Things that made me go Hmmmm in 2008

Things that make me go Hmmm . . . Some things kick your ass and Some things just make your go hmmmm . . . If you run across something on the Net that just has to be shared please send it along so I can add it to the system. I am also looking for a voulenteer to take over editing this feature. 12/29/2008 01:20 AM Rere Metals Limit Alternative Energy The most advanced "renewable" technologies are too often based upon non-renewable resources 12/29/2008 12:00 PM What Carriers Aren’t Eager to Tell You About Texting Ripped Off Again - Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin and the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, wanted to look behind the curtain. He was curious about the doubling of prices for text messages charged by the major American carriers from 2005 to 2008, during a time when the industry consolidated from six major companies to four. 12/29/2008 11:26 AM Veterans of ’90s Bank Bailout See Opportunity in Current One A tight-knit group of former senior government officials who were central players in the savings and loan bailout of the 1990s are seeking to capitalize on the latest economic meltdown, enjoying a surge in new business in their work now as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists. 12/27/2008 12:35 PM One ISP says RIAA must pay for piracy protection erry Scroggin, owner-operator of Bayou Internet and Communications, wants the music and film industries to know that he's not a cop and he doesn't work for free. 12/27/2008 09:27 AM RIM accuses Motorola of blocking job offers BlackBerry maker Research in Motion sued Motorola over claims the mobile phone maker is improperly blocking it from offering jobs to laid-off Motorola workers, Bloomberg said. 12/27/2008 09:17 AM NerdKITS Retired. wondering what to do with yourself ? Get a NerdKIT and build a USB controlled watering hose, you can probably combine this with a low cost video camera and open source facial recognition software to amaze your friends and neighbors. 12/26/2008 01:03 PM SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator This is just way to cool for words to express. If you click on the link you will be taken to a site that will automaticly generate a paper on a computer science topic. Papers written by this software package have been accepted for publication!! If you are out of work and looking for a way to spice up your resume there is nothing being able to reference contributions to the literature you have made.Click on this link to see what one looks like. Let us know if you are successful using this as a job search stratagy, Frank Kasperzak once got a job working for the Atomic Energy commission based on a PhD he granted himself. 12/26/2008 11:32 AM NASA Outsources ISS Support Services NASA has awarded a pair of contracts worth $3.5 billion through 2016 to two private aerospace firms seeking to haul vital supplies to and from the international space station, the space agency announced late Tuesday. 12/26/2008 09:20 AM Amateurs are trying genetic engineering at home Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories. 12/26/2008 09:12 AM Blindsight - The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense The study, which included extensive brain imaging, is the most dramatic demonstration to date of so-called blindsight, the native ability to sense things using the brain’s primitive, subcortical — and entirely subconscious — visual system. 12/13/2008 10:12 AM Solar-powered Wi-Fi comes to Harvard Square The Harvard Square Business Association extended its public Wi-Fi system last week, without extending its electric bill. 12/04/2008 10:13 AM Anti Internet filtering rebels hit the streets Opponents to the government's Internet content filtering scheme will take to the streets in a series of protests planned in Australia's capital cities. 12/04/2008 10:10 AM Has an alien comet infiltrated the solar system? Not from around here - A comet orbiting our Sun may be an interloper from another star system. Comet Machholz 1 isn't like other comets 12/03/2008 09:25 AM The Day The Web Went Dead On Oct. 30, Sprint Nextel severed its last connection to Cogent Communications , disconnecting two of the Internet's five largest backbones. Instantly, major American and Canadian universities lost contact with each other. Officials in Maine's state government found they couldn't link up with many town governments. Millions of Sprint's wireless broadband customers found themselves cut off from thousands of Web sites. 12/03/2008 09:16 AM Behavioral screening -- the future of airport security? Behavioral screening -- the future of airport security? - Yet More Big Brother 12/03/2008 09:13 AM Ads on tests add up for teacher "Tough times call for tough actions," he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final. 12/03/2008 09:07 AM EU to search out cyber criminals Remote searches of suspect computers will form part of an EU plan to tackle hi-tech crime - Big Brother is alive and well 12/03/2008 09:02 AM The Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science 1988 paper by E. W. Dijkstra, which argues that computer programming should be understood as a branch of mathematics, and that the formal provability of a program is a major criterion for correctness. E. W. Dijkstra Wikipedia 12/03/2008 08:53 AM New Windows worm builds massive botnet Half a million PCs infected, botnet still growing, says researcher 12/01/2008 09:15 AM A Generation of Local TV Anchors Is Signing Off "It’s scary for people over 50." In Chicago, the 23-year anchor Diann Burns was laid off from WBBM. In Boston, the renowned sports anchor Bob Lobel was let go by WBZ. In Houston, theWhen the anchors depart, they take decades of experience and insight with them. “Basically, you replace someone who knows City Hall with someone who can’t find it,” When station managers are forced to make cuts, hefty anchor salaries are a tempting target. 26-year veteran Carolyn Campbell was dismissed from KHOU. 11/30/2008 05:02 PM Alien-like Squid With "Elbows" Filmed at Drilling Site A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" Magnapinna squid. 11/23/2008 08:10 AM Quarks, gluons and corroborating e=mc2 It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula e=mc2 has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists. 11/23/2008 08:01 AM Massive Subsurface Glaciers Discovered on Mars The findings, published today in Science, come from the spacecraft's shallow radar, or SHARAD, which is able to penetrate the surface and examine what lies beneath. In this case, SHARAD indicated that two long-visible mid-latitude features, one of which is roughly three times the size of Los Angeles, are almost completely composed of water ice. 11/16/2008 10:02 AM India makes history, launches Tricolour on moon India marked its presence on Moon tonight to be only the fourth nation to scale this historic milestone after a Moon Impact Probe with the national tri-colour painted successfully landed on the lunar surface after being detached from unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1. 11/16/2008 10:01 AM Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction In this century a number of events could extinguish humanity. The probability of these events may be very low, but the expected value of preventing them could be high, as it represents the value of all future human lives. We review the challenges to studying human extinction risks and, by way of example, estimate the cost effectiveness of preventing extinction-level asteroid impacts. 11/16/2008 09:59 AM Online Carpooling Service Fined For Unregulated Transportation TechCrunch points us to the news that the Ontario transportation board has sided with the bus company and fined PickupPal. It's also established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service -- including no crossing of municipal boundaries -- meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. 11/16/2008 09:52 AM Controllers Cheer as Data Arrive from NASA’s Spirit Rover PASADENA, Calif., (NASA) — NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of “She’s talking!” among the rover team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 11/16/2008 07:39 AM Ancient Rome goes online with Google Earth Google Earth has added to its software a 3-D simulation that painstakingly reconstructs nearly 7,000 buildings of ancient Rome, including the Colosseum, the Forum and the Circus Maximus, officials said Wednesday. 11/16/2008 07:32 AM Net Neutrality Advocates In Charge Of Obama Team Review of FCC Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC.- Susan Crawford - Kevin Werbach 11/16/2008 07:26 AM Ruggedised, weaponised' raygun modules now on sale - FIRESTRIKE™: US killtech behemoth Northrop Grumman has has said that it is ready to take orders for the "world's first ruggedised, weaponised high energy solid state laser designed for battlefield applications". The raygun module is dubbed FIRESTRIKE™. 11/14/2008 02:26 PM Crisis Spreads to Tech Sector as Sun to Cut Work Force Before the stock market opened Friday, Sun disclosed that it would lay off 5,000 to 6,000 workers, or 15 percent to 18 percent of its work force. 11/04/2008 04:47 PM Has new physics been found at the ageing Tevatron? Last week, physicists announced that the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, has produced particles that they are unable to explain. Could it be a sign of new physics? 11/04/2008 04:47 PM Large Hadron Collider out of action until spring The huge Large Hadron Collider, built to simulate the conditions at the very start of the universe, will not restart until spring 2009, 11/04/2008 11:14 AM Violent video games linked to child aggression About 90 percent of U.S. kids ages 8 to 16 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing so (more if you're a boy). Now a new study suggests virtual violence in these games may make kids more aggressive in real life. 11/04/2008 10:54 AM Wirelessly, Home Security Becomes a D.I.Y. Project Old Coots Alert !! Sometimes we are lucky to see the start of something really new on the face of the planet. In India they are using technology to change the way things work for everyone in a fundimental way; Video mChek | 11/01/2008 09:37 PM Plasma Engine for Spacecraft The helicon first stage of the VX-200 VASIMR plasma rocket prototype has achieved its full power rating of 30 kW 11/01/2008 09:33 PM Ultramassive: as big as it gets A black hole can consume anything in its path. These monsters can become huge — but perhaps only so huge. 11/01/2008 09:12 PM NASA Solar System Exploration Check out all the missions 11/01/2008 08:50 PM Financial Fiasco Soon people will learn that it is dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. 11/01/2008 08:39 PM Scientists selected for new eye on the universe SOFIA is a highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft that carries a 98-inch (2.5-meter) diameter airborne infrared telescope. 10/30/2008 01:24 PM 'Digital Dark Age' may doom some data What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer’s hard drive? 10/30/2008 01:13 PM Virtual worlds A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. These avatars are usually depicted as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional graphical representations, 10/30/2008 01:09 PM Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web Today's internet is largely an outgrowth of the much-reviled Digital Millennium Copyright Act that lawmakers passed in 1998 10/26/2008 11:40 AM Cellphone Banking Helping To Fight Poverty In India Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC.- Susan Crawford - Kevin Werbach 10/25/2008 01:45 PM Are you living in a "Constitution Free" Zone pre-wired home security installations by alarm companies are on the way out. Thanks to wireless window and door sensors and motion detectors, installing and maintaining one's own security system is becoming a do-it-yourself project - InGrid LaserShield-   10/25/2008 01:39 PM Bill Gates’ mysterious new company "Tough times call for tough actions," he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final. 10/25/2008 01:34 PM Team records 'music' from stars Remote searches of suspect computers will form part of an EU plan to tackle hi-tech crime - Big Brother is alive and well 10/25/2008 01:27 PM Google Founders buy Fighter A company controlled by Google’s top executives, including its billionaire founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, appears to have added a fighter jet to its well-equipped fleet, with in air refueling it can reach Microsoft: 10/25/2008 01:18 PM Open Source Hardware Open source hardware refers to computer and electronic hardware that is designed in the same fashion as free and open-source software. 10/25/2008 01:14 PM Labor's web gag 'worse than Iran' The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the interne 09/14/2008 11:52 AM SideShow Devices Linux DeviceInexpensive USB Display with Sideshow support displays stocks, weather and much more.- Windows Site - 09/13/2008 01:18 PM Cloud computing may draw government action Cloud computing will soon become an area of hot debate in Washington, D.C., with policy makers debating issues such as the privacy and security of data in the cloud - What is Cloud Computing 09/13/2008 01:08 PM Integrated circuit is 50 years old today If it wasn’t for the invention of the integrated circuit, then computers today would probably be housed in huge mahogany cabinets with a baffling array of polished, brass valves 09/13/2008 12:57 PM Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - Think about Joining From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense 09/13/2008 12:45 PM Jedi Knights course offered by Queen's University Belfast A university is offering a course to teach students Jedi Knights communication skills and personal development. 09/12/2008 10:52 PM Think Geek Great Geek Toys 09/10/2008 09:45 PM China sets dates for space launch China will launch its third manned space mission in late September 09/10/2008 09:26 PM Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life. 09/10/2008 11:15 AM Water Bears', first animal to survive in space Tiny invertebrates called 'water bears' can survive in the vacuum of space, a European Space Agency experiment has shown. 09/03/2008 11:42 AM Monogamy gene found in people What if you could tell whether a man is husband material just by peering at his genes? 09/03/2008 11:36 AM Laboring longer a growing trend for Americans Americans are changing the game plan for retirement, with millions laboring right past the traditional retirement age and working into their late 60s and beyond. 09/03/2008 11:32 AM Next Extinction Coming Soon? Scientists from the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology have developed a model showing that our solar system goes through the plane of the galaxy every 35-40 million years, coinciding with mass life extinctions on Earth. 09/02/2008 10:49 AM Hook it to my Veins Can Videogaming be an Addiction? 09/02/2008 10:37 AM Report: ISS Changes Orbit To Avoid Russian Debris Crewmembers onboard the International Space Station had to take the unusual step this week of firing booster rockets to lower the station's orbit, in order to avoid a chunk of space debris that may have come within a mile of the orbital platform. 09/02/2008 10:34 AM Now it's the citizen snoopers: Councils recruit unpaid volunteers to spy on their neighbours Little Brother is watching you 09/02/2008 10:32 AM Fixing a fine data mess Recently the uber sysop in San Francisco caused problems when he refused to disclose system passwords. A more typical problem occurs when a KeyMan moves on to a better job. 08/30/2008 01:58 PM IT staff would steal secrets if laid off Most IT staff would steal sensitive company information, including CEO's passwords and customer details, if they were laid off, according to a new survey from Cyber-Ark. 08/30/2008 01:47 PM Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug Is it realistic to expect stem-to-stern application platform support from any one vendor? 08/29/2008 11:12 PM Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software. 08/29/2008 11:41 AM In Texas School, Teachers Carry Books and Guns Barely 100 students attend classes at Harrold, a tiny town in north-central Texas. But the school board's decision to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons has drawn national attention. 08/28/2008 11:16 AM Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not. 08/28/2008 11:15 AM Introducing Ubiquity Today we’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily. 08/28/2008 11:04 AM Stealing the Internet An Internet Scale Man-In-The-Middle Attack 08/28/2008 11:02 AM Tiny object points to remote solar system reservoir Possible comet may hail from inner region of the Oort Cloud, a proposed comet reservoir 08/25/2008 11:27 AM The Stuff of Life on Titan Titan, the sixth and largest moon of the planet Saturn, is thought to be made largely of ice. 08/25/2008 11:23 AM A walk through mathematics! Nine chapters, two hours of maths, that take you gradually up to the fourth dimension. Mathematical vertigo guaranteed! 08/22/2008 12:01 PM Photo Stamps Stumped for a gift for the grandkids, or someone special, check out order Photo Stamps from the USPS on line 08/22/2008 08:11 AM Thinking outside the square finds light in oven She has developed a simple, cheap way of producing solar cells in a pizza oven that could eventually bring power and light to the 2 billion people in the world who lack electricity. 08/20/2008 09:59 AM Home Fusion Getting bored after retirement ? Now you can build your own fusion plant at home. 08/21/2008 01:45 PM Intel Moves to Free Gadgets of Their Recharging Cords SAN FRANCISCO — Intel has made progress in a technology that could lead to the wireless recharging of gadgets and the end of the power-cord spaghetti behind electronic devices. 08/20/2008 10:14 AM Cassini Pinpoints Source of Jets on Saturn's Moon Enceladus In a feat of interplanetary sharpshooting, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the surface of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus. 08/20/2008 10:09 AM Ubuntu ready to compete wit Windows for Enterprise Desktop At the LinuxWorld expo in San Francisco, analyst Jay Lyman of the 451 Group spoke about the potential for enterprise adoption of Ubuntu and the impact that community-driven Linux distributions will have on the market. 08/20/2008 10:07 AM Do subatomic particles have free will? If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove. 08/20/2008 10:03 AM Low Cost Solar Power Before First Solar's manufacturing innovations, cadmium-telluride photovoltaic cells were the size of postage stamps; now the company makes them as big as window panes