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Robotics

Submission + - A flying fish or a seaplane?

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "University of Michigan engineers have developed a new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) after looking at real flying fish. Like the fish, this seaplane takes off and lands on water. The 7-foot wingspan electric UAV has been funded by the DOD's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and designed as 'an autonomous buoy for persistent surveillance in the open ocean.' The first sea trials have been successful. Now, the researchers want to improve the possibilities of their 'Flying Fish.' In particular, they want to use the energy from sun, wind, and waves during its surveillance missions. But read more for additional details and a photo gallery of the Flying Fish."
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Dam the Red Sea, Dam the Mediterranean?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Physorg reports that Damming the Red Sea could solve the growing energy demands of millions of people in the Middle East and alleviate some of the region's tensions pertaining to oil supplies through hydroelectric power. Equally, such a massive engineering project may cause untold ecological harm and displace countless people from their homes. Herman Sörgel had this idea before about damning the Mediterranean sea. Present technology allows us to shift and shape the earth on a relatively large scale and to control lakes and reservoirs for hydroelectric power generation. In the near future, however, it might be possible to build dams large enough to separate a body of water as large as the Red Sea, from the world oceans.
The Internet

Submission + - Open WAP porn law passes house. (news.com)

Submitted by Nephilium
Nephilium writes: News.com reports that a new bill has just passed the house (by a vote of 409-2) that "anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings — or face fines of up to $300,000." This was rushed through with no discussion, no public debate, and no hearings. But don't worry, the fine for a first offense is only $150,000.
Handhelds

Submission + - Birth of Handspring and the Treo

Submitted by Gammu
Gammu writes: After leaving Palm (after years of mismanagement and interference by its parent company, 3COM) Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins founded Handspring. To the outside world, Handspring appeared to be an ordinary PDA company, releasing the well respected Visor with its SpringBoard slot and enhanced software, but in reality, it was a communications company in disguise. Visor sales helped finance the development and marketing of a new flagship product, the Treo. After two generations of Treos were released, Palm acquired Handspring and adopted the 'communicator' strategy, continuing to release new revisions of the original Handspring design. Read the full history of Handspring and the Treo at Silicon User.
Security

Submission + - Installing a game patch, CCP removes c:\boot.ini 1

Submitted by
egnop
egnop writes: "So there are about 300k subscribers that play the EVE-online game, at 5 december they had a large patch/upgrade for the game, imagine installing it, reboot your computer and it says, boot.ini missing can't start :-/ From their website: http://www.eve-online.com/ Posted — 2007.12.06 06:19:00 — [1] Please do not reboot your computer without reading this information and determining if your system might be affected. If you upgraded from the Classic client to the Premium client, using the content upgrade, then please read on. Check the root directory of your hard drive and see if you have a boot.ini file, if so then you are not affected. The file is normally hidden so you need to click Tools : Folder Options : View and select "Show hidden files and folders" and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files" to be able to see it. You can also check for the presence of this file by clicking Start : Control Panel : System : Advanced : Startup and Recovery : Settings (third button down). Windows will alert you if the boot.ini file is missing. ... Now that is like sending out a virus to your paying customers, firing the QA departement and going bankrupped?"
Privacy

Submission + - Wikipedia "private" Checkuser usage

Submitted by
wikinerdiest
wikinerdiest writes: "Wikipedians are again struggling with back channel invasions of Users' privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#.22Private.22_Checkuser_use . This time it is the frequent(admitted) use by many administrators of backchannel (IRC,email) methods to request and obtain Checkuser information without the User checked being made aware of it. This process completely circumvents their official process at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHECKUSER which seems to be little more than a facade for public consumption. While the official process makes note of the right of Users to complain of privacy breaches, the "private checkuser request" process makes that right mute since the User may not be even made aware Checkuser was used."
Data Storage

Submission + - Samsung's 64GB SSD drive review (computerworld.com) 4

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "Computerworld's Rich Ericson reviewed Samsung's first large capacity solid state disk drive and says it's heartier and faster than the drive in Sony's new flash-based notebook. It's also got an impressive mean time between failure of more than 2 million hours, versus under 500,000 hours for the Samsung's other traditional hard drives and the company says the drive can withstand an operating shock of 1,500Gs at .5 miliseconds (versus 300Gs at 2 miliseconds for a traditional hard drive. "Power consumption is just 1 watt when the system is active, 0.1 watt when idle, and .06 watt in standby mode. (Equivalent power consumption figures with hard drives are 2.1, 1.5, and .2 watts, respectively.) That could explain why we got 5 hours, 22 minutes of power in Max Battery mode when surfing the Web, creating documents with OpenOffice, or uploading and downloading files to an FTP server.""
Privacy

Submission + - Privacy Breach at Canadian Passport Office

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Globe and Mail is reporting a significant privacy breach in the Canadian online passport system. From the somewhat blurry image provided, it seems that by replacing a URL parameter other applicants personal information, including Social Insurance numbers, Drivers License numbers and addresses, could be seen. Worst of all the passport office refers to it as 'an isolated anomaly', in an otherwise 'very highly secure application' — not likely.
Christmas Cheer

Submission + - The Science of Gift Wrapping (alphagalileo.org)

Submitted by
IZ Reloaded
IZ Reloaded writes: "A mathematician working with a leading shopping centre in the UK has come up with a formula for the perfect method of gift-wrapping. The mathematical solution which will hopefully put an end to unnecessary paper wastage: A1 = 2(ab+ac+bc+c2)**. The length of the wrapping paper should be as long as the perimeter of the side of the gift, with no more than 2cm allowed for an overlap. The width should be just a little over the sum of the width and the depth of the gift. There's also a formula to wrap unusual shaped gift: h/(p-2)***. The equation will help consumers decide whether they should roll the paper around the gift or wrap the paper over the top of it to ensure they reduce their gift-wrapping footprint."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Nintendo's curious reasearch OS in javascript

Submitted by
Ayanami Rei
Ayanami Rei writes: "From The Ajaxaian, Nintendo apparently is working on an open source research operating system (translated SourceForge page here). It's an x86 kernel written in C++ with some basic drivers so far, bootable in QEMU and bochs. A particularly interesting feature of this work is that the entire userland is written in Javascript. They even bundled a Squeak interpreter running in the JavaScript environment as a demonstration. Firefox has demonstrated that JavaScript can be a capable language for developing graphical applications and interfaces. Nintendo's WiiShop is certainly written in it; could other Wii channels or other portions of the system be web technology powered, and what does this portend for future Nintendo products?"
Government

Submission + - Australia ratifies Kyoto Protocol

Submitted by GroeFaZ
GroeFaZ writes: As the BBC reports, the first political act of the new PM of Australia, Rudd, was to start ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. He was quoted as saying "[Signing the Kyoto Protocol is] a significant step forward in our country's efforts to fight climate change domestically — and with the international community,". That is, the international community without the USA — Australia's ratification made the USA the only industrialized nation to not have signed the Kyoto Protocol.
Google

Submission + - Google locates mobile phone users with cell towers (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
jbrodkin
jbrodkin writes: "Google today launched a GPS-like service for smartphones that uses cell tower ID information to track the location of mobile phone users and direct them to nearby destinations. The technology, an extension of Google Maps, "takes information broadcast from cell towers and sifts it through Google-developed algorithms to approximate a user's current location on the map," Google says. Google seems to anticipate concerns from privacy rights advocates, and has promised not to associate location data with any personally identifiable information. This new mobile version of Google Maps is available in beta."
Education

Submission + - SPAM: Which certifications are worth your time?

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: For years, the key to jumpstarting a network professional's career was getting a Cisco, Microsoft or other technical certification. But now CIOs, IT recruiters and salary specialists say demand is waning for hardware- and software-oriented certifications. Instead, companies are looking for IT professionals with business-oriented certifications in such areas as project management and Six Sigma, a statistical quality improvement technique that is being adopted by more IT shops.
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - Professor Breaks Bank Security to Prove Point

Submitted by
swehack
swehack writes: "Norweigan computer science professor Kjell Jørgen Hole was dissapointed at how his bank handled the security concerns he had. So he took matters into his own hands, and made it a project to break the security as a proof of concept. Along with his students he worked for approximately 100 hours and managed to successfully break the banks security measures, transfer money between accounts without the owner noticing and steal the identity of banking customers. Original article in Swedish."
Space

Submission + - Watching earthrise from moon (www.jaxa.jp)

Submitted by
kfz versicherung
kfz versicherung writes: "Japan's Kaguya spacecraft has captured a stunning video of the Earth rising above the horizon and setting again as the spacecraft orbits around the Moon. Sadly earthrise cannot be viewed from the surface of the Moon. That's because one side of the Moon is permanently locked facing the Earth, so Earth stays fixed in the Moon's sky (or below the horizon on the side facing away from Earth). Download the high-definition videos from offical JAXA website."

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