I think the technology exists (at least somewhere on this planet) but it's being held back to extract as much money as possible in the meantime on current technology. I have no direct evidence of this of course but when you think of what kinds of things humans can accomplish when they put their minds and copious amounts of funding toward it, you'd have to believe it's out there, even if only in a lab somewhere or in some military only role held in secret. This is going completely off topic (and I know I'll going all conspiracy theory and tin-foil hatter on ya) but consider the "non-battery tech" X-10 drone for example http://www.liveleak.com/view?i... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... That sucker was swirling around the skies in 1953! It went over Mach 2 too. Re-read the year again and it will sink in. You don't just magically design and build something like that in a few years either. Stuff like that takes at LEAST 10 years to plan, build and test. Wikipedia says preliminary design was completed in 1951 and first flight was in 1953. So where are we now...approximately 1943 when they were drawing it up? Think about other technologies of that time frame...then it becomes more almost unicorn and Apple'ish magical! You could say similar things about German technologies of WW2. Like it's so far out there compared to earlier times and other countries offerings as to be mind blowing! Anyhow, back on topic...I'd be really surprised if 10x longer next-gen batteries have not existed for quite some time. DARPA funds crazy things like this all the time and they send people all over the world regularly to sit in on the latest University breakthroughs. If they don't have it, then no one has it - publicly at least.

because of this article. Thanks for the heads up /.

It's late at night there, good luck sleeping indoors or outdoors tonight with the crazy intensity of the aftershocks. Crazy... 6.3 58km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 04:10:31 UTC 40.1 km 5.3 89km WNW of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 04:02:10 UTC 19.5 km 6.2 44km SSW of Ovalle, Chile 2015-09-17 03:55:07 UTC 35.0 km 4.9 47km SSW of Ovalle, Chile 2015-09-17 02:59:29 UTC 35.0 km 6.4 64km NW of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 01:41:09 UTC 35.0 km 5.6 86km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 01:33:03 UTC 15.2 km 5.2 76km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 01:21:50 UTC 24.2 km 4.9 90km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 01:09:49 UTC 35.0 km 4.9 118km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 00:50:08 UTC 10.0 km 5.0 54km SW of Ovalle, Chile 2015-09-17 00:42:56 UTC 32.9 km 5.2 81km WSW of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-17 00:22:20 UTC 10.0 km 5.3 57km SW of Ovalle, Chile 2015-09-17 00:06:16 UTC 10.0 km 5.7 76km WSW of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-16 23:38:05 UTC 35.0 km 7.0 25km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-16 23:18:42 UTC 30.9 km 6.2 70km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-16 23:16:05 UTC 10.0 km 6.1 44km WSW of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-16 23:03:56 UTC 10.0 km 6.4 58km W of Illapel, Chile 2015-09-16 22:59:13 UTC 22.0 km 8.3 46km W of Illapel, Chile

When Microsoft gives it away for free?

Keep 'em coming Microsoft. It matters to me not. My Windows 7 works just fine and will continue to do so until you XP it to death. One day you'll get it sort of right and listen to your beta testers. Or you will continue your failed experiment. One thing I know for sure is that I'm glad I don't work for this company...

Awesome! Now we're talking...Lets start by removing all resemblances of the hideous Metro UI (either in 8, 8.1 OR 10) as well as the incredibly stupid idea of flattening everything (that includes adding back drop shadows, removing lame 2D MSPAINT like icons and adding back gradients on buttons). Even with the offer of free Windows 10 on the horizon I will NOT be downgrading my computing experience any further until this 2D Metro crap fad passes.

Look, if you want to capture data that badly just video capture the screen from a secondary device (smartphone). Even a child could do this. Renders your really expensive security software completely useless instantaneously.

This isn't a completely proper solution, but it could be useful: An audio captcha could be handy here as part of a phone answering machine/program/filter app. "Six plus five equals what?" Don't press the right answer number on the telephone dial-pad, call hangs up or goes directly to voice mail. Or make them press a certain number sequence...just randomize the captcha questions and corresponding answer. Not only that, if a call comes through as "unknown caller" via caller ID, then it automatically gets dropped or goes directly to VM but make sure the auto answer message they get says something so these unknown callers get the message "Your call has been filtered since you're blocking caller ID - GOODBYE" click. These things are fairly trivial to program...some inexpensive Arduino type kit (or less powerful and less expensive) could be programmed to do this type of thing fairly easily.

Honestly, it could be wise for Alibaba to consider buying/taking over Radio Shack entirely. And then use their storefronts as delivery areas for their crap sold on aliexpress.com North Americans grew up with the Radio Shack brand but fell out of love with them over time. Resurrecting the brand with the entire online inventory from Aliexpress would go a long way to bolstering trust in both brands. I don't exactly trust Aliexpress but I DO trust Radio Shack.

Get rid of Firefox and use Palemoon http://www.palemoon.org/ and then install AdBlock Latitude https://addons.palemoon.org/ex... You'll wonder what all the fuss is about after you wrestle your old UI back from Firefox and have all your ads blocked by a reputable organization (Palemoon) that won't sell out to the dark side like AdBlock Plus did. These two greedy companies need more people to jump ship and make a statement. Do your part. You'll be glad you did.

Sweet! Happy for you and that's great information. By the way, do you use Blender http://blender.org/ (Free and Open Source 3D and Video editing) too? Here is a sweet tutorial on how to generate 2D artwork (SVG's) from 3D models. http://goinkscape.com/use-blen... if you ever need it. That's the great thing about Blender and Inkscape, there are so many free and great tutorials on the Internet as well as a wonderful community of users you can most likely get an answer from when you get stuck. Something I really want to learn myself is how to run a CNC milling machine (or Plasma cutters) as well as how to 3D print. I mean if you learn Blender, GIMP, Inkscape and Inkcut one can be very versatile and valuable to a lot of companies in a lot of situations. Or like yourself, run your own business.

Since this is really a slashvertisement I may as well add some more fuel to the fire. If you're already brave enough to use Inkscape as your bread winner, perhaps you've thought about branching out into making signs? If this is the case then you should definitely check out Inkcut http://sourceforge.net/project... Just add a vinyl cutter to the mix and you're rolling. GIMP, Inkscape and Inkcut, all you need to start making signs on the cheap.

You might wish to consider using a hard drive cloning tool (drive imager) that makes backups of the entire hard drive (including the OS) to save time and effort. These programs are capable of automatic scheduled backups to make things easier on you. An external USB hard drive is typically the medium of choice for these types of backups since hard drives and USB 3 enclosures are so cheap and portable. Some software versions let you do incremental backups (since the last full backup is made, only files that have changed get backed up) and there is often cloud storage too (which I personally do not trust). Anyhow software like Macrium Reflect (which has a free version and is excellent) or a paid for version like Acronis True Image or others is worth examining. YouTube is full of tutorial videos on how to use these programs but they are very easy to figure out on your own. Now, you will need to make boot medium too (CD/DVD/USB key) too don't forget and it's a good idea to include an ISO image of the boot medium on the storage hard drive too in case you need to create bootable medium once more in a pinch (you lost your original boot medium for example). Why I suggest using these programs is that when restoring after a failure of a hard drive or what have you, it only takes a fraction of the time required to get back up and running to a fully working state (all your programs and customizations are working just how you like them at the time of backup). These programs are capable of restoring file and folder level restoration or entire hard drive contents. Since hard drives are so cheap, saving complete drive images makes sense and you can have several terabytes of data compressed down down into something a lot smaller on the hard drive allowing multiple images to be made (you can even span them over several drives if needed). You can also encrypt them for safety. The only thing iffy about going this route is that OS vendors deprecate their OS's over time (like Microsoft has done with XP) and perhaps the hardware of the future is not able to load the drive images for some reason. But, if you were staying diligent and doing backups at least once a month or more (and keeping your software version current), you'd most likely be fine since you'd be deleting old images and replacing them with current images.

I was stopped in traffic the other day at a light and was watching in my rear view mirror that a big 4x4 truck in the lane next to me was not slowing down at all and was about to smoke the guy in front of him. I have no idea how he could have missed the fact that all 4 lanes of traffic were stopped for the light. I leaned on my horn hardcore and that luckily caught the stopped guy's attention in front of the 4x4 truck and he managed at the last second to get out of the way. It was literally inches separating this guy from a really bad day and maybe even a fire. I felt a little moment of positive Karma after that...good duty of the day.

ALIENS! Sheesh...