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Submission + - Question : A digital "SMART" pen for every day use. (toptenreviews.com)

Submitted by mmiscool
mmiscool writes: I love having a smart phone and a tablet that can be used with a stylus but some times a pen and paper are a much better way to get the job done.

Taking notes and sketching things is so much easier with paper so I pose the question. What "smart pens" are on the market now.

I have seen some like the livescribe and the equil but don't like that you have to buy special paper or attached a device to your note book for it to capture writing.

Are there any smart pens out there that can capture writing and sketches with out the need for special proprietary paper or bulky clip on sensors. Some thing that is simply a pen with Bluetooth sink to a mobile.

Let me know what you are using.
Censorship

Submission + - Chinese Censor Going Mad, Coutering Tools Rise (mingpaonews.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao Daily reports that the number of words being censored by Chinese authority has mushroomed and a new software tool known as Online Anti-Harmonizer has rapidly gaining popularity. The software claimed to contain a dictionary of over 10,000 words censored by the infamous Green Dam software and baidu.com and will automatically insert random punctuations to your online post to get it pass through the automated filtering algorithm. The Chinese censorship effort, known as Harmonization, has gone mad. Not only it censors politically sensitive words such as June 4, Liu Xiaobo but it starts blocking words that are far or completely unrelated. The newspaper reported earlier that the words empty chair has been blocked because it becomes a symbol of Liu Xiaobo's absence in the Nobel Peace Price ceremony; the last name Liu, one of the most common Chinese last names, is also blocked. The name of the current Chinese president, Hu Jintao, is blocked (probably because they reason that no comments with his name can be good.) Even worse, because of the lack of word separator in Chinese, topics not having the censored words are being blocked. For example, "(Chinese currency) Yuan Being Manipulated" is blocked, not because the topic is blocked, but because first two characters of the the words "being manipulated" in Chinese, i.e. "bei cao" in "bei cao zhong", means "being fucked" in Chinese.

Submission + - Postal Trucks to Become Sensor Platforms? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in today's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise.
Politics

Submission + - Vatican Latest in WikiLeaks Revelations (bryanhealey.com)

Submitted by healeyb
healeyb writes: WikiLeaks continued as promised to release cables daily, and the New York Times and other news outlets are reporting interesting revelations about the Vatican and the Catholic church. Amongst the discoveries is church sentiment regarding sexual abuse and complimentary legal action, with Cardinal Angelo Sodano expressing strong displeasure to US ambassadors over...
Idle

Submission + - New Clothing Line Reminds TSA of the 4th Amendment (aolnews.com)

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "AOL News reports that there's a line of underclothes that offer a friendly reminder of the Fourth Amendment called 4th Amendment Wear. Metallic ink printed on shirts spells out the privacy rights stated in the amendment and is designed to appear in TSA scanners. The 4th Amendment Wear line also includes non-metallic options, including underpants for both adults and children. Should a passenger be stripped down, instead of the full amendment, they'll receive a more direct message: "Read the 4th Amendment Perverts." "If you're getting that close to kids' underwear, you have license to say something a little tongue-in-cheek," says creator Tim Geoghegan."
Earth

Submission + - Coral-Like Living Skin Developed for Buildings (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the University of Greenwich in the UK are developing a carbon negative building material that would not only help fight climate change but protect the structures it is built upon. The material is made from protocells — super simple cells that have only the basic elements of life, yet are able to grow and multiply — that will capture carbon in their membranes and grow over time to create a hard, coral-like armor around or under buildings.
Security

Submission + - WikiLeaks’ Biggest Revelation: Poor Security (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by geek4
geek4 writes: The biggest revelation from WikiLeaks is government incompetence not government secrets, and Gary McKinnon did it first, says Eric Doyle

There is an elephant sitting in the corner of government chambers that’s being ignored while the powers-that-be concentrate public attention on the guerrilla in the room – WikiLeaks.

While Julian Assange, WikiLeaks’ whistleblower-in-chief, is being demonised by government leaders, and the US races to shut Wikileaks down, the fact that their security is leaking like a sieve appears to be going unnoticed.

The recent political disclosures show that governments still have to learn the lessons about digital security that their citizens have been trying to learn. Security has to be a prime concern and, if it is not, you only have yourself to blame.
Graphics

Submission + - Graphics fundamentals - the why of 4-D matrices (blogspot.com) 2

Submitted by
solarmist
solarmist writes: "I've seen a lot of posts that curse the math used in computer graphics, especially 4-d matrices. Most graphics books skip over the motivation for this entirely; leading people to see this as complicating things and being done arbitrarily, but there's a good reason behind it. This article tries to explain one of the main reasons for this. Basically it simplifies the math and makes representing transformations much easier."
NASA

Submission + - Vasimr VX-200 Reaches Full Power Efficiency

Submitted by Matt_dk
Matt_dk writes: Ad Astra Rocket Company’s VASIMR® VX-200 rocket prototype demonstrated its highest power efficiency and performance so far in tests, which ended Friday November 19 at the company’s Houston laboratory. Last week’s results met the efficiency milestone set by the company as it specifies the requirements for the VF-200 flight engine for the International Space Station. The VX-200 is the full power laboratory prototype that provides the technical basis for the design of the flight hardware.

Submission + - Laser-powered copter drone sets record (msn.com)

Submitted by Freddybear
Freddybear writes: A small model helicopter set a new record for laser-powered copter drone flight. Powered by a diode-laser beamed power system from LaserMotive, the copter drone, built by built by Ascending Technologies, hovered for 12 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds.
Piracy

Submission + - Operation Payback targets RIAA CEO's family (myce.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In retaliation for the Limewire shutdown, Anonymous is launching a new DDoS attack against the RIAA. But this time they've published the CEO's home address, his wife's name, and is encouraging pizza delivery orders, prank phone calls, and "creative" pranks on his home. Too far?

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