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Ten Best, Worst, and Craziest Uses of RFID 126

Posted by CowboyNeal from the track-this dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This top 10 rounds up what it calls 'the best, worst and craziest' uses of RFID out there — including chipped kids at Legoland, smart pub tables that let you order drinks, smartcards for sports fans, and chipped airline passengers. The craziest use of the tech surely has to be RFID chips for Marks & Spencer suits — you couldn't pay most people to wear one of them."

U.S. Classrooms Torn Between Science and Religion 1115

Posted by Zonk from the when-the-man-has-an-agenda- dept.
Dystopian Rebel writes "A New Jersey public-school history teacher was recorded telling his students that they 'belong in Hell' if they do not accept Jesus. The teacher, who is also a Baptist Pastor, lied later when he was asked by the school principle what he said to the students. Unfortunately for this dodge, a student recorded the teacher's 'lesson'." From the article: "The student and his parents have requested that the teacher's anti-scientific remarks be corrected in open class, and that the school develop quality control procedures to ensure that future classes are not proselytized and misinformed. They have also referred the matter for disciplinary action. No apology has been forthcoming from the teacher or from the school."

The World's Most-High Tech Urinal 225

Posted by CmdrTaco from the japan-might-argue-with-that dept.
Mudzy writes "In an effort to handle its nighttime public urination problem, Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, is considering installing high-tech urinals that disappear below street level during the day. Then at night, an operator comes by with a remote and the Urilift hydraulically lifts to sidewalk level in about two minutes. Then the unit is ready to serve all the nighttime party animals who don't mind peeing in a very exposed public urinal. The $75,000 system has been installed across the Netherlands, and have spread to London and Belfast, but Victoria will be the first North American city to try them out."

Ancient Swords Made of Carbon Nanotubes 293

Posted by CowboyNeal from the built-to-last dept.
brian0918 writes "Nature reports that researchers at Dresden University believe that sabres from Damascus dating back to 900 AD were formed with help from carbon nanotubes. From the article: 'Sabres from Damascus are made from a type of steel called wootz. But the secret of the swords' manufacture was lost in the eighteenth century.' At high temperatures, impurities in the metal 'could have catalyzed the growth of nanotubes from carbon in the burning wood and leaves used to make the wootz, Paufler suggests. These tubes could then have filled with cementite to produce the wires in the patterned blades, he says.'"

Walkman Creator Leaves Sony 89

Posted by CowboyNeal from the walking-shoes dept.
Gammu writes "Nobutoshi Kihara, the engineer behind the Walkman, has left Sony. In the late seventies, one of the co-chairman of Sony, Morita, requested the audio division create a portable tape player capable of playing his operas while he was on transpacific flights to the US. After less than a year, the Walkman was released to the public and revolutionized the music industry. Read about the development of the first Walkman at Low End Mac."

Democrats Take House, Senate Undecided 1090

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-not-officially-anyway dept.
Every news publication on earth is saying mostly the same thing. The Democrats have taken the house picking up a sizable number of seats. But the Senate remains a tossup with a few undecided seats holding the balance. Concerns of voter fraud have been heard from around the nation as well.

Natural Language Processing for State Security 132

Posted by Zonk from the your-ipod-can-tell-what-you-mean dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Obviously, computers can't have an opinion. What computers are very good at, though, is scanning through text to deduct human opinions from factual information. This branch of natural-language processing (NLP) is called 'information extraction' and is used for sorting facts and opinions for Homeland Security. Right now, a consortium of three universities is for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which doesn't have enough in-house expertise in NLP. Read more for additional references and a diagram showing how information extraction is used."

Breakthrough Gives 3-D Vision of Dawn of Life 54

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the like-looking-at-really-old-black-and-whites dept.
butterwise writes "MSNBC reports that a new scanning technique could revolutionize paleontology. The new technique is allowing researchers a virtual dissection of half-billion-year-old fossilized embryos." From the article: "The Chinese, Swedish, Swiss and British researchers on Donoghue's team used a 1,640-foot-wide (500-meter-wide) particle accelerator in Switzerland to scan the minute fossils, and then fed the information into a computer that generated complete 3-D images of the internal structures in fine detail."

WxPython in Action 77

Posted by samzenpus from the snakes-on-a-computer dept.
aceydacey writes ""WxPython in Action" is a new and definitive guide to the popular wxPython GUI framework. WxPython has been growing in popularity by leaps and bounds in recent years but has been hampered by a comparative lack of good, comprehensive documentation, so much so that many people have turned to studying the documentation for the underlying wxWidgets framework, that is written in C++. "WxPython in Action" fills the void by combining a good introduction to the framework with a comprehensive and accessible reference document. At 552 pages, Manning Publications has produced a definitive book." Read the rest of Ron's review.

Einstein- Husband, Lover and Father 215

Posted by CmdrTaco from the man-myth-and-hairdo dept.
evilsheep writes "A large collection of correspondence shedding light on Einstein's personal life and perspectives was made public today by The Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Spanning almost 3500 pages, the correspondence encompasses letters to and from his first and second wives and children between the years 1912- 1955.This newly released batch of letters fill in details to create a 'higher resolution' image of Einstein beyond what was previously known of his personal life. The collection has been in the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University for many years, but was not made public in accordance with the will of Einstein's stepdaughter, Margot, who specified that they not be revealed until 20 years after her death. Margot died in July 1986. Einstein wrote almost daily letters to his second wife Elsa and to her daughter Margot whilst away from home about delivering and listening to boring lectures, playing music with friends, or trying to stop smoking."

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It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster. - Voltaire

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