The Allied Victory Sidecar Motorcycle – Hammacher Schlemmer: “The Allied Victory Sidecar Motorcycle.
Description
This is the Ural-T sidecar motorcycle credited with helping the Russian army to achieve victory on the East Front during World War II. Regarded as a reliable workhorse by reconnaissance troops for tackling Russia’s unforgiving terrain and climate, it is now considered by enthusiasts to be the historical apex of the classic sidecar motorcycle. Still produced east of the Ural Mountains in Russia, it is updated with modern components for roadworthy cruising. Its electric starter (or kick starter for purists) starts its air-cooled, flat-twin 749cc engine, producing 40 hp for comfortable cruising along scenic routes up to 65 mph; its 5-gallon tank provides up to a 165-mile range. Its five-speed transmission (four forward and one reverse), adjustable twin hydraulic spring shock rear suspension, and front disc and rear drum brakes provide easy foot shifting, smooth rides, and confident stops. The single-wheel, all-steel detachable sidecar ensconces passengers in comfort with a padded vinyl seat and chassis-mounted shock absorbers; its trunk provides 3′ cu. of storage. Supports up to 580 lbs. of total payload. Black with maroon pinstripe. Special conditions and guarantee limitations apply. Please call 1-800-227-3528 for details. 8 1/2′ L x 5 1/2′ W x 43 1/4″ H. (705 lbs.)

Price:
$10,000″

(Via .)

U.S. Patent Office Honors Steve Jobs with iPhone-Shaped Exhibit: “The late Steve Jobs has been hailed as a brilliant businessman, marketer, and visionary. He was also an prolific inventor, if the number of patents bearing his name are any indication.

No less than 323 Apple patents list Jobs among the inventors responsible for them. Now the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is honoring the Apple founder with a dedicated exhibit.”

Verizon Pays a Negative Federal Income Tax Rate, Then Pursues More Tax Breaks

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Zombie-Proof House Keeps the Walking Dead and Jehovah’s Witnesses at Bay | The Last Goddess Magazine: ““The Safe House,” designed by KWK Promes, is the perfect house for anyone who fears attack by zombies, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons.

Located in Poland, by day the house is a two-story concrete cube, with 6,100 square feet of spacious living areas, floor to ceiling windows, panoramic views of the surrounding landscape, and a beautiful indoor swimming pool.

But by night, or in the event of a zombie or creepy religious fanatic attack, heavy doors and shutters slide closed, providing “maximum security” for the people hunkered down inside.

It isn’t the most beautiful design in the world, but when the zombiepocalypse comes it may very well be where mankind makes its last stand.”

Yelp Update Makes Fun Of Rick Perry’s Debate Flub In App Update: “At the GOP debate in Detroit, Republican presidential nominee Rick Perry committed a memorable gaffe when he claimed that he would eliminate three government agencies and was only able to name two, totally brain-farting on the third (Read all about it and watch the cringe-inducing video of Perry’s flub here).

Now, the day after, the local guide Yelp is mocking this political brain-fart in their iOS app update.

“There are three types of bugs that are now gone,” the update says:”

Adobe touts the end of blurred photos with new Photoshop feature: “Adobe is developing an upcoming feature for Photoshop that could end the problem of blurred photos forever.

The new feature was demoed at the company’s MAX 2011 event, drawing gasps of amazement from a crowd that witnessed a blurred photo, retouched and perfected in seconds. Advanced algorithms calculate the movements of the camera at the time the image was taken, enabling the user to ‘fix’ the image by unblurring it – saving what would ordinarily be a disappointing, dud image.

As the video – which is unfortunately slightly shakey itself – demonstrates, the process can be used on a photo captured on a mobile device to sharpen the quality and, in the case of text-based images, reveal more data.

Though it was showcased at MAX, Adobe has no official release date for the anti-blur feature, though suffice to say it is likely to get a very warm welcome when it is finally available to the public.”

Lower court’s ruling stands: Downloading music is not a crime | The Raw Story: “(Reuters) – The Supreme Court let stand on Monday a ruling that a traditional Internet download of sound recording does not constitute a public performance of the recorded musical work under federal copyright law.

The justices refused to review a ruling by an appeals court in New York that the download itself of a musical work does not fall within the law’s definition of a public performance of that work.

The not-for-profit American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) appealed to the Supreme Court. It said the ruling has profound implications for the nation’s music industry, costing its members tens of millions of dollars in potential royalties each year.”

16 ‘super-Earths’ found outside solar system – Light Years – CNN.com Blogs: “16 ‘super-Earths’ found outside solar system It’s not like aliens put up a welcome banner or anything, but scientists now have newly identified at least one planet that could potentially sustain life.

The European Southern Observatory has just announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), including 16 super-Earths (planets whose mass is between one and 10 times that of our own planet).

One of these planets in particular could theoretically be home to life if conditions are right. It’s called HD 85512 b, and scientists say it’s about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth. This planet is about 35 light years from Earth. Its location with respect to its star suggests that this planet could have liquid water under certain circumstances.

Don’t get too excited, though; there’s a lot more work to be done to explore whether this planet is truly fit for life, in addition to whether there are alien life forms there.

The discovery comes from High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, or HARPS. HARPS is located at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, and is part of a telescope that’s nearly 12 feet long.

Here’s how it works, according to ESO: When a planet orbits a star, the star move towards and away from the person who’s stargazing on Earth in a regular fashion. That’s called a change in radial velocity. Because of the Doppler effect, changes in radial velocity makes the star’s light spectrum move towards longer wavelengths when it’s moving away, and towards shorter wavelengths as it gets closer. HARPS can detect this shift in the spectrum, and infer that there is a planet present.

So far, scientists have confirmed the existence of 564 planets outside of our solar system, according to NASA’s PlanetQuest website, not counting this latest batch of more than 50. Beyond that, NASA’s Kepler mission has found more than 1,200 exoplanet candidates.

“In the coming 10 to 20 years we should have the first list of potentially habitable planets in the Sun’s neighbourhood. Making such a list is essential before future experiments can search for possible spectroscopic signatures of life in the exoplanet atmospheres,” said Michel Mayor, who led the HARPS team, in a statement.”

The Makayama Movie Mount is essentially a case for your iPad 2 that allows you to “radically improve video capture” by attaching a number of professional photography related peripherals. Some of the possibilities include third-party wide angle and tele-lenses, microphones and lights, and a standard tripod (not included) for “stable shots, pan & tilt camera movements”.

Simply clip the iPad 2 into the case and attach your third-party accessories to one of the two standard hot shoes or screw fittings. Wide angle lens conversion up to 0.5x and zoom-angle up to 2x comes courtesy of a 37mm screw fitting that allows you to attach conversion lenses and even switch between the attached lens and the iPad’s lens on the fly.

Radically improve iPad 2 video capture with the Makayama Movie Mount | 9to5Mac | Apple Intelligence: “”

Anonymous to Wall Street: Expect Us: “Anonymous to Wall Street: Expect Us By Adbusters 25 August 11

Jammers, dreamers, patriots,

Anonymous has just released a video communique endorsing #OCCUPYWALLSTREET. Using language from our first Tactical Briefing, the video calls on protesters to adopt the nonviolent Tahrir-acampadas model. On the 17th of September, it says, “flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months … Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.”"

Native Instruments Komplete 8 Release & Features: “The Native Instruments juggernaut collection of Audio Instruments & Effects just got even bigger. Native Instruments has announced the all new Komplete 8 and it’s bigger than expected. To complete the Komplete 8 package are new versions of Kontakt, now at version 5, Guitar Rig 5 Pro and, a completely new product, Guitar Rig 5 Kontrol.

Komplete now comes in two flavours, Komplete 8 and Komplete 8 Ultimate. The later weighs in at over 240GB and includes over 50 different NI products. In fact, it’s so massive (sic) that it comes on a USB 2.0 external drive. Say goodbye hours spent installing from 20 DVDs!

Learn more about the differences between Komplete 8 and Komplete 8 Ultimate here. In this article let’s take a brief look at some of the new features and products in both Komplete bundles. ”

House panel approves bill forcing ISPs to log users’ web history | The Raw Story: “The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Thursday that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to collect and retain records about Internet users’ activity.

CNET reported the bill would require ISPs to retain customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses for 12 months.

The bill passed by a vote of 19 to 10, and is aimed at helping law enforcement track down pedophiles.

“The bill is mislabeled,” Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), a senior member of the panel told CNET. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”"

New battery design could give electric vehicles a jolt: “A radically new approach to the design of batteries, developed by researchers at MIT, could provide a lightweight and inexpensive alternative to existing batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. The technology could even make “refueling” such batteries as quick and easy as pumping gas into a conventional car.

The new battery relies on an innovative architecture called a semi-solid flow cell, in which solid particles are suspended in a carrier liquid and pumped through the system. In this design, the battery’s active components — the positive and negative electrodes, or cathodes and anodes — are composed of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. These two different suspensions are pumped through systems separated by a filter, such as a thin porous membrane. “

HP Pretends Linux Voids Netbook Hardware Warranty – The Consumerist: “Installing a different operating system on a computer does not change its hardware. This is a simple enough concept…unless you work in technical support for HP. Their phone tech support have joined their Geek Squad colleagues in insisting that a Linux-infested laptop was no longer under warranty.

Kyle didn’t want to put Windows back on his netbook just so his problem would fit phone support’s standard script. He tried to make tech support see logic…and eventually they did. (Or gave him a new battery so he would go away, but the end result is the same.)”

Cosmic burst in distant galaxy puzzles NASA | The Raw Story: “WASHINGTON – NASA is studying a surprising cosmic burst at the center of distant galaxy that has burned for more than a week, longer than astronomers have ever seen before, the US space agency said Thursday.

Calling it ‘one of the most puzzling cosmic blasts ever observed,’ NASA said it has mobilized the Hubble Space Telescope along with its Swift satellite and Chandra X-ray Observatory to study the phenomenon.

‘More than a week later, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade from its location,’ NASA said in a statement.

‘Astronomers say they have never seen such a bright, variable, high-energy, long-lasting burst before. Usually, gamma-ray bursts mark the destruction of a massive star, and flaring emission from these events never lasts more than a few hours.’

The first in a series of explosions was detected by a NASA telescope on March 28 in the constellation Draco.

Astronomers think the the blast occurred ‘when a star wandered too close to its galaxy’s central black hole,’ NASA said.

‘Intense tidal forces probably tore the star apart, and the infalling gas continues to stream toward the hole. According to this model, the spinning black hole formed an outflowing jet along its rotational axis. A powerful blast of X- and gamma rays is seen when the jet is pointed in our direction.’

On April 4, the Hubble telescope spotted the source of the explosion at the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away from Earth.

‘We have been eagerly awaiting the Hubble observation,’ said Neil Gehrels, the lead scientist for Swift at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

‘The fact that the explosion occurred in the center of a galaxy tells us it is most likely associated with a massive black hole. This solves a key question about the mysterious event.’

The Swift telescope has catalogued the event as gamma-ray burst (GRB) 110328A, alerting worldwide astronomers to its existence for further study.”

SFW or NSFW? Software firm hiring only naked web coders – TechSpot: “Nude House, a computer software company in Buckinghamshire, UK is looking to recruit female web coders who are prepared to work in a ‘warm and private’ naturist office environment. The company is also looking for naked sales people tempting customers to buy, as well as nudists to provide free technical support. An ad titled ‘Nude Web Coders Wanted’ has been placed on Craigslist, offering part-time or full-time positions and customers ‘who never meet you and will not know you are nude.’ “

Demand Super-Fast Broadband in the US | Techi.com: “An article in the NY Times yesterday really upset me. If you live in the US, it should upset you as well.

Hong Kong has a broadband service that costs less than $26 a month. This option for its fiber-to-the-home service offers a speed of 1,000 megabits a second. A gig. To put that into perspective, Verizon offers the ‘fastest’ broadband in the country for $145. It’s speed: 50 megabits down, 20 megabits up.

‘Why doesn’t Verizon offer gigabit service?’ Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net asks. ‘Because it doesn’t have to.’

We are sheep. We need an Apple 1984 moment. Someone needs to throw a sledgehammer through somebody’s screen to wake us up.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The Internet is not an option that people can boycott. We can’t turn it off. We need our broadband. As such, it will take a bold company to produce the demand. We need a company that is willing to push the limits, building the infrastructure, and supply the speeds that will force the rest of the ISPs to respond.

Will it be Google? Verizon? The US Government? There are so many possibilities out there, but nobody is stepping up yet.

If you are ‘in the know’ about a company that needs support, please tell us. We will help get the word out through social media. We will blast it out there for the masses to see. Slow Internet is no longer an option. We need someone to step up today.

Who will it be?”

US lawmakers target ‘rogue websites’ with online infringement act | The Raw Story: “Democratic and Republican members of the US Congress pledged Monday to pass legislation that would give US authorities more tools to crack down on websites engaged in piracy of movies, television shows and music and the sale of counterfeit goods.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he would introduce a new version ‘soon’ of a bill designed to combat so-called ‘rogue websites.’

A previous bill co-sponsored by Leahy, called the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 19-0 vote in November, but never made it to the Senate floor.

Leahy, speaking to reporters on Monday, said: ‘Online infringement and the sale of counterfeit goods costs American creators, producers, and businesses billions of dollars and results in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.

‘This theft is unacceptable at any time; it is devastating in our current economic climate,’ he said.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas, said: ‘The success of our economy is in part tied to the success of America’s intellectual property industries.”

Document Corrupter: “We have all been in the situation where we have half-finished work due tomorrow. You can upload a unfinished word document and this tool will modify it so that it cannot be opened. You can send the corrupted file instead to buy yourself some extra time. “

: ” 10 Habits for a Stronger Heart

The smartest plan for attacking a heart attack is, of course, preventing one from ever happening. Choose three of the following strategies and make them a habit. The closer to the top, the more you reduce your risk of heart disease.

1. Convince Your Wife to Stop Smoking Nonsmoking husbands of smoking wives face a 92 percent increase in their risk of heart attack. Breathing secondhand smoke boosts bad cholesterol levels, decreases good cholesterol, and increases your blood’s tendency to clot.

2. Work Out for 30 Minutes, Four Times a Week Middle-aged men who exercise vigorously for 2 or more hours cumulatively per week have 60 percent less risk of heart attack than inactive men do.

3. Lose 10 to 20 Pounds If you’re overweight, dropping 10 to 20 pounds lowers your risk of dying from a heart attack. A 10-year study found that overweight people had heart attacks 8.2 years earlier than normal-weight victims.

4. Drink Five Glasses of Water a Day Men who drink that many 8-ounce glasses are 54 percent less likely to have a fatal heart attack than those who drink two or fewer. Researchers say the water dilutes the blood, making it less likely to clot.

5. Switch from Coffee to Tea A recent study found that people who drink three cups of tea a day have half the risk of heart attack of those who don’t drink tea at all. Potent antioxidants, called flavonoids, provide a protective effect.

6. Eat Salmon on Saturday, Tuna on Tuesday Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health say that eating fish at least twice a week lowers heart-disease risk by more than 30 percent. The magic ingredient is the omega-3 fatty acids.

7. Ask Your Doctor About Vitamin E and Aspirin Men who take both cut the plaque in clogged arteries by more than 80 percent, according to a recent University of Pennsylvania study.

8. Eat a Cup of Total Corn Flakes for Breakfast This cereal contains one of the highest concentrations of folate (675 micrograms) of any cereal. Taking in that much folic acid daily cuts your risk of cardiovascular disease by 13 percent, according to researchers.

9. Count to 10 Creating a 10-second buffer before reacting to a stressful situation may be enough to cool you down. Men who respond with anger are three times more likely to have heart disease and five times more likely to have a heart attack before turning 55.

10. Eat Watermelon It contains about 40 percent more lycopene than is found in raw tomatoes, and a new study shows that your body absorbs it at higher levels due to the melon’s high water content. Half a wedge can boost heart-disease prevention by 30 percent. “

US senators: We want apps that game DUI checkpoints taken down | 9 to 5 Mac US senators: We want apps that game DUI checkpoints taken down | Apple Intelligence: “If you resort to software to figure out those speed traps, know that your senator is possibly lobbying to ban such programs from mobile bazaars forever. A group of senators took a tough stance on the matter, reports ABC News. The senators call such specialized apps ‘nothing but a public safety hazard’.

Deciding enough is enough, senators Harry Reid, Charles E. Schumer, Frank R. Lautenberg and Tom Udall – all Democrats – in a knee jerk reaction sat down and wrote a letter to Apple, Google and Research In Motion.

They want those checkpoint-dodging programs taken down from Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Market and RIM’s App World. A mind-boggling excerpt from their letter reads:

We know that your companies share our desire to end the scourge of drunk driving and we therefore would ask you to remove these applications from your store unless they are altered to remove the DUI/DWI checkpoint functionality. Senator Schumer’s office even bothered issuing a press release specifically mentioning Trapster and PhantomALERT, iPhone apps that provide users with real-time location information on DUI checkpoints. CNN observes that RIM has apparently complied and yanked Trapster from the BlackBerry App World.

It makes sense – to some extent – that responsible drivers would steer away from gaming the system. If you use smartphone apps to dodge speed traps, this initiative concerns you directly. You know who you’re gonna call to complain? That’s right, your state’s senator!

“

Demand Super-Fast Broadband in the US | Techi.com: “An article in the NY Times yesterday really upset me. If you live in the US, it should upset you as well.

Hong Kong has a broadband service that costs less than $26 a month. This option for its fiber-to-the-home service offers a speed of 1,000 megabits a second. A gig. To put that into perspective, Verizon offers the ‘fastest’ broadband in the country for $145. It’s speed: 50 megabits down, 20 megabits up.

‘Why doesn’t Verizon offer gigabit service?’ Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic.net asks. ‘Because it doesn’t have to.’

We are sheep. We need an Apple 1984 moment. Someone needs to throw a sledgehammer through somebody’s screen to wake us up.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? The Internet is not an option that people can boycott. We can’t turn it off. We need our broadband. As such, it will take a bold company to produce the demand. We need a company that is willing to push the limits, building the infrastructure, and supply the speeds that will force the rest of the ISPs to respond.

Will it be Google? Verizon? The US Government? There are so many possibilities out there, but nobody is stepping up yet.

If you are ‘in the know’ about a company that needs support, please tell us. We will help get the word out through social media. We will blast it out there for the masses to see. Slow Internet is no longer an option. We need someone to step up today.

Who will it be?”

Obama admin. proposes wiretapping media pirates | The Raw Story: “In today’s media saturated age, savvy consumers have grown mindful of what’s on. But soon, you’ll also need to be sure of where that video came from too — or Uncle Sam might decide to listen in on your phone conversations.

That’s no joke: it’s actually just one in a series of the Obama administration’s proposed reforms to intellectual property laws, which could fundamentally change how people share audio and video on the Internet.

In the most dramatic among them, the president has asked Congress for the authority to wiretap suspects in copyright cases.”

Gas rich galaxies confirm prediction of modified gravity theory: “ScienceDaily (Feb. 25, 2011) — Recent data for gas rich galaxies precisely match predictions of a modified theory of gravity known as MOND, according to a new analysis by University of Maryland Astronomy Professor Stacy McGaugh. This — the latest of several successful MOND predictions — raises new questions about accuracy of the reigning cosmological model of the universe, writes McGaugh in a paper to be published in March in Physical Review Letters.”

You Win, RIM! (An Open Letter To RIM’s Developer Relations):

“You win. I concede defeat. I no longer want to attempt developing an app for the Playbook,” developer Jamie Muraiblogs. “Are you happy now? Surely you must be. Considering how terribly designed the entire process is, from the registration right through to loading an app into the simulator, I can only assume that you are trying to drive developers away by inconveniencing them as much as humanly possible.”

“Having already developed apps for theiPhone and iPad, I had a little experience with the process of signing up for developer programs, and naturally I assumed that yours would be different, but fairly straight forward none the less,” Murai reports. “Well, you know what they say about making assumptions!”

Murai reports, “First, I had to fill out a form with my personal information. No big deal, pretty standard. I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps. On Twitter, I believe that would colloquially be referred to as a fail.”

Comment of the Day: Aluminum Foil as Dryer Sheet! | Apartment Therapy Chicago: “I’ve completely eliminated the need for dryer sheets. I was a firm lover of these until I found that I could take aluminum foil, ball it up, and toss it in the dryer with the wet laundry. It removes static and never has to be changed. I’ve been using the same aluminum foil ball for over 6 months.”

HP walks on the bile side at the Grammys | Technically Incorrect – CNET News: “”

Spooky “Dark Flow” Tracked Deeper Into the Cosmos; No Word on What’s Tugging at Galaxies | 80beats | Discover Magazine: “A year and a half ago, the team led by Alexander Kashlinsky of NASA proposed the controversial and ominously named ‘dark flow,’ a massive gravitational force that is tugging at galaxy clusters, and that Kashlinsky says could be coming from beyond the limits of our own visible universe. Now the team is back with a follow-up study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and Kashlinsky “

“Impossible” planet from beyond the Milky Way discovered: “It’s not quite the impossible planet, but it’s certainly very improbable. A planet has been discovered around a type of ancient star that scientists once believed couldn’t support planets. Even more incredibly, the planet formed outside our galaxy.

Before the discovery of this gas giant, it was incredibly rare to find planets orbiting ancient stars – and even more rare to find them orbiting a star like this one because it lacks the necessary metals to form planets. This planet’s star, amazingly, is both old and metal-poor, and what’s more the star has entered its red giant phase, in which it expands to an incredible size and threatens to engulf its planets. That’s what you can see in the rather mind-blowing, somewhat impressionistic artist’s conception up top. That black dot just to the lower right of center is the planet in question.

So this planet is impossible for three reasons, all to do with the extreme conditions of its star.

Just to add to the strangeness, the star should have swallowed up its planet, based on the planet’s position relative to the star. But that’s nothing compared to the story of its birth. This star is part of a group that was once part of a satellite galaxy apart from the Milky Way, which was gravitationally disrupted and assimilated into our galaxy several billion years ago. In all likelihood, this planet predates that merger, meaning it’s technically the first planet we’ve discovered that’s from another galaxy.

[via ScienceExpress]“

Incredible Space Maximization in a Small Studio Apartment: “Incredible Space Maximization in a Small Studio Apartment

You’ve seen a lot of ingenious ideas on how to decorate small apartments on Freshome. Here is another tiny crib that manages to maximize space and create a cozy living environment as well. The East Village Studio comes from JPDA Architects, stretches over an area of 46 square meters (500 square feet) and was built as a little ‘nest’ for the owners who also work here. It has all the utilities a common looking contemporary home has and dare we say a lot more. This original crib has storage space and shelves in the most unusual and unexpected places, reducing clutter and contributing to a clean and fresh interior design. The wood gives this home its warmth which is ‘intensified’ by the friendly vegetation pots spread around the open studio.”

Hubble zooms in on a space oddity: “Hubble Zooms in on a Space Oddity

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2011) — One of the strangest space objects ever seen is being scrutinized by the penetrating vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. A mysterious, glowing green blob of gas is floating in space near a spiral galaxy. Hubble uncovered delicate filaments of gas and a pocket of young star clusters in the giant object, which is the size of our Milky Way galaxy.”

cornelius comanns: bufalino: ” ‘bufalino’ by german industrial designer cornelius comanns is a small camper which is equipped to meet the basic needs of one person. the concept behind the project is to offer absolute flexibility during periods of travel. the minimalist construction is based on the existing piaggio APE 50 three wheeled light transport vehicle; a model chosen for its economic and fuel efficient benefits. however, the more complex structural components such as the frame, the chassis, and engine are derived from the original piaggio model.”

Tent With Transparent Walls | Update Your Home – Gadgets and Interior: “For those who are planning to unwind among nature during the holiday season, French designer Pierre Stephane Dumas has designed a series of luxury tents ‘BubbleTree’ for a fun-filled camping experience. The inflatable bubble tents are decked out with wardrobes, sofas and electric lights for a comfortable stay.And, the series feature CristalBubble, a completely transparent tent for the exhibitionists, while ‘Cocooning’ is the version for those who seek privacy.”

PAiA – Fatman Analog Mid Synth: “The FatMan has all of the features that give analog it’s big bottom and punch in a MIDI controlled package. The classic Voltage Controlled normalization is brought up to date with a Velocity CV not available on pre-MIDI synths. Pitch wheel modulation is supported and Pitch and Velocity CVs and gate signal are provided on the front panel for driving PAiA or other linear response synthesizer modules.

And all those knobs. They invite experimentation and invention in ways that a single control with functions buried under layers of obscure menus never can. Just a few hours with the FatMan will teach you more about the nature of sound than you might ever learn otherwise. It’s as at home in the physics lab as on-stage.”

Cheaper, Spray-On Solar Panels Could Appear in Three Years | Business | GreenBiz.com: “AUSTIN, TX — Researchers at the University of Texas have developed a method to create photovoltaic panels at one-tenth the cost of existing technologies using nanoparticle ‘inks’ to generate electricity from the sun.

The group, lead by Brian Korgel in the University’s chemical engineering department, predicts that the technology, which would allow solar panels to be painted on rooftops or the sides of buildings, could be market-ready in three to five years.”

‘Anonymous’ topples, defaces Zimbabwe government websites | Raw Story: “The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu-PF) website, Zimbabwean government website and Zimbabwean Finance Ministry website were the target of cyber attacks on Thursday by a loose-knit group of online hacktivists known as ‘Anonymous.’”

Javier Senosiain is a Mexican architect who has a peculiar taste to create numerous marvels in different patterns. This particular shell house aptly named ‘Nautilus House’ was given shape in 2006 at a place called Naucalpan in Mexico. Being an exceptional one directly from the imagination of its architect, it naturally had to undergo enough changes testing the patience of its builder. The concept ‘Organic’ can be well experienced from the way one feels being amidst the nature. The way the structure and the interiors have been designed is nothing but teasing the ever hungry urban population confined to concrete jungles. Do you want to be the one, dreaming different?”

Lofted Forest Home: Organic Curves & Natural Materials | Designs & Ideas on Dornob: “Good things come to those who wait – particularly in a work of uniquely detailed and highly curved architecture. Nearly a decade in the making, this structure by Robert Harvey Oshatz is much like a tree house – lofted toward the top of the canopy around it – only bigger, grander, more complex and curved than most any tree house in the world. “

Have we found the universe that existed before the Big Bang?: “The current cosmological consensus is that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago with the Big Bang. But a legendary physicist says he’s found the first evidence of an eternal, cyclic cosmos.

The Big Bang model holds that everything that now comprises the universe was once concentrated in a single point of near-infinite density. Before this singularity exploded and the universe began, there was absolutely nothing – indeed, it’s not clear whether one can even use the term ‘before’ in reference to a pre-Big-Bang cosmos, as time itself may not have existed yet. In the current model, the universe began with the Big Bang, underwent cosmic inflation for a fraction of a second, then settled into the much more gradual expansion that is still going on, and likely will end with the universe as an infinitely expanded, featureless cosmos.”

WikiLeaks rival plans Monday launch after internal split, founders say – CNN.com: “London (CNN) — Arguing that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has ‘weakened the organization,’ a newly organized rival to the website known for leaking official secrets says it will launch Monday. The founders of Openleaks.org say they are former WikiLeaks members unhappy with the way WikiLeaks is being run under Assange. ‘It has weakened the organization,’ one of those founders, Daniel Domscheit-Berg says in a documentary airing Sunday night on Swedish television network SVT. He said WikiLeaks has become ‘too much focused on one person, and one person is always much weaker than an organization.’”

Shair single or multiple chair by Jie-Jyun Lyu » Yanko Design: “There is more! But there is also one. It is like a spore. A good spore! As the designer Jie-Jyun Lyu says, those who live in a small apartment like to have few pieces of furniture. But when too many people come over, you’ve gotta have more! So you need an amazing chair device such as this, one that’s both a single chair, but a bunch of shoot-off chairs that work just as nicely as the original. But with less bumps.

Each cushion chair combines to become Voltron, which is really big awesome and comfortably powerful. But as you know, when Voltron is apart, it’s five lions instead of just one big dude. That’s what this design is!

It’s the ‘Shair.’ And as an added bonus: when the chairs are down off the frame, the frame becomes a rack for all your guests coats, hats, and whatever else they’ve decided to take off.”

New diplomatic cables contain UFO details, says Wikileaks founder: “New diplomatic cables contain UFO details, says Wikileaks founder

2010-12-04 12:00:00 Sharp Solar CellsAds by GoogleLeading the world with an energy conversion efficiency of 35.8% sharp-solar.com Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said that the new leaked diplomatic cables set to be published by the whistleblowing website will contain fresh details on UFOs.

The 39 year-old Australian, who is wanted by Interpol over a charge of rape and sexual assault in Sweden, said there were some references to extraterrestrial life in yet-to-be-published confidential files obtained from the American government.

He did not revealed what information was contained in the diplomatic memos obtained by the website.

It also remains unclear when they will be published.

Assange said his website, under considerable strain in recent days over its ‘Cablegate’ series of leaks, received emails from ‘weirdos’ claiming to have seen UFOs.

‘Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant,’ the Telegraph quoted him as saying, when asked if any of the documents he had received referred to extraterrestrial life.

‘However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules. 1) that the documents not be self-authored; 2) that they be original.

‘It is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs,’ he added.

Assange’s comments were made during a webchat with The Guardian. (ANI)”

Student faces three years in prison for modifying Xbox 360 | Raw Story: “In the first case of its kind, a man from Southern California is set to go on trial Tuesday on criminal charges of circumventing digital rights management (DRM) by modifying Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console.”

Torrent users sue US Copyright Group for fraud and extortion – TechSpot News: “Dmitriy Shirokov is suing a Washington law firm that sent threatening letters to thousands of alleged movie downloaders, accusing the firm of fraud and extortion. He filed the 96-page lawsuit, which argues that lawyers at Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver made a business of threatening people with expensive litigation and fines unless they pay ‘settlement offers’ of $1,500 to $2,500, in the US District Court of Massachusetts. “

Solar panels getting a sleek new makeover | MNN – Mother Nature Network: ” The next generation of solar panels will bear little resemblance to their predecessors, at least on the outside. Companies like SRS Energy, Kyocera and Suntech Power are working with building suppliers on alternatives to clunky solar panels that will satisfy the demands of picky property owners, creating products like solar roofing tiles that blend in with the traditional clay versions found on many Southern California homes.”

Disguised Man Boards International Flight (PHOTOS): “A passenger flying from Hong Kong to Canada made a transformation in flight that officials are describing as ‘unbelievable,’ morphing from what appeared to be an elderly, Caucasian man to a mid-twenties Asian youth, CNN is reporting.

The incredible deception began as the man, whose name is not being released, boarded an Air Canada flight disguised as an elderly white man in Hong Kong. According to the alert obtained by CNN:”

Custom Receipt Maker: “This tool lets you make your own custom receipts.

Customize your receipt below and press the ‘Make the receipt!’ button. Your custom receipt will be shown (containing the text that you entered) in the space above.

The completed receipts are in dollars only but you can enter non-dollar amounts for prices if you like. That way, you can say that something is ‘free’ or ‘cheap’ or whatever you like.

What should you put in your custom receipt? It’s up to you! The top of he receipt might give a store with a funny name, or perhaps a strange address. Put things you’d like to get, or give products crazy prices. Make a serious receipt, but put a funny slogan at the bottom! Be creative. The only limit is your imagination. “

U.N. to Establish Protocols for When We Make Contact With Aliens | Dr. Kaku’s Universe | Big Think: “The United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) has announced that it will consider drafting protocols for what to do when we finally make contact with extra-terrestrial civilizations in space. What’s prompting the UN to consider this possibility is the fact that astronomers are expected to announce, perhaps later this year or next year, that our satellites (such as Kepler and Corot) have identified earth-like planets in space. So far, almost 500 large Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered, but earth-like planets are much more difficult to identify.

The KEPLER SATELLITE”

Homemade Spacecraft from Luke Geissbuhler on Vimeo.

Rick Santorum’s Anal Sex Problem | Mother Jones: “Rick Santorum would very much like to be president. For the past few years, he has been diligently appearing at the sorts of conservative events—the Values Voters Summit, the Conservative Political Action Conference—where aspiring Republican candidates are expected to show up. But before he starts printing ‘Santorum 2012′ bumper stickers, there’s one issue the former GOP senator and his strategists need to address. You see, Santorum has what you might call a Google problem. For voters who decide to look him up online, one of the top three search results is usually the site SpreadingSantorum.com, which explains that Santorum’s last name is a sexual neologism for ‘the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.’”

Incredible Gallery of Art Deco Vehicles: “Incredible Gallery of Art Deco Vehicles”

30 Old PC Ads That Will Blow Your Processor | Information Technology Schools: “Many people today either are too young to have ever seen some early pc’s or have forgotten what they looked like and how much they cost. Today we complain about the cost of a laptop running 2Ghz with 4GB ram for a cost of $ 400.00, however it wasn’t that long ago that laptops and pc’s were priced quite a bit higher. Here are 30 Old PC ads that will make you laugh and possibly appreciate what you have today.”

The Paranoid Kit :: Add-ons for Firefox: “The collection aims to consolidate a package of add-ons, whose overall goal is to reduce/eliminate ads, web tracking, and other privacy sensitive matters involved in day to day browsing.”

Brabus’s iBusiness is a Mercedes-Benz S600 tricked out Apple style: “We’ve seen the iPad implemented both at school and at work, but in your car? That’s the idea behind the iBusiness, a Mercedes-Benz S600 that’s been tricked out with Apple gear aplenty by Brabus. Get this — you can see the two iPads and keyboards in the back seats, but there’s also a Mac mini in the back and a 64gb iPod touch as well. The display above is a 15.2′ TFT display, and all of the gear connects to the Internet via a high speed 3G system. The iPads can also control the car’s multimedia system, navigation systems, and the built-in telephone system.”

[From 2009 Cornell University Solar Decathlon | Home]

[From Online converter - convert video, images, audio and documents for free]

A Russian software company today released a password cracking tool that instantly reveals cached passwords to Web sites in Microsoft Internet Explorer, mailbox and identity passwords in all versions of Microsoft Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.

[From New Tool Reveals Internet Passwords | Information Security News - SecurityWeek: IT Security News & Expert Insights]

An Interview With Wu Yu-Ying – Designer of the Breathing Chair

Posted by Dave on May 21st, 2010

The Red Dot Awards have featured an interview they’ve done with Wu Yu-Ying, designer of Breathing, a perforated foam chair that transforms its shape according to the body of the sitter.

[From An Interview With Wu Yu-Ying – Designer of the Breathing Chair » CONTEMPORIST]

belgian architectural firm dmvA designed ‘blob VB3′, a mobile unit for the office of
xfactoragencies as an extension to the ‘house’. the space – egg house consists of a bathroom,
kitchen, lighting, a bed and several niches for storage. the nose can be opened automatically
and functions as a kind of porch. it easily transportable and can also be used as an office,
guestroom or garden house.

[From dmvA: blob VB3]

It may seem that Steve Jobs is on a lonely crusade against Adobe’s Flash format with the rest of the industry simply waiting who this battle will turn out. While Adobe is rallying support for Flash, Apple receives support from a rather unexpected ally, the adult film industry. The founder of Digital Playground, one of the porn heavyweights in the U.S., told ConceivablyTech that it will abandon Flash as soon as the desktop browsers fully support HTML 5. We also learned that 3D is just not there yet and that online movie streaming is unlikely to replace Blu-ray discs anytime soon.

[From An Unexpected Apple Ally: Porn Industry to Drop Flash | ConceivablyTech]

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in New York sided with Google Inc. in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit filed by media company Viacom Inc. over YouTube videos, saying the service promptly removed illegal materials as required under federal law.

Wednesday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in the closely watched case further affirmed the protections offered to online service providers under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The 1998 law offers immunity when service providers promptly remove illegal materials submitted by users once they are notified of a violation.

[From Viacom Loses To YouTube In Landmark Copyright Case]

[From Police Want to Use Unmanned Drones for Law Enforcement]

[From YouTube - President Jimmy Carter - Address to the Nation on Energy]

Microsoft’s CEO knows the future of personal computing lies with mobile, yet he continues to live in the past.

I sat incredulous last week listening to Steve Ballmer display more out-to-lunchness than I’ve ever heard from a major CEO. His company, Microsoft (MSFT), only recently lost the battle of most valuable technology company to Apple (AAPL). He is presiding over the umpteenth reorganization of the company he has run for years, having succeeded his pal, Bill Gates. His online business, whose Bing search engine is making modest gains against industry leader Google, lost more than $700 million last quarter.

Yet here was Ballmer traveling down a semantical rabbit hole over the future of the PCs. In Ballmerworld, it doesn’t matter that the PC is shrinking in relevance. Any device is a computer, and people will want to use Windows because they’re so familiar with it. By the way, Windows 7, Microsoft’s latest release, is crushing it, further proof that computer users love Microsoft.

CEOs certainly are paid to put on a happy face and represent as well as possible. But hearing Ballmer at the Wall Street Journal’s D conference left me with one question: What is the guy smoking? Windows 7 has been a “success” in part because Microsoft’s previous effort, Vista, was such a stinker. Businesses the world over held off so long on upgrading their PCs that once Microsoft got it right they had no choice but to start replacing obsolete equipment.

Semantics aside, Ballmer knows as well as anyone that the future of personal-computer industry is in mobile devices. Here, Microsoft’s hand is so weak that its most important global equipment partner, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), is buying a beleaguered smartphone maker, Palm (PALM), for its superior mobile operating system. Ballmer’s reminiscing that Microsoft was ahead of the curve on mobile software only draws attention to the fact that the PC kingpin’s cash, power, research and market might have left it approximately nothing in the phone arena. That’s not good. If the growth is in mobile devices and Microsoft can’t shoot straight on anything other than a PC or a laptop (and, to give credit where its due, gaming devices), then its fearsome cash flow and market position in the corporate enterprise mean less than nothing going forward. In the area of computing where Microsoft has been thrashed by Apple, it is nothing more than an extremely well-funded yet dysfunctional and emotionally scarred company. (This seems like a good time to point out that Microsoft has been pursuing tablet computers for a decade, the very segment Apple dominated in a couple months. But then that would feel like piling on.)

[From Steve Ballmer doesn't get it - Fortune Tech]

Microsoft has a problem—a big one. The problem is not just that its CEO, Steve Ballmer, has had a disastrous 10-year run. That’s been obvious for a while now, as I first pointed out last October in a piece titled “The Lost Decade—Why Steve Ballmer is no Bill Gates.”
It even prompted me to predict, last fall, that Ballmer would get pushed out of Microsoft this year.

That wasn’t a popular position at the time. Microsoft’s head of PR called my piece a “hit job on Steve,” and told me all the ways I was wrong and stupid and off the mark. Then he pretty much stopped communicating with me.
I figured he was just in denial, or maybe just saying what he needed to say because he was getting paid to say it.
But my goodness, how much difference a year makes—because these days everyone seems to be piling on Ballmer. And that poor PR guy has a much bigger problem on his hands.

[From Drumbeats: The Tech Press Turns on Microsoft's Ballmer - Newsweek]

[From WFMU HTML 5 Audio Player]

Steve Jobs has posted a rare open letter on Apple’s website entitled “Thoughts on Flash.” Here it is verbatim:

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience, and Adobe was drawn to the corporate market with their Acrobat products. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests.

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. Adobe has characterized our decision as being primarily business driven – they say we want to protect our App Store – but in reality it is based on technology issues. Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true. Let me explain.

First, there’s “Open”.

Adobe’s Flash products are 100% proprietary. They are only available from Adobe, and Adobe has sole authority as to their future enhancement, pricing, etc. While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system.

Apple has many proprietary products too. Though the operating system for the iPhone, iPod and iPad is proprietary, we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.

Apple even creates open standards for the web. For example, Apple began with a small open source project and created WebKit, a complete open-source HTML5 rendering engine that is the heart of the Safari web browser used in all our products. WebKit has been widely adopted. Google uses it for Android’s browser, Palm uses it, Nokia uses it, and RIM (Blackberry) has announced they will use it too. Almost every smartphone web browser other than Microsoft’s uses WebKit. By making its WebKit technology open, Apple has set the standard for mobile web browsers.

Second, there’s the “full web”.

Adobe has repeatedly said that Apple mobile devices cannot access “the full web” because 75% of video on the web is in Flash. What they don’t say is that almost all this video is also available in a more modern format, H.264, and viewable on iPhones, iPods and iPads. YouTube, with an estimated 40% of the web’s video, shines in an app bundled on all Apple mobile devices, with the iPad offering perhaps the best YouTube discovery and viewing experience ever. Add to this video from Vimeo, Netflix, Facebook, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, NPR, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, People, National Geographic, and many, many others. iPhone, iPod and iPad users aren’t missing much video.

Another Adobe claim is that Apple devices cannot play Flash games. This is true. Fortunately, there are over 50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free. There are more games and entertainment titles available for iPhone, iPod and iPad than for any other platform in the world.

Third, there’s reliability, security and performance.

Symantec recently highlighted Flash for having one of the worst security records in 2009. We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash.

In addition, Flash has not performed well on mobile devices. We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it. Adobe publicly said that Flash would ship on a smartphone in early 2009, then the second half of 2009, then the first half of 2010, and now they say the second half of 2010. We think it will eventually ship, but we’re glad we didn’t hold our breath. Who knows how it will perform?

Fourth, there’s battery life.

To achieve long battery life when playing video, mobile devices must decode the video in hardware; decoding it in software uses too much power. Many of the chips used in modern mobile devices contain a decoder called H.264 – an industry standard that is used in every Blu-ray DVD player and has been adopted by Apple, Google (YouTube), Vimeo, Netflix and many other companies.

Although Flash has recently added support for H.264, the video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software. The difference is striking: on an iPhone, for example, H.264 videos play for up to 10 hours, while videos decoded in software play for less than 5 hours before the battery is fully drained.

When websites re-encode their videos using H.264, they can offer them without using Flash at all. They play perfectly in browsers like Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome without any plugins whatsoever, and look great on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Fifth, there’s Touch.

Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. For example, many Flash websites rely on “rollovers”, which pop up menus or other elements when the mouse arrow hovers over a specific spot. Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch interface doesn’t use a mouse, and there is no concept of a rollover. Most Flash websites will need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices. If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?

Even if iPhones, iPods and iPads ran Flash, it would not solve the problem that most Flash websites need to be rewritten to support touch-based devices.

Sixth, the most important reason.

Besides the fact that Flash is closed and proprietary, has major technical drawbacks, and doesn’t support touch based devices, there is an even more important reason we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. We have discussed the downsides of using Flash to play video and interactive content from websites, but Adobe also wants developers to adopt Flash to create apps that run on our mobile devices.

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.

Our motivation is simple – we want to provide the most advanced and innovative platform to our developers, and we want them to stand directly on the shoulders of this platform and create the best apps the world has ever seen. We want to continually enhance the platform so developers can create even more amazing, powerful, fun and useful applications. Everyone wins – we sell more devices because we have the best apps, developers reach a wider and wider audience and customer base, and users are continually delighted by the best and broadest selection of apps on any platform.

Conclusions.

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

The avalanche of media outlets offering their content for Apple’s mobile devices demonstrates that Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content. And the 200,000 apps on Apple’s App Store proves that Flash isn’t necessary for tens of thousands of developers to create graphically rich applications, including games.

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Steve Jobs

April, 2010

[From MacDailyNews - Steve Jobs posts rare open letter: Thoughts on Flash]

WikiLeaks

This Swedish organization publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations. WikiLeaks protects its sources. There is no better whistleblower website on the internet. In fact, The National said, in 2009, “WikiLeaks has probably produced more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the past 30 years.”

[From Four Websites You Should Know About]

Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded.
In most of the cases, technicians turned on the system after a student or staffer reported a laptop missing and turned it off when the machine was found, the investigators determined.

But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams keep clicking for days or weeks after students found their missing laptops, according to the review. Those computers – programmed to snap a photo and capture a screen shot every 15 minutes when the machine was on – fired nearly 13,000 images back to the school district servers.

The data, given to The Inquirer on Monday by a school district lawyer, represents the most detailed account yet of how and when Lower Merion used the remote tracking system, a practice that has sparked a civil rights lawsuit, an FBI investigation and new federal legislation.

[From Lower Merion report: Web cams snapped 56,000 images | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/19/2010]

Natasha, a five-year-old macaque living at Safari Park, near Tel Aviv, almost died from a severe case of the stomach flu. When she recovered she started walking upright like a human, no longer dropping down on all fours or using her hands to move along .

A zoo veterinarian says he has no idea why this happened but maybe the flu left Natasha with some brain damage.

[From Natasha the walking macaque]

What’s new in Photoshop CS5

Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 software redefines digital imaging with a strong focus on photography; breakthrough capabilities for superior image selections, image retouching, and realistic painting; and a wide range of workflow and performance enhancements.

[From what's new in Photoshop | Adobe Photoshop CS5]

Innovative door handle system, designed by Arnaud Lapierre, promises to ensure your privacy by hiding the knob when the door is locked.

Doorknob Condition uses clever pulley system that retracts the exterior door knob when pulled from the inside. [via]

[From Disappearing Doorknob Concept]

[From MacDailyNews - Library of Congress to archive every public tweet, ever, since Twitter’s inception]

Next week, the brightest lights of the psychedelic cognoscenti will gather in San Jose, California. Leaving swirls of tracer visions in their wakes, they will converge from around the world at an incongruously bland Holiday Inn, 50 miles south of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that once served as the pulsing capital of Psychedelistan. There, several hundred turned-on and tuned-in doctors, psychologists, artists and laypeople will participate in the annual conference of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). For four days, they will explore — through workshops and lectures, nothing more — the widening gamut of clinical inquiry into the uses of the psychedelic experience, a global resurgence of which has led to hopeful talk of a “psychedelic revival.”

[From How Stanislav Grof Helped Launch the Dawn of a New Psychedelic Research Era | Drugs | AlterNet]

Bob Cringely has republished a quote from an interview he did with Bill Gates from June, 1998 for a never-published piece for Vanity Fair:

“What I can’t figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can’t win.” – Bill Gates, June 1998

Cringely writes, “Look at the two companies today. Jobs is still running Apple despite cancer and a liver transplant while Gates has moved on to saving the world at the Gates Foundation. Microsoft is worth $240 billion, a tiny drop from 12 years ago, with the shares now around $27 (down from $29). Nothing gained in more than a decade. Apple shares, on the other hand, have gone from $7.25 to almost $240, Apple’s market cap has risen more than 33X from $6 billion to $220 billion. And Cupertino’s cash hoard today is almost exactly the same as Microsoft’s at around $40 billion.”

[From MacDailyNews - 1998 Bill Gates: I can’t figure out why Jobs is even trying to be Apple CEO; he knows he can't win]

This villa is designed by Enric Ruiz-Geli’s firm Cloud9. It is an example of usual contemporary structure made of concrete but with a quite intriguing shape and very usual features that changes its look entirely. The most cool feature is that the building itself is the extension of the site. It is conceived as a growing C-shaped spiral with grass and plants on the roof. Besides hydroponic rooftop garden there is an underground garage so the structure is very economical and environmental. There is a lot of glazing in the house and its rear features an almost 50 foot-wide expanse of glass. Being environmental by itself the house also features the landscape views from many rooms. { Cloud9 }

[From Villa Bio – Contemporary House with Hydroponic Rooftop Garden | DigsDigs]

Six-year-old boy told he will be able to hold chopsticks in a few months

Shenyang, Liaoning – Li Jinpeng, a 6-year-old boy born with 15 fingers and 16 toes, is happy he will soon be able to wear a normal pair of shoes.

Doctors at the Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang, Liaoning province, successfully removed Li’s additional fingers and toes in a surgical operation that lasted more than five hours on Tuesday.

Before the surgery, Li, the son of migrant workers from Heilongjiang province, was believed to be the world record holder for having the maximum number of fingers and toes.

He is not the least bit sad at losing the record to two Indians, Pranamya Menaria and Devendra Harne, who each have 12 fingers and 13 toes.

[From Doctors remove extra fingers, toes]

This is why I have a strong dislike of government and our system of lobbyists. Many people in the tech community are becoming increasingly skeptical of Google’s motives in partially pulling out of the Chinese markets and starting to suggest a certain level of hypocrisy.

[From Congress On China: Google Gets A Big Wet Kiss. Microsoft Is “Enabling Tyranny”]

[From Chile Earthquake May Have Shortened Days on Earth - Yahoo! News]

[From Parrot AR.Drone: Coolest iPhone accessory ever? [VIDEO]]

The explosive spread of electromagnetic fields across the world has undeniably spawned at least one disorder: electrosensitivity syndrome. Millions of people — most of them in Europe — say they suffer headaches, depression, nausea, rashes and other problems when they’re too close to cellphones or other sources of EMFs. They’ve formed their own support groups, started their own newsletters and taken drastic steps to avoid EMFs, with some even wearing metallic clothing. A band of EMF “refugees” has moved to a valley in southern France to avoid radiation.

[From Victims of electrosensitivity syndrome say EMFs cause symptoms - latimes.com]

Scientists have isolated a gene sequence that appears to determine how fast our bodies age, the first time a link between DNA and human lifespan has been found.

The discovery could have a profound impact on public health and raises the best hope yet for drugs that prevent the biological wear and tear behind common age-related conditions such as heart disease and certain cancers.

[From Living fast? Scientists show lifespan is linked to DNA | Science | guardian.co.uk]

(PhysOrg.com) — Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.

[From Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything]

These days, a number of architects and designers are exploring humanitarian design for people hit by a natural disaster or any other emergency. Under the brand Urban Nomads, all the projects by Winfried Baumann cater to instant housing for urban nomads and the homeless. The Instant Housing by Winfried Baumann comprises small mobile homes, which are designed for the special living circumstances and are manageable by one person. An emergency assistance to homeless people and victims of disasters, the Instant Housing Shelter is equipped with a retractable padded bed, first aid kit, mirror, whistle, multi tool, flashlight and plastic hood with viewing window. The residential portable container can provide all the basic necessities in a disaster-struck area, efficiently and affordably. Last but not the least, these Instant Housing shelters can be easily transported from one place to the other.

[From Urban Nomads' Instant Housing Shelters For The Homeless - The Design blog]

Blue Chevy
Culver City, CA
Fall 2009

[From Vans and the places where they were.]

Cheers To Finger Power!

Mind you, this is not a “Green” concept and neither does it claim to be “Eco Friendly”. It’s just a helpful solution for a tricky situation. The situation being: you running out of juice on your mobile phone. So what do you do? Remove the battery from the back of the phone; give it a few good turns around your index finger and its gathered enough power to last you a conversation or a safe trip to your charger and electric point.

[From Swing Your Energy - Mobile Phone Battery Charger System by Song Teaho & Hyejin Lee » Yanko Design]

designer jamie o’shea must have really wanted a nap when he created his vertical bed design. the vertical
allows the user to sleeping standing up right in the middle of the street. not satisfied without testing his
creation, o’shea slept for 40 minutes in downtown new york. the bed design can be collapsed into a small
suitcase and is attached to a subway vent when in use. the help the user gets a peaceful rest, the bed comes
with noise canceling headphones, opaque sunglasses and a free-standing umbrella for napping in the rain.
next time you walking down the street and feeling tired, simply set up the vertical bed and take a nap.

[From vertical bed]

Verizon is terminating internet service to an unknown number of repeat copyright scofflaws, a year after suggesting it was not adopting a so-called graduated-response policy.

While it was not immediately clear whether other internet service providers were following suit, the move comes as the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are lobbying ISPs and Congress to support terminating internet access for repeat, online copyright offenders.

All the while, the United States has been privately lobbying the European Union to “encourage” so-called three strikes policies, according to leaked documents surrounding a proposed international intellectual property accord.

Verizon was not immediately prepared to comment in detail on the developments, first reported by CNET, or to detail how many of its more than 8 million broadband subscribers it has terminated — although CNET said the number was “small.” The RIAA declined comment.

“We reserve the right to do that,” Verizon spokeswoman Bobbi Henson said in a telephone interview regarding the terminations.

The RIAA announced a year ago it was ending its litigation campaign against individual file sharers, about 30,000 lawsuits in all. Instead, the music industry’s lobbying and litigation arm said it would rely on a series of accords it had reached with “leading” internet service providers, in which ISPs have agreed “on principle” to shut off internet access to customers the RIAA catches file sharing repeatedly.

At that time, in a Jan. 5, 2009 interview, Verizon spokeswoman Ellen Yu said that, in reference to the RIAA announcement: “We are not working with them on this.”

Cara Duckworth, an RIAA spokeswoman, said the same day that “We have an agreement on principle with several leading ISPs but not all, and the agreement on principle is confidential.”

Other than Verizon, none of the leading ISPs have acknowledged practicing what the content industry is calling “graduated response.” Under Verizon’s plan, the ISP notifies customers that unlawful file sharing allegedly is taking place on their accounts — file sharing discovered by the RIAA or other intellectual property holders who actively police networks and IP addresses. Internet service could be terminated perhaps after several warnings.

[From Verizon Terminating Copyright Infringers’ Internet Access | Threat Level | Wired.com]