Thursday, January 18, 2007

Stuff 01-18-07: Railgun, rootkits, geniology, metadata, toughbooks, FlashDisks, Tires and photoshop

5 Photoshop Tutorials, including removing wrinkles, adding color to B&W photos, and fading photos together:

Turns out, tires make a HUGEÊdifference in the handling of a car, even a standard use car.


Solid State Disks gather momentum - 32 GB, 64 GB and now 128GB



I LOVE THE TOUGHBOOK SERIES!
Panasonic's Toughbook R6: a 10.4-inch, 2-pound laptop for riot grrrlz
Panasonic updates Toughbooks: W5, T5, Y5 all Vista ready



Rosendahl Ice Scraper by Tim Yu

It's about 18û Farenheit (-8û Celsius) in New York todayÑthose of us who live in areas with cold temperatures, snow and ice storms know how delicate and ineffective most scraper/brushes are. Made of stainless steel and synthetics, the Rosendahl Ice Scraper is designed to remove anything from dew to a layer of hard ice. There is a soft edge for fogged up and frosty windows and a hard synthetic side for ice. Designed by Erik Bagger in cooperation with physical therapists, it grips well and is ergonomically designed to prevent strain on the hand, arm or shoulder. The smart engineering makes the brute strength that usually breaks most other scrapers unnecessary. And it doesn't hurt that it's much better looking than other conventional ice scrapers.ÊIt is available from Yanko Design for $29.

http://tinyurl.com/3ceblj


Managing MetadataÊPosted Jan 17th 2007 4:30PM by Sue PolinskyÊFiled under: Security, Windows, Office, Microsoft, How-TosÊWe send too much personal and corporate information when we transport documents throughout our electronic business world. Disclosing some personal data causes us problems; disclosing other data can have an international impact. Early in 2006, AT&T lawyers accidentally disclosed sensitive information in an NSA suit with a 25-page brief striped with thick black lines that were supposed to make portions of the document indecipherable but failed miserably. By dropping copied text into OS X or other PDF readers, or just using foolab's xpdf, the supposedly deleted portions were easy to read. So much for privacy and so much for that lawsuit and probably so much for those particular lawyers.ÊGLOBAL HUMILIATION ...SCO was humiliated internationally when documents with 'hidden' metadata revealed which companies it had considered targeting legally. EFF survived a sealed-document "mishap" and started using image files of documents to avoid sharing metadataIf you don't want to send strictly ASCII files yet be true to your fiduciary responsibility to your company and clients, then take 5 not-so-simple steps toward secure file sharing.Ê

http://tinyurl.com/2w5mf4



FOR THOSE USING MacFUSE:

Secure Remote Disks SSHFS for Mac the Made Easy

http://tinyurl.com/3x95yu



FOR MY MUM:

Create a family tree with Geni

Posted Jan 17th 2007 9:00AM by Chris GilmerÊFiled under: Fun, Internet, E-mail, Web servicesÊCreating a family tree seems like a boring thing to do. Don't get me wrong, its great to know where you've come from, but jotting it down on paper or in a massive, messy Excel document are not that appealing. Enter Geni. Michael Arrington broke the news on this intuitive family tree tool created entirely in Flash last week, and it just launched on Tuesday. Geni is like a living organism that beautifully expands your family information, and molds in to others on the web. Its ultimate goal is to create a family tree of the world. When you start to enter your information, you have the option of entering email addresses for each person added. Geni will then send out the tree to them as well. They add their data, thus expanding the tree further. It's a far cry from the pen and paper most trees are created on, and also much more interesting to navigate through.


Six Rootkit Detectors To Protect Your PC
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 17, @10:05PM
from the rate-them dept.ÊAn anonymous reader writes
"InformationWeek has a review of 6 rootkit detectors.This issue became big last year when Sony released some music CDs which came with a rootkit that silently burrowed into PCs. This review looks at how you can block rootkits and protect your machine using F-Secure Backlight, IceSword, RKDetector, RootkitBuster, RootkitRevealer, and Rookit Unhooker."


Navy Gets 8-Megajoule Rail Gun Working (32 and 64 in the works)ÊPosted by Kurtis - Jan. 17, 2007 - 4:07 pm from Fredericksburg.comÊNormally, new weaponry tends to make defense more expensive. But the Navy likes to say its new railgun delivers the punch of a missile at bullet prices. A demonstration of the futuristic and comparatively inexpensive weapon yesterday at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren had Navy brass smiling. The weapon, which was successfully tested in October at the King George County base, fires nonexplosive projectiles at incredible speeds, using electricity rather than gun powder.ÊThe technology could increase the striking range of U.S. Navy ships more than tenfold by the year 2020. "It's pretty amazing capability, and it went off without a hitch," said Capt. Joseph McGettigan, commander of NSWC Dahlgren Division. "The biggest thing is it's real--not just something on the drawing board," he said.ÊThe railgun works by sending electric current along parallel rails, creating an electromagnetic force so powerful it can fire a projectile at tremendous speed. Because the gun uses electricity and not gunpowder to fire projectiles, it's safer, eliminating the possibility of explosions on ships and vehicles equipped with it. Instead, a powerful pulse generator is used. The prototype fired at Dahlgren is only an 8-megajoule electromagnetic device, but the one to be used on Navy ships will generate a massive 64 megajoules. Current Navy guns generate about 9 megajoules of muzzle energy. The railgun's 200 to 250 nautical-mile range will allow Navy ships to strike deep in enemy territory while staying out of reach of hostile forces.ÊRead the full story at Fredericksburg.com.



A new language barrier -- Why learning a new language may make you forget your old one











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