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New Internal Cavity X-ray Technology for Airports Screenshot-sm 308

Posted by samzenpus from the nice-guts-finish-last dept.
Thanks to a new type of X-ray scanner unveiled in Australia, annoyed TSA agents won't have to send you to a hospital for a body cavity scan, they can do it in-house. Officials say that more than 4,600 man-hours were wasted last year in hospitals waiting for scans. From the article: "Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said the scanners would also help innocent travelers. 'The option of an internal body scan will more quickly exonerate the innocent and ensure a minimum of delay for legitimate travelers,' Mr O'Connor said."
Software

G-WAN, Another Free Web Server 217

Posted by kdawson from the dioing-it-in-a-hundred-k dept.
mssmss writes "Has anyone used G-WAN — a free (as in beer), supposedly fast and scalable Web server? The downside is it supports only C scripts, which the author claims is a plus since most programmers know C anyway. There is currently only a Windows release and no clear answer in their FAQs whether there would be Linux/Solaris releases. As an interesting aside, releasing a Web server while at the same time fighting a losing battle (PDF) with a large bank over a piracy claim of $200 million (the bank is alleged to have done the piracy) is quite a feat."
Displays

Visualizing Data Inside the 30-ft Allosphere 131

Posted by timothy from the bah-I've-seen-bigger dept.
TEDChris writes "The Allosphere, being created at UC Santa Barbara, is the most ambitious attempt yet at creating powerful 3d visualizations of raw scientific data, such as the structure of a crystal, or how quantum effects take place. Researchers watch from a bridge inside the 30-foot sphere, looking at data projected 360 degrees around them and listening to 3D sound. The first major public demo of the facility has just been posted at TED.com. Optimists would argue that many of the greatest scientific breakthroughs happened through a new visual way of imagining data. Penicillin and relativity come to mind. So this is either a killer new research vehicle, an incredible toy, or just an insanely expensive art project."
Cellphones

The Realities of Selling On Apple's App Store 223

Posted by kdawson from the languishing-on-the-midlist dept.
Owen Goss writes "Everyone is familiar with the story of the iPhone developer who spends two weeks of spare time making a game that goes on to make them hundreds of thousands of dollars. The reality is that with the App Store now hosting over 25,000 apps, the competition is fierce. While it's true that a few select apps are making developers rich, the reality is that most apps don't make a lot of money. In a blog post I take a hard look at the first 24 days of sales data for the first game, Dapple, from Streaming Colour Studios. The post reflects what is likely the norm for developers just getting into the iPhone development game."
Software

Apple Claims That Jail-Breaking Is Illegal 610

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the never-underestimate-the-power-of-greed dept.
rmav writes "Apple has finally made a statement about jail-breaking. They try to sell the idea that it is a copyright infringement and DMCA violation. This, despite the fact (as the linked article states) that courts have ruled that copying software while reverse engineering is a fair use when done for purposes of fostering interoperability with independently created software. I cannot help but think that the recent flood of iPhone cracked applications is responsible for this. Before that, Apple was quietly ignoring the jailbreak scene. Now, I suppose that in the future we may only install extra applications on our iPhones as ad hoc installs using the SDK, and if we want turn-by-turn directions, tethering, and the like, we have to compile these apps by ourselves? Maybe we should go and download the cydia source code and see what we can do with it."

Comment In Soviet Russia... (Score 5, Insightful) 309

by macx666 (#26684943) Attached to: Will the New RIAA Tactic Boost P2P File Sharing?

I know this sounds like the start of a bad joke, but this seems to be a fairly simple principle. When the USSR made it nearly impossible to get normal goods that the public wanted, an underground sprang up to fill the need. This is simple supply and demand economics. To generalize, making things overly expensive and tied to one internet connected device is only going to encourage a larger underground market.

People, on the whole, want to do the right thing, but you should not deprive them of their right to do whatever they want with things they have legally bought, or they will circumvent it. Humans adapt, learn, and defeat stupid things like copy protection and vendor-lock in all the time. If they really want to decrease piracy, then they should stop price gouging, stop overly restrictive DRM, allow better "try before you buy" methods, and truly embrace college communities via viral marketing techniques rather than call them criminals.

But hey, you already knew this. At this point, we're just beating a dead horse with this argument.
Robotics

Toward Autonomous Unmanned Aircraft Technology 137

Posted by kdawson from the fly-by-wire-only-there-is-no-wire dept.
coondoggie writes with a NetworkWorld piece that begins, "Researchers at Purdue will soon experiment with an unmanned aircraft that pretty much flies itself with little human intervention. The aircraft will use a combination of global-positioning system technology and a guidance system called AttoPilot ... to guide the aerial vehicle to predetermined points. Researchers can be stationed off-site to monitor the aircraft and control its movements remotely. AttoPilot was installed in the aircraft early this year, and testing will begin in the spring, researchers said."
Television

New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California 609

Posted by timothy from the free-markets-are-just-too-wacky-and-non-linear dept.
petehead writes "The LA Times reports on regulations expected to pass in 2009 that will not allow energy-inefficient TVs to be sold in the state. 'State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models, starting in 2011... The regulations would be phased in over two years, with a first tier taking effect on Jan. 1, 2011, and a more stringent, second tier on Jan. 1, 2013.'" According to the Energy Commission's estimates, purchasers of Tier 1-compliant TVs would shave an average of $18.48 off their residential electric bill in the first year of ownership.
Google

Google Tells Users To Drop IE6 426

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-mom-still-won't-do-it dept.
Kelly writes "Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome. Google recently removed Firefox from the Google Pack bundle, replaced it with Chrome, then added a direct download link for Chrome on Google and YouTube. Google's decision to list IE6 as an unsupported Gmail browser does not affect just consumers: Tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized businesses that run Google Apps hosted services may dump IE6 as well. What's especially interesting is the fact that Mozilla is picking up two out of three browser users that Microsoft surrenders."

Comment Re:Will AT&T repay me for the days my service (Score 2, Insightful) 213

by macx666 (#26259041) Attached to: Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest

That's fine. If a tornado ripped through their datacenter, I could see that being Force Majeure. Failure to have a backup generator (or other power protection mechanism) is not force majeure and you would be hard pressed to find a judge that would say otherwise. Failure to have power for any reason is considered a predictable event that any datacenter operator should be able to deal with for 24 hours.

Comment Re:Will AT&T repay me for the days my service (Score 1) 213

by macx666 (#26258977) Attached to: Storm Causes AT&T Outage Across Midwest

No, I don't know for fact that they don't have adequate power backup. I do know for fact that they didn't loose their roof. I also know, as I live in the general area, that other than a few trees down here and there, power was the only problem.

I certainly didn't see anything about trees falling on datacenters in the storm reports I've read through. I have, however, read about many many people being out of power because of the winds.
Privacy

10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles 398

Posted by Soulskill from the mood:-unsurprised dept.
theodp writes "Confirming paranoid high-schoolers' fears, a new Kaplan survey reveals that 10% of admissions officers from prestigious schools said they had peeked at sites like Facebook and MySpace to evaluate college-bound seniors. Of those using the profiles, 38% said it had a 'negative impact' on the applicant. 'Today's application is not just what you send ... but whatever they can Google about you,' said Kaplan's Jeff Olson. At Notre Dame, assistant provost for enrollment Dan Saracino said he and his staff sometimes come across candidates portraying themselves in a less-than-flattering light. 'It's typically inappropriate photos — like holding up a can of beer at a party,' Saracino said. On the other hand, using the Internet to vet someone's character seems overly intrusive to Northwestern's Christopher Watson. 'We consider Facebook and MySpace their personal space,' the dean of undergraduate admissions said. 'It would feel somewhat like an invasion of privacy.'" We recently discussed similar practices from prospective employers.
Science

Magpies Are Self-Aware 591

Posted by kdawson from the who-you-callin'-birdbrain dept.
FireStormZ writes "Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals. It had been thought only four species of apes, bottlenose dolphins, and Asian elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror. But German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies, a species with a brain structure very different from mammals, could also identify themselves. It had been thought that the neocortex brain area found in mammals was crucial to self-recognition. Yet birds, which last shared a common ancestor with mammals 300 million years ago, don't have a neocortex, suggesting that higher cognitive skills can develop in other ways."

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