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Apple: You Can’t Play Jesus on iPhone
Apple has rejected an iPhone app that would enable users to fashion their mugs into portraits resembling Jesus Christ. The app, called Me So Holy, involves using the iPhone’s camera to snap a mug shot of someone, which can then be scaled and cropped to replace Jesus’ face. Apple rejected the app, saying it “contains objectionable [...]
05.11.09 -
Teen Pleads Guilty To Scientology Web Attacks
A New Jersey teen pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to a computer hacking charge for his role in distributed denial-of-service attack that last year shuttered Church of Scientology websites Dmitriy Guzner, part of the online troublemaking group, “Anonymous,” was charged with a felony count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer for the January, 2008 [...]
05.11.09 -
Big Bucks and Big Ideas for Big Transportation Bill
Uncle Sam is finally getting serious about overhauling a transportation system that hasn’t seen a significant upgrade since the Eisenhower era. According to a two-page hand-written outline by Rep. James Oberstar. chairman of the House Transportation Committee, that’s making the rounds in D.C., the Department of Transportation is in for a major reworking when the big [...]
05.11.09 -
Minnesota Court: Release Source Code of Breath-Testing Machines
Drunken-driving convicts in Minnesota are intoxicated over a recent state high court ruling allowing defense experts to examine the source code of breath-testing machines. The legal brouhaha concerns the court’s position (.pdf) that drunk drivers have the right to examine the evidence against them. But the company that supplies the state with breath-testing machines, CMI of [...]
05.11.09 -
Kindle DX Leads to Buyer’s Remorse for Some Kindle 2 Users
Real gadget heads know the pitfalls of being an early adopter: The products can be expensive, sometimes buggy and easily rendered obsolete as a result of an upgrade. Now some Amazon Kindle 2 buyers are finding this out for themselves as they try to return their newly acquired Kindle 2 in favor of the larger [...]
05.11.09 -
YooouuuTuuube Takes YouTube on Psychedelic Trip
Online buzz is building for a trippy new image generator that can take any YouTube video and send it straight down the rabbit hole with Alice. New York City programmer/designer David Kraftsow’s YooouuuTuuube project re-imagines video as a procession of postage-sized clips. They pulse across the screen in a mesmerizing swarm that seems to literally underscore [...]
05.11.09 -
Netbooks for Business? Talk to the Guys In IT First
Puny, lightweight netbooks are making their way into plenty of homes, but they must leap over a few hurdles before they become widely used in offices. First step: Convince the IT guys that the netbooks can handle the business and security needs of your company. ZDNet polled a few Asian corporations who said they were experimenting [...]
05.11.09 -
Getting There is Half The Fun on the Dubai Palm Monorail
As part of a plan to reduce gridlock while attracting tourists, a new monorail in the emirate of Dubai silently whisks passengers to exclusive resorts and offers sweeping ocean views along the way, proving that even public transportation is more extreme in the United Arab Emirates. The newly inaugurated and aptly-named Palm Monorail connects the mainland [...]
05.11.09 -
BriTunes Bores Into Indie Rock With Deer Tick
NBC anchor Brian Williams boasts a monotone delivery that can put a cokehead to sleep in seconds flat. So who better to launch an exciting, web-only music interview series called BriTunes? That’s right, no one. On Monday, Williams and MSNBC.com flipped the switch on BriTunes and shone the spotlight on Deer Tick, the Rhode Island-based folk-rockers [...]
05.11.09 -
Apple Rejects iPhone BitTorrent App
Citing copyright infringement concerns, Apple won’t include a BitTorrent client in the App Store. The Cupertino-based electronics company rejected Maza Digital’s Drivetrain, saying “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third-party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.” Apple is well known for banning [...]
05.11.09
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Square Enix Kills Near Complete Chrono Trigger Fan Project
After five years of development, pushing the project to 98 percent completion and offering gamers 35 hours of gameplay and 10 separate endings, the team behind Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes has received a sternly worded cease and desist from Square Enix’s lawyers, effectively killing the fan project. Crimson Echoes, while technically a new game, was created [...]
05.11.09 -
Video: Duke Nukem Forever Gameplay Footage
A nearly three-minute-long clip from the presumably never-to-be-released Duke Nukem Forever has emerged from former 3D Realms animator Bryan Brewer. Released to the public as part of Brewer’s online portfolio, the clip takes us through a number of different parts of the game — a game that, though much derided, actually looks like a fun time [...]
05.11.09 -
NYTimes Reader Shows Graceful Future of Online News
I read the news today in a whole new way. And I’m betting you will too, soon. Journalism’s grey lady, the New York Times just threw down her cane and sprinted to the forefront of online newspapers with the release of version two of the Times Reader — a downloadable application built on Adobe’s AIR framework. The [...]
05.11.09 -
As Flu Spreads, Generic Drugmakers Wait for Call
Even as the World Health Organization acknowledges that swine flu will spread worldwide and could evolve in unpredictable ways, it hasn’t ordered generic versions of Tamiflu, the most effective anti-flu drug. Indian generic drug maker Cipla says it could make 1.5 million courses of oseltamavir, as the drug is non-commercially known, before the end of June. [...]
05.11.09 -
Activision Offers 10 Seconds of Modern Warfare 2
While you’ve still got a few weeks wait ahead until Activision offers a substantial look at the upcoming Modern Warfare 2, the company has offered about 10 seconds of in-game footage as a teaser. Such a minuscule clip wouldn’t normally be reason for excitement, but given the rabid fanbase of its predecessor (they rival the Halo [...]
05.11.09 -
Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos
Official White House photos are now officially in the public domain, thanks to a licensing change made quietly over the weekend by the Obama administration and the photo-sharing site Flickr. The White House began posting striking photos of President Barack Obama from its official photographer Pete Souza to the Web 2.0 site in early May. The [...]
05.11.09 -
iPhone App Endorses Greener Tissues
You are what you wipe. That’s the message behind Greenpeace’s iPhone app Tissue Guide, which launched Monday. The app is a simple directory listing various brands of toilet paper, facial tissue, paper towel and napkins, rating each for its environmental friendliness. Based on those ratings, Tissue Guide breaks the brands into categories: products recommended, products that [...]
05.11.09 -
SeeqPod Seeks New Life at Microsoft
Seeqpod CEO Kasian Franks confirmed to wired.com Monday that the embattled music search engine was talking to Microsoft about a sale of part of the company, and said other parts of its search engine, which corrals MP3s from around the web into a neat streaming interface, could be sold off to other parties. In a brief [...]
05.11.09 -
How to Get 81.5 MPG
The Ford Fusion hybrid doesn’t have much sex appeal, but it sure is fuel-efficient. Even Ford was surprised to squeeze 1,445.7 miles out of the car’s 17.5-gallon fuel tank. Now that we’ve talked to the car’s head engineer, we’re pretty sure you could too if you’re willing to trade speed and comfort for efficiency. Hypermiling king [...]
05.11.09 -
FBI ‘Going Dark’ with New Advanced Surveillance Program
The proposed 2010 Justice Department budget published last week reveals the development of a new FBI advanced electronic surveillance program dubbed “Going Dark.” The program is being budgeted $233.9 million next year. According to the published budget summary (.pdf), the program “supports the FBI’s electronic surveillance (ELSUR), intelligence collection and evidence gathering capabilities, as well as [...]
05.11.09
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On-the-Scene Twitpics of Shuttle Launch
The Atlantis Space Shuttle successfully launched Monday at 2:01 Eastern time from Cape Canaveral, Florida headed for the Hubble Space Telescope. One of the last shuttle flights NASA will attempt, the mission will service and repair the world’s most famous orbiting eye, so that it can continue taking beautiful pictures of the universe for a few [...]
05.11.09 -
U.S. Fighting Off White Phosphorus Allegations, Again
While American and Afghan leaders engage in a bit of kabuki theater over whether U.S. airstrikes will continue (hint: yes), there are fresh accusations over the types of weapons the American military is using. Once again, U.S. forces’ incendiary white phosphorus rounds are scorching civilians, human rights groups charge. Yesterday, Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai pleaded [...]
05.11.09 -
Soybeans Grow Where Nuclear Waste Glows
Soy crops are so tough they can flourish in the contaminated soil around Chernobyl and produce healthy offspring. If scientists can understand how plants survive in ultra-hostile environments, it will help them engineer super hearty plants to withstand drought conditions or grow on marginal cropland. “The fact that plants were able to adapt to the area of [...]
05.11.09 -
U.S. Soldier Kills 5 Fellow G.I.s in Iraq Shootout
Shocking news from Iraq: An American soldier killed five fellow troops in a shooting incident at Camp Liberty, the heavily-fortified U.S. base complex that abuts Baghdad International Airport. Details at this point are scarce, but this looks like an ugly case of fratricide. The Associated Press reports that the shootings happened at a Camp Liberty stress [...]
05.11.09 -
CIA: Our Drones are Killing Terrorists. Promise.
Al Qaeda is so spooked by CIA drone attacks that Osama’s crew is staging spectacular bombings in Pakistan, in an attempt to get America to call off its unmanned attack fleet, former U.S. officials and counterterrror advisers say. And the CIA is apparently so spooked about the possibility of a withdrawal that they’re spilling details [...]
05.11.09 -
Five for Fighting 5/11/09
* Iran frees U.S. journo * Real life mad scientists * Hopping robots! * Barnett vs. swine flu * Boeing’s killer drone rises again
05.11.09 -
Weekend Thrifting: It’s Yard Sale Season
We’re having a bit of nice weather here in San Francisco, which doesn’t exactly happen that often. Good thing it was beautiful out today, as otherwise the Fair Oaks Street Fair would have been spoiled. Once a year, the residents of one of SF’s nicest little tree-lined streets all hold yard sales in tandem, the result [...]
05.11.09 -
Made in Ore’s Game Design Process, Explained
Nintendo has released the latest in the Wario Ware series, called Made in Ore, in Japan. We’ve got a feature up today that talks about how this new Nintendo DS game lets you be the designer and create your own microgames. Below, we’ll take a deeper dive into the creative tools that make Made in Ore [...]
05.11.09 -
When You Let Gameplayers Design Their Own Gameplay
*They cheat themselves. No, really. They immediately ruin everything. *You know what this reads like? Bankers in a finance crisis. Bloggers during the death of journalism. British parliamentarians selling second homes in a global real-estate crisis. The applications seem universal....
05.11.09 -
Wall Street Journal to Introduce Micro-Payments Scheme
The Wall Street Journal online, one of the few news sites that charges for access, is planning to modify its one-price-all subscription model by charging readers for only what they read, the Financial Times reports. With little exception content on wsj.com is available only to subscribers who pony up more than $100 a year to access [...]
05.11.09
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Hideous 80s Throwback Phone Case is Curiously Seductive
It would be nice if this clunky, 1980s-style cellphone holder acted as a real add-on keyboard and display for a modern mobile, allowing you to go in for some retro charm and then, when bored of carrying this brick-sized box, slide out your iPhone and carry on as if nothing untoward had happened. Sadly, it lacks [...]
05.11.09 -
Rogue AT-ST Attacks Unsuspecting Picnickers
The AT-ST model advancing on the pavilion through the trees looks pretty convincing, but a closer look at the photo reveals quite a few lightsabers being waved around, not to mention the presence of Stormtroopers and other Star Wars characters. This was obviously not your typical Saturday picnic; it was, in fact, the third annual [...]
05.11.09 -
Hands-On With the Gigapan Epic 100 Panorama Robot
The new Gigapan Epic 100 is a tripod-mounted, motorized camera robot that automates the process of creating massive, gigapixel-size panoramas. After some simple setup you simply sit back and let the device move your camera up-and-down and side-to-side, snapping a patchwork of pictures along the way. Later, back at the computer, the Gigapan software stitches those [...]
05.11.09 -
VEX World Championship 2009
It has been over a week since we started the 2009 VEX Robotics World Championship and I think I may finally be caught up on sleep. I arrived at the convention center last Wednesday a little after noon and immediately went to work helping setup the kiosks in the VEX store and making sure we had [...]
05.11.09 -
The GeekDad Stack, Issue #2
Howdy! Welcome back to the GeekDad Stack. I hope everyone had an excellent Mother’s Day weekend. We celebrated by having a special Mother’s Day Cosmic Madness night last night with an exciting game or two of Arkham Horror. I think I’ve recovered okay… just a little gibbering here and there. Every week I’ll suggest some comic [...]
05.11.09 -
Children’s Book Week: May 11-17
Every GeekDad and GeekMom knows that reading is important to the education of your children. (Even if you are a JockDad, you know the importance of reading to your children.) Since 1919, Children’s Book Week has been celebrated nationally in schools, libraries, bookstores, and any place where there are children and books. Hopefully that means [...]
05.11.09 -
IKEA Hacker
http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/ *The Long Tail enables all kinds of post-consumer alteration stuff nowadays. But since IKEA stays very cheap by offshoring its assembly labor onto the consumer, it makes especial sense that post-consumer IKEA hacks should flourish. *And in a massive...
05.11.09 -
IV-Drip Hard Drive Takes Concept a Little Too Far
Hyuh Jin Lee’s concept hard-drive emergency kit looks fantastic, although it suffers from a bad case of over-intellectualizitus, something common in student concept designs. The idea is that the IV-drip contains a hard-drive full of anti-virus software which auto-runs when hooked up to the computer. This would actually be quite useful as a product, but the [...]
05.11.09 -
GeekDad Puzzle of the Week: The Case of the Missing… Case
This week, Super-spy Pedro Vex is trying to recover a briefcase full of State secrets. Email your solutions by Thursday 10:00 pm EST to be part of the selection from correct answers and win a $50 gift code to ThinkGeek! Check the solution on Friday for your code for $10 off of your next purchase [...]
05.11.09 -
Yup, That Was an Old-School Texas Regional Writer
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/09/0509shrakeobit.html (...) A Fort Worth native, Shrake got his start at the Fort Worth Press in 1951 while still in college at Texas Christian University. The Press was a second-rate paper in a fourth-rate building, and there Shrake worked under...
05.11.09
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Long Exposure Shows Web-Like Roomba Light-Trail
This 30-minute long-exposure shows the trail blazed by the blinking light of a Roomba as it goes about its autonomous, ceaseless duties. The photograph was snapped by curious blogger Signaltheorist to see just how effective the little vacuum-robot would be: The result is a picture that shows the path of the roomba through it’s cleaning cycle, [...]
05.11.09 -
Want Some Destructive TV Goodness? Watch Weaponizers Tonight
New Discovery Channel Show Weaponizers Pits Two Teams of Destruction Experts Against Each Other With Remote Controlled Vehicles of Mass Destruction
05.11.09 -
Lego Sunglasses As Nerdy as They Sound
Sunglasses = cool. Lego = nerdy. Combining the two would clearly seem to be a recipe for destruction, a physics faux-pas on the same level as crossing the streams or shaking hands with your anti-matter doppelganger. But in reality, the combo actually works, and the universal clock continues to tick. The thing we like best about [...]
05.11.09 -
NASA To Give Hubble New Life With Atlantis Mission Launching Today
On Monday, May 11, at 2:01 PM EDT, the space shuttle Atlantis will lift off for the final service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. For close to twenty years, Hubble has dazzled the world with its wonderful images and led to new scientific understandings about our universe. With this service mission, NASA will install [...]
05.11.09 -
None More Black: SpyderCube White Balance Tool
“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.” So said Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap, but only because didn’t have a SpyderCube. The SpyderCube is more a cube than a spider, and is used for tweaking the white balance and exposure of your photos. Sure, [...]
05.11.09 -
Listen to a Couple of Geeks Talk About Star Trek
One of the very geeky things I did before coming to GeekDad, and indeed one of the things on my application to join GeekDad that probably went a long way towards getting me the job, was writing for, and running herd over, a wonderful collection of geeks from all over the world with one thing [...]
05.11.09 -
Alt Text: The Craigslist Free-Couch Blues
Craigslist is well-known as a place to find anything from a new job to a night of semi-anonymous pleasure — in some cases, both at the same time. It is also a great way to turn your old, unwanted possessions into a huge hassle. No matter how valuable your merchandise or how reasonable your terms, there’s [...]
05.11.09 -
Stephen Wolfram Reveals Radical New Formula for Web Search
The home page is nearly blank. At the center, just below a colorful logo, you’ll find an empty data field. Type in a phrase, hit Return, and knowledge appears. No, it’s not Google. It’s Wolfram|Alpha, named after its creator, Stephen Wolfram, a 49-year-old former particle physics prodigy who became bewitched by the potential of computers. He [...]
05.11.09 -
Game About Making Games Takes Nintendo to New Heights
I’ve been trying out some really obscure microgames on Nintendo DS lately. There’s “Dog Drool,” where the goal is to get a dog named Otis to drool over a plate of curry by tapping on the screen. Then there’s “Escape!” where Otis has to jump over a fence without falling into a garbage [...]
05.11.09 -
Recycled Racer Runs on Veggie Oil and Chocolate
Auto racing is going green as top teams and upstarts embrace a range of tech, from biodiesel to hybrids and even electric drivetrains. A British team is doing them one better, using recycled and natural materials in a Formula 3 car fueled by vegetable oil and waste chocolate. The WorldFirst Racing car features slick bodywork fashioned [...]
05.11.09
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Commercial television crippled by one company's computer breakdown
*This is kinda awesome. If people had known it was so easy to Kill Your TV just by wrecking Nielsen's servers, presumably they would have hacked to ribbons Nielsen ages ago. *Comes off the RISKS list. Date: Wed, 6 May...
05.10.09 -
On Ghosts and Their Media: the show
(((This is an even cooler junket when you realize that this Dortmund electronic art museum is next to a huge, freaky, abandoned steel mill.))) ‘Awake Are Only the Spirits’ - On Ghosts and Their Media Hartware MedienKunstVerein at PHOENIX Halle...
05.10.09 -
LEGO for Mother’s Day
For mother’s day this year I had the bright idea to let my son give my wife a replica of our house in LEGO’s. I downloaded the LEGO Digital Designer Saturday night and got to work. For those who don’t know Digital Designer is a free download from the LEGO website that will allow you [...]
05.10.09 -
Hammy the Hamster Rides Again
You may recall back in March when we posted the amusing video of Hammy the Hamster, and the almost-but-not-quite-scientific test of his preference for organic veggies. Well, he’s at it again, though this time he’s no so much advancing a green agenda as performing death defying motorcycle stunts. Enjoy! [thanks to Ken, this time at [...]
05.10.09 -
Death Star Annihilates Star Trek’s Spotlight-Hogging Enterprise
Stormtroopers celebrate after the Death Star vaporizes the Enterprise in the clip above. Mike Horn’s fan footage pits the two high-tech war machines against each other in the sci-fi franchise faceoff. As with his 2008 masterpiece “Death Star Over San Francisco,” the reel above was probably made on Horn’s computer using nothing more than After [...]
05.09.09 -
I Cannot Deliver Mail To Myself
(((I've gotten more than my share of error messages over the years. This is the first time that I ever learned that I have failed to deliver email to myself. This must be a significant moment for the Internet.))) (((I...
05.09.09 -
Urban Ubicomp, New York Style
*This is a very different paradigm from "ubiquitous computing covering the whole Earth like paint" and also very different from a Spime paradigm of "designed things as the atomic elements of an Internet of Things." It's a paradigm of urbanware,...
05.09.09 -
Voice of 21st-century environmentalism here
*Sounds a little weird now, but bound to make more and more sense as the garbage inevitably rises. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ftf-ellis-1/#more-3996 "...it’s time for a “postnatural” environmentalism. Postnaturalism is not about recycling your garbage, it is about making something good out of...
05.09.09 -
Terminator Salvation’s Not for Wussies, Sam Worthington Says
BEVERLY HILLS, California — Sam Worthington, the Australian actor who plays mysterious Marcus in Terminator Salvation, talked tough Friday about taking on the physically challenging role in the upcoming killer robot flick. Pictured above in an exclusive image from the film, Worthington said he didn’t mind getting scuffed up in the course of the grueling shoots, [...]
05.08.09 -
Darker Skin Linked to Nicotine Dependence
Dark-skinned smokers may be at greater risk for nicotine addiction than their paler counterparts, a new study finds. Researchers found that in African Americans, darker skin — specifically that acquired by sun exposure, not genetics — is directly linked to smoking frequency and dependence. “African Americans are known to have a more difficult time quitting and suffer [...]
05.08.09
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Air Marshals’ Secret Communication Weapon
If you’re a U.S. Air Marshal patrolling the friendly skies, you’ll want to communicate discreetly with fellow on-board marshals, airport ground crew, cockpit crew and flight attendants if you need to thwart an attack. You might also want to tap into the plane’s digital system to know where you are at any time, how far the [...]
05.08.09 -
Science Revises Civilization’s Creation Story
The Middle East, near where the Tigris meets the Euphrates, has long been considered the “cradle of civilization,” but a series of new studies indicate that Chinese river valleys represent a second spot for the emergence of agriculture. Genetic studies, using DNA from charred seeds gathered at the world’s first farms, are slowly rewriting the long-told [...]
05.08.09 -
Star Trek Blowback: Weigh In to Win Hefty Blu-ray Set
The long-awaited relaunch of the U.S.S. Enterprise blasts off this weekend as Star Trek goes global with a release sure to please Trekkies and newbies alike. Or is it? One of the best-reviewed movies of the year, Star Trek has blown critics away with vivid battle sequences, clever banter and strong acting (including Eric Bana’s portrayal [...]
05.08.09 -
Stickman Exodus Crew Sticks It to The Fuzz
Atom.com and Waverly Films won the hearts of the people and the pros with their raunchy, hilarious series Stickman Exodus, which nabbed two Webby Awards earlier this month. Now Waverly has been given the green light by Comedy Central to develop five webisodes for an Atom series called The Fuzz, which could hit prime time [...]
05.08.09 -
Colbert Bugs Out, Donates His Birthday
Hyper-real talking head Stephen Colbert loves himself so much that he wants everything in the world named after him. Thursday, he settled for a beetle with hairy balls. Entomologists Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller announced the naming of Agaporomorphus colberti in a birthday card to Colbert, who turns 45 on May 13. It’s a suitable gift for [...]
05.08.09 -
Could Wolfram|Alpha Sway Google Regulators?
News Analysis — Wolfram|Alpha, a company whose product you have never used, may turn out to be Google’s best friend. For those who haven’t heard yet, Wolfram|Alpha is a much-hyped, badly-named computational search engine that gives real answers to queries such as “internet users in Europe.” It pulls off the techie magic by using structured data [...]
05.08.09 -
Fallout 3’s ‘Broken Steel’ No Longer Broken
Though the PC version of Fallout 3’s “Broken Steel” add-on launched earlier this week with a number of issues, Xbox spokesman Major Nelson offers word that the DLC is now fixed and ready for your weekend gaming. “After receiving reports of errors with the Fallout 3 Game Add-on Broken Steel on Games for Windows – LIVE, [...]
05.08.09 -
Hybrids Hit the Track
High performance hybrids is not an oxymoron, and budding automotive engineers from 30 universities gathered at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to prove it. The teams competed in the third annual Formula Hybrid International Competition last weekend and tore up the track in cars they’d spent months building for a race that places as much value on [...]
05.08.09 -
Vevo Watch: Music on Late Night Talk Shows Offers Promise, Complication
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs delivered an electrifying performance on Saturday Night Live last month. Yet despite widespread demand for this video, there’s not a single legitimate place where you can watch it online. NBC’s booming digital TV hub Hulu posted exclusive footage of the band hanging out with SNL’s Fred Armisen backstage, and NBC posted a few [...]
05.08.09 -
Trekker’s Take: Illogical New Star Trek Warps Coherency
J.J. Abrams’ new Star Trek is commonly described as appealing to “all audiences.” It’s supposed to be Trek for “the rest of us.” If that means the adventures of the Enterprise crew will now be dumbed down and play on screen with as many clunky plot points and pained coincidences as other studio movies, consider [...]
05.08.09
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UC Berkeley Suffers Breach of Student Health Data
The University of California at Berkeley sent an e-mail to students on Friday disclosing that hackers had obtained access to secured databases belonging to the university’s health services. The databases contained information about current students and alumni as well as spouses of students and, in some cases, parents or guardians whose health insurance information was [...]
05.08.09 -
Dark Sector Creator Tapped for BioShock 2 Multiplayer
BioShock 2 publisher 2K Games is handing the reins of the game’s multiplayer mode to Dark Sector developer Digital Extremes, according to an announcement made Friday morning. Prior to Dark Sector, Digital Extremes collaborated with Epic Games on the Unreal Tournament series, offering fans of multiplayer gunfights good reason to be excited, despite the fears that [...]
05.08.09 -
I Have a Warm, Affirmative Feeling for anybody anywhere calling themselves "cool tools"
http://www.agriculture.com/ag/category.jhtml?categoryid=/templatedata/ag/category/data/1192590862956.xml&bcpid;=18444453001&bclid;=18465740001&bctid;=22324154001 *Yeah man! Those babes are rockin' it over at SUCCESSFUL FARMER! Way to go with the bottlejack, Laurie and Amy!
05.08.09 -
BioWare Unveils The Old Republic’s ‘Trooper’
Developer BioWare has unveiled the latest character class from its upcoming MMO The Old Republic, the Trooper. The game’s official website described the Trooper as “the most advanced fighting force in the galaxy,” saying “they are equipped to face any foe in any environment, but it’s not their gear that makes them tough—it’s their guts.” Though it [...]
05.08.09 -
Artist Unveils Images from Duke Nukem Forever
The collapse of Duke Nukem Forever creator 3D Realms most likely killed the game permanently, which art director Tramell Isaac apparently sees as a great reason to show off his work on the title. Via his personal blog, Isaac has issued 8 images from the game. Most of the shots are simple environmental images, but Isaac’s [...]
05.08.09 -
Batman: The Brave and the Bold Returns With Babes, She-Males
Its winter hibernation concluded, Cartoon Network’s lighthearted but somewhat subversive animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold returns with 13 new episodes starting Friday. The show returns with babes in tow, female and otherwise. Friday night’s uproarious “Night of the Huntress” debuts not just female costumed crime-fighters Huntress and Black Canary, but also Baby Face’s [...]
05.08.09 -
Why Your Baby’s Name Will Sound Like Everyone Else’s
Emma was the most popular baby girl name of 2008, the Social Security Administration announced today, supplanting Emily, which had held the slot for the past 12 years. Both names, though, reflect a much deeper and largely unnoticed naming trend, which has played out over decades. At the beginning of the last century, names beginning with [...]
05.08.09 -
Hey Hack3rs. Check out what it's like to be a fed.
*The leaden ring of authenticity here. Yup, that's the anti-hacker daily grind. A lot more black money in it than there used to be, but running a computer-crime sting hasn't changed much in 20 years. *He pwned the freakin' server....
05.08.09 -
U.S.: Afghan Airstrike Killed About 30 Civilians (Updated)
American airstrikes killed dozens of civilians during a firefight in western Afghanistan this week, U.S. military investigators have concluded. The death toll — about 50 people, including at least 20 militants — makes the battle in Farah Province one of the bloodiest in recent years. But it’s far lower than initial reports, by the Red [...]
05.08.09 -
Darpa: Heat + Energy = Brains. Now Make Us Some.
The U.S. military’s premiere research agency is already trying to use math to predict human behavior and neuroscience to replicate a primate’s brain. The next step: Lean on the study of energy and heat to create an entirely new theory for how intelligence actually works. The idea behind Darpa’s latest venture, called “Physical Intelligence” (PI) [...]
05.08.09
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M. John Harrison Recommends Genuinely Interesting Science Fiction
*Maybe the best list of its kind I've ever seen. *And I've seen plenty. http://ambientehotel.wordpress.com/2009/05/02/some-interesting-science-fiction/
05.08.09 -
The Grid, Our Cars and the Net: One Idea to Link Them All
Editor’s note: Robin Chase thinks a lot about transportation and the internet, and how to link them. She connected them when she founded Zipcar, and she wants to do it again by making our electric grid and our cars smarter. Time magazine recently named her one of the 100 most influential people of the year. [...]
05.08.09 -
Spano Is Spanish For ‘Ferrari-Killer’
With the economy in the tank and the auto industry on the ropes, you’d think a startup supercar company, especially one building a car that costs $663,000, would wait until things improved before unveiling their exotic machinery. But no. Not GTA Motors. We aren’t complaining. The GTA Spano looks a lot like the Saleen S5S Raptor concept, [...]
05.08.09 -
No Jail Time for Army Contractor in Revenge Killing
Don Ayala — the U.S. Army contractor who pleaded guilty to a revenge killing in Afghanistan — won’t be going to prison. Instead, U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton sentenced Ayala, a member of the Army’s Human Terrain social science project, to five years probation and a $12,500 fine. Ayala (pictured, left) began working in Afghanistan [...]
05.08.09 -
Spirit and Opportunity, Still Churning Away
http://planetary.org/news/2009/0430_Mars_Exploration_Rovers_Update_Spirit.html *Nice to have such a detailed, not to say geeky report on the continued doings of the gamest planetary rovers ever. These are two solar-powered computers-with-wheels, on a freezing, windy, dusty, alien planet, that have been rolling around there...
05.08.09 -
Thackara's Latest Doors of Perception
*These sublime emanations will see you through a spring weekend, no question about it. Doors of Perception Report May 2009 With i-Borg in New York by John Thackara i-BORG A new sign on Manhattan Bridge as you enter New York...
05.08.09 -
Free! Two Entire Days of Generative Infoviz Ambient Music
“The Sound of eBay” is an UBERMORGEN.COM project with Stefan Nussbaumer, online at www.sound-of-ebay.com since July 2008. Using eBay user data, The Sound of eBay generates unique songs. By simply entering any eBay username and clicking “generate”, the robots sprawl...
05.08.09 -
Plug-In Be Bop: It’s a Box. It’s French. It’s Got Batteries.
Renault calls its all-electric Kangoo be bop Z.E. concept “quirky,” but we here at Autopia think it’s cute as a button. The prototype unveiled Thursday at a shareholder meeting has a compact lithium-ion battery under the dashboard and a “circuit board” design motif. Leave it to the French to build a car where even the door [...]
05.08.09 -
Colleagues Mount Quick Defense for DHS Chief Geek Pick
Yesterday, biological defense specialist Dr. Tara O’Toole was tapped by the Obama administration to become the Department of Homeland Security’s geek-in-chief — and was instantly blasted by critics as a bioterror Cassandra. Today, her colleagues fought back, praising her as a public health visionary who helped get the country ready to respond to epidemics like [...]
05.07.09 -
Lawmaker Defends Imprisoning Hostile Bloggers
Rep. Linda Sanchez responded Wednesday to Threat Level’s tirade against her proposed legislation outlawing hostile electronic speech. Her answer: “Congress has no interest in censoring.” Sanchez, with the introduction of the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, clearly has a great interest in censoring. Still, the Democrat from Los Angeles makes several valid points that cyberbullying has lasting [...]
05.07.09
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Pentagon’s Black Budget Grows to More Than $50 Billion (Updated)
The Pentagon wants to spend just over $50 billion on classified programs next year, newly-released Defense Department budget documents reveal. “That’s the largest-ever sum,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget seer — a three percent increase over last year’s total. It makes the Pentagon’s secret operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside, “roughly [...]
05.07.09 -
Not All Automakers Are Suffering
In an era of brand elimination, government bailouts and plant closings, it’s refreshing to hear some positive news about the automotive industry. Unfortunately, we have to travel all the way to Romania to find a factory that’s hiring, and all the way to China to find consumers who are still buying. While plants worldwide are [...]
05.07.09 -
Heartland Breach Cost Company $12.6 Million So Far
Heartland Payment Systems reported on Thursday that the hack it experienced last year has cost the company $12.6 million so far. The amount includes legal costs and fines from Visa and MasterCard, who say the company was not compliant with payment card industry rules. Network World reports that during the company’s financial earnings call, Heartland executives [...]
05.07.09 -
Teenage Bomb Threat Suspect Was Internet Prank-Call Star
A 16-year-old North Carolina boy arrested for allegedly making a bomb threat against Purdue University had a secret identity as a superstar in an unusual online subculture — one dedicated to making prank phone calls for a live internet audience, his mother admitted Thursday. “I heard the prank phone calls he made,” says Annette Lundeby [...]
05.07.09 -
Court Upholds Hacking Conviction of Man for Uploading Porn Pics from Work Computer
An Ohio appellate court has upheld the felony hacking conviction of a man who was found guilty of unauthorized access for misusing his computer at work. Richard Wolf acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate when he used his work computer to upload nude photos of himself to an adult web site and view other photos on [...]
05.07.09 -
Google, Apple and Microsoft Knuckle Under to Telcos
If you think Google, Microsoft and Apple are bad-ass, cutthroat, take-no-prisoner companies, you should meet the nation’s wireless carriers, who have collectively convinced those intensively competitive software giants to cripple their products. Need any more proof that the nation’s four largest wireless carriers - AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile - have too much control over the [...]
05.07.09 -
Flying Lightsaber Zapped, Multiple Kill Vehicle Killed
During the previous administration, the Missile Defense Agency was living large. The agency, which helped develop the rudiments of a U.S. missile shield, had a lavish budget; it could afford to invest in a wide spectrum of technology. But next year, it won’t have so many dollars to throw around. The Department of Defense released the [...]
05.07.09 -
Back to the Arctic in a Solar Car
Marcelo da Luz, who set a world record when he drove 14,000 miles to the Arctic Circle in a solar car, is headed back to the Great White North to continue evangelizing about the wonders of solar power. Da Luz and his X of 1 - that’s Power of One - team hit a roadblock when [...]
05.07.09 -
Creationism Dig Violated Student’s Rights
When a high school history teacher told his students that creationism was “superstitious nonsense,” he violated a student’s First Amendment rights, a Federal judge ruled this week. Christian conservatives are celebrating the decision by U.S. District Court Judge James Selna that high school teacher James Corbett violated the establishment clause, which courts have interpreted to mean [...]
05.07.09 -
The French edition of "Shaping Things" has appeared
http://fypeditions.com/objets.htm *Just in time for the "Internet of French Things."
05.07.09
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Star Trek Gallery: Then and Now
05.08.09 -
The Best Gaming Rigs Money Can Buy
05.11.09
