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Sci-Fi

Submission + - Steven Brust releases CC-licensed Firefly fanfic

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Back in 2005, Steven Brust, Big Damn Author Extraordinaire (often compared to Roger Zelazny, and justly so), first discovered the Firefly universe, and decided he liked it so much that he just had to write about it. (He often says that he writes the books he wants to read.) When the resulting novel was finished, a long process was started to see if he could get it published. The last hope of this finally having vanished, he has now released his 'fanfic' novel, "My Own Kind of Freedom" under a Creative Commons license. You can download it here. (If you discover you like his style, consider picking up some of his regularly published works, or donating.)

Feed Schneier: UK Two-Tier Tax Security System (schneier.com)

From feed by bsfeed
Poor security for everyone except the rich and powerful: The security of the online computer system used by more than three million people to file tax returns is in doubt after HM Revenue and Customs admitted it was not secure...

Feed Engadget: Holocube brings 3D projection down to desktop size (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Displays

After years of promises, it seems that holograms are finally starting to gain a little traction, although the applications for the technology so far have been fairly limited. At least one company thinks that's about to change, however, with it now touting its retro-styled Holocube as an all-purpose solution for company's to advertise their products "like never before." Measuring about 20-inches square, the Holocube packs a 40GB hard drive for storing up to 18 hours of compressed video, which can magically float at 1080i resolution within the cube at the flick of a switch. Of course, the fact the company is targeting the device solely as a means of advertising should tell you something about the price (which is on a need to know basis, it seems). Still, it's a start, and we're guessing there are at least a few folks out there that'll snag one of these to fully round out their Star Wars-inspired home theater no matter what the cost. Head on past the break for some video of it in action.

Continue reading Holocube brings 3D projection down to desktop size

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Hardware Hacking

Submission + - First ever "Bionic Eye" contact lens creat (discovery.com)

Submitted by
azuredrake
azuredrake writes: "Discovery News reports that, for the first time, researchers have fitted a contact lens with an imprinted circuit and lights. This could be used to overlay electronic information on natural vision, essentially providing a hassle-free heads-up-display. The device receives power from radio signals presumably emitted by a carried device. While practical implementations are still probably years away, the significant technological hurdle of crafting a safe LCD inside a contact lens has now been cleared."
Biotech

Submission + - Human body heat to power energy-efficient chip (computerworld.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new energy efficient chip designed by researchers at MIT may use so little power that someday human body heat will be able to charge implantable medical devices. The new chip design, which researchers say will reduce power consumption by 10 times, is being unveiled this week at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. The chip, still in the proof-of-concept stage, is expected to be used in portable electronic devices, like cell phones, PDAs and even implantable medical systems. "We intend to implant these new low-voltage techniques as quickly as we can," said Dennis Buss, chief scientist at Texas Instruments, TI engineers worked with MIT researchers on the two year project. "To get to where we'd need to be with this will take about five years. Doing a research demonstration is an important step, but making it robust for commercial production will require some work." The key to the chip's improved energy efficiency lies in making it work at a reduced voltage level, according to Joyce Kwong, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the chip design project team. Most of the mobile processors today operate at about 1 volt. The requirement for MIT's new design, however, drops to 0.3 volts.
Cellphones

Submission + - Waking Engineers from the Dead

Submitted by wizman
wizman writes: Hi Slashdotters! I am responsible for maintaining the uptime of our 80-ish servers. My company has an after-hours on-call rotation. At any given time, there are two engineers in the notification pool. When an outage is detected, an e-mail is sent to both engineers cell phones.

Over the past several months, I've been having more and more problems with engineers not responding to outages. This is often due to some failure of their phones. Sometimes they don't receive the SMS, sometimes they don't hear the notification sounds, sometimes they leave the phone on vibrate accidentally. The list goes on.

I'm sure there are other geeks out there who have had to deal with similar situations. I'm curious what others have found to resolve this. We've discussed having more people in rotation at once, buying secondary cell phones, providing alpha pagers (which are surprisingly hard to find these days), and other ideas. What has worked for you?
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - KS Hobbyist Hacks "Green" Vehicles, Shames (fastcompany.com)

Submitted by Dragee
Dragee writes: Goodwin, a 37-year-old who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair, is a professional car hacker. [And grade-school dropout.] He takes the hugest American cars on the road and rejiggers them to get up to quadruple their normal mileage and burn low-emission renewable fuels grown on U.S. soil — all while doubling their horsepower. The result thrills eco-evangelists and red-meat Americans alike: a vehicle that's simultaneously green and mean. And word's getting out.

Oh, and the conversation with GM engineers who happened upon one of Goodwin's creations?
One engineer turned and said, "GM said this wouldn't work."

"Well," Goodwin replied, "here it is.
Privacy

Submission + - The iPhone Meets the Fourth Amendment (ssrn.com) 3

Submitted by background image
background image writes: According to Alan M Gershowitz, the doctrine of "search incident to arrest" may allow devices such as mobile phones, pdas and laptops to be thoroughly searched without either probable cause or warrants, and incriminating evidence found in such searches may be used against you whether or not it is germane to the reason for the original arrest.

Imagine that police arrest an individual for a simple traffic infraction, such as running a stop sign. Under the search incident to arrest doctrine, officers are entitled to search the body of the person they are arresting to ensure that he does not have any weapons or will not destroy any evidence. The search incident to an arrest is automatic and allows officers to open containers on the person, even if there is no probable cause to believe there is anything illegal inside of those containers. What happens, however, when the arrestee is carrying an iPhone in his pocket? May the police search the iPhone's call history, cell phone contacts, emails, pictures, movies, calendar entries and, perhaps most significantly, the browsing history from recent internet use? Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent decided well before handheld technology was even contemplated, the answer appears to be yes.

Feed Techdirt: Full Of SQL And Fury, Signifying Nothing (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
The RIAA's website was hacked early Monday morning — their out-of-date CMS installation proved to be vulnerable to a number of SQL injection attacks — and as you might expect the internet has been having a good laugh about it since.

Well, ha ha. I won't pretend to be immune from a little shadenfreude at the expense of this particular blogospheric bête noir. But in a larger way, this incident validates the RIAA's existence. After all, it's not the RIAA's name that appears on lawsuits filed against P2P users: it's those of the record labels. The association serves a number of functions, but not least among them is its role as a consequence-free focal point for consumer backlash — backlash that most recently channeled itself into meaningless vandalism against a brochureware site that no one visits.

Of course, this displacement of blame works in both directions. It's considerably easier for copyfighting triumphalists to claim they're in the right when the enemy is a constituency-free trade group rather than a business that represents (however poorly) the artists whose work is being appropriated. For this reason, I wouldn't take too seriously the rumors of the RIAA's demise. So long as the labels choose to prosecute their war on filesharers, everyone concerned will have a use for a scapegoat.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.



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The Military

Submission + - Israel Eyes Thinking Machines for 'Doomsday' 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Israel is worried about Iran launching an all-out, "doomsday" barrage of rockets and missiles. So military leaders have begun early planning for a new, robotic defense system, armed with enough artificial intelligence that it "could take over completely" from flesh-and-blood operators. "It will be designed for... autonomous operations," the commander of Israel's air defense forces, insists.
Google

Submission + - Google on the Hill (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "In an intelligent move, Google has injected a little bit of Google into Washington, D.C. in an effort to avoid what Microsoft failed to a decade ago. Hoping to play some politics, the lobbyists are looking to avoid the nasty slap on the wrist that Microsoft received. From the article, "Google also showed its Washington maturity by starting a political action committee. With its employees giving overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates, Google's NETPAC has been able to create goodwill on the other side of the aisle by funneling contributions to key Republicans. The PAC has distributed just $53,100 since 2006, but 54 percent went to Republicans, according to Congressional Quarterly's Moneyline. The Foosball table in Google's Washington offices shows that the company understands the political game. The red players are labeled Republicans and the blue players Democrats." Hopefully they don't pick up some of the lesser desirable traits of the politicians they are hosting."
United States

Submission + - Mitnick allowed back online. 1

Submitted by dbizzle
dbizzle writes: Legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick returns to the Internet tomorrow when his probation forbidding him to use the Internet (and all computers) comes to an end. Kevin was jailed following a series of legendary hacking exploits, and has never used the commercial Internet. Read more
Businesses

Submission + - What are they going to try next? (wordpress.com)

Submitted by ts in ky
ts in ky writes: Citicorp is denying legal purchases of firearms and accesories with thier credit cards. They have started this since the recent infusion of capitol from the Middle East. What will they next right they decide they are allowed to infringe upon?

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