54160697
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Velcroman1 writes:
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has filed a patent application for an electronic commerce system that sounds remarkably like Bitcoin — but never mentions the controversial, Internet-only currency. The patent application was filed in early August but made publicly available only at the end of November; it describes a “method and system for processing Internet payments using the electronic funds transfer network.” The system would allow people to pay bills anonymously over the Internet through an electronic transfer of funds — just like Bitcoin. It would allow for micropayments without processing fees — just like bitcoin. And it could kill off wire transfers through companies like Western Union — just like Bitcoin. There are 18,126 words in the patent application. “Bitcoin” is not one of them.
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Velcroman1 writes:
A U.S. spacecraft hasn’t made a controlled landing on the moon since Apollo 17 left the lunar surface on Dec. 14, 1972. That’s about to change. Moon Express will unveil the MX-1 spacecraft at the Autodesk University show in Las Vegas Thursday evening — a micro-spacecraft that will in 2015 mark the first U.S. "soft" landing since the days of the Apollo program, FoxNews.com has learned. The craft looks for all the world like a pair of donuts wearing an ice cream cone, and the tiny vehicle clearly isn’t big enough for a human being. But it is big enough to scoop up some rocks and dirt, store them in an internal compartment, and return it to Earth. After all, the moondirt Gene Cernan, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin once trod holds a king’s ransom of titanium, platinum, and other rare elements. Moon Express plans to mine it.
53072263
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Velcroman1 writes:
The tomb of brutal Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan — the one who created the world’s most powerful empire by raiding and invading across Eurasia, not Kirk's nemesis — is a lost treasure archaeologists have sought for years. And one man thinks he knows where it is. Last fall Alan Nichols, the president of The Explorers Club, mapped out possible locations for the tomb of Khan (also known as Chinnggis Qa'an). His hypothesis: Khan’s tomb is located in the Liupan Mountains in Northern China, where the emperor who was born in 1162 is said to have perished from an arrow wound in August 1227. Next fall, Nichols plans the next phase of his research: pinpointing Khan’s exact resting place. “Ghengis Khan’s tomb is my obsession,” Nichols, a noted authority on the emperor, said recently. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But I’m not happy just reading about it, or knowing about it. I need to have my feet on it.”
52850937
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Velcroman1 writes:
It has been a year since fallen software magnate John McAfee fled his adopted home and country — wanted by police for questioning in connection to the murder of his neighbor. In that year, the often eccentric programming pioneer led the media and the public on a wild ride with his outlandish behavior and off-the-wall statements during a catch-me-if you-can escape from the small Central American country. McAfee is a person of interest in the investigation surrounding the murder of his neighbor, American ex-pat Gregory Faull, near his compound in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye. No headway has been made in the investigation — and authorities in Belize are still looking to speak with McAfee. “Nothing has really changed. It’s not a closed case,” police spokesman Raphael Martinez said. “He is still a person of interest.”
52664995
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Velcroman1 writes:
What's going on in Canada, eh? Toronto is being run by a wild man — Mayor Rob Ford just admitted to smoking crack during a “drunken stupor" — and one of the country's leading technology lights has got not just a black eye, but a black berry (yes, I went there). No longer hooked on the Crackberry, the world has moved on to iPhones and Android handsets. Fortunately, Blackberry has a secret weapon — if only they realize it. In 2010, Blackberry purchased QNX Software, ostensibly to power a growing panoply of Blackberry devices, including a tablet computer (we all know how that went). But QNX's real strength, indeed what it's famous for in the tech world, is what's in the car.
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mattydread23 writes:
Google's latest Android showcase device is really a showcase for its services, particularly Google Now. It's so deeply integrated into the platform, you're practically compelled to use it for everything. That may be the whole point.
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Velcroman1 writes:
I bumped into someone recently. Admittedly, I wasn’t watching where I was going — in fact, I was heading for the food table. The person who brushed against me wasn’t paying attention, either. In fact, it wasn’t really a person at all. It was a robot. I was too. I was controlling the Beam remote-presence device at the RoboBusiness conference in Santa Clara last week. The person who brushed against me was also controlling a Beam. There were approximately 50 robopresence operators in attendance there, along with a few hundred “real” humans.
51669717
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Velcroman1 writes:
What if you could build a computer that works just like the human brain? You could invent new forms of industrial machinery, create fully autonomous thinking cars, devise new kinds of home appliances. And a new project in Europe hopes to create a computer brain just that powerful in the next ten years — and it’s incredibly well-funded. The Human Brain Project kicks off Oct. 7 at a conference in Switzerland. Over the next 10 years, about 80 science institutions and at least 20 government entities in Europe will figure out how to make that computer brain. The project will cost about $10 billion euros — or about $1.3B in US dollars. The research hinges on creating a super-powerful computer that’s 1,000 times faster than those in use today.
51205797
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Velcroman1 writes:
About 60,000 people have come from all over the world to attend Oracle's biggest customer conference of the year, but Oracle CEO Larry Ellison left no doubt Tuesday that his boating team's defense of the America's Cup is a higher priority. Ellison, a billionaire renowned for his flamboyance and hubris, delivered that message by snubbing the crowd that had gathered at a San Francisco convention center to see him on stage. The speech is considered to be the marquee event at Oracle OpenWorld, an annual rite of autumn that has grown so large that some San Francisco streets close down to accommodate the masses on hand to learn the about the business software maker's latest products. "I was disappointed," said Steve Katz, a Hewlett-Packard Co. employee who traveled from Hartford, Conn., to attend Oracle OpenWorld. "I guess Larry's boat is more important to him than all these people here."
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Velcroman1 writes:
Imagine living in a country where only 3.5 percent of the population use the Internet. When you ask a neighbor about Facebook, they give you a confused look. Posting a status update on Twitter is a foreign concept, and most citizens still rely on printed newspapers and radio reports. That’s life in Afghanistan today, where only 1.5 million people (out of 30M) have Internet access. A new National Social Media Summit intends to change that trend. To be held September 22 to 23 in Kabul, and featuring some 200 speakers, the event will promote the use of social media as a way to not only discuss current news, but to make news. The summit, called Paiwand (or Unity), aims to boost Net use further. It will break out into several themes including social media and government transparency, new media trends and emerging tech.
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Velcroman1 writes:
Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility announced Tuesday a successful test of its ultrapowerful laser system, which melds 192 laser beams into a single incredible burst of energy. On Aug. 13, the facility was activated for 14 billionths of a second and aimed at a tiny capsule of fuel. The result: approximately 350 trillion watts of power — hundreds of times more than the entire United States consumes at any given instant. “We’re working in a place where no human has ever gone before,” Ed Moses, principle associate director for NIF and Photon Science, said. “We’re working on the bleeding edge of fusion physics.”
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Velcroman1 writes:
The group was down to Earth — but not for long, they hope. These folks want to go to Mars. “I want off the planet – I want humanity off the planet,” declared Leila Zucker, 45, also known as “Dr. Leila,” because she is, in fact, a doctor who works nearby in the emergency room at Howard University Hospital. She has yearned to be an astronaut — and a doctor — since the age of 3, she told FoxNews.com. “One dream fulfilled, one to go,” she said happily. Zucker joined not a million, but 100 or so “aspiring Martians” from across the country, one with green hair and costume antennae, for a “Million Martian Meeting” held Saturday in Washington, D.C., which was sponsored by the Facebook page of the same name. The group came together as applicants of the Mars One project, an ambitious 10-year plan for a one-way trip to colonize the Red Planet.
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Velcroman1 writes:
The world’s GPS system is vulnerable to hackers or terrorists who could use it to hijack ships – even commercial airliners. Todd Humphreys, a GPS expert at the University of Texas just completed a frightening real-time, real-life experiment that has exposed a huge potential hole in national security. Using a laptop, a small antenna and an electronic GPS “spoofer” built for $3,000, Humphreys and his team took control of the sophisticated navigation system aboard an $80 million, 210-foot super-yacht in the Mediterranean Sea. “We injected our spoofing signals into its GPS antennas and we’re basically able to control its navigation system with our spoofing signals,” Humphreys told Fox News.
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Velcroman1 writes:
Retailers are experimenting with a variety of new ways to track you, so that when you pick up a shirt, you might get a message about the matching shorts. Or pick up golf shoes at a sports store and you see a discount for a new set of clubs. New technologies like magnetic field detection, Bluetooth Low Energy, sonic pulses, and even transmissions from the in-store lights can tell when you enter a store, where you go, and how you shop. Just last year, tracking was only accurate within 100 feet. Starting this year, they can track within a few feet. ByteLight makes the lighting tech, which transmits a unique signal that the camera in your phone can read. The store can then track your location within about 3 feet — and it's already in use at the Museum of Science in Boston.
47864637
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Velcroman1 writes:
The clandestine National Security Agency is partly responsible for the modern PC era, a newly declassified document reveals, thanks to decades of custom computers built for one thing: espionage. Declassified by the NSA on May 29 and posted online on Monday, the 344-page report “It Wasn’t All Magic: The Early Struggle to Automate Cryptanalysis,” details the unknown high-tech history of computers so secretive even their code names were kept confidential. A Slashdot link on Monday took down the computers hosting the documents at Government Attic (the slashdot effect still happens!) FoxNews.com has reposted the docs: Part One. Part Two.
