Battery-Powered Devices in the Bedroom
According to a recent Solutions Research Group study of nearly 5,000 Americans, more than 63 percent of BlackBerry users take the device into the bathroom. And 37 percent of laptop owners “frequently” use their computers in the bedroom.
Data Recovered From Columbia
Wow.
Jon Edwards often manages what appears impossible. He has recovered precious data from computers wrecked in floods and fires and dumped in lakes.
Now Edwards may have set a new standard: He found information on a melted disk drive that fell from the sky when space shuttle Columbia disintegrated in 2003.
“When we got it, it was two hunks of metal stuck together. We couldn’t even tell it was a hard drive. It was burned and the edges were melted,” said Edwards, an engineer at Kroll Ontrack Inc., outside Minneapolis. “It looked pretty bad at first glance, but we always give it a shot.”
[...]
Most of the information was radioed to Earth during Columbia’s voyage. Edwards was able to recover the remainder, allowing researchers to publish the experiment in the April issue of a science journal, Physical Review E.
Drug Subs
In the last six months the U.S. Coast Guard along with the U.S. Navy have found 42 submersibles headed north towards the United States and off the coast of Central America.
That is double the number found in the previous five years combined. These subs can carry as much as 10 tons of drugs or even weapons and some of the latest models can move 15 knots. This is obviously troubling and makes our war on the cartels that much more difficult.
We are currently at Coast Guard Island in Alameda California, where the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sherman is located. The ship has recently returned from operations off of Central America, where finding these subs is proving difficult. They are primitive but effective and built similar to the subs used in the civil war. Usually about six inches or so sticks above the water, which is almost impossible to spot.
I wonder how many got through.
The Road Kill Record Book Club
I didn’t think the internet was complete until today.
The Road Kill Record Book Club Web site includes a gallery and registry for bears, cougars, elk and other animals killed by vehicles. It also offers memberships and merchandise.
But Sanders cautioned that the Web site should not be seen as promoting accidents or glorifying roadkill. He plans to provide information on peak danger seasons for vehicle-deer collisions and tips on reporting roadkill.
“The Web site is written in a serious vein, because it is a touchy subject,” he said.
Man Blogs When Arrested in Egypt
Back in MY day, this guy would have sat in an Egyptian prison and LIKED it!
Buck, a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Mahalla, Egypt, covering an anti-government protest when he and his translator, Mohammed Maree, were arrested April 10.
On his way to the police station, Buck took out his cell phone and sent a message to his friends and contacts using the micro-blogging site Twitter.
The message only had one word. “Arrested.”
Within seconds, colleagues in the United States and his blogger-friends in Egypt—the same ones who had taught him the tool only a week earlier—were alerted that he was being held.
Good for him for thinking on his feet.
Biofuels Driving Up Food Prices
Here’s more confirmation of the fact.
Soaring food prices have triggered violence in some developing countries, and biofuels are bearing at least part of the blame.
“The drive for more biofuels means more investment is going into those crops, meaning less land and less investment going in for food crops, causing a massive conflict and resulting in rising prices, which is having a huge negative impact, especially on developing countries,” said Clare Oxborrow, food campaigner for Friends of the Earth. See why tortilla makers are blaming biofuel for increasing food prices »
Critics also say that in Africa, Asia and South America, people are being driven from their land and forests are being cleared to make room for the booming biofuel industry.
Skype Sells Unlimited International Calls
This should kill the Mob’s stranglehold on international toll fraud.
Skype, the Internet calling subsidiary of eBay Inc., is introducing its first plan for unlimited calls to overseas phones on Monday.
The plan will allow unlimited calls to land-line phones in 34 countries for $9.95 per month, said Don Albert, vice president and general manager for Skype North America.
The countries encompassed include most of Europe, plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Malaysia.
Calls to domestic land lines and cell phones are included as well, as are calls to cell phones in Canada, China, Hong Kong and Singapore, but not cell phones in other countries.
.su Lives On
Huh.
Sixteen years after the superpower’s collapse, Web sites ending in the Soviet “.su” domain name have been rising — registrations increased 45 percent this year alone. Bloggers, entrepreneurs and die-hard communists are all part of a small but growing online community resisting repeated efforts to extinguish the online Soviet outpost.
Perhaps they are just anticipating the future if Putin gets his way.
Scuba Scuta
Coming to a cruise destination or resort near you…
The Scuba Scuta, a ride-upon underwater “scooter” with its own air supply, will be making a rare New Zealand appearance at next month’s Hutchwilco New Zealand Boat Show at the ASB Showgrounds in Greenlane.
The innovative underwater device looks and performs like something out of a James Bond movie. A sort of cross between a jet ski and a miniature submarine, the Scuba Scuta vaguely resembles a normal scooter - albeit one with no wheels but with a protective dome for the rider’s head.
Ridden like a scooter, it can remain submerged for around 1 hours, dive down to 10m and reach a speed of 2.5 knots. Users sit with their heads in the protective dome, which is constantly replenished with breathable air.
Hat tip Pine River World News.
Sony OLED
Sony has put the display panel used in its 3mm-thick 11in OLED TV on a crash diet and produced a version that’s less than a third of the thickness - not much beefier than a sheet of A4 paper, in fact.
The new panel is just 0.3mm thick…
How long before we can roll up our TVs and take them with us?
Maserati Dealership In Wisconsin
Maserati of Milwaukee is to open by late May in Glendale, Mancuso said. It will be the second dealership for the Mancuso family, which has operated Lake Forest Sportscars since 1981. That dealership, in Lake Bluff, Ill., sells Maserati, Ferrari and Aston Martin automobiles.
Maserati of Milwaukee will be in the former Land Rover of Glendale building, 5858 N. Green Bay Ave., which the Mancuso family recently bought. The 6,800-square-foot building, across the street from Johnson Controls Inc.’s headquarters, is being renovated to accommodate the new business.
Prohibited Military Equipment for Sale on Internet
Government investigators posing as buyers were able to purchase a dozen prohibited military items on the popular online selling sites. The report notes that the items purchased could easily have been shipped overseas and “used directly against our troops and allies.”
The items include:
• Two F-14 fighter jet components. The United States has retired its fleet of F-14s. Only Iran is currently using them.
• Night vision goggles specially made to military specifications that allow the user to identify U.S. troops at night.
• Army combat uniforms. The military has prohibited the sale of uniforms to non-military personnel since January 2007, when Iraqi Insurgents used U.S. military uniforms to sneak into a base in Karbala and kill five U.S. service members.
• Special “enhanced” body armor vests used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and not available to the general public.
Soviet Shuttle Headed for Museum
The one-time pride of the Soviet space program is making a decidedly sedate journey to its new home, chugging up the Rhine River aboard a pontoon boat.
The Buran 002 space shuttle is headed for the Technik-Museum Speyer in southwestern Germany, which says it has long had its eye on the spacecraft.
The shuttle has been in storage in Bahrain since 2002. Last month, the museum’s new acquisition — with its wings removed for transport — was loaded onto a ship in Manama for its journey to the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
Maybe the Fam and I will get over to see it some day.
Ford Sells Jaguar and Land Rover to Tata
Wow.
U.S. automaker Ford has agreed to sell its luxury brands Jaguar and Land Rover to India’s Tata Motors for more than $2 billion, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Ford, which signed the deal on Tuesday, plans to publicly announce the transaction in New York at 8:00 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, said another source.
The deal will also see Ford pay about 300 million pounds ($598 million) into Jaguar and Land Rovers’ pension funds, according to unions.
The automobile industry continues its shift. Who would have thought 20 years ago that an Indian company would be making Jaguars?
Recruitment Tool
Cool.
The Israeli secret service has launched a new venture: it has started to carry an internet diary, or blog, written by four of its agents.
The agents discuss how they were recruited, and what sort of work they perform; they also answer questions sent in by members of the public.
The tone of the blog is chatty, at times even facetious.
The agents from Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, are shown in silhouette.
[...]
The blogs are intended to draw members of the public into other areas of the Shin Bet website - in particular the recruitment section.
Some of the positions are advertised with a red star and the slogan “hot job”.
There is the opportunity to work on what are described as “irregular missions”; to work on one’s own; and to acquire a variety of “special skills”.
Ol' Army
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