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And luckily, it's already been busted. "I reject your reality, and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage.

But, I have a feeling the first step is going to put this flat on it's face.

Mr. Owens say he has addressed this by making sure the lower half weighs far more than the upper half, and some other design modifications. The whole thing (pic) weighs a ton and a half, though.

I'd love to see a project like this tackled on "Junkyard Mega-Wars". Dueling Exoskeletons!

Saw this at the Discovery Store. Is this close enough?

I was watching CSI the other night and caught a number of simple scientific inaccuracies that really bothered me. Such as the lead scientist guy saying "terminal velocity is 9.8 meters per second squared" and having the misconception that you are safe in a car during a thunderstorm because it sits on rubber tires go uncorrected. I've seen what happens when lightning hits a vehicle "protected" by its rubber tires, every thing was fine EXCEPT the rubber tires. Do you actually think that after going through a mile of free air that a half inch of rubber is going to stop a lightning strike?

Every year the local university has a festival where each department gets to show its stuff to the community and the students' families. The physics department puts on a wonderful show of applied physics which is always packed as they keep things light hearted and very educational. The biology department had experiments with banana DNA. The chemistry department showed how many calories were in a gummie bear by burning it. Many of the departments and clubs (such as solar car and robot projects) have very good displays and would likely give good ideas on reaching the general populace and especially high school students (which are targeted as potential students for the university).

May I suggest doing a regular how things work presentation. Perhaps bring in clips from popular TV shows and show how they got it wrong. Like the CSI episode I mentioned or why the antagonist that cut the air hoses on the racing tractor-trailer will not have it go speeding out of control but will in fact bring it to a sudden, spectactular, and usually quite safe stop.

Such misconceptions in television and movies not only insult the intelligence of those watching but perpetuate myths that may cost people lives. That sheet metal lawn tractor shed will not stop a .45 calibre round. A car that has been in a crash should not cause one to grab the occupants quickly because "O my God! It's gonna blow!" but have them call 911 so the crash victims can be safely extracted by those trained to do so.

What's the point of my rant? I'm not sure. Maybe it's that Mythbusters is must see TV.

http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/humanface/art icles/mask.html

My SO and I have gotten into watching Clean Sweep and it's helped...

I think we should all suggest this the Mythbusters to have them try and recreate this one. It should be fun, at the very least, to have them shoot high speed rocks and large amounts of electricity at a street light to see whether the effects are consistant with this photo.

Gradually, TV and movies have devolved into very little content, but a lot of sex and violence.

How do you know? You haven't watched TV in four years.

But of course, we must pander to the mindless majority. If someone speaks up, he/she is just an old prude who wants to stop everyone else's fun.

No, he/she is someone who thinks they are smarter than everyone else, and should therefore make their decisions for them.

And you are free, of course, to use your first ammendment right to support the dumbing down of America.

And you are also free to not support the "dumbing down" by not watching this crap. I don't like it either, but there are alternatives to broadcast smut. Before "moral" groups start taking away my choices, perhaps they should exercise some restraint like you did.

Most sets or set-top boxes, Tivos, etc. have parental control built right in, often using a V-Chip. If you only want children's programming to work when you aren't there, just set it to limit that type of programming for them, then when they're in bed you unlock it for yourself. Still means things need to be rated properly (and news of all things, one of the worst things you can show children is often rated G) but it is better than sticking all of us with TreehouseTV.

There is one other problem, commercials aren't V-Chip rated yet and while you'd think they'd make the commercials match the show, often there are innappropriate commercials around educational shows. Surprisingly, Discovery channel is one of the worst culprits, at least Discovery Canada does. With simulcasting I'm not sure about the original signal.

First test: how much historical evidence is in existence for the person of Goliath?

About as much as many other 2000-year-old historical figures, which is to say, enough to establish probability but not proof. If you're interested in what evidence there is, you could check out this video from the Discovery Store.

a war story of heroism, and pretty much same as all the others in every culture on the planet that tells stories about their leaders. Embellishments are to be expected...

Of course! History is written by the winners. Or at least, the winner's personal historian. And this story was embellished when the storyteller included miraculous invisibility and strength. My point was that the real miracle happened in David's heart when his faith and courage overcame fear, not in some physics-defying display of invisibility and superhuman strength. By definition, there is no such thing as a physical miracle. When a "miracle" happens that defies your existing model of the world, and you establish that it really did happen, you change your model to accomodate the new event. Viola', now your "miracle" has become a "phenomenon." It's only the human spirit that continually defies explanation by new models and theories. Unless you're a strict determinist, in which case we have philosphical chasm that is pretty much impossible to broach.

It was on the Discovery Channel and was called "Unsolved History: JFK - Beyond the Magic Bullet" It doesn't show to be airing again anytime soon. However, they do have the DVD for sale on their site - here

Now that this sense of ownership is gone (and has been replaced by a new breed of woman who have all the privileges and none of the responsiblites of marriage), men are leaving in droves. Hence the high devorice rate and number of fathers who won't support their children.

I call bullshit, since most divorces are initiated by women

You mean like in this comic, eh?

On a serious note, I hated what little I saw of the original CSI because the characters were too typical of Bruckheimer - so much posturing and bad acting, like a football team with microscopes. That, and the fact that so much of actual investigations are simplified for the sake of (poor) plot and character development, turned me off the show. I doubt most investigations are as short as is depicted on the show, where they solve a case in a few days.

It could be that my standards were too high going into it, though. I'd seen a lot better forensic investigation shows on other channels like Discovery and TLC.

If you want a really good forensics show, go watch The New Detectives or The FBI Files on Discovery channel. They're documentary-type shows where they reenact actual investigations, so they're quite accurate. They focus totally on the investigation, with none of the annoying posturing like the CSI guys because they have a new cast for each episode. Plus, they don't pretend that it all happens in a day and the forensics guys do everything, they depict the team effort and time required to actually build up a case that can stand up in court. If you have time, check it out - I thik they're on saturdays and tuesdays.

Actually there are archaeological ruins that point to the Great Flood.

Some deposits in the bottom of the black sea discover fossils of animals that only lived in non-sea water. This points to a huge lake existing many meters below sea-level, in a time where water was very scarse. At a point, the water level increased, and the sea flooded this zone. (Human bones which confirm this have been found)

Later, the tale of the great flood was written in an ancient babylonian text called the Epic of Gilgamesh. When the jews were captured by Babylon, they learned this account, and incorporated it into the book of Genesis.

Here's a National Geographic article about it. There's a Discovery channel brief, too.

Frankly, both tales, Atlantis and the Great Flood, look very interesting to me, from an archaeological point of view.

One of my favorite toys growing up was my microscope set. You could either get a new high-tech one that hooks up to the PC, or you could just get a classic one. There are also lots of cool toys at http://shopping.discovery.com/ . And for Jebus' sake, don't get them any "themed" toys like Harry Potter or Mickey the Corporate Whore.

In the recent Discovery Channel documentary, "Black Sky: The Race for Space," Burt Rutan revealed one of his preliminary designs for an orbital craft. Basically, it looked like SpaceShipOne, except it had a huge rocket roughly twice it's length sticking out its rear. I'm guessing Rutan has some tricks up his sleeve to deal with the reentry issue.

However, I'm not sure if we'll see Rutan launching such an orbital craft in time for this prize. From a recent speech he gave:

I put out there that before I die I want to see affordable travel to the Moon, that's essentially where I'm going. What I mean by affordable is not what Houston talks about affordable; I'm talking about where a third of the people in this room can afford to go to the Moon when I finally kick off. That's my vision.

Now, when you do that, you can draw a schedule back to show this above low Earth orbit stuff, and this low orbit stuff, and this suborbital stuff. Tier One is suborbital manned spaceflight, Tier Two is low Earth orbit manned spaceflight, and Tier Three is what we do above low Earth orbit, and it does have to start very soon after we have affordable Earth orbit stuff. I drew a schedule for all of that about three and a half months ago, and I decided what had to happen at every point to get to that. As of the 27th of September, I'm already six months ahead three months into the schedule. I did not think that there would be a major investment by a major guy who can and will do it. Can anyone here think of a better guy that will actually go out and build a spaceline [than Richard Branson]? I couldn't.

Can anyone here think of a better guy that will actually go out and build a spaceline [than Richard Branson]? I couldn't.
I could move directly on to orbital ops from a research standpoint, but I decided that since I didn't seem to have a real close competitor to the X Prize, that maybe I ought to stay with suborbital and make damn sure that there's a successful, certified, safe system out there flying many passengers every day suborbitally before I lose interest in it and go on to orbital. And that's what I'm going to do. Is it going to be tough? Yeah, there's some tough things. Are the regulatory issues going to be tough? Yeah. But I'm not as scared of that program that is in front of me right now as I was scared of the SpaceShipOne program that was in front of me in 2001.

Personally, I'm guessing that to win this prize somebody will end up designing a capsule to launch on SpaceX's reusable Falcon V rocket, which, starting next year, will be launching 4200kg payloads (enough for a manned capsule) to orbit for $12 million.

I only caught a part of it yesterday, but Mythbusters was dropping various electrical items into a bathtub and recording the output. Fun stuff!

Sounds like an idea for an upcoming MythBusters episode.

Next time on MythBusters: Adam visits the dentist and gets an implant with a timy tracking device. The team then tries various ways to block or disable the chip. Will tinfoil in Adam's hat do the trick, or will Jamie's more radical plan to alter a microwave oven be successful!? Tune in next week!

Heh, didn't they hint about putting a poodle in a microwave once?

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/legends/bl-p oodle.htm

A friend of a friend had a grandmother who was a little bit "dotty." One day, Grandma had just bathed her miniature poodle, Pierre, and was about to towel-dry him when the phone rang. It was her daughter, reminding her that they had arranged to meet for lunch a half hour earlier. Grandma apologized for being late and said she'd be there as quickly as she could.

As she began towel-drying Pierre, it dawned on her that there was a quicker way to do it: the microwave. So she put her beloved pet inside the oven, set the dial to "defrost" and switched it on.

A half a minute later, as Grandma was donning her coat to leave, she heard a muffled explosion in the kitchen.

Pierre the poodle was no more.

Even my (admittidly bi) wife thinks Kari is Hot, with a capital H.

Ya the Discovery Channel has kinda tanked the alst few years.... However, I never get tired of Junkyard Wars and Myth Busters.

A couple weeks ago they had Space week, that ROCKED!

I moved from Denver to a rural South Dakota town, comcast didn't have this channel, this cable company does.

Visit http://science.discovery.com/http://science.discov ery.comfor more information.

Say cheese

It's a television show on Discovery Channel.

Official Site

Link HERE

Actually, I once saw a show on PBS where some scientists did a clever test.

You may be referring to Dr. Stephen Marquardt who found that faces considered to be beautiful conform to certain proportions. It is based on the Golden Ratio, which has many recurrances in nature, such as in the chambers of a nautilus shell.

Actually, I once saw a show on PBS where some scientists did a clever test.

You may be referring to Dr. Stephen Marquardt who found that faces considered to be beautiful conform to certain proportions. It is based on the Golden Ratio, which has many recurrances in nature, such as in the chambers of a nautilus shell.

You're probably thinking about one of these. They cost 200 dollars. You think you can get a halfway decent laptop for 200 bucks? Please tell me where.

There was a 2 hour special on the discovery channel last night that I would highly recommend. It was called Black Sky: The Race For Space. It is airing again 10/4 and 10/10. One of the things you said was exactly what Burt Rutan said; that you need to try the wacky theories as well, and it requires a lot of balls because you risk losing life, wasting money, and so on. He said that 50% of innovation was thinking and planning, the other 50% was developing and testing crazy ideas to see what worked. The rest of the program talked about their challenges, how they overcame them, Burt's previous experience, and a little about the prize. Cool stuff.

There was a 2 hour special on the discovery channel last night that I would highly recommend. It was called Black Sky: The Race For Space. It is airing again 10/4 and 10/10. One of the things you said was exactly what Burt Rutan said; that you need to try the wacky theories as well, and it requires a lot of balls because you risk losing life, wasting money, and so on. He said that 50% of innovation was thinking and planning, the other 50% was developing and testing crazy ideas to see what worked. The rest of the program talked about their challenges, how they overcame them, Burt's previous experience, and a little about the prize. Cool stuff.

The Discovery Channel had a great documentary on Rutan's attempt at the x-prize on last night, and there will probably be re-runs. The guy is an absolute genious, he's probably the closest to a real life Zeframe Cochran that we'll ever have - at least in our lifetimes.

He talked about some of the challenges that they overcame that government space programs have not - for instance re-entering the earth's atmosphere in a composite vehicle w/o tiles or heat sheilds, such as what the Space Shuttle OR the X-15 had. Space Ship One is designed to essentially fold up so that it falls in an aerodynamically and controlled manner. When it reaches and altitude and speed where the control surfaces are effective again, it turns itself back into a glider.

During one of the interview segments between him and camera, he mentioned a private mission to pluto that was in the planning stages by another group - he didn't say if he was involved in that - but he did openly talk about plans for a 7-seat version of Space Ship One, plans for a psuedo space hotel, plans to put a version of Space Ship One on a booster rocket to get into orbit, etc. Him and a few employees mentioned the next five years being incredible, and the next ten-fifteen even more so than that.

Check it: http://www.health.discovery.com/encyclopedias/946. html

"A fever greater than 106 degrees Fahrenheit can result in brain damage and death in some cases."

Guess what the coversion from 106 F is to C?

It's pretty clever, I guess. And I don't think Bush had anything to do with this film, BTW.

Ever seen the TV show mythbusters? It's like snopes for TV. Anyway, they took the myth about the Corvette that smelled so bad that no one could clean it or sell it. They took two dead pigs and sealed them up in a Vette and sealed the whole thing up in a shipping container for a few weeks. Then tried to clean it.

They got a professional crew in, guys that clean out ambulances, crime scenes, etc. The car still reeked at the end of the show, and wound up getting sold for the engine & transmission.

You may be stuck with the stench. OK, random bad jokes : give them to PETA/ADL/vegan society. Give them to Cowboy Neal, no one will notice them over his stench.

What a coincidence to see this topic on Slashdot seeing as I just saw this exact topic on MythBusters the other day. In the episode (Season 2 Ep. 07, "Stinky Car"). The MythBusters are attempting to confirm the legend of the "Car so smelly it can't be sold".

The MB crew decided that a whole pig, rotting in the front seat would be the best emulation for a dead human body (as described in the myth/legend).

After consulting with professionals, they discovered the best and perhaps only way to COMPLETELY remove the smell of decaying organic matter is to use ENZYME-based cleaners that essentially digest the particles of matter.

At this point it should be noted that a by product of the decaying/decayed animal is Amonia, which is not only smelly, but potentially poisonous.

Unfortunately, the MB crew also concluded that no matter how powerful the enzyme wash, unless you get ALL the decaying matter out, the smelly thing will still smell. In the case of the car, they would have had to take the car entirely apart and washed each individual component in an enzyme wash, which is not cost effective by any means.

What a coincidence to see this topic on Slashdot seeing as I just saw this exact topic on MythBusters the other day. In the episode (Season 2 Ep. 07, "Stinky Car"). The MythBusters are attempting to confirm the legend of the "Car so smelly it can't be sold".

The MB crew decided that a whole pig, rotting in the front seat would be the best emulation for a dead human body (as described in the myth/legend).

After consulting with professionals, they discovered the best and perhaps only way to COMPLETELY remove the smell of decaying organic matter is to use ENZYME-based cleaners that essentially digest the particles of matter.

At this point it should be noted that a by product of the decaying/decayed animal is Amonia, which is not only smelly, but potentially poisonous.

Unfortunately, the MB crew also concluded that no matter how powerful the enzyme wash, unless you get ALL the decaying matter out, the smelly thing will still smell. In the case of the car, they would have had to take the car entirely apart and washed each individual component in an enzyme wash, which is not cost effective by any means.

• Sep 14 2004 @ 10:00 PM
• Sep 15 2004 @ 01:00 AM
• Sep 19 2004 @ 12:00 PM

Slow news day or infatuated with Mozilla? Heck, I like Mozilla and use it at home and work, but I don't drop everything to see what's happened with their website in the last day. Gee willikers.

Here's some other fine articles which could probably have been posted:

Philadelphia Considering Free or Low Cost Wireless For All

Microsoft to Exploit Japan's Post Offices to deliver SP2 (their word, not mine!)

The Road Ahead, According to Steve Ballmer

X-Rays Reveal Mummy Faces (Low Cancer Risk to Mummy)

Owls Use Poop to Lure Beetles

Now can you moron explain me at least, what happens @ 10k feet height if you shoot through the hull?

You must mean 30,000 feet...and by hull, you mean fuselage, right? ...and why are you calling people morons for having an opinion that's different from yours?

As far as what an airplane does when a bullet penetrates the fuselage -- nothing. The idea that a bullet passing through an airplane's fuselage (or even through a window) will cause explosive decompression is a myth (see episode 10). You won't be sucked through a bullet hole in a window or the fuselage. If a passenger or member of the flight crew gets hit by a stray bullet (or even multiple), in the case of a 9/11-style attack we're clearly talking about acceptable losses (assuming that a gun in the cockpit will prevent such a catastrophe). Consider that VP Cheeney gave the order to shoot down the flight over PA on 9/11/2001 -- in relation to the damage that an airplane can cause, killing a few people on board in order to save thousands (not having to shoot the plane out of the sky is a pretty nice bonus too)...not so much of a problem by me.

LOL, yes 4 sure, all we need are just bigger weapons, than any terrorist could have

I don't know a whole lot about guns, but a 9mm is a pretty small caliber bullet. This isn't a case of bigger weapons, it's just a case of effective lethal weaponry.

Actually, NASA already has a working prototype/model of a robot.

I was able to see the robot at NASA's Community Day at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). (NASA opened up the campus of GSFC to the public in July for one day. I submitted a story about this to /., but it was rejected.)

The "sophisticated camera" that the original article referred to is the Wide Field Camera 3. At NASA's Community Day I was able to talk to the lead electrical engineer for the Wide Field Camera 3, and he has been succesfully been using the robot for the past couple of months to work with the camera installation.

Considering that NASA already has a working prototype/model, I'm sure that finalzing the design can be accomplished in the next year.

Make it a reality series! I know I'd watch them prepare and fix it.

Yeah, I second that. Make it like Junkyard Wars or something.

BTM

I, however, find it incredible that NBC would offer "1,210 hours of coverage spread across NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, USA, Telemundo and a high-definition channel" and none of it live. All I'm going to see is whatever bits of the highlights-they-deign-offer-us-in-lieu-of-full-cov erage [broken /. lameness filter turned 'coverage' into 'cov erage'] that happen to be on as I'm surfing past NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and USA on my way to something worth watching (we don't get Telemundo or any high-def channels).

NBC offers the worst sports coverage of any American network, so naturally they get the Olympics. The fact that the IOC cares more about the $$$ than the quality of the coverage speaks volumes about the true nature of the Olympics. If I wanted delayed coverage I'd read about it in tomorrow's newspaper, which is exactly what I will do for the few sports I care about. And I'll bet I get the results from the newspapers before NBC shows us the highlights.

Speaking of the internet and it's rapid and massive stream of information, check this out

Yea the fat little penguin Tux should be replaced by a mean penguin. Maybe even a penguin skeleton kinda like the Brisk snowman skeleton. He then should be surrounded by guns, women, and alcohol -- ALWAYS.

That nylug picture, if it's the one I'm thinking of, is funny as hell. Everyone of those guys could be the poster child for joining a gym and going on this show. Although maddog is cool. I think if he was paraded around dressed like some insane old guy in a red beanie with a bottle of whisky in his hand, Linux would be a lot more cool.

Our desktops still are essentially the same as the 1984 Macintosh. PDAs still haven't caught up with the Newton. Computers are still dumb.

Computer technology is evolving. Quickly.

Biological evolution took billions of years to get to today. Have you ever read up on Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar? If you were to compress the known history of the universe into a single calendar year, all of written human history would comprise the last 15 seconds on December 31!

Whether you're talking about technology or biology, you can't evolve anything too quickly, or you throw out all the accumulated wisdom in the current design. That's why birth defects and substantial changes in genetics are rare - evolve too quickly and the mortality rate climbs towards insolvency.

The QWERTY keyboard is with us, perhaps for centuries to come, even though there are "better" alternatives. But these "better" alternatives cost alot more TODAY to develop and implement than continuing with the QWERTY. So if you "know how to type", you're using a QWERTY.

To change to another keyboard, you have to throw out all the accumulated wisdom associated with QWERTY keyboards - all the trained office workers, all the existing equipment in place right now, the typing tutor software, the toys, cell phones, PDAs, etc.

And why? The QWERTY is "good enough", so we invest our resources elsewhere.

Here's another example: Joel on Software - Things You Should Never Do. In this work, Joel claims that re-writing your nest egg software is the kiss of death for a software company, for the simple fact that in even a cruddy, poorly cobbled software, there's often many man-years of embedded wisdom in there - bugs fixed, design issues resolved, special cases handled, etc.

You simply can't rebuild anything significant from scratch without tremendous cost. That's why our very sophisticated human cerebral brains are built upon the much simpler mammalian brain, which is in turn built upon the very simple lizard brain inside our heads. It's very literally three concentric sections of brain, with the lizard brain in the middle, the mamallian brain wrapped around that, and the cerebral cortex packed on around the outside!

The biological cost of rebuilding our brains to factor out the now much-antiquated lizard brain functions is simply too high to be viable, so it's never happened, and the lizard brain is simply "infrastructure" for higher development.

Look at the history of cities. You'll see the exact same pattern there... Example? Los Angeles has spent 75 years developing around the automobile, and their recent construction of subways have been extremely expensive (300 MILLION DOLLARS PER MILE) and the residual effects of the subway on local business has driven many to bankruptcy.

It's been very costly, very slow, and cost overruns are the norm.

So, when I hear somebody talk about making major changes to existing infrastructure, it's hard for me NOT to dismiss them, no matter their credentials. You simply *don't* change critical infrastructure of any kind without serious review and contemplation, and even then, you have to assume that it'd be 10x as costly and painful as you can imagine.

I did see an episode of Mythbusters in which the boys built some penny launching guns (the penny flew in frisbee fashion) - perhaps you could scale up something like that. One of them was an aluminum block with a thin slot for the penny on the end of a .22 rifle. You could put something like that on the end of a potato gun, maybe.

The idea that our support for Israel was the cause of 9-11 is totally unsupported by the facts.

I suggest you watch the documentary titled "Searching for the roots of 9/11", a reporter travels the middle east asking why people hate the USA; time and time again the answers that he gets start with our unconditional support of Israel.

Osama's major claim (as stated in his declaration of war against the United States in 1996) was the presence of "infidel" troops in the Saudi Arabian peninsula. They were there not to protect Israel, but to protect Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Quatar, United Arab Emirates, and the status quo of the oil producing countries from... Saddam Hussein, who had violated 14 UN sanctions since the end of the Gulf War.

BS, our troops were there to protect Israel. Saddam's attack on Kuwait was provoked by Kuwait stealing billions of dollars worth of Iraqi oil. Through April Glaspie, the US made it clear to Saddam that we didn't care if he invaded Kuwait.

The 14 UN sanctions that Iraq violated are nothing compared to the 69 resolutions that Isreal violated. Not to mention the 29 more that were blocked by US vetoes.

The foreign policy of the United States cannot be dictated by foreign psychopaths who dislike our policies, or we would soon have none except total isolation, soon to be followed by our own decimation.

Foreign policy should be dictated by what is best for our country. This alliance with Israel is not.

Don't misunderstand me, I don't think that the Islamists are innocent either. They are to blame for their part in the conflict, what I'm saying is that our unconditional support of one of the parties the conflict is what had painted a bullseye on us.

Bosnia 10,000+ during the first Yugoslavian War, no action during Kosovo (NATO stepped in since they wouldn't), and 5 years later under U.N. management Kosovo still has electical production issues that are *worse* than Iraq's after 8 months.

The UN sided *against* the legitimate Muslim controlled goverment in Kosovo. The UN weapons embargo cost untold lives in that conflict.

I assume you quote Hillary's expression of collectivist socialism to express contempt for it.

You assume correctly.

I am surprised that you appear to be unaware that most of the spectacularly unsuccessful nations which comprise the the UN cling to the same philosophy, that the UN itself regularly espouses it, and this is the real reason why they are so easily corrupted and typically unsuccessful.

This is precisely why I believe that the US should withdraw from the UN, but even a broken clock is right twice per day.

LK

Werent there some people who made videos of themselves, spinning CDs on the tip of a dremel until the centrifugal force made them explode in omnidirectional-flying shards of plastic?

Great show: the scientific method meets real-life engineering meets blowing stuff up. Shame that the Discovery Channel gives it such little support

The show MythBusters did a segment on this. They had to work pretty hard to get an un-damaged CD to shatter. If I recall correctly, they had to modify a router to spin a CD up to about 40,000 rpm before a standard CD would go ka-blooey

Actually the report Kevin Poulsen is a famous phone phreak who has since reformed and now does pieces for securityfocus

Cool, didn't know cell phones were being used to even allow people to buy gas. That should finally put that damn urban legend to rest.

The Muthbusters even visited the myth twice, the second time addressing everyones concerns that wrote in about the first attempt. They went to the extreme of trying to short out the battery after killing the short protection, and still couldn't generate a spark to set off a gas filled chamber, one a human would probably not survive in due to the air mixture.

A few years back, according to Discovery Channel's FBI Files or New Detectives (i forget which exactly), there was a Canadian car dealer who would steal high-end cars in canada, and replace their VIN tags with those from the same make/model in a junk yard.

Eventually, he needed more VINs and sent a few scouts to US car lots to record VINs from US cars right off the lot.

They finally prosecuted him, but they estimate that there are ~$7 million worth of high end cars that they apparently can't (or are too lazy) to locate.

It's obvious that there is no central VIN tracking system, or the FBI would have used to to search for duplicates between the US and Canadian registries.