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OCAU News |
Wednesday Morning
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Wednesday, 1-December-2010 03:46:25 (GMT +10) - by Agg
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NASA win today's award for most intriguing press-release: WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
Here's an interesting video of a mobile phone concept from Mozilla, called Seabird. The Mozilla Seabird, part of the Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series, is an experiment in how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technology advances. Drawing on insights culled from the Mozilla community through the project’s blog, a focus quickly developed around frustrating physical interactions. Sooo.. it's not likely to be a real product anytime soon.
Dasuperham sent in these horrifyingly dusty PCs over on TheReg. Good work by all those readers who sent in evidence demonstrating that it really is a good idea to keep your computer spick and span. The consequences of poor PC hygiene can, as we shall see, be quite terrifying.
Net Neutrality has reared its head again with Comcast charging a fee for specific traffic. “This action by Comcast threatens the open Internet and is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access,” Thomas Stortz, Level 3’s chief legal officer, said in the statement. “With this action, Comcast is preventing competing content from ever being delivered to Comcast’s subscribers at all, unless Comcast’s unilaterally determined toll is paid.” More here and here.
We haven't heard much about the mysterious "stuxnet" worm for a while, but FoxNews have an article that details how it attacked Iran's nuclear program. At Natanz, for almost 17 months, Stuxnet quietly worked its way into the system and targeted a specific component -- the frequency converters made by the German equipment manufacturer Siemens that regulated the speed of the spinning centrifuges used to create nuclear fuel. The worm then took control of the speed at which the centrifuges spun, making them turn so fast in a quick burst that they would be damaged but not destroyed. And at the same time, the worm masked that change in speed from being discovered at the centrifuges' control panel.
mpot noticed an article comparing shipping companies. Not directly relevant to us, but an interesting idea. I called up a contact at National Instruments—an innovative manufacturer of industrial control equipment and software, based in Austin, Texas—and presented a challenge: Could the company help me disguise vibration sensors inside a package that I could secretly ship around the country?
A 64-bit ARM processor is rumoured to be in the works, thanks dasuperham. ARM, the developer of microprocessor technologies that power chips inside various low power consumer electronics, is secretly developing a 64-bit core that will allow the company's partners to design truly server multi-core solutions that support 4GB and more memory and can theoretically compete against AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon processors.
Trekkies, check out this LCARS-inspired computer. This is what I built in my home and this video is my own work. Both the computer and the software is self made. The interface is inspired by the LCARS interface from Star Trek.
Also from mpot is this board game gift guide, if you want to flash back to the days before MyTweetBook and NaziZombieFarm. A board game is one of the best presents you can give, because it brings friends and family together and can provide more hours of fun than any book, DVD, or pair of socks you can find. There's a game on this page that's right for anyone on your list!
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