclipse to Fall on ChinaA rare solar eclipse, known in China as the "sun-eating dragon," will fall again this Friday.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 6:10 pm BLOG: The Debut of Spaceship 2.0From the creators of the first privately developed spaceship comes its commercial cousin.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 6:10 pm Two New Football Helmets Do Battle Against ConcussionsThey may look like standard football helmets — but these skull shields are about as standard as Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Impala. The basic form is there, but everything else has changed. The aim is to cut the 300,000 concussions that players — from Pop Warner to NFL teams — suffer annually. In January, Riddell, the granddaddy of helmet makers, rolled out its Revolution IQ HITS, equipped with sensors and real-time monitoring tech. And Vin Ferrara, a former Harvard QB who endured his share of head knocks, will start selling his air-cushioned Xenith X1 this fall. Hut, hut, hike! Roll over the numbers below to see the helmets' features. 
Illustration: Bryan Christie
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 28 Jul 2008 | 3:00 pm Warp Drive Engine Would Travel Faster Than LightPhysicists outline how to manipulate the fabric of space to accelerate a craft.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 2:43 pm 'Dinosaur Eel' Inspires Body Armor of FutureAn ancient African fish could be the model for light, bomb-proof body armor.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 2:43 pm Supercontinent Pangea Gets Climate RethinkEarth's famous supercontinent Pangea may have been far colder than thought.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Jul 2008 | 1:40 pm
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: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.com