Submission + - Virtual Earth now has Hill Shaded Maps
An anonymous reader writes: Virtual Earth has added terrain shading to their road maps. See Mt Rainier
Submission + - A Wife's Fight against Corruption in India (nytimes.com)
cryant writes: "Fearing for her husband's life, an IAS officer's wife in India does the un-obvious — she "Blogs" in an attempt to create a human shield through awareness over the Internet.
(IAS: Indian Administrative Service — a highly coveted genre of candidates serving the highest Civil Service position's in India, something akin to the Secretary positions in the USA)
From the NY Times story: "As her husband made powerful enemies, Ms. Jayashree began to fear for his life. And so she devised an unusual ploy to protect him: she blogged. In the YouTube era, she reasoned, it is harder to kill a man who has a bit of Internet renown."
"In a 2005 study, it concluded that Indians pay more than $5 billion a year in bribes.""
Submission + - Dell Plugs the Analog Hole via Vista Drivers
Dr_Xadium writes: "For months, irate Dell customers whose computers ship with a Sigmatel audio chipset have complained that line-in / microphone monitoring (the feature on that lets you listen to what passing through your soundcard from an external source on your speakers (like when you run your TV through your card's input to take advantage of its 5.1 surround decoder) has been completely disabled in software, using their Vista drivers to basically remove a feature that has been a stock part of soundcard technology for almost 20 years. Dell even tried to claim that line-in monitoring was an "advanced feature" and that it wouldn't be supported on "low-end" soundcards, but quickly backpedaled. Users have resorted to using drivers from rival hardware manufacturer LG or hacking the Vista registry to try and reclaim the functionality that no one ever expected to lose. Unfortunately, the solution doesn't work for everyone, and even though the hardware itself supports monitoring, users are left in the dark as Dell continually promises to provide a revised driver which re-enables monitoring but fails to deliver, even going so far as to suggest users use the WinXP driver instead (which also doesn't work for everyone) Is Dell dragging its feet or tacitly co-operating in a plan to close the "analog hole?" Will we see more actions like this from other OEMs in the future?"
Submission + - Toledo Police Cruisers to accept sponsorship (toledoblade.com)
Mahtar writes: The Police Dept. of The City of Toledo, OH, recently began a campaign soliciting businesses to place ads upon new squad cars for 15,000 USD per car. Ostensibly to offset the costs of a new fleet; two such 'sponsorships' buys a single cruiser. Thus far, at least two accounts — an atty. and a local retail business — have signed up.
"We are probably going to go ahead and put the ads for these businesses on the left and right rear quarter panels of the new cars when they come in," the chief said.
The ads themselves are 3ft. x 1ft. and will be placed next to the "911" markers. These Miranda Rights brought to you by Big Jim's Criminal Defense Madhouse. Let Big Jim save you from Big Blue!
Submission + - iPhone Development Tools Released
MikeyTheK writes: Ajaxian is reporting today that both Aptana and Morfik have updated their IDE's specifically for iPhone development. Aptana is providing a plugin for their IDE, while Morfik has built the functionality right into their product. Both development tools claim to make building iPhone applications quick and painless.
Submission + - The Gigahertz Race is Back on
Anonymous Coward writes: "When CPU manufacturers ran up against the power wall in their designs, they announced that "the Gigahertz race is over; future products will run at slower clock speeds and gain performance through the use of multiple cores and other techniques that won't improve single-threaded application performance."
Well, it seems that the gigahertz race is back on — This CNET story talks about how AMD has boosted the speed of their new Opterons to 3GHz. Of course, it the new chips also consume better than 20% more power than their last batch. The real question is: "What happens when they approach 4GHz this time?""
Feed OQO confirms Model 02 delays, EV-DO modem to blame (engadget.com)
Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs, Wireless
While OQO has certainly had its share of ups and downs over the past few years -- from us calling the Model 01 the "heavyweight champion of vaporware," to literally having a market segment spring up around the devices -- things looked to be headed decidedly up with the release of the 3G-capable Model 02 at the start of the year. But as always with the San Francisco company, the transition between announcing a product and actually shipping it is proving to be a little difficult. With shipping delays stretching to 16 weeks, an OQO rep recently confirmed the problem and pointed the finger of blame: "All orders with Sprint and Verizon customers are on hold while some issues are ironed out with the WWAN product line." Engadget pal Boy Genius says his experience bears that out -- his commercially-purchased Model 02 has no software support for the supposedly-present Sprint modem, and to make it worse, the unit he received is covered in nicks and scratches, more evidence of hiccups along the OQO production line. Although we enjoy talking to the guys over at OQO, it sounds like they really need to get their ducks in a row with the Model 02. Peep the full Boy Genius rant with photos of his nicked-up Model 02 at the read link.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Submission + - Google Phone Will Be on Ship by The End of 2007
zack2007 writes: "HTC ( High Tech Computer ) will manufacture Google phone and commence shipments by the end of 2007. The makers also said the shipment volume will reach as high as one million units and will be available in global markets by start of 2008.
http://zecharyw.com/270/google-phone-will-be-on-sh ip-by-the-end-of-2007/"
Feed Google Sued For Infringing On Just Granted 'Enhanced Hyperlink' Patent (techdirt.com)
Wasting absolutely no time at all, a Kentucky-based company appears to have gone straight to court on Tuesday, the same day it was granted a patent for a "method for adding a user selectable function to a hyperlink, and proceeded to sue Google for infringement. The patent appears to cover the ability to pop up various choices if you mouseover a hyperlink -- something that's pretty common these days and certainly not particularly difficult to implement. Does anyone really believe that a 20 year monopoly needed to be granted to some company in order to put in place the proper incentives for this functionality to be created?
Submission + - Atlantis destroyed by a tsunami ?
An anonymous reader writes: Research on the Greek island of Crete suggests that one of Europe's earliest civilisation [Alantis], which flourished until about 3,500 years ago, was destroyed by a giant tsunami.
From the article:
"The ancient Minoans were building palaces, paved streets and sewers, while most Europeans were still living in primitive huts.
But around 1500BC the people who spawned the myths of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth abruptly disappeared. Now the mystery of their cataclysmic end may finally have been solved.
A group of scientists have uncovered new evidence that the island of Crete was hit by a massive tsunami at the same time that Minoan culture disappeared.
"The geo-archaeological deposits contain a number of distinct tsunami signatures," says Dutch-born geologist Professor Hendrik Bruins of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
"Minoan building material, pottery and cups along with food residue such as isolated animal bones were mixed up with rounded beach pebbles and sea shells and microscopic marine fauna.
"The latter can only have been scooped up from the sea-bed by one mechanism — a powerful tsunami, dumping all these materials together in a destructive swoop," says Professor Bruins.
The deposits are up to seven metres above sea level, well above the normal reach of storm waves.
"An event of ferocious force hit the coast of Crete and this wasn't just a Mediterranean storm," says Professor Bruins.
The wave would have been as powerful as the one that devastated the coastlines of Thailand and Sri Lanka on Boxing day 2004 leading to the loss of over 250,000 lives.
But if this evidence is so clear why has it not been discovered before now?
Tsunami expert Costas Synolakis, from the University of Southern California, says that the study of ancient tsunamis is in its infancy and people have not, until now, really known what to look for.
Submission + - Sunspots reach 1000 year peak
rlp writes: Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000 year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots. Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores. Based on observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years.
Journal Journal: Extremism is mainstream on the internets. 1
The web is a great place for free political speech. It is also a beautiful informational tool. But if you are looking for total anonymity, the internet is not great. It does, however, give people the feeling of total anonymity and that is the perfect environment to see people as unfettered, morally unrestrained, emotionally spastic versions of their public face.
Submission + - Pirate Bay permanantly quits plans for own nation
Jared writes: "The world's most famous BitTorrent pirates decide to permanently drop anchor in their home country of Sweden, saying the whole affair was really for them to be able to "look on Google Maps and find ourselves there." In a response from an ADMIN over at The Free Nation Foundation, which split from BuySealand to form a group of the truly committed, he writes that "Personally, I'd like to say I 'saw it coming', but truthfully, I can't. What I can say, though, is that I'm not all that surprised, especially after the roller coaster ride their forums took." — Now I just wonder what the guys who donated a share of the $25,000 bucks The Pirate Bay has in collected in donations so far think about the fact that their money was simply a big Google Earth ad. Refunds anyone?"
Submission + - Australian Open Source Survey responses sought
Sigurd writes: "Australian academics have formed a survey to learn why we love open source. Also, to look at correlations between being a participant of the open source community and outlook on life, happiness, and careers. Lara Thynne, PhD candidate at Deakin University Australia is asking for 1500+ responses to provide an adequate sample population.
Heading an open source project myself, filling out this survey reiterated to me how diverse the open source community is, and that it's ambitious to survey on large unfamiliar topics. I'm trusting a net gain will be made, despite this being akin to asking parliamentarians through to your neighbour's dog about politics."
Heading an open source project myself, filling out this survey reiterated to me how diverse the open source community is, and that it's ambitious to survey on large unfamiliar topics. I'm trusting a net gain will be made, despite this being akin to asking parliamentarians through to your neighbour's dog about politics."
