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I'm not in any way involved with the company, but I have read TFA and having done that I feel as if I can answer your questions and concerns in the same spirit:

Absolutely none! The conversion process requires no energy at all, occurs instantaneously, and releases no harmful emissions. In fact, pure unadulterated sunshine blasts forth from the process at all times and bathes bystanders in with its gentle warmth.

This is not at all the case! The Vetrolium produced is immediately transported to fueling stations across the globe by faeries or the like. No energy whatsoever is required to do this and no harmful emissions are produced. Blasting forth from the fueling stations is pure unadulterated sunshine, to warm your cockles while you fuel up.

Untrue! Think of something you want that uses physical raw materials? Got it yet? What you are thinking of can be produced as follows: Waste -> Vetrolium -> What you thought of + pure unadulterated sunshine. See what is missing? Harmful emissions are whats missing, which is why Vetrolium is so great.

The need for atom splitting is entirely obviated by this Waste to Fuel converson process I'd like you to fund. No harmful emissions or byproducts of anything you don't want. No heat. No muss. No fuss. Shove your trash into the magic machine. When you feel warmed by the sunshine coming out, you'll know the process is up and running. Absolutely no hamrful emissions will be involved in any way.

This is some really cool artwork built by an MIT graduate student. He's designed custom LED light fixtures which are seven times brighter than the closest similar commercial models, and include colors which can't be reproduced by a normal RGB cluster (including two ridiculously bright UV LEDs) in order to create some beautiful mixed media artwork. The author's goal is to eventually publish a guide to make getting into creating such artwork more accessible to the general public.

The site includes lots of great photos and a movie of the art in action. It also has in depth descriptions of the theory involved in this relatively new form of art, an explanation of how the paints were chosen, and an in depth technical discussion of how such lights are designed with schematics and board layouts for those who might wish to build their own lights.

It's a bit heavy on the technical details for a typical artist, but it's a goldmine of experienced technical advice for an engineer looking to get into making their own LED based lighting.
http://web.mit.edu/neltnerb/www/artwork/index.html

Anonymous Coward writes "Item: Telecoms such as Verizon illegally vacuum up all your E-mails for the FBI and other government spooks. Item: hackers, possibly working for China, have been E-looting the Pentagon. Item: who says the Chinese are the only people loose in federal server rooms? RiderOnTheStorm, a diarist at Daily Kos, considers the ramifications in That's not a weapon — that's a target. Or: who ELSE is reading your email? "(W)hat possible reason does anyone have to believe that the feds are the only ones tapped into the output of Room 641A?," including "telephone records, credit reports, and 'net traffic," Rider asks, concluding that "(A)t least some of our private data is very likely in the hands of an unfriendly foreign government, and quite possibly in the hands of an unknown number of third parties. And all of this is based just on what's publicly known. The real picture (as anyone who works in IT security is sadly aware) is almost certainly much worse.""

I have a mini-review of MEPIS 7, currently in RC1, which I loaded onto a MacBook. MEPIS, I have found, is a great distro for those wishing to leave Windows purgatory and take their first steps in Linux within the comfortable confines of KDE (must have that Start button in the bottom left corner!).

What MEPIS brings to Ubuntu and Linux in general is a crisp, balanced, and efficient configuration with plenty of system and networking tools that were custom-designed by Woodford and his team for the KDE interface. MEPIS also arrives with all necessary browser plug-ins installed and set up, so you don't have to juggle Flash installers, gstreamers for video rendering, and the like. It's done already.

Not worth a tin full of beans

Analysis A significant and noticeable part of the US and European academy of terrorism studies is like a shark. If it stops swimming forward, it dies. This has two consequences: a drive to publish or perish which, in turn, motivates it to creep onto past battlefields, assessing which bodies can be ignored for the sake of renewing mythologies; or new terror analyses that purport to show Byzantine networks and capabilities.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/07/london_ricin_cell_myth/

A judge has ruled that the RIAA can subpoena the defendant's employer in a case pending in Manhattan federal court, Atlantic v. Shutovsky. The judge's order (pdf) contained eight (8) separate rulings deciding 19 pages of discovery disputes (pdf), resolving virtually all of them in favor of the RIAA.

zestyping writes "At 11:45 pm last night, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced her decisions on the use of electronic voting systems in California, following the review that found vulnerabilities in all three systems tested.

For Diebold and Sequoia (but not Hart), only one DRE is allowed per polling place, and there must be a 100% manual count of all votes cast on it. The ES&S InkaVote, which wasn't submitted in time for the review, is decertified.

Several new restrictions apply to both DREs and optical scan systems by Diebold, Sequoia, and Hart. All software and firmware must be reinstalled on all devices prior to the February primary election. Security seals must be serialized. If a machine error requires the machine to be rebooted, it must be removed from service and the vendor must explain the cause of failure. Vote tallies must be posted outside each polling place. There will also be increased post-election manual auditing of the results.

See the official documents for all the details: Diebold, Hart, Sequoia, ES&S."
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

An anonymous reader writes "Richard Menta makes a strong case on MP3 Newswire that bad public relations stirred by the open conflict between the record industry and the consumer is a heavy contributor to the crumbling fortunes of the major labels. In his analysis he contrasts how the NFL and Major League baseball tread gingerly with the Michael Vick and steroids scandals respectively to avoid further raising the ire of sports fans, while the major labels and the RIAA openly antagonize music fans who dare embrace new technologies they don't have full control of. From the article" Today the major record labels don't have a positive brand image and the very public actions they have taken to control the rise of digital media and the Internet over the last several years is at the very heart of their fall from grace. To some the big labels are an anachronism. To others they are anti-consumer. The erosion of their image is dramatic..." Menta then lays out 17 public events that have chipped away at the image of the recording industry including those that show them as bullies (RIAA sues little girls), as incompetent (RIAA sues the dead), as oppressors of the artist (Courtney Love, Janis Ian, and Grey Tuesday), as greedy (that's what Steve Jobs called them), and as practitioners of unauthorized access (Sony rootkit scandal). Consumer perception can be a bitch and the end result here is that many consumers probably don't feel as good about buying a CD anymore."

Kurtz'sKompund writes "Trend Micro says a large-scale security attack could be about to launch on the web after its researchers spotted a Russian server loaded with more than 400 different pieces of malware. http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?n ewsID=9701"

An anonymous reader writes "A few weeks ago Linus Torvalds gave a speech at Google, talking about Source Code Management and GIT. Despite of the big number of Subversion developers hired by G$ (some of them were even present at the speech) Linus made really strong assertion: "Subversion has been the most pointless project ever started". But Linus folk didn't stop there he continued with really "nice" sentences like:

- "Subversion used to say CVS done right: with that slogan there is nowhere you can go. There is no way to do cvs right"

- "If you like using cvs, you should be in some kind of mental institution or somewhere else"

- "Get rid of perforce, it is sad, but it is so, so true"

He just talked wonders about his great version control system (GIT), which he said he "wrote in a couple of weeks". Well, I believe it is true: we wrote it in two weeks, and it only took two years to make it usable for the rest of the world... But it seems Linus was all about strong opinions that day: "not everybody can write something right the first time, just me".

Well, if you want to watch Linus being more rude than ever, find the whole story here"
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2007/05/linus-torvalds-on-git-and-scm.html

Mendy writes "Tim Ankers, a British archaeologist claims to have found the wreck of the HMAS Sydney, lost during World War 2. He says that he's done this using software he wrote called Merlindown which can analyse satelite photographs to "peer 75m into the earth and 16,000 metres beneath the seas". The Times has a little more information here"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1873026.ece

Raindeer writes "Sion Touhig, an award winning photojournalist, wrote a very interesting piece on how the internet has changed the industry of photojournalism. He blames this (at least partially) on the Creative Commons. Though I disagree with him on this, it does remain a fascinating read on how the lower costs to produce content, the lower transaction costs in finding and disseminating content and the decline in advertising revenue for mainstream media is changing an industry. There are some good reactions already on his blog "

Indy writes "Teddy is a Java-Applet Drawing Program that takes the 2D images you draw and render them in 3D. The algorithm adds shading according to the strokes and connections between the lines.
Check out this video which proves how fast and easy it is to crate 3D objects even by kids."

ndogg writes "Japanese researchers that were led by sperm whales almost caught a live giant squid, and they filmed part of it (there's a link in the article to the video, or get an lavc encoded version here). Unfortunately it seems to have died from injuries caused by the capture. The CNN article unfortunately mistakenly claims that it's the first live giant squid caught on film, but it is no doubt the first substantial video of a live giant squid."