‘A 75 year old woman from Karlstad in central Sweden has been thrust into the IT history books – with the world’s fastest internet connection.
Sigbritt Löthberg’s home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, many thousands of times faster than the average residential link and the first time ever that a home user has experienced such a high speed.
But Sigbritt, who had never had a computer until now, is no ordinary 75 year old. She is the mother of Swedish internet legend Peter Löthberg who, along with Karlstad Stadsnät, the local council’s network arm, has arranged the connection.’
‘At my store, searching and copying files was not a common practice at all. We were the good guys of the district. One day, however, a gorgeous woman walked in with her computer complaining of her PC locking up when she went to use her webcam. She refused to give us her website so we knew something was up. She authorized us to do a tune-up to remove unneeded files and update her to SP2. During the cleanup process, we saw that her Norton Protected Recycle Bin was consuming 12gigs of files. [..]
So how about that? Not only did the techs steal porn from a customer…they forfeited the revenue from a new computer AND from an on-site visit for the sole purpose of getting more porn.’
‘The virtual communities created by online games have provided us with a new medium for social interaction and communication. Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface. The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.’
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‘More than 300 high definition CCTV cameras have been placed in potential terrorist targets in the lead-up to Sydney’s APEC Summit, acting Premier John Watkins says.
The new cameras bring to 6400 the total number of cameras watching people using buses, trains and ferries.
The cameras, 200 of which use cutting-edge facial recognition technology, have been installed across the city in buses, ferry and train stations.
“The technology which includes live streaming to large LCD displays will also prove a strong deterrent to common criminals and thugs,” Mr Watkins told reporters today.’
‘A San Francisco company said Friday it plans to build the world’s largest solar power farm near Fresno, California.
The 80-megawatt farm is to occupy as much as 640 acres (260 hectares) and upon completion in 2011 will be 17 times the size of the largest U.S. solar farm, said Cleantech America LLC, a privately held 2-year-old company.
The farm will also be about seven times the size of the world’s biggest plant and double the largest planned farm, both in Germany.
Bill Barnes, CEO of Cleantech, said the scale of the Kings River Conservation District Community Choice Solar Farm will change renewable energy and make California the global leader for huge solar projects and replace Germany as the solar energy hub of the world.’
‘Optus will release new broadband/phone bundles this week, but will make a dramatic shift in the way it counts broadband usage.
According to Optus sources, the new “Optus Fusion Plans” will now count uploaded data as well as downloaded data, which can significantly reduce value for money. Optus’ existing broadband plans (with free uploads) will still be available for those that want them. [..]
Most ISPs do not count upload data, as it typically doesn’t cost them anything. This is because ISPs purchase bandwidth pipes that are capable of the same speed in both directions. Traditionally, download usage always exceeds upload usage, making upload usage irrelevant to the buying equation.’
‘An engineering student at UNC Charlotte was caught with a device made to block police photo radar. He used a switchable electric window glazing that turned his car license plates to gray at a touch of a button.
The student’s job caused him to work late at a local restaurant. Having to sit at a near by traffic light for what he considered to long made him come up with the idea to make a device to allow him to go through the red light with out the photo radar getting a shot of his plates.
He said he ordered the glass cut to the shape of his plates and wired a switch to his dash so he could darken his plates before going through the red light. After weeks of getting photos of the same car with no visible plates local police waited for him at his usual red light. With in 2 hours they caught him coming home from work.’
‘Start by addressing the envelope below then write a letter to a friend or relative.
We will print, envelope, stamp, and send your letter via regular U.S. postal mail 100% free of charge. You pay nothing!’
If only I knew someone in the US to send a letter to.
‘Authorities tracked down a 4-year-old girl who called 911 nearly 300 times last month by offering to deliver McDonald’s to her suburban Chicago apartment.
Unbeknownst to her mother, the girl used a deactivated cell phone to call dispatchers 287 times in June–sometimes as often as 20 times a shift.
Dispatchers heard the child’s voice but could only track the phone’s signal to the apartment complex.
So authorities used a ruse to pinpoint her.
“We asked (the caller) what she wanted. She said she wanted McDonald’s,” said Steve Cordes, executive director of QuadCom’s emergency center, which covers Carpentersville.
“We talked with her and we convinced her if she told us where she lives, we would bring her McDonald’s,” he said. “She finally gave us her address. So we sent the police over–with no McDonald’s.”‘
‘Microsoft said on Thursday it expects to spend more than $US1 billion to repair widespread hardware problems in its Xbox 360 video game console after a large number of them broke down.
Microsoft said it would extend the warranty on the Xbox 360 to three years after too many of the consoles succumbed to “general hardware failure,” but the company provided few other details about the extent of the problems.
“We don’t think we’ve been getting the job done,” said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, which also makes the Zune digital music player. “In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for our liking.”‘
‘This Friday, it became known that the Swedish Police Board will shut down The Pirate Bay, the popular file sharing site, by classifying it as a child pornography site in the blocklist that Swedish Internet Providers respect. Some time next week, an update to the blacklist will include The Pirate Bay.
This means that anyone from Sweden visiting the well-known file sharing site The Pirate Bay will be greeted by a block page from the Police Board saying they’re not allowed to visit child pornography sites.
“This is a devastatingly ignorant abuse of the trust relationship between the Internet world and the Police that was created in order to stop child pornography”, says Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Pirate Party. “Once given the means to shut down unwanted sites, the Police uses the filter to shut down the Pirate Bay after the failed attempt last year. And just like last year, through abuse of procedure.”‘
‘In a fairly radical departure from the principles that normally govern hydroelectric power generation, Austrian engineer Franz Zotlöterer has constructed a low-head power plant that makes use of the kinetic energy inherent in an artificially induced vortex. The water’s vortex energy is collected by a slow moving, large-surface water wheel, making the power station transparent to fish – there are no large pressure differences built up, as happens in normal turbines.’
‘A political battle is raging in Russian cyberspace. Opposition parties and independent media say murky forces have committed vast resources to hacking and crippling their Web sites in attacks similar to those that hit tech-savvy Estonia as the Baltic nation sparred with Russia over a Soviet war memorial.
While they offer no proof, the groups all point the finger at the Kremlin, calling the electronic siege an attempt to stifle Russia’s last source of free, unfiltered information.
The victims, who range from liberal democrats to ultranationalists, allege their hacker adversaries hope to harass the opposition with the approach of parliamentary elections in December and presidential elections in next March.
Some independent experts agree.’
Followup to Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia.
‘Pink Floyd fans who may have thought that they had bought their last copy of The Dark Side of the Moon are helping to make the landmark album a best seller again–this time at Apple’s iTunes.
The reason appears to be its availability in a new audio format–yes, again.
Thanks to generations of music fans wearing out copies of the album on LPs, 8-track tapes and cassette tapes, Dark Side has sold more 35 million copies worldwide since it was released in 1973 and has spent more than 1,550 weeks as one of Billboard’s Top 200 best-selling albums–that’s about 30 years. [..]
Now the album is climbing the charts again, thanks to the unprotected 256kbps AAC version available through Apple’s iTunes Plus. Since Apple’s DRM-free music experiment with EMI was launched in May, sales of Dark Side have gone up more than 270 percent.’
‘A young man was admitted from prison to a psychiatric facility after reports that he had been acting in a bizarre manner. He had been arrested for stealing motor vehicles and assaults with weapons. At interview he was found to be experiencing the delusion that he was a player inside a computer game (adult-certificate game, widely available) in which points are scored for stealing cars, killing assailants and avoiding police vehicles. Psychotic symptoms had emerged slowly over two years. His family had noticed him becoming increasingly withdrawn and isolated from social activities. He developed delusions that strangers were planning to kill him and also experienced auditory hallucinations, constantly hearing an abusive and derogatory voice. Previously a computer enthusiast, he began to play computer games incessantly. He felt that the games were communicating with him via the headphones. In a complex delusional system he came to believe he was inside one of these games and had to steal a car to start scoring points. He broke into a car and drove off at speed, believing he had `invulnerable’ fuel and so could not run out of petrol. To gain points he chose to steal increasingly powerful vehicles, threatening and assaulting the owners with weapons. Later he said he would have had no regrets if he had killed someone, since this would have increased his score.’
‘What are the last true outposts on our planet? In an era when humanity seems to have subjugated the whole world, are there any places left untouched by human influence?
To find out, New Scientist set out to discover the Last Places on Earth. Pleasingly, there were plenty to choose from: unclimbed mountains, unexplored caves, unmapped deserts, tribes untouched by the outside world and islands where alien species have yet to invade. We also discovered the last place dinosaurs roamed, the last place to make radio contact with the rest of the world, the very last place that will survive when our sun expands – and many more. So join us on our grand tour of the planet’s most unknown, pristine or downright extraordinary locations…’
‘Crews aboard the space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station revived the third and final part of the station’s prime computer network on Saturday and scoured the complex for the cause of the crash.
The computers, which control the station’s position in orbit, were restored after station commander Fyodor Yurchikin and flight engineer Oleg Kotov hot-wired the systems to bypass suspect power sources. [..]
So far, the best explanation for the crash is a subtle change in the space environment now that the station’s size has grown, Suffredini said.
As the station flies 220 miles above Earth, it plows through streams of charged particles which create friction and build up a static voltage charge on the outside.
“As the station gets bigger, this potential continues to grow,” Suffredini said. “I think we’re going to find system sensitivities as we change the space station.”‘
‘A Corvallis teenager is facing charges of burglary and sexual abuse of an animal after being arrested last week at a barn in northeast Corvallis.
The teenager, 17 at the time of his arrest, was arrested by Deputy Randy Hiner and Corvallis Police Officer Jason Harvey at the barn in the 4000 block of Northeast Minnesota Avenue at about 2:30 a.m. on June 7.
The owners of the property had reported assaults on the horse before, once on July 30, 2006, and again on Feb. 9 of this year. After the July incident, the owners noticed the halter of their mare had been moved. So the owners installed a video surveillance camera inside the barn.’
‘I was working on a video player for Nuvu.tv and they referenced something on YouTube.com so I went to check it out. I had a FireFox extension add-on (FlashTracer) running – it outputs Flash debug statements in a FireFox sidebar. As I was watching this YouTube video I noticed debug statements coming out of the YouTube player (which is pretty common if you surf to any website with flash content – more on this bad practice later). 99% of these statements were typical, but there were a couple that irked me; look at the two lines of text I highlighted in the left column of this screenshot [..]’
We got meta, fuck yeah. 🙂
‘An elementary school science teacher in this Chicago suburb doesn’t have to turn on the news for an update on NASA’s space mission. She just turns on her video baby monitor.
Since Sunday, one of the two channels on Natalie Meilinger’s baby monitor has been picking up black-and-white video from inside the space shuttle Atlantis. The other still lets her keep an eye on her baby.
“Whoever has a baby monitor knows what you’ll usually see,” Meilinger said. “No one would ever expect this.”
Live video of the mission is available on NASA’s Web site, so it’s possible the monitor is picking up a signal from somewhere.’
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‘A friend of mine happened to live in a students’ flat where such a thing happened: the landlord basically made them cram a bunch of stuff, which usually was in the main hallway, into a room that was too small for it, while in the same flat three rooms were completely empty, but locked. Luckily, the guy could lockpick his way into a room, but he asked me for a way to be able to re-lock it without the key and without anything suspicious being visible from the outside.
After some brainstorming, we came up with a James Bond-worthy concept: knock on the door in a certain fashion, and the door’ll open automatically. The idea was perfect: no need to drill holes, sneaky enough so the landlord wouldn’t accidentally trigger it, easy enough to remember.’
‘A new report puts Google in last place when it comes to privacy protection. Despite recent moves to anonymize server logs and other pro-privacy gestures, Privacy International called the company “an endemic threat to privacy.”
Only Google earned the dismal “black” color bar from the group, which has just issued a report on Internet privacy that took six months to assemble [..]. The current report is preliminary; final results will be released in September.
The report rated top Internet companies on privacy issues and distilled the various results into a single color bar. Microsoft was two ranks up from Google, earning a curry-colored “serious lapses” rating. Amazon scored one level higher with its yellow “notable lapses” rank, and eBay did even better, earning a coveted blue bar. No company earned a top mark, however.’
‘The way Hollywood tells the story, if you step through a laser beam then you should expect and alarm to go off and everybody laughs or something. But the way the defense company Ionatron tells the story, if you step through a laser beam things are a lot worse than some bells ringing in your ears.
That’s because this laser is really a laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) that can conduct electricity. You break the stream and—ZAP—you wake up behind bars to the smell of burnt hair and another man’s aftershave. And that’s what we are calling a best case scenario.
For those interested in purchasing units for home use, remember that all the really cool technology is controlled by the US government…and to stay clear of their buildings after 5pm.’
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These people seem to have rigged up some sorta robot to steer their motorcycle by remote control.
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‘The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear-style head to help carry injured soldiers away from the battlefield.
The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) can scoop up even the heaviest of casualties and transport them over long distances over rough terrain.
New Scientist magazine reports that the “friendly appearance” of the robot is designed to put the wounded at ease. [..]
While the existing prototype slides its arms under its burden like a forklift, future versions will be fitted with manoeuvrable hands to gently scoop up casualties.
The Bear is controlled remotely and has cameras and microphones through which an operator sees and hears.’
‘A court decision reached last month but under seal until Friday could force Web sites to track visitors if the sites become defendants in a lawsuit.
TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search engine, was ordered on May 29 by a federal judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles to create logs detailing users’ activities on the site. The judge, Jacqueline Chooljian, however, granted a stay of the order on Friday to allow TorrentSpy to file an appeal.
The appeal must be filed by June 12, according to Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy’s attorney.
TorrentSpy has promised in its privacy policy never to track visitors without their consent.’
‘A clean-cut vision of a future freed from the rat’s nest of cables needed to power today’s electronic gadgets has come one step closer to reality.
US researchers have successfully tested an experimental system to deliver power to devices without the need for wires.
The setup, reported in the journal Science, made a 60W light bulb glow from a distance of 2m (7ft).
WiTricity, as it is called, exploits simple physics and could be adapted to charge other devices such as laptops. [..]
Measurements showed that the setup could transfer energy with 40% efficiency across the gap.’
‘They say they have built a prototype high-speed quantum key distribution (QKD) system that can perform a theoretically unbreakable “one-time pad” encryption, transmission and decryption of a video signal in real-time over a distance of at least 10 kilometers. [..]
One important requirement for any candidate system is that it be compatible with existing fiber-optic telecom networks that transmit at wavelengths of either 1550 or 1310 nanometers (nm) to reach the greatest distance. Another requirement is a highly efficient photon detector that can detect single photons reliably without introducing significant amounts of “noise.” One of the best low-noise detectors, a silicon-based avalanche photo diode (Si-APD), does not function at the telecom wavelengths. Instead, it operates best at much shorter wavelengths around 700 nm. To take advantage of the Si-APD, the NIST group designed a sub-system to “up-convert” single photons from a transmission wavelength of 1310 nm to 710 nm for high-efficiency detection.’
‘New ways of turning heat into sound waves – and then into electricity – may be the next step toward a practical new source of alternative energy.
Scientists have known for decades that they can turn heat into sound using simple devices called acoustic heat engines. But this week a team of University of Utah researchers plan to show they’ve succeeded in miniaturising and optimising the devices, which then turn the sound into usable electricity.
If true, the advance could open the door to super-efficient power plants, cars, and computers, as well as a new generation of solar cells.
Acoustic heat engines usually use a copper plate to conduct heat to a high-surface-area material like glass wool, which then heats the surrounding air. The movement of the hot air generates a single frequency sound wave, rather like a flute. And this in turns vibrates a piezoelectric electrode, producing voltage.’
