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Shark

UK Police Test 'Temporarily Blinding' LASER 398

Posted by Soulskill from the for-sufficiently-permanent-values-of-temporary dept.
esocid writes "Called the SMU 100 it costs £25,000 and sends out a three-meter 'wall of light' that leaves anyone caught in it briefly unable to see. Designed by a former Royal Marine Commando, it was originally developed for use against pirates in Somalia. While tasers and CS gas work well over short distances the laser is said to be effective at up to 500 meters (1,640ft). Being targeted by the beam has been compared to staring into the sun before being forced to turn away. Paul Kerr, managing director of Clyde-based Photonic Security Systems, which came up with the design, said 'If you can't look at something you can't attack it.'"
Microsoft

Silverlight 5 Released 107

Posted by Soulskill from the hp-totally-stole-their-thunder dept.
New submitter CaptSlaq sends word that Silverlight 5 has been released. Microsoft has not revealed whether it will be the last version. "New features in Silverlight 5 include Hardware Decode of H.264 media, which provides a significant performance improvement with decoding of unprotected content using the GPU; Postscript Vector Printing to improve output quality and file size; and an improved graphics stack with 3D support that uses the XNA API on the Windows platform to gain low-level access to the GPU for drawing vertex shaders and low-level 3D primitives. In addition, Silverlight 5 extends the ‘Trusted Application’ model to the browser for the first time. These features, when enabled via a group policy registry key and an application certificate, mean users won’t need to leave the browser to perform complex tasks such as multiple window support, full trust support in browser including COM and file system access, in browser HTML hosting within Silverlight, and P/Invoke support for existing native code to be run directly from Silverlight."

Comment What about Texts? (Score 1) 228

by men0s (#38308428) Attached to: How many robocalls do you get each month?
I live in the US and don't have a land-line, just a cell phone. While I haven't received any unsolicited phone calls in years, I've probably received about five text messages within the past two months for generic mortgage refinancing or auto warranties from area codes elsewhere in the US.
Censorship

ACTA To Be Signed This Weekend 277

Posted by Soulskill from the yep-this-happened dept.
We've been following the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement for over three years, from its secretive beginnings, to the controversy and debate that followed, and to the document it eventually evolved into. Now, Japan has announced that the agreement will finally be signed on Saturday during a ceremony that follows an anti-piracy symposium on Friday. "The negotiation has been carried out among Australia, Canada, the European Union and its Member States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States, and reached a general agreement at the negotiation meeting held in Japan in October 2010, followed by the completion of technical and translation work in April 2011. ... The signing ceremony will be attended by the representatives of all the participants in the ACTA negotiations, and those that have completed relevant domestic processes will sign the agreement. The agreement is open for signature until May 1, 2013."
Input Devices

1970s Polaroid SX-70 Cameras Make a Comeback 106

Posted by timothy from the for-all-your-expensive-art-projects dept.
cylonlover writes "When it was released in 1972, the Polaroid SX-70, with its foldable SLR design, was the world's first instant SLR. It was also the first camera to use Polaroid's then-new integral instant film that contained all the chemical layers required to expose, develop, and fix the photo. Photojojo is now offering Limited Edition Polaroid SX-70 cameras that have all been restored to working condition, and integral instant film is also available."
Medicine

Measles Resurgent Due To Fear of Vaccination 668

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-take-medical-advice-from-nude-models dept.
florescent_beige writes "In the September Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Gregory Poland, M.D. writes that 'More than 150 cases of measles have been reported in the United States already this year and there have been similar outbreaks in Europe, a sign the disease is making an alarming comeback (abstract). The reappearance of the potentially deadly virus is the result of unfounded fears about a link between the measles shot and autism that have turned some parents against childhood vaccination.'" This follows the recent release of a massive review of studies into the side effects of vaccination, summarized here by Nature, which did not find convincing support for the idea that MMR shots caused autism.
PHP

Serious Crypto Bug Found In PHP 5.3.7 165

Posted by timothy from the pronounced-pfffffpp dept.
Trailrunner7 writes "The maintainers of the PHP scripting language are warning users about a serious crypto problem in the latest release and advising them not to upgrade to PHP 5.3.7 until the bug is resolved. PHP 5.3.7 was just released last week and that version contained fixes for a slew of security vulnerabilities. But now a serious flaw has been found in that new release that is related to the way that one of the cryptographic functions handles inputs. In some cases, when the crypt() function is called using MD5 salts, the function will return only the salt value."
The Internet

Web Surfing At Work Can Boost Productivity 134

Posted by Soulskill from the you're-welcome dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Wall Street Journal reports on a study into productivity and efficiency in the workplace, which found that people who are given a break to surf the web return to their work with 'lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement.' Researchers tested against two other groups; one continued working, and one was given a break that did not involve web browsing. They concluded that 'browsing the Internet serves an important restorative function.' In contrast, dealing with personal email was 'particularly distracting.' In the end, the researchers recommended that employers loosen restrictions on employee web access." This backs up a similar study out of Australia from a couple years ago.
Movies

What Happens After the Super-Hero Movie Bubble? 339

Posted by CmdrTaco from the reboot-retool-recycle dept.
mattnyc99 writes "In the wake of a not-that-exciting Comic-Con come some (perhaps premature) reports on the so-called "Death of Superheroes" — what one financial group calls "the top of the (comic book) character remonetization cycle." In response, Esquire.com's Paul Schrodt has an interesting look down Hollywood geek road. From the article: "What happens after The Avengers, or Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie — after we've seen all there is to see of the best comic-book blockbusters ever made?""

Review: Captain America 295

Posted by CmdrTaco from the first-avenger-or-something dept.
If you have been living under a rock, you might not be aware that the next in the ongoing series of Avengers prequel movies came out this weekend: Captain America follows Steve Rogers origin, and sets him up for next summer's kajillion dollar Whedonesque mega blockbuster. But how is it as a movie in its own right? Hit the link to read my 2 cents. Standard spoiler warnings apply.
Books

For Texas Textbooks, a Victory For Evolution 626

Posted by timothy from the evolving-attitude dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Texas Board of Education has unanimously come down on the side of evolution. In an 8-0 vote, the board today approved scientifically accurate high school biology textbook supplements from established mainstream publishers — and did not approve the creationist-backed supplements from International Databases, LLC."

Comment Re:Not different (Score 1) 178

by men0s (#36811750) Attached to: <em>Chain World</em> &mdash; Innovative Game Design Sparks Debate
Didn't some SA Goons do something similar with a Dwarf Fortress world file? I'm not sure of the stipulations on when your time was up, but it seemed interesting. Someone started a new world, did some work, posted screen caps and summaries, and then handed it off to another Goon. Only one person could play it at a time. Rinse and repeat. The thread was entertaining to read, for sure.

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