New Doctor prepares for invasion The BBC News website interviews
David Tennant, preparing to defend the Earth from alien invasion in a
special Christmas edition of sci-fi series Doctor Who. In his first
full episode as the Doctor, Tennant barely has time to change out of
his pyjamas before he is hunted by robot Santas, a lethal spinning
Christmas tree and bloodthirsty Sycorax aliens. It brings to an end
a busy year for Tennant, who won acclaim in dramas Blackpool and The
Quatermass Experiment, took the lead in Casanova and ITV thriller
Secret Smile and joined blockbuster movie Harry Potter and the Goblet
of Fire. Tennant's breakthrough came after he graduated from the
Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. 'Very curious' Small
parts in acclaimed productions such as the 1996 movie Jude led to
larger roles in films including Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things.
http://tinyurl.com/a9bs3
Internet Film Feast New Web video databases are brimming with
deliciously goofy amateur films. But will these gems get lost in the
rush to put Hollywood productions online? Dec. 21, 2005 - The video
clip is 15 minutes long and captures a late 1980s public speaking
class at Silicon Valley’s Sun Microsystems. “I view every speech
as a challenge,” says the film’s bespectacled star, who’s
wearing a red, Reagan-era pencil tie and flamboyantly waving his
hands in the air. “I have no sense of time. I don’t know how to
organize my speaking stuff. I try to be spontaneous but because of
the nature of the constituencies in the group, spontaneities might
get me into trouble.”
http://tinyurl.com/bwte7
Americans live in fantasy world Israeli journalist Itai Engel returns
from war-torn Iraq pessimistic about future Itai Engel (VIDEO) I'm
coming near dozens of civilians who live near the open market in the
city of Falluja. In order to do so, I've got to separate from the
U.S. forces – and I'm dying of fear. I'm afraid because just about
every day someone here is kidnapped. Mainly foreigners and
journalists. What a difference to what I experienced the last time I
was in Iraq two-and-a-half years ago. Then, I visited Shiite Najaf,
Sunni Tikrit, and family members and supporters of Saddam Hussein. I
spent days with no soldiers in sight. Just me and them. Talking.
Everything was fine, even nice.
http://tinyurl.com/bt82b
GOOGLE PROXY
Contributed by: bigthistle
[12/20/05 | Discuss (9) | Link to this hack]
A little tutorial found on the italian site www.manuali.net inspired
me for this hack. That tutorial suggests to translate a webpage,
using Google translator, to access it even if restricted. It worked
fine but something else was needed... why translate?! Ok, let's
start from the beginning. We all know that Google is more than a
search engine; we do use it as provider for email, mapping, news and
many other services. Google is now also a free proxy service. Proxy
is a device that stands between a PC and the internet, providing all
the connections to the world wide web. What a proxy does is to
receive all data from a requested site, so when you access web pages
all data come from proxy.
http://tinyurl.com/ck3us
More Delays for Ender Movie
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday December 21, @03:33AM from the
wiggin-out dept. Arramol writes "IGN reports that difficulties in
hammering out a screenplay have resulted in more delays for the
Ender's Game movie. Despite attempts by several teams of writers, no
script has yet been written that meets necessary standards in the
minds of Warner Brothers or author Orson Scott Card. The latest plan
involves an entirely new script written by Card himself."
http://tinyurl.com/9ubya
Underfoot insulation using nanotech (link to this article) December
21, 2005 The human body needs warmth and the areas in which we feel
the cold first are naturally enough those which are at the
extremities – hands and feet. The feet are particularly vulnerable
in arctic climates as they are continually in contact with very cold
surfaces. Accordingly, the advanced nanotech underfoot insulation
offered by ToastyFeet insole liners from Polar Wrap. Most insulation
requires loft but when you step on it, it gets compressed and loses
its loft and therefore its insulating power. Aerogel doesn't require
loft as it contains nanometer-sized pockets of air that can maintain
thermal protection and shape even when you step on it. In partnership
with NASA, this same flexible aerogel technology is being developed
for next generation space suits but you can get it now and keep your
feet toasty warm. We've written about numerous applications for
aerogel technology including a translucent roofing system and about
the origination of the world's lightest solid.
http://tinyurl.com/93te6
Navizon’s devilishly clever wireless positioning system (link to
this article) December 21, 2005 In early 2005, a small group of
hardcore GPS geeks (who were tired of their GPS devices not working
in dense cities, urban canyons, indoors, etc) got together to come up
with a solution that would enhance the performance of their GPS
equipment and applications. The goal was to find a way to make GPS
devices work in all situations. The result was Navizon Pocket PC
Client Software. Now the group has developed an ingenious P2P network
that enables people to accurately navigate urban and suburban areas
using WiFi and a cellular devices (cell phones) - a dynamic,
collaborative, networked "Wireless Positioning System" using wireless
signals (Cellular and 802.11 WiFI). The Navizon Network is worth a
look if you are a city dweller as it enables you to have accurate GPS
on your mobile phone. The Navizon network is based on a collaborative
database. Members with a GPS device can use Navizon to map the Wi-Fi
and cellular landscape in their neighborhoods. Once they synchronize
their data, it is made available to all the other users of the
network. This way, users who don't have a GPS device can benefit from
a positioning system. And it's free for personal use!
http://tinyurl.com/apjrc
Unlimited storage on the way. (link to this article) December 21,
2005 Those of us who can just never have enough portable digital
storage will be heartened to hear that Hitachi Global Storage
Technologies is working on a 5 terabyte 3.5 inch hard drive aimed at
the PC market. Though it’s not due until 2010 – less than five
years from now – it’s a reminder that the technological bar is
being raised significantly every day, regardless of the industry.
http://tinyurl.com/a3nm3
Ten most needed circuits for the DIYer I have decided to compile a
list of the top ten most needed circuits that are a must know for
anyone interested in DIY projects. These are the basics that can all
be interchanged and used in conjunction with each other to make many
of the projects that we all love so much. 10. The 5 v voltage
regulator is a must, and is used to convert any 9v battery to the
much needed 5 volts. This is used to power IC (integrated circuit)
chips, as well as can be connected to a USB port to charge your ipod.
The most common part is the 7805 chip, and here is the schematic.
http://tinyurl.com/dca9h
Space tourism firm unveils Silver Dart spacecraft (SPACE.com) -- A
space tourism group developing a suborbital rocket ship is now taking
aim at orbital trips with a new spacecraft that doubles as a
hypersonic glider. Canada's London, Ontario-based firm PlanetSpace
unveiled designs for its Silver Dart spacecraft, an eight-person
vehicle derived from experimental aircraft studies in the 1970s,
Thursday with hopes of carrying fare-paying passengers into orbit and
resupplying the international space station (ISS).
http://tinyurl.com/73txm
The Past From Above A high view of civilizationCivilization is a
pattern best seen from above, at an altitude that encourages a long
view. Master aerial photographer Georg Gerster has spent the last 40
years photographing ancient archeological sites around the world from
the passenger seat of rented airplanes. His portraits of large-scale
human works are stunning. Meta-patterns emerge. We see the
persistence of the past in the most modern places. We see the
anticipation of the modern in the most ancient places. Many of these
vast sites are legendary, but totally new seen from above, others
will be unfamiliar to readers: Alexander's Wall, Chimu at Chan Chan
Peru, the circular city of Hamadan, Iran, and so on. Gerster's
chapters are brilliant; he clusters cities as if they were ideas:
"Seeing and Being Seen - Festival Sites and Places of Assembly," "For
Safety's Sake - Fortifications and Bulwarks," "Building For Eternity
-- Graves and Cemeteries." The big book is heavy with full-page full-
color images, as one would hope; 240 in all. But the best and most
important part of this big long view are the meticulously researched
notes on each overhead image. You get a succinct, but masterful,
footnoted treatise on what you are seeing, written by an
archeologist. From them you get the aha behind the ooooh. Gerster is
a floating eye with a brain. He gives tours of our biggest
achievements on this planet.
-- KK
http://tinyurl.com/7oakw
Garbage to Hydrogen, Just Add Sun December 21, 2005 05:00 AM - Jacob
Gordon, Los Angeles, CA We've clearly all got hydrogen on the brain
these days. While it promises to be a key resource in our energy tool
belt, there's a lot of fluff out there too, coming both from the guys
in the White House and the guys in the white lab coats. As a recent
Wired article suggests, the hydrogen technology bandwagon carries a
motley bunch. Whether hydrogen can be coaxed from water by harnessing
the power of lightening bolts with lasers (see the Wired piece)
remains to be seen. A city in Saskatchewan is placing its bets on
what looks like a worthy candidate for getting hydrogen from the
garbage its residents toss out. A local company is forwarding a
technology that employs concentrated sunlight to power the production
of hydrogen. In a plan that has already received key initial support
from local officials, the city of Regina is moving towards an array
of these solar-powered units that would convert methane from the
local landfill into hydrogen for industrial and potentially fuel
purposes.
http://tinyurl.com/828nk
Ford's New Energy Efficient Furnaces December 21, 2005 02:04 AM -
Michael G. Richard, near Ottawa We don't write positive stories about
Ford all that often, so when we read this story about them replacing
four old energy-wasting furnaces with two energy-efficient ones at
their casting plant in Brook Park, we figured that it was worth
noting. Of course, it is a small improvement in the grand scheme of
things, but it is also a perfect illustration of the kind of
unglamorous eco-tweaking that all corporations need to be doing right
now; obviously, it is better to optimize an inefficient process than
to just add more capacity (and thus more waste) to it. So Ford
workers demolished part of the foundry roof, bumped it up by 50 feet
and dug a 35-foot pit to make way for the new furnaces. They expect
"huge energy savings" from the $65 million project. "Rather than
using air pre-heated by natural gas burners, the new furnaces save by
recycling heat from the melting process." Good for them. Now if only
they would apply that kind of thinking more aggressively to their
vehicles. ::Businesses assaulting energy inefficiency, other Ford
stories: ::Ford Kills 19-Foot Gas-Guzzler Excursion, ::New Ford V6
Shows Evolutionary Improvements, ::Get Your Ford Mariner Hybrid Online
http://tinyurl.com/a96u6
Getting Things Done: The Procrastinator’s Version Orginally Getting
Things Done (GTD) methodology is simple and powerful, but if you are
a procrastinator, sometimes you thought it may not be enough. Dave
Pollard extends the GTD method to add in couple of new ways on
tracking different data. He has couple of new sections called
Calendar, Tickler, Obstacles, Inspirations to track different type of
tasks. Now Dave tracks tasks with dates and also coloured coding to
specify the type of the projects. I do dates for tasks along with GTD
methods, but coloured coding seems like a good idea as well. He then
followed his five steps process. I see step three is probably the
most important part.
http://tinyurl.com/clklj
Selling your start-up to GYMA Dare Obasanjo has an interesting post
titled Flipping Your Startup 101. Dare references my earlier post
Microsoft Will Acquire My Company which explains the logic the big
players use when considering the acquisition of a startup. The
"Flipping" post talks about the recent VC investment in Meebo and how
that effects their chances of being acquired by GYMA (Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft, AOL). While the subject is Meebo, the lessons and logic
apply to all startups. It is interesting to note that VCs invest in
startups for the same reasons that the major companies acquire
startups; 1)Great team of extraordinary people, 2)innovative
technology, 3)growing user base, 4)a hot new market with huge growth
potential. These are pretty much in rank order of importance.
http://tinyurl.com/8mamv
Build to Flip = Build to Fail There are a bunch of blog posts flying
around on the subject of flipping companies. Yes, we’ve been here
before, 5 years or so ago, and yeah all the same issues remain. The
interesting difference this time around is, thanks to the world wide
everybody talking to/about/for everybody/everything, there is a ton
of material for you, the start up, to absorb in your quest for world
domination or just a bigger house. Some notable blog postings out
there are Don Dodge’s notes on selling your start up. Smart guy,
worth reading and listening to. He makes the point about talent and
does it in a way that shows his experience and professionalism.
http://tinyurl.com/9telk
VIDEO TUTORIAL ON PROGRAMMING YOUR OWN RPG IN C++
http://tinyurl.com/cddrs
BitTorrent Reloaded: Unauthorised installs lead to pirated movie
files on victim's PCs Yep, the title is a mouthful but you heard it
correctly: those crazy guys behind the Middle-East connected Rootkit-
powered Botnet (phew! mouthful alert) experimented with something I
haven't seen before, and we have the details over at Spywareguide.com.
http://tinyurl.com/awuvm
Double X-rays give 'speedy scan' A hi-tech scanner has been developed
which takes images in less time than it takes the human heart to
beat. The Somatom Definition machine contains two X-ray scanners so
full body images can be taken twice as fast. Manufacturer Siemens
said the scanner, which will be available in the UK next autumn, is
ideal for diagnosing heart problems because of its speed. Scanning
experts said such technology might reduce the need for more invasive
diagnostic techniques. CT (computed tomography) scans use special x-
ray equipment to obtain image data from different angles around the
body. A computer then processes the information to show a cross-
section of body tissues and organs.
http://tinyurl.com/96ldc
China Outlines Lunar Ambitions China will begin an effort to send
astronauts to the moon by 2017, with a landing some time after that,
official media said Wednesday, citing a senior official of the lunar
probe program. The moon landing would cap a lunar program begun in
2004 with the launch of a probe. In October, China launched its
second manned space flight, a successful five-day mission.
http://tinyurl.com/8fv25
Blackbird Diagrams Gallery (VERY COOL)
http://tinyurl.com/9k2l9
