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In what has to be one of the most ironic twists so far in the Sony DRM debacle, a blogger named Nicholas Colyer discovered that by adding the $sys$ to the front of his CD burning software he can now copy as many CD's as he wants. No mention of any real details about the programs involved (apologies to all you hackers out there). One has to wonder, though, just how many other software restrictions can be bypassed by this useful feature? If the stealth function of the original rootkit turns out to be good for lots of other fun things, this could be a real situation for Sony. Nothing forces you to run the stealth removing patch, and I would bet that Sony didn't include an automatic update feature (in which case they would not be able to automatically disable the stealth feature from afar). Might they have to resort to cooperating with Microsoft to add a patch to the regular Windows update process?

A press release from A123Systems announces a new lithium-ion battery technology that delivers unprecedented performance (according to them). The technology is suppose to deliver 10 times the cycle life and 5 times the power over conventional lithium technology, and only require 5 minutes to recharge to 90% capacity. And this is not a theoretical announcement -- the first batteries are now in production and being delivered to the Black & Decker Corporation, who will be utilizing them in a new line of DEWALT branded power tools. The company is also working with the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a major undertaking to develop battery materials for future use in hybrid electric vehicles. Assuming 5 times power means 5 times range (may not be the case but hey let's dream a little, ok?), an all electric car that only had a 70 mile range would be able to go more than 300 miles between charges and only take 5 minutes to recharge at the station. Might this make fuel cell cars (and hybrids) obsolete before they even get started? On a side note, there have been other promises of breakthroughs for lithium based batteries before...wonder if there is a patent lawsuit in the making? This press release is also mentioned over at Green Car Congress.

The Register is reporting that NASA has started developing a contingency plan to deflect a quarter-mile wide asteroid if indeed it looks to threaten the Earth in 2029. The asteroid formerly known as 2004MN4 has now been named 99942 Apophis. The space agency says that if the asteroid still appears to be threatening Earth by 2013, it will start work on a mission to visit Apophis with a probe in 2019. This would be followed by an attempt to deflect the asteroid some time between 2024 and 2028. NASA's plans to deflect the asteroid were first publicly revealed by the B612 Foundation.

Now this is really thinking outside the box...Mazda is displaying a new form of an idle-stop system for direct-injection spark-ignition engines that uses combustion and the reverse operation of the engine as a restart trigger rather than an electric motor. To summarize: The Smart Idling Stop System shuts off the engine when you come to a stop. When you want to go again, the system injects fuel into the cylinder in the compression phase but not yet at the top of the compression cycle (in a four cylinder 4 stroke engine, one cylinder is always in the compression phase). Then the fuel is ignited to force the compressing piston back down in the opposite direction. This causes compression in a different cylinder which then has fuel injected and ignited, which in turn forces the engine to turn back in the normal direction and provides enough power to kick start the engine back to life. In order for everything to work, the Smart Idling Stop System forces the engine to stop in a position that is optimal for the next restart attempt. Mazda claims that the Smart Idling Stop System is more energy-efficient than an electric motor restart, and also restarts the engine more quickly and quietly than a conventional idle-stop system.

Two California inventors have designed and patented the ultimate flex-fuel and flex-combustion engine: an engine that can adapt in real-time to a variety of petroleum-, bio- or gaseous-fuels using the appropriate combustion mode, including spark-ignition, compression-ignition or HCCI variants. The design eliminates the last mechanical constraint for a totally electronically controlled engine, namely the cam shaft, and allows each cylinder to be independently fine tuned in real time for a wide range of power options. Possibilities range from boosting compression for more power to using air compression only (no fuel) for braking to even storing the compressed air for extra power later on. Now all they have to do is get someone with lots of money interested in developing it further.