No-one knows how many Nigerians there are - and the authorities are
too afraid to find out. Legend has it that one out of every five
black people on Earth is a Nigerian. But that can only be an
assumption, for every headcount held in Nigeria in the past 30 years
has ended in national controversy and with strong allegations of
population inflation.
http://tinyurl.com/bdnq4
Mayan treasure found in Guatemala Archaeologists working in Guatemala
say they have uncovered one of the most spectacular pieces of artwork
created by the ancient Mayan people. They say they have discovered a
mural depicting the Mayan creation myth and the coronation of a king,
thought to be more than 2,000 years old. Archaeologist William
Saturno said it was like finding the Mayan equivalent of the
Vatican's Sistine Chapel. The mural was discovered at the San
Bartolo site in northern Guatemala.
http://tinyurl.com/e4fpj
Bringing prime time to video iPod Even with a few more TV shows added
to the iTunes store, Chris Cardone said he just can't get enough good
video for his video iPod. So, increasingly, the Cincinnati-based
anesthesiologist has been turning to a little-known program called
MyTV ToGo, which lets him take shows recorded to his Windows Media
Center PC and put them directly onto his video iPod. "It's
fantastic," Cardone said. There were some bugs with the software at
first, and it could be a bit slow, he added. But when he was stuck at
the hospital on call for hours, at least he did not run out of shows
to watch.
http://tinyurl.com/8dgkk
New 'Kong' monkeys with game industry When Peter Jackson's new film
"King Kong" opens nationally on Wednesday, fans of the original 1933
movie won't be the only ones with an advance sense of the story
line. Thousands of people have been playing the "King Kong" video
game since late last month. And while the game and the film by the
hit-making "Lord of the Rings" director didn't come out on the same
date, the releases were close enough to be seen in the two industries
as a tandem launch. Kong is the latest example of an evolving trend
in Hollywood that many see as the future of filmed fiction. With some
Hollywood films like "King Kong" costing as much as $200 million or
more to make, the film business is desperate for ways to recoup some
of those expenses. And it is turning increasingly to its video game
licensees as a way to do so.
http://tinyurl.com/8kqbc
MIT’s robo snail! Researches at MIT have built a robotic snail to
test mathematical models of how snails move and stay stuck to
surfaces. The device is able to climb slime slathered vertical walls
and ceilings by a process which loosely imitates the real deal. See,
the artificial gastropod has five movable segments on its underside.
After each has advanced, the body itself slides forward allowing the
robot to inch forward on a surface covered with a 1.5-milimeter layer
of Laponite (aka, slime). While slow, this means of locomotion allows
the device to crawl over just about anything. The “secret” is to
“keep the snail as light as possible (31.6 grams), while ensuring
the Laponite has just the right stickiness.” Er, that’s not a
secret folks.
http://tinyurl.com/a27xq
GumSpots Positioning System We admit to being the type of pansies
that seek out a trash receptacle to deposit our chewed gum, but for
the other nine tenths of society the sidewalk seems to be as good a
place as any to spit that Double Bubble. Well now someone has figured
out how to put all those sidewalk gum spots to good use with GSPS:
the GumSpots Positioning System. You merely take a picture of the
sidewalk with your cameraphone and send it to the service, which then
determines your location based on the unique pattern of gum spots —
ala QR codes — and sends back the image with extra data such as
“connect the dot spot” drawings to keep you occupied. They’re
currently seeking investors to create a social community based around
the concept, so bust out your phone and get practicing on those
sidewalk pics.
http://tinyurl.com/74zgx
Fuel Cell Car Lab lets you build your own
If you’re tired of waiting for a fuel cell car to show up at
Mike’s Used Car Emporium down the street and usher you into a life
of gas-free nirvana, you can always build your own with the $80 Fuel
Cell Car Lab. Sure, it might not exactly hold your weight or speed
you through a commute, but it is a zero emissions vehicle, and runs
on the good old H2O, so it all kind of levels out, right?
http://tinyurl.com/9zqdb
PC Inspector, free file recovery
We've all deleted stuff and wish we hadn't. I remember using Norton
tools for years to "undo" my own stupid mistakes. Of course, that was
back in the days of sub-gigabyte drives, and space was at a premium.
Nowadays we probably have the opposite problem: we need to delete
more. But if you've gone and wiped out a bunch of stuff, PC INSPECTOR
might be your salvation. Sorry about the caps, that's how they show
it... What's impressive is, for a free program, there's a lot of
power. Support for FAT 12/16/32, recovers with metadata intact (like
date of creation), support for network volumes, and it can resurrect
files with damaged header info. That last one is limited to a handful
of file types, but that's a tall order, and one that many commercial
apps won't do. Keep this tool in mind next time you think you're
really deleting all that sensitive info on your PC, and then go
putting it on ebay. For more info on how to use this app, check out
this article.
http://tinyurl.com/7mq9d
Google Adds Widgets to Homepage
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 14, @09:16AM from the thats-
the-clever-stuff dept. Panaphonix writes "Google announced that
their personalized homepage now has an API for developers to add
their own modules. Samples are available in this directory."
http://tinyurl.com/dlons
Virgin Galactic to Build Space Port in New Mexico
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday December 14, @07:26AM from the
area-fifty-two dept. aapold writes "Virgin Galactic today announced
plans to build a $225 million space port in southern New Mexico.
Richard Branson will meet with governor Bill Richardson Wednesday to
unveil the plans. Virgin Galactic is the company leveraging Spaceship
One which, as reported by Slashdot, claimed the Ansari X prize for
commercial space flight."
http://tinyurl.com/aslku
Ruby on Rails 1.0 Released
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday December 13, @09:16PM from the
web-deployment-made-easy dept. Simon (S2) writes "Ruby on Rails 1.0
has been released. From the announcement: 'Rails 1.0 is mostly about
making all the work we've been doing solid. So it's not packed with
new features over 0.14.x, but has spit, polish, and long nights
applied to iron out kinks and ensure that it works mostly right, most
of the time, for most of the people.' " The Ruby on Rails website has
also been given a new look.
http://tinyurl.com/ae26d
HP compares AMD Opterons to Intel Xeons HEWLETT PACKARD has produced
a document on its web site contrasting the performance of Opterons
against Xeons in high stress server testing.
The firm said that the technical community had generated much
discussion about the differences between Xeons and Opterons, but many
benchmarks had focused on CPU throughput "based on an unrealistically
light workload" added to "equally unrealistic hardware and software
infrastructure". While these benchmarks are good as a reference
point, very few customers would have these workloads in the real
world. After thrashing Opterons and Xeons, HP came up with some
general and some particular conclusions. The first general conclusion
is that the more content cached in memory, the better the Opteron
scores. Xeons at 800MHz are throttled by the front side bus, while
the Opteron isn't. But, said HP, if the server sub components become
bottlenecks, the Opteron access speed advantage is negated. Websites
with a lot of static content "level the playing field" because the
disk controller and hard drive tech is the "mitigating factor".
http://tinyurl.com/e2e2d
Audio from John Gilmore's trial on right to travel anonymously
Mindwarp sez, The link goes directly to an full recording (WMA audio
file) of the Dec 8th hearing for John Gilmore vs Gonzales about the
constitutionality of the ID requirement for flying domestically
within the United States. Each attorney got approximately 20 minutes
to argue his case in front of the court. Interesting for a direct
look at what each party is arguing and the issues that the court
seems most concerned with. There are questions of jurisdiction, which
the government is using as a basis to try and get the case thrown
out, and they were touched upon in the hearing. Listening to the
whole thing provides a slightly deeper understanding of the legal
subtleties which will determine whether or not the ID requirement
will be found, in court, to raise constitutional issues.
http://tinyurl.com/bqlmt
Dangerously strong magnets
I love the warnings for these large neodymium magnets. (I have some
tiny ones and when they snap together, they can cause a painful pinch).

Beware - you must think ahead when moving these magnets.
If carrying one into another room, carefully plan the route you will
be taking. Computers & monitors will be affected in an entire room.
Loose metallic objects and other magnets may become airborne and fly
considerable distances - and at great speed - to attach themselves to
this magnet. If you get caught in between the two, you can get injured.
Two of these magnets close together can create an almost unbelievable
magnetic field that can be very dangerous. Of all the unique items we
offer for sale, we consider these two items the most dangerous of
all. Our normal packing & shipping personnel refuse to package these
magnets - our engineers have to do it. This is no joke and we cannot
stress it strongly enough - that you must be extremely careful - and
know what you're doing with these magnets. Take Note: Two of the 3" x
1" disc magnets can very easily break your arm if they get out of
control.
http://tinyurl.com/92uhj
Plasma engine passes initial test The European Space Agency (Esa)
says initial testing of a new plasma drive for spacecraft has been a
success. The 'double layer thruster' is a new kind of ion drive
which could give much more power than existing versions. It works by
accelerating charged particles between two layers of argon plasma,
gas where the atoms have been stripped of electrons. Esa says it has
'proven the principle', and will proceed with simulations and perhaps
bigger prototypes. Esa already uses an ion drive on its Smart 1 Moon
probe, and the US space agency Nasa deployed one on Deep Space 1,
which flew out to Comet Borrelly in 2001.
http://tinyurl.com/cpovh
2005 Gift Guide: Wine Drinkers Delight
This is a bit of a smorgasbord of great things that center around the
pure pleasure of drinking. Each one is a FIND.
1. A case of wine from Jeff Hock at Winesby.com on Jones Street. He
has a great small selection of wines that are meant to be drunk, not
saved and he delivers within two hours of your call. 2. 8 Riedel O
Wine Glasses (stemless). These glasses may not fit in the kitchen
cabinet as easily as stemmed ones, but we find them entrancing and
unique. Reidel, of course, is a top notch glassmaker. These are high
quality drinking vessels. 3. The Reidel O Wine Decanter. It just
looks super cool and isn't as big and bulky as the more snooty
styles. 4. A Vacu Vin Wine Saver. This is one of our Best Products
from 2005 and an absolute necessity when you don't finish the bottle,
but want it to taste the same tomorrow.
http://tinyurl.com/7ag2a
University of Tokyo Announces Some New Kind of Wind Turbine. We Think.
Where would we be without RSS? we wouldn't find out about new
developments like this Joint Venture between Tokyo Power and the
University of Tokyo to develop floating turbines that seem to be on
some kind of interconnected structure. The Google Autotranslation is
entertaining but not particularly illuminating. Can anyone
help? ::Nikkeibp via
http://tinyurl.com/7le4v
Start Your Own Business Guide
http://tinyurl.com/7e4e6
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