Comment Re:Interesting idea, poor implementation. (Score 3, Informative) 194
And that software would be Maxivista.
Comment Re:My Reply to Melissa Parke MP (Score 1) 231
If I have to rent a VPN plan and connect to a server in the US to bypass this stupid filter, then I will.
Since I've been looking at VPN solutions so I can safely use free WiFi spots, I might as well just sign up for a cheap US service so I can bypass The Great Firewall of Australia too.
Comment Re:Well... (Score 2, Interesting) 440
A couple of months ago AVG decided that Portable Thunderbird was a trojan. After an update, hey, no it's not.
I used to recommend it to anyone who needed anti-virus for a home PC but now I recommend Avast and I'll be removing the last remaining AVG install on any of my PCs the next time it screws up in any way.
I used to recommend it to anyone who needed anti-virus for a home PC but now I recommend Avast and I'll be removing the last remaining AVG install on any of my PCs the next time it screws up in any way.
Molten Salt-Based Solar Power Plant 478
rcastro0 writes "Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of United Technologies, announced today that it will start to commercialize a new type of solar power plant. A new company called SolarReserve will be created to provide heat-resistant pumps and other equipment, as well as the expertise in handling and storing salt that has been heated to more than 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla 'Three percent of the land area of Morocco could support all of the electricity for Western Europe.' Molten Salt storage is already used in Nevada's Solar One power plant. Is this the post-hydrocarbon world finally knocking?"
Submission + - Solar Tree Bears Fruit 1
Hugh Pickens writes: "A solar tree recently passed a key test and went on display on a busy street — the Ringstrasse — in Vienna, Austria providing light during the night-time even when the sun had been covered by clouds for four days in a row. The branches of the solar tree were decorated with 10 solar lamps, each one powered by 36 solar cells.and the tree included rechargeable batteries and electronic systems to measure the amount of light in the atmosphere and trigger the solar lamps to go on. "Not just trees but other objects could be decorated with solar cells and so keep streets well lit at night time," said Christina Werner from Cultural Project Management. Google uses a similar concept to light their parking lots with 3,000 solar panels that provide 10 percent of the Googleplex's power demand."
Information Overload Predicted Problem of the Year for 2008 146
Wired is reporting that information overload is being predicted by some analysts as the problem of the year for 2008. "'It's too much information. It's too many interruptions. It's too much lost time,' Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira declared. 'It's always too much of a good thing.' Information overload isn't exactly new, but Spira said the problem has grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous response. And more information available, he said, also means more time wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or through a search engine."
DIY CPU Demo'd Running Minix 313
DeviceGuru writes "Bill Buzbee offered the first public demonstration of the open-source Minix OS — a cousin of Linux — running on his homebrew minicomputer, the Magic-1, at the Vintage Computer Festival in Mountain View, Calif. The Magic-1 minicomputer is built with 74-series TTL ICs using wire-wrap construction, and implements a homebrew, 8086-like ISA. Rather than using a commercial microprocessor, Buzbee created his own microcoded CPU that runs at 4.09 MHz, and is in the same ballpark as an old 8086 in performance and capabilities. The CPU has a 22-bit physical address bus and an 8-bit data bus."
Vinyl To Signal the End for CDs? 883
PJ1216 writes to mention that vinyl seems poised to make a comeback in the music industry. Some are even predicting that this comeback coupled with the surge in digital music sales could possibly close the door on CDs. "Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs. Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound. Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."
Thompson Sues ESRB, Best Buy 134
Well known anti-gaming lawyer Jack Thompson is following up on his clever sting operations against Best Buy. He's filed suit against the consumer electronics retailer for allegedly selling M-rated games to underage gamers. He has also included the ESRB in that suit. GamePolitics reports: "As we reported, the claim against Best Buy suit looks as if it will be going nowhere. Thompson has also apparently named the ESRB in the suit. That looks like a non-starter as well. His explanation: 'The ESRB has been sued by Thompson because it is well known that it a) is owned and operated by the video game industry, b) does not even play the games it rates to conclusion, c) routinely mislabels games as to age appropriateness, per testimony before the U.S. Congress, and is engaged in representations to American parents that the age label are accurate and are keeping "Mature" games out of the hands of kids.'"
Robotic Cannon Loses Control, Kills 9 580
TJ_Phazerhacki writes "A new high tech weapon system demonstrated one of the prime concerns circling smarter and smarter methods of defense last week — an Oerlikon GDF-005 cannon went wildly out of control during live fire test exercises in South Africa, killing 9. Scarily enough, this is far from the first instance of a smart weapon 'turning' on its handlers. 'Electronics engineer and defence company CEO Richard Young says he can't believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart. During the shooting trials at Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range, "I personally saw a gun go out of control several times," Young says. "They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down."' The biggest concern seems to be finding the glitches in the system instead of reconsidering automated arms altogether."
Geek and Gadgets Set Cross-US Speed Record 805
Brikus writes "And you thought your car had gadgets. In this story from Wired magazine, we hear about Alex Roy and his quest to break the record time for a cross-USA road trip. One of the biggest roadblocks to breaking the record: highway patrol officers, about 31,000 along the way. So Roy decked out his E39 BMW M5 with a thermal camera, radar/laser detectors, GPS devices, police scanners, and other high-tech gadgets and toys."
Submission + - New Milestone Demoscene Releases. (pouet.net) 4
An anonymous reader writes: With over 3000 visitors one of the biggest computer festivals, the Assembly 2007, just closed doors. The event saw the release of some of the best demoscene productions of this year. Among them the first good demos for the XBOX 360, but also for platforms as obscure as the Atari VCS2600 from 1976. The main demo competition was won by Lifeforce, one of the most acclaimed demoscene demos ever. Other releases can be found here.
Journal SPAM: Does the iPhone have a built-in spyware module? 2
The underground hacker team "web-Hack" from Russia released a whitepaper with results of iPhone firmware research where they reverse-engineered embedded functions. They claim discovery of a built-in function which sends all data from an iPhone to a specified web-server. Contacts from a phonebook, SMS, recent calls, history of Safari browser - all your personal information - can be stolen. Researchers as
Submission + - Perpetual Energy Machine Can't Take the Heat. (slashdot.org)
Kris_J writes: "As anyone with half a brain could have predicted, the Perpetual Energy Machine previously discussed on /. (sigh) has run into technical difficulties. The official website currently says
"We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting."
Bad news for the tropics, I guess."
Submission + - GeForce 8800 SLI raises graphics performance bar
theraindog writes: "With Nvidia's GeForce 8800 series doubling the performance of the previous generation's fastest graphics cards, one has to wonder whether there's any point to teaming a pair of 8800s in SLI. Somewhat surprisingly, there is. When combined with a 30" display, the latest games, and high levels of image quality enhancing antialiasing and anisotropic filtering, GeForce 8800 SLI makes an interesting case for $1200 graphics subsystems. Unfortunately, high-end multi-GPU configurations like GeForce 8800 SLI are still at the mercy of immature drivers and dodgy application support, proving there's plenty of baggage to go along with breathtaking performance."
