ghstomahawks - Slashdot User

Feed Engadget: Darpa funds invisible, shoot-through shield (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Thursday June 21, 2007 @10:52PM

In a move seemingly influenced in equal parts by Halo and David Lynch's film Dune, Darpa has announced that it's ponying up $15 million to develop one-way-invisible, self-healing, shoot-through shields for use in urban combat. While the Pentagon's research division acknowledges that there are "significant technical obstacles" in the process, it's fairly gung-ho about developing a technology combining metamaterials, 'coded' obscurant systems, and a bunch of other stuff no one really understands. Trust us, you'll thank them if the Harkonens try and overthrow your spice-mining operation.

[Via Digg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - Web 2.0 Media: Digg For SEO Only! (media-sight.net)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday June 21, 2007 @06:22PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "There are thousands if not millions of web pages, articles, blogs, and news sites that discuss and share tips and advice, but for the first time here you can find the first Digg like site but only for SEO. great place to learn a lot about how to promote your web site or blog in search engine. take a look!"

Feed Engadget: Police fatally taser gasoline-soaked suspect (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Thursday June 21, 2007 @10:34AM

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

As we've reported before, tasers might not be as safe as their makers like to claim. Juan Flores Lopez, a Texas man who had doused himself in gasoline, became the latest unfortunate taser-related casuality when police used the stun device (which sometimes emit sparks) during his arrest. "We don't know what ignited the fire," perplexed officers admitted. The case is currently being investigated by the Texas Rangers.

[Via Digg]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Feed Sony's back: shifting from "recovery to profitable growth" -- 380 new PS3 games (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Thursday June 21, 2007 @04:52AM

Filed under: Cellphones, Digital Cameras, Displays, Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Laptops, Portable Audio, Portable Video

var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/playstation_3/380_PS3_games_annou nced_by_Sony_return_to_profits'; Howard Stringer -- Sony Corp's CEO and man with the plan -- just exited stage-left from Sony's annual shareholder meeting in Tokyo. To say that the 6,000 attendees were skeptical of said plan would be an understatement given a year of fiscal losses, job cuts, PS3 under-performance (with an eventual Kutaragi dismissal), and an embarrassing and dangerous recall of some 10 million batteries among other missteps. Still, Howard stood strong, assuring investors that Sony has made the swtich from "recovery to profitable growth" and will be a "dominant company" in the digital age. So what's the plan?

Continue reading Sony's back: shifting from "recovery to profitable growth" -- 380 new PS3 games

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

RIAA Accused of Extortion & Conspiracy 373

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday June 05, 2007 @07:31PM from the this-is-new-oh-in-court dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The defendant in a Tampa, Florida, case, UMG v. Del Cid, has filed counterclaims accusing the RIAA record labels of conspiracy and extortion. The counterclaims (pdf) are for Trespass, Computer Fraud and Abuse (18 USC 1030), Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices (Fla. Stat. 501.201), Civil Extortion (CA Penal Code 519 & 523), and Civil Conspiracy involving (a) use of private investigators without license in violation of Fla. Stat. Chapter 493; (b) unauthorized access to a protected computer system, in interstate commerce, for the purpose of obtaining information in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030 (a)(2)(C); (c) extortion in violation of Ca. Penal Code 519 and 523; and (d) knowingly collecting an unlawful consumer debt, and using abus[ive] means to do so, in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, 15 U.S.C. 1692a et seq. and Fla. Stat. 559.72 et seq."

Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt 1142

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @11:26PM from the toothpaste-back-in-the-tube dept.

fieryprophet writes "An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show. Search digg for HD-DVD song lyrics, coffee mugs, shirts, and more for a small taste of the rebellion." Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved. Update: 05/02 05:44 GMT by J : New blog post from Kevin Rose of Digg to its users: "We hear you."

Submission + - Hard drive snafu has NBA star suing, fuming

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @05:55PM

coondoggie writes: "All basketball player Bruce Bowen wanted was his hard drive fixed. What he got apparently is an invasion of privacy and a big mess. The Smoking Gun Website says the San Antonio Spurs forward hired a Texas company to fix but instead the repair company removed the machine's hard drive and sold the item — which contained confidential personal and financial information — to another customer. Bowen is now seeking over $2 million in damages from Computer Nerdz, the San Antonio company used to repair his Gateway computer. http://www.networkworld.com/community3/?q=node/147 53"

Music Decoded From 600-Year-Old Carvings 243

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @05:55PM from the rosslyn-motet dept.

RulerOf writes "Musicians recently unlocked a 600 year old mystery that had been encoded into the walls of the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, the one featured in The Da Vinci Code. The song was carved into the walls of the chapel in the form of geometric shapes that a father-son team — both are musicians and the father is an ex-Royal Air Force code breaker — finally matched to so-called Chladni patterns (see the Wikipedia article on cymatics). The recovered melody was paired with traditional lyrics (translated into Latin) and recorded; the result can be heard in this video (also linked from the musicians' website). The video also gives a visual representation of how the engravings match up to the cymatic patterns." From the Reuters article: "'The music has been frozen in time by symbolism... [The carvings] are of such exquisite detail and so beautiful that we thought there must be a message here.' The two men matched each of the patterns on the carved cubes to a Chladni pitch, and were able finally to unlock the melody."

Long Block Data Standard Finalized 199

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @05:23PM from the 30-years-later dept.

An anonymous reader writes "IDEMA has finally released the LBD (Long Block Data) standard. This standard, in work since 2000, increases the length of the data blocks of each sector from 512 bytes to 4,096 bytes. This is an update that has been requested for some time by the hard-drive industry and the development of new drives will start immediately. The new standard offers many advantages — improved reliability and higher transfer rates are the two most obvious. While some manufacturers say the reliability may increase as much as tenfold, the degree of performance improvement to be expected is a bit more elusive. Overall improvements include shorter time to format and more efficient data transfers due to smaller overhead per block during read and write operations."

Censoring a Number 1046

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @03:44PM from the you-can't-copyright-that dept.

Rudd-O writes "Months after successful discovery of the HD-DVD processing key, an unprecedented campaign of censorship, in the form of DMCA takedown notices by the MPAA, has hit the Net. For example Spooky Action at a Distance was killed. More disturbingly, my story got Dugg twice, with the second wave hitting 15,500 votes, and today I found out it had simply disappeared from Digg. How long until the long arm of the MPAA gets to my own site (run in Ecuador) and the rest of them holding the processing key? How long will we let rampant censorship go on, in the name of economic interest?" How long before the magic 16-hex-pairs number shows up in a comment here?

VeriSign To Offer Passwords On Bank Card 158

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @02:59PM from the third-factor dept.

Billosaur writes "Imagine the PayPal security tool embedded on a credit card. VeriSign is announcing that a deal is in the works to provide credit cards with one-time-use passwords. By placing the technology directly on the card, it becomes more convenient and provides an extra layer of security for online credit-card transactions. A cardholder would type in their information as normal and then would be prompted to enter the passcode displayed on the card. This means a user would need to have the physical card in hand in order to use it, thus thwarting identity thieves who steal credit card information but do not possess the card itself. VeriSign said it expects to announce a major bank using its cards in May."

Lip-Reading Surveillance Cameras 271

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @02:16PM from the open-the-pod-bay-doors dept.

mrogers sends us to Infowars for the following news from the UK, "which is fast becoming the front line of the war on privacy": "'Read my lips..."' used to be a figurative saying. Now the British government is considering taking it literally by adding lip reading technology to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in order identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone says. Perhaps the lip-reading cameras and the shouting cameras will find something to talk about."

Submission + - AACS exploit and industry revenge

Submitted by

Guzabi

on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @12:46PM

Guzabi writes: "Not a scoop, really, but ruud-o has published the (in)famous 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 some hours ago. This is actually a key that is part of the de-cyphering process for HD contents found on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs. There seems to be a storm over this on the web (despite the code being accessible for months now) as AACS-LA is desperately trying to shut down sites exhibiting the code. Read the full story below and if you feel like contributing to world freedom, you know what to do ;-)

http://rudd-o.com/archives/2007/04/30/spread-this- number/"

Ad-Supported Free Music Downloads Doomed to Failure? 226

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @12:43PM from the no-love-for-ads dept.

madonna writes "CNET extensively explains why the new We7.com download service — which offers ad-embedded free music downloads without DRM — is doomed to failure. 'This service absolutely, categorically will not succeed. You can quote us on that. It's true the best way to combat piracy is to provide a realistic and affordable alternative, and free is certainly affordable. But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs the same as using BitTorrent or Limewire, but comes with abominable disclaimers or advertisements.'"

2012 Olympics Security to be Chosen by Sponsorship 165

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 01, 2007 @10:41AM from the bribery-it's-everywhere-you-want-to-be dept.

denebian devil writes "In an Editorial/Blog at ITPRO, Davey Winder writes of a keynote speech at Infosecurity Europe by Member of Parliament Derek Wyatt. In this speech, which was about the IT security demands of running the 2012 London Olympics, Derek Wyatt MP dropped the bombshell that IT Security at the Olympics will hinge not on which companies show themselves to be the best in their field or to have the technology that best meets the needs of the Olympics, but rather on whether or not the companies were a 'major sponsor' of the Olympics. So who has bought their way into being the security experts of choice, and with whom our security and that of the visiting millions will rest? Visa."

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