Archive for May, 2008
Revision3 website attacked with denial of service attack by for doing nothing more than using BitTorrent And it was MediaDefender behind the attack. This can’t be good. These people are supposed to protect legit content makers, not attack them. Stonehenge turns out to be a cemetery. Slew of stories about using coax to deliver Ethernet. I suspect that there is a movement afoot to create Ethernet to the home based on the cable network. Brazil has jumped in with South Africa to condemn OOXML. I’m suspicious. Sony is in the news for developing a glass speaker. Alien will be revealed on TV. Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth will become an Opera in Italy? What?
Click to listen:
In an effort to convince the Peruvian, and Brazilian governments to take seriously the threat that logging the Amazon has over unknown, and uncontaminated groups of tribal people living in the Amazon, Survival International did a fly over to take photos of tribes people that have never been seen before…
Here are some of the pics
Full body black and red paint, apparently applied after the first fly over, indicate an aggressive posture towards the unknown aircraft fling overhead, although can you blame them for being scared and angry.
The uncontacted tribes, which are located in the jungles of South America (the inhabitants of which have also responded to attempts at contact with extreme aggression) all have one thing in common - they want to be left alone.
And for good reason. The history of contact, between indigenous tribes and the outside world, has always been an unhappy one.
Even where there is no violence, the tribes can be wiped out by diseases like the common cold to which they have no resistance.
According to Miriam Ross of Survival International, which campaigns to protect the world’s remaining indigenous peoples:
“These tribes represent the incredible diversity of humankind. Unless we want to condemn yet more of the earth’s peoples to extinction, we must respect their choice. Any contact they have with outsiders must happen in their own time and on their own terms.”
Ms Ross added:
“These pictures are further evidence that uncontacted tribes really do exist. The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct.”
The jungle is fundamental to their lives and survival. It’s their home, their source of food, the source of their culture etc. Without it, they could not exist as a people.
It is probably time for us to consider how important the Amazon rain forest is for our survival as well…
In the 10 minutes preview of tonights episode we learn lots of stuff… and then have to wait..
Spoilers after the jump.
This episode is entitled “sine qua non” which is latin for “(a condition) without which it could not be” or “but for…” or “without which (there is) nothin
Natalie dies, but not before having a touching moment with Doc Coddle, Zarek assumes the presidency and Lee Tells his daddy on him, but too bad, Adama Sr. is more interested in throwing a bitch fit with Athena and puts her in the brig.
Lee tells the Quorom that Adama Sr. won’t have Zarek be president, and then they throw a bitch fit… typical.
Other spoilers online indicate that it is likely that Adama will depose Zarek and put Lee in his place, which will definitely put a strain on Lee and Zarek’s budding relationship, but I think that Zarek works better as a puppetmaster then a puppet.
Tune in tonight to find out the rest..
The iPhone has so far been marginalized as chic consumer device, and most companies have ignored it as a possible replacement to the smart phone market, but with the impending version 2.0 update that adds Exchange ActiveSync and 3rd party application support I think businesses and the enterprise are starting to think of how the iPhone will fit into their plans. That means the battle of iPhone versus Blackberry will continue on…
The one advantage, on the business side, that blackberry will keep after the initial 2.0 release of the iPhone is that the Exchange interaction on the blackberry is realtime, versus a “sync” version that the iPhone will use. I don’t think that will stay an advantage for long though, since the iPhone SDK is out there, there will be someone who put together a realtime connection between the iPhone and the Exchange servers…
So does that mean that the blackberry will die an instant death on June 9th when the iPhone v2 is released? Not likely. Most companies are pretty entrenched in the blackberry/RIM world and to extricate them from that position will take time, and attrition. In most companies it will start with the requests from the minions who want to use an iPhone, and most of those requests will be denied, because haven’t the power to go over the head of the IT people who make those decisions. Of course, then will come the CEO, or other high-powered executive who will see an iPhone in use on the plane, and read about it in Forbes as he is flying back from his business trip and the first call he makes when he gets off the plane is to the director of IT and says “Get me an iPhone and make it work”. Now all of sudden the door is open and the iPhone slowly floods the company, and blackberry is pushed out..
Time … that is all the iPhone, is time to overtake and dominate the market….
A group of geeks got together and pooled their Duct tape and created a pretty cool “duct tape” computer case…
Want one of your own? Got a grip of duct tape and nothing better to do with an evening?
well… here you go [ instructions ]
Sony getting back into Interactive TV. What are they thinking? Also the company is going to roll out a 27-inch OLED set. Will Disney buy Tivo? Maybe! The Belgian news story keeps chugging. Google Gears becomes Gears. Ok, whatever. Yahoo suing Nigerian scammers? How do they find them? How about blocking the spam? Norcal man uses cartoon character names to open online brokerage accounts. Ha. Blogger breaks news! Stop the presses. New Dell laptop. Intel getting into flash business.
Click to listen:
If you look longingly at the MacBook Air, for no other reason then the super cool SSD (Solid State Drive), then you need not be green any longer …
[ ExperCom ] has released, for immediate purchase, SSD upgrades for the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. They will even handle installation and data transfer for you.
Prices :
60GB - $599
120GB - $899
If you’re looking to make a MacBook purchase, you can also buy directly from them with the drives pre-installed.
Sixteen members of a smuggling gang in China and Hong Kong have been arrested for rigging a 300-metre long cable to send contraband goods across the heavily-policed border, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The gang had initially used a crossbow to shoot the cable across the fenced-off border between the two sides, before stringing it from the top of a Chinese high rise down to a village house in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reported.
Investigators said the gang had likely been operating for two to three weeks, using a zip wire and pulley system to whisk small batches of goods along the cable, mostly at night.
Leo Sin, a senior Hong Kong customs’ intelligence officer sai
“They took 10 to 15 seconds to smuggle goods weighing 3-5kg, such as 20-30 mobile phones each time,”
Electronics goods worth more than $770,000 were seized, including 3,300 mobile phones and 2,100 computer memory cards, the paper reported.
The newspaper said it was the first time such a method had been deployed by cross-border smugglers, who have in the past dug tunnels to ferret electronics underground and to pump contraband diesel between the two sides.
Twelve people from mainland China and four from Hong Kong were arrested.
The Phoenix Lander has successfully begun to deploy its robotic arm, which will allow it to dig into the Martian surface and deliver samples of soil and ice to scientific instruments on the lander for analysis.
Due to the earlier problems with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter NASA is currently using the Mars Odyssey to relay the Phoenix’s commands. Investigations are still underway to determine why the MRO experienced difficulty.
After freeing the arm from the pins, that were used to protect the arm during transport, the arm moved itself out from under a sterile wrapping called the bio-barrier, which prevented the arm from being contaminated with Earth microbes prior to launch.
NASA sent commands to Phoenix on Wednesday morning PDT (Wednesday afternoon GMT) to unhook the robotic arm. The arm’s complete deployment is scheduled to unfold over a period of two days, finishing up today.
If everything goes well, the arm could start digging by early next week,
Unlike the Mars rovers, Phoenix cannot move across the Martian surface. So the Phoenix team is very carefully planning how it will make use of the area within reach of its robotic arm.
Due to the lack of new commands on Tuesday, Phoenix got a head start on assembling a color panorama of its surroundings. But it will still take two to three weeks to finish and send back to Earth.
Finally, a portable drive that packs a desktop drive size..
The new 1 TB desktop models sport a USB 2.0 interface, a 7,200 rpm drive mechanism, at least 8 MB of onboard cache, and come pre-formatted with the NTFS file system. (The drives are still usable by Mac users, though: just reformat as a journaled Mac OS Extended volume). The drives are available in three colors—black, red, and blue—also ship with a download-only license to EMC’s Retrospect HD backup software. Although some of Iomega’s portable eGo hard drives can be powered off the USB bus, the desktop version require a separate AC power adapter.
Iomega says the 1 TB desktop eGo drives are available now at a suggested price of $269.95.