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Earth

Journal Journal: Shakin', smokin' and floodin' 3

Journal by zogger

The big thinking about natural disasters in California is usually topped by contemplating "the big one", a huge earthquake, and forest fires after long drought spells are common, and recently some serious rains caused flooding and mudslides.
Privacy

Submission + - UK Police Plan To Use Military-Style Spy Drones (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by krou
krou writes: According to documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, the UK police plan on deploying unmanned drones in the UK to 'revolutionise policing' and 'greatly extend' domestic 'surveillance, monitoring and evidence gathering', which will be used in 'the routine work of the police, border authorities and other government agencies'. The documents come from the South Coast Partnership, 'a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan' in conjunction with BAE Systems. The stated aim is to introduce the system in time for the 2012 Olympics. Initially, Kent police stated that the system would be used to monitor shipping lanes and illegal immigrants, but the documents reveal that this was part of a PR strategy as '"There is potential for these [maritime] uses to be projected as a "good news" story to the public rather than more "big brother"'. However, the documents talk about a much wider-range of usage, from '[detecting] theft from cash machines, preventing theft of tractors and monitoring antisocial driving', tackling 'fly-posting, fly-tipping, abandoned vehicles, abnormal loads, waste management', and also 'road and railway monitoring, search and rescue, event security and covert urban surveillance'. Also, due to the 'large capital costs' involved, it has also been suggested that some data could be sold off to private companies, or the drones could be used for commercial purposes.
Patents

Submission + - Mr. Edison's Kindle (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: In 1911, Thomas Edison bragged that he could make a 40,000-page book by printing the pages on thin pieces of metal. In the mid-1930s, newspapers experimented with transmitting special editions into homes via early fax machines. In 1956, Chrysler tried to sell Americans on buying 7-inch records that could only be played on a tiny turntable built into its cars' dashboards. Over at Technologizer, I rounded up these and a dozen other fascinating, forgotten gadget ideas that didn't work out--but which foreshadowed products and technologies that eventually became a big deal.
Transportation

Submission + - Heat Engines Shrunk By Seven Orders of Magnitude (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: The vast majority of motors that power our planes, trains and automobiles are heat engines. They rely on the rapid expansion of gas as it heats up to generate movement. But attempts to shrink them by any significant amount have mostly ended in failure. Today, the smallest heat engines have a volume of some 10^7 cubic micrometers. Now group of Dutch engineers have built a heat engine that is seven orders of magnitude smaller than this. The engine consists of a piezoelectric bar that expands and contracts in the normal piezoelectric way. However it also heats up and cools at the same time causing a thermal expansion and contraction, which lags the piezoelectric displacement. By carefully choosing the frequency of the driving AC current, the Dutch team found a resonant effect in which the thermal expansion and contraction amplifies the mechanical motion, making it a true heat engine. Operating the thermodynamic cycle in reverse turns the device into a heat pump or refrigerator. The total volume of the device is just 0.5 cubic micrometres. .
Idle

Submission + - Master Facebook Password Was 'Chuck Norris' (therumpus.net) 1

Submitted by
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris'. Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: Analyst: AT&T Needs to Spend $5B to Catch Up

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: 'The public's perception of AT&T's network is poor and declining, apparently because of real shortcomings when compared with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel,' says Gerard Hallaren, director of research at financial research firm TownHall Investment Research. 'AT&T's capital expenditures on its wireless network from 2006 through September 2009 totaled about $21.6 billion, compared with $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Over that time, Verizon has spent far more per subscriber: $353, compared with $308 for AT&T,' Hallaren said. 'Even Sprint has outspent AT&T per subscriber, laying out $310 for network capital expenditure.' All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer.'"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Displayport v1.2 to take giant leap over HDMI (pcauthority.com.au) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With HDMI becoming increasingly common, Displayport has been slow to become a widely used connection interface, but a plethora of new features in the new v1.2 standard could see that change. As well as doubling the data rate of the existing v1.1a standard to 21.6 Gbps, the update allows for multiple monitors to be connected to a single Displayport connector and adds support for transporting USB data at up to 720Mbps, enabling embedded webcams, speakers and USB hubs over a single cable. Ethernet data is also supported. The improved data rate will allow for richer, larger and higher resolution displays and the new version is also backward compatible with the current display technology, so all the ports, cables and devices will be interchangeable, although they will revert to the lowest common denominator.
Businesses

Submission + - Where Do Old Space Shuttles Go When They Die?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Russia's Space Shuttle, Buran, ended it's days at a theme park in Moscow and was once offered for sale on the Internet for 3 million dollars. Now the NY Times reports that when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration put out the call in December, 2008 seeking buyers for US shuttles from museums, schools and elsewhere, the agency didn't get as much interest as expected, so now NASA has slashed the price of the 1970s-era spaceships, available for sale this fall once their flying days are over, from $42 million to just $28.8 million apiece. “We’re confident that we’ll get other takers,” says agency spokesman Mike Curie. The Discovery is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum but the Atlantis and the Endeavour are still up for grabs and it is possible that the Enterprise, a shuttle prototype that never made it to space, will also be available. The lower price is based on NASA’s estimate of the cost for transporting a shuttle from Kennedy Space Center to a major airport, and for displaying it indoors in a climate-controlled building. As for the space shuttle main engines, those are now free. NASA advertised them in December 2008 for $400,000 to $800,000 each, but no one expressed interest. So now the engines are available, along with other shuttle artifacts, for the cost of transportation and handling."
Government

Submission + - RIAA: all the ISP's work for ua (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by
Presto Vivace
Presto Vivace writes: "Reporting for Computer World, Grant Gross reports that the RIAA is asking the FCC not to make the net neutrality rules so strict that avoid adopting strict net neutrality rules that would limit broadband providers' flexibly to "address" illegal online file sharing. It seems the RIAA is unclear on the concept of the Fourth Amendment."

Submission + - Web video restrictions in Italy

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: New rules to be introduced by government decree will require people who upload videos onto the Internet to obtain authorization from the Communications Ministry similar to that required by television broadcasters, drastically reducing freedom to communicate over the Web. Some critics described the decree as an expression of the conflict of interests of Silvio Berlusconi, who exercises political control over the state broadcaster RAI in his role as prime minister and is also the owner of Italy's largest private broadcaster, Mediaset.
Technology

Submission + - Using EMP to punch holes in Steel (economist.com)

Submitted by angrytuna
angrytuna writes: The Economist is running a story about group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantage over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (.2 vs 1.4 seconds), and by metal press, which can leave burrs which must be removed by hand.
United States

Submission + - US Dept. of Labor Turns to $4,380-a-Year Coders 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Et tu, Ms. Secretary of Labor? To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the U.S. Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ. According to the Federal Register, an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed U.S. workers. A number of Monster.com sites are among the current top vote-getters. Speaking of Monster, a cached Monster Ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 2,00,000 ($4,380 US). BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'

Submission + - Human Males Evolve at a Faster Pace Than Females (mit.edu)

Submitted by
Tisha_AH
Tisha_AH writes: "A report by the Whitehead Institute indicates that the human Y chromosome present in males is evolving at a furious pace. Across the chromosome there can be as much as a 33% difference within humans alone. The portions of the chromosome evolving fastest are related to sperm production"

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