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Toys

Submission + - USB Chainsaw - when you need to open something up! (usbchainsaw.com)

Submitted by cruff
cruff writes: Don't know if the USB Chainsaw is real or not, but the 500 ma provided by a USB port probably won't cut the stuff they show in the video, unless you spend a long time charging a battery. :-) However, imagine the uses to which a properly trained IT person could utilize this new tool!
Announcements

Submission + - Open Source Car:20 year lease, free fuel for life! (ostatic.com)

Submitted by ruphus13
ruphus13 writes: The race for a hyper-fuel-efficient car is on in a big way. Now, Riversimple has tried to leverage the knowledge of the masses to bring its vision to reality soon with a car that gives the equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon. From the post, "The idea to build an open source car isn't a new one, but you've got to give vehicle design company Riversimple credit for originality. The company plans to unveil its first car in London later this month, a small two-seater that weighs roughly 700 pounds. If you agree to lease one for 20 years (yes, 20), Riversimple will throw in the cost of fuel for the lifetime of the lease...The team decided to release the car's designs under an open source license in order to speed up the time it takes to develop the vehicle while also driving down the cost of its components. "
AMD

Submission + - Faster AMD Phenoms Due In Early '08

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of yesterday's announcement of AMD's Spider platform, InfoWeek reports that three faster quad-core Phenom processors are coming in early 2008. AMD has so far announced two Phenoms: the 2.2-GHz Phenom X4 9500 and 2.3-GHz 9600. (Spider also includes the ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics cards, and the AMD 7 Series chipset, which has CrossFireX and OverDrive technology.) These will be joined by two faster cousins in the first quarter: the 2.4-GHz Phenom X4 9700 and the 2.6-GHz Phenom X4 9900. Then a third processor (no model number available) running at 3.0-GHz is due in the second quarter of 2008. That'll make for five Phenoms all together by Q2 of next year. The big question: Do you think this is too little too late in the face of Intel's 45-nm Penryn family, and its desktop 3.0-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9650, announced last week.
Security

Submission + - Apple Mail in Leopard vulnerable again (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by
juct
juct writes: "In March 2006 Apple defused a security problem in Apple Mail that made it possible to inject disguised malignant code. In Leopard, the patch was apparently forgotten. This means that you can inadvertently start an executable by double-clicking a mail attachment that looks like a JPEG image file. This works with special attachmnets of the MIME type AppleDouble, that carry information which application should be used to open a file. In Tiger you got a warning about a program being opened, Leopard silently executes a shell script with Terminal.app. heise Security provides a demo, where you can check for yourself."
Security

Submission + - 15 million personal records lost 1

Submitted by bestweasel
bestweasel writes: The BBC reports that a UK Government department has lost discs with details of 15 million benefit recipients, including names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts. The head of the department involved, HM Revenue & Customs, has resigned and his resignation "was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection" so someone thinks it's not a trivial matter. The Chancellor will try to evade responsibility in the House of Commons at 3.30 GMT. A similar leak of a mere 15,000 records from the same department happened a month or so ago. At that time, they refused to say "on security grounds" whether the information was encrypted, which I interpreted as "no it wasn't but we're not going to admit to you how lax we are.
Announcements

Submission + - Popular Science's Top 100 Innovations of 2007 (popsci.com)

Submitted by john
john writes: Popular Science has just published their "Best of What's New" list of the 100 most impressive innovations in science and technology this year. Top honors goes to the Nanosolar Powersheet, a paper-thin solar cell that produces energy at 1/10th the cost of a traditional silicon and glass cell. Other winners include the Apple iPhone, the daVinci-inspired Ellsworth Ride bicycle, and the Audi R8.
Biotech

Submission + - Is Curry the Cure for Cancer and Alzheimer's? (inventorspot.com)

Submitted by
deepcleanfun
deepcleanfun writes: "Curcumin, a polyphenolic compound found in the "curry spice" Tumeric, has been shown to have beneficial effects against cancerous tumors and combats the advance of Alzheimer's disease. The compound breaks down quickly after being eaten, however, so Japanese scientists are creating longer lasting synthetic versions."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis

Submitted by sertsa
sertsa writes: In an article just published by the Archaeological Institute of America Archaeologists are hypothesizing that the formation of ancient Egypt is linked to recurrent Predynastic zombie attacks due to outbreaks of Solanum virus.

From the very beginning of Predynastic research, Sir W.M. Flinders Petrie reported several headless, but seemingly intact, burials during his famous excavations at Naqada in 1895. Further excavations at Gerzeh and other sites revealed more of these curious burials, but no satisfactory explanation could be proposed at the time. More recently, excavations in the non-elite cemetery at Hierakonpolis (HK43), undertaken from 1996 to 2004, have uncovered more of these strange headless burials in addition to 21 individuals whose cervical vertebrae bear cut marks indicative of complete decapitation. The individuals include men and women ranging in age from 16 to 65. The number and the standard position of the cut marks (usually on the second-fourth cervical vertebrae; always from the front) indicate an effort far greater than that needed simply to cause the death of a normal (uninfected) person. The standard position also indicates these are not injuries sustained during normal warfare.

I've got my pub scoped out!
Space

Submission + - Space-Based Solar Power is Next Energy Frontier (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The idea of using satellites to beam solar power down from space is nothing new — the Department of Energy first studied it in the 1970s, and NASA took another look in the '90s. The stumbling block has been less the engineering challenge than the cost. A Pentagon report released in October could mean the stars are finally aligning for space-based solar power, or SBSP. According to the report, SBSP is becoming more feasible, and eventually could help head off crises such as climate change and wars over diminishing energy supplies."
Linux Business

Submission + - Sourcefire Acquires ClamAV

Submitted by Huh?
Huh? writes: Looks like another popular open source project is getting gobbled up this month . Open source innovator and SNORT (R) creator, Sourcefire, Inc. (Nasdaq:FIRE), today announced that it has acquired ClamAV(TM), a leading open source gateway anti-virus and anti-malware project. Sourcefire's first acquisition since its Initial Public Offering in March 2007, ClamAV will broaden the company's open source footprint while providing the technology foundation for new products and services that will extend the company's Enterprise Threat Management network security portfolio. I sure hope Sourcefire doesn't put a 30 day delay on the ClamAV database updates for community users (i.e. non paying) like it did to the Snort VRT rules.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - ESA Altered Wikipedia Entries on Mod Chips (gamepolitics.com)

Submitted by sesshomaru
sesshomaru writes: Game Politics is reporting that the Entertainment Software Association has been editing Wikipedia entries on modchips and abandonware so that they will be more favorable to their point of view. In other words, they've edited them so that any discussion of legal or moral gray areas are removed and the Wikipedia entries say that these things are illegal, period. Here's a link to the Game Politics article:

ESA Altered Wikipedia Entries on Mod Chips, Abandonware

Links to the alterations made in the article can be found in the article, and thanks to Wikipedia Scanner for uncovering this scandal.

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It seems that more and more mathematicians are using a new, high level language named "research student".

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