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Comment OTA seems excessive...How about USB? (Score 1) 305

by zidane2k1 (#46298659) Attached to: Why Your Phone Gets OTA Updates But Your Car Doesn't
How about firmware updates that a user can just download off the manufacturer's website, save on a USB stick, and insert it into a USB port somewhere on the dash?

A little less convenient than OTA, but with lesser risks, and still a whole lot more convenient than going to the dealer's service department.
Hardware Hacking

Reverse Engineering a Missile Launcher Toy's Interface 118

Posted by Soulskill from the target-that-explosion-and-fire dept.
nitro writes "A fairly in-depth technical report by the security researchers at TippingPoint was released on how to reverse engineer the proprietary protocol for controlling a USB missile-launching toy system. They develop an iPhone application to control the device. 'The hardware is coupled with a simple GUI controller written in Delphi (MissileLauncher.exe) and a USB Human Interface Device (HID) interface written in C++ (USBHID.dll). The toys lost their allure within minutes of harassing my team with a barrage of soft missile shots. That same night I thought I would be able to extend the fun factor by coding up a programmatic interface to the launchers in Python. ... One interesting thing is that we have a lot more granular control of the turret movement now than we did with the original GUI. I wrote two simple loops to count the number of possible horizontal and vertical ticks and the results were 947 horizontal and 91 vertical versus 54 and 10 from the original GUI respectively. Granular control allows you to slowly and quietly reposition the turret for stealthy attacks.'"
Toys

Demo of Spatially Aware Blocks 109

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the but-will-they-survive-my-2-year-old dept.
Chris Anderson writes "This 5-min demo just posted from last week's TED — got a big crowd reaction. It's a new technology coming out of MIT, about to be commercialized. Siftables have been seen before, but not like this. They're toy blocks/tiles that are spatially aware and interact with each other in very cool ways. Initial use may be as toys, but there's big potential for new paradigm of spatially-aware physical mini computers."

Comment Re:Also CF Card (Score 1) 465

by zidane2k1 (#26594901) Attached to: Long-Term PC Preservation Project?

2 + 2 = .... What? I can't read it anymore! 5? Yeah, must be 5, gonna write that in...

Back to flash memory cards, I really wasn't aware that the data could decay that quickly.

Hey, so does that mean that my Mario Kart 64 scores will actually fade away quicker than my Super Mario Kart ones (which are stored on battery-backed SRAM)? (Yeah, I know I'm really starting to go OT on this one)

Comment Re:I've thought about this (Score 1) 465

by zidane2k1 (#26594871) Attached to: Long-Term PC Preservation Project?

Speaking of punch cards, I do wish I could have somehow had the opportunity to see how those things were created and used. I mean, I see pictures and text on the Internet describing that, but it would be nice to have seen it actually happening, even if it were just in a video.

Now back to the OP's actual topic, somehow I think only "geek" type people (like me) would really care all that much about PC preservation.
Space

Submission + - Black holes may not grow beyond certain limit (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by
xyz
xyz writes: "Do black holes increase in size indefinitely? According to an analysis by astronomers at Yale and European Southern Observatory, the maximum size a black hole may reach is only few tens of billion solar masses. The limit was calculated using an analysis of what may happen to the gas surrounding a black hole which has reached few tens of billion solar masses. It is thought that black holes of such size heat the surrounding gas to a temperature where the radiation pressure begins blowing outer layers into space."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Best OS for netbooks and underpowered tablets

Submitted by
vigmeister
vigmeister writes: "I joined the netbook bandwagon early this year in a rather odd fashion by picking up an outdated portable tablet (Fujitsu P1510) which just about matches the latest greatest netbooks for their performance and portability features while nipping them by managing to be a tablet and give me a better battery life. I have been happy using XP Tablet on this machine until recently when I have started feeling that by optimizing the OS for targeted use, I may be able to squeeze more out of the device. I don't see very many netbooks or ultraportables around me, so I ask slashdot these questions that are probably useful for a large userbase here :
1) What OS would you recommend for a netbook/outdated laptop? Usage is typically light — web surfing (with multimedia), email, word processing, spreadsheet and reading pdfs.
2) What OS would you recommend for a ultraportable tablet? Usage is similar to a netbook, but now we have a tablet on our hands. There's a little more document editing going on and good handwriting recognition and notetaking software would be great.
I would like for the user experience to be snappy on a computer that is essentially running the equivalent of a 1.2 GHz PIII with 512mb RAM. The other objective for both of these is to maximize the battery life as that is the major drawback of these ultraportables. A small memory footprint would work wonders since the hard drives on these devices are typically slow and completely suck the joy out of using them when swap space is being used. Any tips? If you are still using your outdated laptops/tablets productively, please share with us how you're doing so so we can too."
Cellphones

Submission + - Security Flaw in Android Web Browser

Submitted by r
r writes: The New York Times reports on a security flaw discovered in the new Android phones. The article is light on details, but it hints at a security hole in the browser, allowing for trojans to install themselves in the same security partition as the browser:

"The risk in the Google design, according to Mr. Miller, who is a principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators in Baltimore, lies in the danger from within the Web browser partition in the phone. It would be possible, for example, for an intruder to install software that would capture keystrokes entered by the user when surfing to other Web sites. That would make it possible to steal identity information or passwords."

Feed Engadget: Philips reveals Bluetooth-enabled GoGear LUXE DAP (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Philips' GoGear line hasn't exactly sent us into uncontrollable fits of jubilation of late, but the latest DAP to fall under the aforesaid umbrella doesn't look half bad. Boasting a prism-like motif and integrated Bluetooth 2.1 functionality, this unit will actually pause your tunes and allow you to answer a call if your BT-enabled phone is nearby and paired up. It also features 10-hours of playback time and 100-hours in standby, and there's an FM tuner included in case you roll through 2GB of jams and just can't bear to hear any of them again. Word on the street has it that this bugger will surface in Singapore next month for around S$139 ($92), though other Asian countries should see it pop up shortly thereafter.

[Via PMPToday]Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments


Biotech

Submission + - Couch Potato Gene Identified in Fruit Flies 1

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "University of Pennsylvania biologists have discovered a mutation in fruit flies aptly named the "couch potato" gene that allows them to simply chill out — entering a mild state of quasi-hibernation known as diapause, when winter arrives. "It's not like they're bears sleeping in a cave," says Paul Schmidt. "They just look like they're a little bit more sluggish." The couch potato gene, first discovered in the early 1990s, got its nickname because flies with mutations in the gene became really sluggish and behaved abnormally. Little is known about the underlying evolutionary genetic architecture but in diapause, the slacking off is far less severe, the flies' bodily functions slow down, and they are better able to tolerate stress. The fruit fly gene may have implications for human health, as it can help biologists study the function of the nervous system and diseases such as epilepsy refuring a recent statement by a political candidate that fruit fly research has "little or nothing to do with the public good.""

Feed Engadget: Microsoft signals some improvements in Windows Vista SP2, still not moist and ch (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

It hasn't been too awfully long since Windows Vista SP1 hit the intertubes for real, but the Vista team is already talking up SP2. Granted, we all know Redmond is focused on moving beyond all of this Vista hoopla and forging ahead with Windows 7, but there's apparently still some work to do on the outfit's current OS. Unfortunately, the latest update isn't exactly enthralling, as we're given no set time frame for launch and we're not shown any forthcoming changes that really get our juices flowing. For instance, Vista SP2 will add Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches, the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, ability to natively record data on Blu-ray media and Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify WiFi configuration. Wait, did you just yawn? You did. We saw it.Read|Permalink|Email this|Comments


Image

The Walking House 304

Posted by samzenpus from the baba-yaga-eat-your-heart-out dept.
What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.

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