Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror
IBM

IBM's Patent-Pending Traffic Lights Stop Car Engines 423

Posted by Soulskill
from the even-red-lights-are-going-green dept.
theodp writes "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let your engine idle. The USPTO has just published IBM's patent application for a 'System and Method for Controlling Vehicle Engine Running State at Busy Intersections for Increased Fuel Consumption Efficiency.' Here's how Big Blue explains the invention: 'The present disclosure is directed to a method for managing engines in response to a traffic signal. The method may comprise establishing communications with participating vehicles; responding to a stop status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: receiving a position data from each participating vehicles; determining a queue of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal; determining a remaining duration of the stop status; sending a stop-engine notification to the list of participating vehicles stopped at the traffic signal when the remaining duration is greater than a threshold of time; responding to a proceed status indicated by the traffic signal, further comprising: sending a start-engine notification to a first vehicle in the queue; calculating an optimal time for an engine of a second vehicle in the queue to start; and sending the start-engine notification to the second vehicle at the optimal time.' IBM notes that 'traffic signals may include, but are not limited to, traffic lights at intersections, railway crossing signals, or other devices for indicating correct moments to stop and to proceed.'"
Space

X-37B Found By Amateur Sky Watchers 109

Posted by Soulskill
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
otter42 writes "It seems that X-37B couldn't stay hidden forever. Launched a few weeks ago, The Flying Twinkie disappeared shortly after separation. Now it has been found in an orbit that takes it as far north as 40 degrees latitude. No additional information has been found about the spacecraft's capabilities or purpose, except for a US Air Force statement that the satellite has no space-weapons purpose. The X-37B is intended to fly for 9 months at a time, opening the door to possible space longevity experiments in addition to its spying tasks."
Security

Leaning Tower of Pisa Secure for 300 More Years

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Medieval architects only got as far as the third floor of the tower of Pisa before it began to lean in 1178 and by 1990 it had tilted more than four meters off its true vertical, with conservationists estimating that the entire 14,500-ton structure would collapse "some time between 2030 and 2040." Now the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been stabilized and declared safe for at least another three centuries after it was anchored to cables and lead counterweights while 70 tons of soil was removed from the north side — away from the lean — and cement was injected into the ground to relieve the pressure. The tilt has now returned to where it was in the early 19th century and architects say there was never any intention to straighten the 56m tower, only to stop it sinking further. Nicholas Shrady, author "Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa" says that the tower was destined to tilt from the outset because of the decision to build the tower "on what is essentially a former bog" and that the tower has previously come close to collapsing in 1838, 1934, and 1995. Although Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped cannon balls from the tower in a gravity experiment, Shrady says the myth is the "result of the overripe imagination of Galileo's secretary and first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani.""

Comment: Send outside the firewall? Via UPS (Score 1) 542

by jgt10 (#23507268) Attached to: How Would You Prefer To Send Sensitive Data?
If I don't trust sending something via email, why would I trust ANY kind of electronic transport?

By the time any VPN, PGP, or other encryption method is worked out a flash drive or CD or DVD with the data could be FedEx to the consultant.

Many years ago the pithy comment was "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon loaded with tapes."

Today it might be "Don't underestimate the bandwidth of a minivan loaded with DVDs."

JGT

Intel

SPAM: Student invents alternative to silicon chip

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes "Even before Weixiao Huang received his doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his new transistor captured the attention of some of the biggest American and Japanese automobile companies. The 2008 graduate's invention could replace one of the most common pieces of technology in the world — the silicon transistor for high-power and high-temperature electronics. Huang, who comes from humble roots as the son of farmers in rural China, has invented a new transistor that uses a compound material known as gallium nitride (GaN), which has remarkable material properties. The new GaN transistor could reduce the power consumption and improve the efficiency of power electronics systems in everything from motor drives and hybrid vehicles to house appliances and defense equipment."
Link to Original Source
The Courts

SPAM: First Caller-ID spoofers spanked

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "The first telemarketers charged with transmitting false Caller IDs (a process known as caller ID spoofing) to consumers were fined and barred from continuing their schemes by a New Jersey District Court judge. Under the terms of a court order announced by the Federal Trade Commission today, two individuals and one corporate defendant have been barred from violating the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) and its Do Not Call (DNC) requirements arising from a telemarketing scheme designed to sell mortgage loans, refinancing services, and other products to U.S. consumers. They were also found liable for $530,000 in damages. In addition to charging the defendants with calling consumers on the National DNC Registry and failing to pay for access to the list, the case was the first brought by the Commission alleging the transmission of phony caller ID information or none at all. Under the DNC provisions of the TSR telemarketers are required to transmit accurate caller ID information so consumers who do not want to be called in the future can contact them and tell them so. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Software

The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML 254

Posted by timothy
from the distracted-by-short-skirt-during-brief-summer dept.
Steve Pepper writes "The former Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee, who resigned two weeks ago in protest against his country's vote of Yes to OOXML, tells the inside story of how the decision was reached: how a single bureaucrat from Standards Norway sidelined the overwhelming majority of Norwegian technical experts and changed Norway's vote from No to Yes. The story is so surreal it's hard to believe." It's as depressing as it is brief.
Space

Private Efforts Fill Gaps in Earth's NEO Defenses

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "Until very recently, the devastating 1908 explosion of a space rock over the isolated Tunguska region of Siberia was thought to be a once-in-a-millennium event but new simulations by Mark Boslough at Sandia National Laboratories suggest the Tunguska object was much smaller than previously believed and since smaller near-Earth objects (NEOs) are more common than larger ones, the implication is that the gap between such impacts may be centuries rather than millennia. In 2005, the US Congress directed NASA to catalog 90 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter by the year 2020 but NASA has yet to allot funds to the project. Increasingly, coordinated private efforts are working to fill the gap in Earth's NEO defenses. Earlier this year, Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi donated a combined $30 million to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), keeping it on track for first light in 2014. LSST will survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its three-billion pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and by opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move, the LSST will also detect and catalog NEOs."
The Media

Wikileaks Sidesteps Publishing Public PGP Key 96

Posted by timothy
from the these-things-take-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Repeated requests toward the Wikileaks staff regarding their use of PGP have gone unanswered. The current public PGP key posted has been expired since November 2nd, 2007. A response on their PGP talk page notes that the 'SSL based mail submission system' will be the secure online method of document submission. At the current time, there is no method to safely encrypt any postal communications with Wikileaks or verify that any given communication actually originated from a Wikileaks staff member." Doubtless there are some complicating factors here -- but what is the best way to keep a confidentiality-centric site like Wikileaks trustworthy?
Supercomputing

SPAM: Self-healing ceramics for nuclear safety

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes "Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers have used supercomputers to simulate how common ceramics could repair themselves after radiation-induced damages. This is an important discovery because 'materials that can resist radiation damage are needed to expand the use of nuclear energy.' These ceramics, which are able to handle high-radiation doses, could improve the durability of nuclear power plants. They also might help to solve the problem of nuclear waste storage. But read more for additional references about how this research could improve nuclear safety."

"The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert." -- D. Letterman