Slashdot Mirror

Ironically the slashdot groupmind isn't very fond of New Scientist, but their story provides some useful information about how and why this works:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn12 429&feedId=tech_rss20

I'm surprised no-one has posted this to Slashdot, but they are reconsidering selling the OLPC commercially:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn12 339

Though they are looking at a price point a bit higher than this Asus EEE laptop.

There's an interesting, though limited, article on cyberbullying on NewScientist.com:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg195 26136.300-the-rise-of-cyberbullying.html

It does show how bullying over electronic channels can be effective - to the point of (at least partially) causing youths to kill themselves. In fact, the e-bullying seems to look an awful lot like bullying in RL - repeated personal attacks, ostracizing, humiliation and degrading treatment.

I'd have to guess that bullying in Wikipedia would probably heavily rely on ostracizing of various forms, b/c being part of the community seems important to many there. So if a person can get other editors of a page against you, you might end up feeling unwelcome and going elsewhere: they "win".

From the article:

The liquid contains tiny iron oxide particles coated with plastic.

Article in last weeks New Scientist about nano technology: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/nanot echnology/mg19526121.400-the-great-nanotech-gamble .html (abstract only)

There's a catch. If these particles escape into the environment, their very smallness means they could have as yet unknown and possibly damaging effects. You might inhale or swallow them, or they could collect on the skin. They could then be carried to major organs such as the heart, liver and even the brain. The consequences of all this are still not clear, but following past health disasters caused by substances such as PCBs and asbestos, the prospect has stirred concern among governments and scientists alike.

The idea behind chameleon liquid looks great, but perhaps we should check to see what it does to the environment before we start to use it for everything.

This technology is still a long way off. As you can see from this picture, where a magnet is held to the right, causing the substance to change from brown to blue, the resolution and control still isn't very good. If this works though, suddenly we will have much more brilliantly colorful displays, with every color available. Imagine fluorescent orange on your display.....and, since it works by reflection, putting it in bright daylight will only make it more brilliant.
Also, they are talking about using it for liquid paper, but I'm not sure how they are planning on doing that, since once the magnetic field is removed, the picture disappears.
In any case, if the pitfalls in the technology could be overcome, it would be a vast improvement over what we have today. Big if.
--
Looking to trade your girlfriend? Now you can!!

It is in fact the Immersion Cyberforce.

Compare the picture in the article to the Cyberforce at the Immersion website.

Oh for Christ's sake! ...but thank you for posting it.

With Pluribus, you can build a cineplex-quality image using a handful of ordinary, $1,000 PC projectors--in less time than it takes to pop the popcorn

A handful of $1000 projectors? Great idea - if your ame is Bill Gates or Lars Ulrich. For those of us who live on a paycheck and don't have unlimited sources of funding, this just ain't gonna happen. Next?

It's a bit like the Wii remote--only more accurate and far easier to use.

Why stop there? Why not just let me point at the giant Imax sized screen in my giant imax sized house with my bare finger? Don't these guys have any imagination?

Extreme Peer-to-Peer
<yawn>

The Man-Made Brain
How many beads do I have to string on my abacus before it becomes self-aware? After all, your computer is nothing more than a binary abacus with billions of beads. Your brain is electrochemical (with emphasis on the chemical). True thought is a chemical reaction. You can simulate anything, but flying your Microsoft Flight Simulator won't really make you move an inch.

This last one has been predicted as long as flying cars. Now, if they make computers out of biological substances I might change my mind about this.

If you want my turing machine, here it is. The original one was written on a TS1000 with 16K (that's kilo not mega) of memory in 1984. The PC version (1987, runs on DOS) is about 400k, but most of that is compiler overhead, it's not signifigantly different than the TS1000 version or the Apple IIe version.

Mine, "Artificial Insanity", is a turing debunker written on the premise that humans get tired, drunk, crazy, don't pay attenbtion, are smartasses, and have attitudes. So it does too. Warning: Its answers pissed one friend off so much he broke his keyboard typing back at it.

-mcgrew

It's too bad the US isn't building a National Ignition Facility to produce fusion in the laboratory using the largest lasers on the planet.

If only there were physicists scrutinizing the data produced by something like Gravity Probe B here in the US.

Something like a Z Machine would be really useful for high energy physics, but the fundies in the US won't allow it.

Then there is NASA, sitting its laurels of times long past, not making any effort to replace [1] the ill-conceived shuttle.

The US isn't attempting to measure the rate of polar ice cap melting using precise measurements of the exact center of mass of the entire planet. No, because physics in the US sucks and that sort of work is best left to others.

If the NSF wasn't completely dominated by neo-cons it might have funded Kip Thorne and let him build the most sensitive laser interferometer on Earth.

There aren't a dozen people orbiting the planet attempting to assemble the largest space based solar collector in history; the physics involved are far beyond anything practiced in the US. I can just imagine Americans in space, risking life and limb. They'd probably find themselves using staple guns to keep from getting killed on live TV. The US is too cowardly for any of that.

If Europe had only had the wisdom to exclude the US from LHC, Fermilab's mistakes wouldn't have led to their current magnet problems. There's the US again, setting back physics by another decade.

Then there are the beef-eaters in Detroit, oblivious to any concept that doesn't involve guzzling gas.

Those damn Christens did manage to stifle US fusion research; the next big Tokamak is being built in France for crying-out-loud. There's hardly even any US funding involved.

That article is right. The US is nothing but a swill of gun-toting suburbanite consumers, polluting and terrorizing the world.

[1] Watch the quarterly report video on the right panel; bunch of silly US bubba cowboys trying to engineer a rocket. What a laugh.

The S1A1 remote controlled great white shark has a secondary offensive capability based on 1) rows of sharp teeth and 2) neural implant boosted hunger, all guided by a keen sense of smell. Obviously, we planned for Chinese frogmen in invisibility suits.

This is all classified info BTW, please kill yourself after reading it, unless you happen to have SPECOPS/JAWS clearance.

You recall correctly. Living in Japan, I personally tried this system at an NTT tech fair. It only had a minor effect on me, but I did feel it. My friends reported a stronger effect.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn7829.htm l

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn947 1

Doesn't make jordy laforge look so silly now does it?
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/ns/cms /dn11198/dn11198-1_600.jpg
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/ns/cms /dn11198/dn11198-2_650.jpg

By the looks of things the signals going to be pretty small so I don't imagine it
would send much interference. But it might recieve a buch though if it has to be ulra
sensitive though. Oh well it's not like you need more than 30-40fps.

On the other hand what if you woke up, switched on your recievers so you could find
where your glasses were by looking at what was infront of them...wonder if they can
do this with car keys?

And one more idea, what about the aplication of remote sensing. You have the recievers
implanted into your head and use cameras around your house. Guess you would need to be
pretty paranoid to do that....

Doesn't make jordy laforge look so silly now does it?
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/ns/cms /dn11198/dn11198-1_600.jpg
http://www.newscientisttech.com/data/images/ns/cms /dn11198/dn11198-2_650.jpg

By the looks of things the signals going to be pretty small so I don't imagine it
would send much interference. But it might recieve a buch though if it has to be ulra
sensitive though. Oh well it's not like you need more than 30-40fps.

On the other hand what if you woke up, switched on your recievers so you could find
where your glasses were by looking at what was infront of them...wonder if they can
do this with car keys?

And one more idea, what about the aplication of remote sensing. You have the recievers
implanted into your head and use cameras around your house. Guess you would need to be
pretty paranoid to do that....

It is also certain that any such weapon is going to be used for torture and/or "prisoner control".

Yes, and it is certain that DVDFabDecrypter is used for purposes of copyright infringement. Shall we ban it?

It's still lighter, less complicated, and less expensive than a soldier.

It is too heavy for a soldier to carry and with the batteries probably has a range of a couple miles and a top speed of 5mph tops.

There are solutions to the weight carrying problem.

As for the issue of range and runtime, are you just talking out of your ass or did you find some specs? Even hobbyists are making tracked vehicles with more speed than that. Range is a larger issue but the robot is not intended to do all that much moving around, either.

If you've ever had to handle a treaded robot in real life (I have) you would know how silly the notion of a device like this seeing wide deployment really is.

I would assume that for the moment it will only be used by special forces in rare occasions, and the technology will be developed further to be useful in more situations.

I think it's very likely that the military will order them to, as they will want to justify the money they spent on it.

Which will last until about the 10th time a sniper runs off and resets while the squad is busy fussing with this stupid robot.

Others have commented about how what we're seeing in Iraq is a lot of people holed up long-term in the same location because it works. If this device is better than humans at detecting where a sound is coming from, which is not hard to imagine really, then it may in fact be very useful.

My post posited that it was likely the robot couldn't detect snipers accurately unless the snipers were shooting directly at the robot.

Why would that be true? There's no evidence to suggest that it is and if a human can tell approximately where a shooter is in most situations without them firing directly at them - which they can - then the robot should in theory be able to do an even better job because it deals with metrics and absolutely quantifiable values.

This news is almost 2 years old:
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg185 24883.300-goldstandard-online-security-code-cracke d-.html

The question is: why are they bringing up this news again? Moreover, why has there been so little talk about SHA-1 vulnerability during these 2 years? Most linux distro's still use SHA-1 based MD5 for /etc/passwd by default, why didn't they switch to other algorithm in 2 years?

My bet is that the NSA knew this vulnerabity and has been actively exploiting it. 2 years ago this news was not good for them because people might switch to other algorithms they cannot break (so easily). That would be a reason to let the vulnerability go ignored by the software industry, as long as only the NSA could break it.

2 years has been enough time for the NSA to discover vulnerabilities and to build computers capable of breaking more advanced algorithms (SHA-2?). So it makes sense to push now for an upgrade SHA-1 to SHA-2, which the Chinese probably still don't know how to break. Thus the NSA would be regaining it's strategic advantage in cryto over the Chinese.

TFA refers to its own source as the New Scientist. A quick search there reveals the article in question is dated February 2005. So I guess this should probably come under "oldnews", but in any case the NSA had had plenty of time to play with it.

What concerns me is that in the last two years I've heard no news about a replacement for SHA-1. Maybe every's hoping that if they ignore the problem, it'll go away.

From the original article cited by the epoch times article (at the moment /.ed)

Busted! A crisis in cryptography

"LAST year, I walked away saying thank God she didn't get a break in SHA-1," says William Burr. "Well, now she has." Burr, a cryptographer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is talking about Xiaoyun Wang, a Chinese cryptographer with a formidable knack for breaking things. Last year Wang, now at Tsinghua University in Beijing, stunned the cryptographic community by breaking a widely used computer security formula called MD5. This year, to Burr's dismay, she went further. Much further."

cute...

Dolls-house size! See Fab@Home or see the New Scientist report.

FTFA...

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn716 5-3d-printer-to-churn-out-copies-of-itself.html

If you would have taken the time to read the article, you could have spotted this link: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/dn716 5-3d-printer-to-churn-out-copies-of-itself.html

Hydrogen-powered Ducks

Remarkably similar in content and style to http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg192 25761.100-arson-evidence--shot-down-in-flames.html published November 6th, 2006...

Here is a bunch of link i gathered about google and a dystopic future, they are a fun read ;-)

The future of google?
http://www.richardmartineau.net/museum/

Google and social control?
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19125691 .800

Generic google watch:
http://www.google-watch.org/

And what if google had an OS, would it give you privacy?
http://www.osweekly.com/index.php?option=com_conte nt&Itemid=&task=view&id=2309

I wish I had mod points. Hmmm - haven't had any for months. But you are spot on. The trials with putting modern sale systems on large container ships look most promising.

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg18524881 .600.html

An older New Scientist article on a related technique reports 7 to 25 times less light reflected, compared to optical black paint. NS also reports on the current laser-based technology.

The issue is whether we can sustain our usage at current levels indefinitely. The answer is of course, no. Can we then sustain current usage until a substitute energy source comes along? Possibly.

I've spent a bit of time reading around this area, and I think you can divide the problem into a couple of areas

1. Depletion of reserves

A big problem. Oil will run out, its really a question of when. If you believe the Peak Oil proponents, we may well be in a depletion phase already. Certainly May 2005 was a peak in production which we have not yet exceeded, and the longer this goes on for the more likely that it was the true peak. Also we are currently consuming reserves at 4 times the rate we are discovering new one sources. It is unlikely that we will ever find another major producer like Saudi Arabia, and so if we haven't hit peak, we will soon enough (in the next 10 years). After that peak, we probably have 20 years or so of decreasing production.

With oil reserves limited, attention is turning to other energy sources. Natural gas and Nuclear Power are the obvious choices.

Unfortunately, natural gas isn't infinite, and while it will last a while, its loss will be accelerated by oil substitution. In other words, it will peak not long after whenever oil peaks.

Nuclear power is contentious, difficult, and actually not in infinite supply. The world would consume all the nuclear power in a couple of decades; and there isn't any easy way to make its energy available for transportation.

2. Ecological Damage

Whilst all this stored energy will run out, the bigger question that we face is: Can we really afford to ever actually use all these sources without damaging the environment too much?

Carbon Dioxide emissions are a big concern. A recent article highlights the rapid rise in CO2 that we are producing right now. Its hard to see how we an avoid terraforming the planet (in a nasty way) with current consumption of fossil fuels. There are options such as sequestration or even shading the planet from space, but its hard to know which country is going to start this process off. Perhaps more economic solutions exist, but for now all these solutions are just theories, and nobody is doing any of it yet to my knowledge.

Environmental damage from renewable resources is still an issue. Wind farms make noise and kill birds, hydro power floods large areas of the environment, solar takes out alot of space and uses a great deal of non-renewable resources to manufacture. Nuclear comes with its own set of environmental problems.

Coal, historically, is the worst offender. Most coal mines have killed more miners individually that all nuclear accidents in the world have done. Coal contains radioactive isotopes, and coal powered stations actually release a substantial amount of radiation. Also, there are a great deal of pollutants in coal - its not a really clean energy source; and in fact causes more CO2 and less H2O release as its mostly carbon - unlike natural gas, which has a lot of hydrogen in it and therefore has water as a waste product of combustion which is much better than carbon dioxide.

Renewable alternatives

The renewable resources all have problems.

Bio Diesel (and/or ethanol) is a really promising alternative, but will require huge amounts of land to be converted to fuel production to support this - perhaps as much as 25% of the surface area of the US would be required to support the US at current rates of usage. In this sense it suffers the same problems as most renewables - environmental degredation. Its hard to know where all the fresh water is going to come from to grow this fuel, let alone the land. On the

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn10 233

Combine this technology operating in a very low-power mode with something like this thing I read about earlier on /., and do we get smart DVD drives that can detect if they're authorized to play a given disc securely and over air? I mean, you could stick an RFID on each DVD and then a reader somewhere in the drive, but is this a more off-the-shelf type of combination?

Or am I full of crap?

Considering how they posted their own article on newscientisttech (the dyson airblade) which has in the article a link to a demo video showing it hosted on youtube I would say as long as you attribute it correctly (give it a newscientist tag and stuff) then it won't be seen in a really bad light.
If it is, they can always get it removed if they decide their ambiguous company policy (some on, some off) does not allow any of their videos to be posted.

thats my 2p anyway.

RTFP

"[0024] Embedding electrical storage means with corresponding I/O means in a CD provides a unique device which may be implemented especially in data security field, i.e. a security device. For example, the XCD can be used as an ATM card, credit card, authentication card, and so forth. The owner of the XCD can open his office door by the proximity coil, use the embedded smart card or magnetic stripe and his picture printed on the CD as a credit card, use the XCD as an ID card on the Internet, as a security token (e.g. the eToken manufactured by Aladdin Knowledge Systems--Tel-Aviv, and so forth."

Content control for [whatever] is just one of the applications possible for their system. And they expect the CD to be wallet sized.

Personally, I'd like to see a better picture than this

Some experiments with DVD (then CD) drives from my younger years:

1. put on top stickers of pokemons you obtained from chewing gums

2. crack a disk and see if it plays

3. stuff two disks at once

4. have you noticed small cd/dvd-s are more expensive than full size ones !? what's with that. chop pieces of a large CD/DVD to create a home made small cd/dvd and record stuff on it

Now, ... those seem stupid right.. Why do stupid shit and waste your drive. Well, look at this and tell me if you feel safe putting it in your drive.

But I bet kids will love playing with it.

4.

Foot-twisting can be used for right or left mouse clicks and sliding one foot over the ground can be translated into dragging and dropping. This would allow someone to use a wearable computer while keeping their hands free for other tasks.

Bruce Sterling has written many amazing stories. ("Maneki Neko.") But that was just horrible.

It's like reading a 60's icon critiquing the year 2006, complaining it's not "hippie" enough, and pretending to take the role of a teenager in 2006, an adult in teenage clothing. "Hey, why isn't everybody listening to really great works of music, like Pink Floyd, or reading truely great works of literature, like, Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary?"

All the kids getting up to cheer in high school, against technology? Can I see a trend line that even hints in this direction?

"Okay, sure: I know I sound pretty depressed. Us teenage poets depress easily." -- Apparently!

I'll stick with Synthetic Serendipity.

An older NewScientist story describes another system that beams ads directly to phones, also via Bluetooth.

A better FA can be found here. This article is sort of related, and interseting.

Technology to the rescue again! OK, well, for one teensy part...

The already have a full-body DDR. Wiimotes would definitely be less encumbering, though.

Like New Scientist? The linked article has a photo of the device taken through an electron microscope. It also explains how the little bugger works. Another article there says "A single cobalt atom has been made to hop back and forth between two positions in response to an electric current by US researchers. The technique could some day lead to the development of 'atomic switches' for nanoscale devices."

Mod me down, -1 a/c

Like New Scientist? The linked article has a photo of the device taken through an electron microscope. It also explains how the little bugger works. Another article there says "A single cobalt atom has been made to hop back and forth between two positions in response to an electric current by US researchers. The technique could some day lead to the development of 'atomic switches' for nanoscale devices."

Mod me down, -1 a/c

So you're telling me that as demand decreases and supply remains constant, price increases? I think an econ professor's head just asploded.

Seriously, though, I really do hope that this becomes a common technology. I oversee some aspects of a domestic supply chain, and you would be surprised to know how much money is spent geting stuff where it needs to go. Granted, containerization and bulk shipments help reduce overhead, but it still adds up. Cheaper transport leads to cheaper prices for the consumer (or slower price increases, as the case may be). There are two different ways of adding sails to ships, both of which are shown in the link. One involves a giant kite to use faster winds at high altitude (primarily featured in TFA). The other has been in limited use for several years and uses hard square sails that open and close like window blinds.

Last time I checked, "infinitesimal" meant "extremely small, negligeable", which is the exact opposite of the notion the writer has in mind (that is, that water is hard to animate).

And it went right through the BBC editors, who are apparenlty easily dazzled by latinate words,

Poor Beeb.

I suggest that the author of the article, Spencer Kelly, should be replaced by a random tech news generator.

This article has more of the details correct. http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn93 68

Yeah, the builders could be put to work on focusing on fusion power and how to harness it, like this: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg190 25534.000.htmllike this But then think about it, these people are employed, paid and taught how to build bombs, which means the American government would probably use the research for better bombs.

I think the goatse guy was the first patient in the trial of this monstrosity. How else did his arse get like that. That worm must be to blame for the abomination that is the goatse guy's arse.

From the same site. This little robot can make roaches come out in the light where you can better kill em.

There's an even better story, linked from that page:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn7630

Sure, it has a valid medical purpose, but hoo boy.

Sory but light breaking lightspeed, is not breaking news. CERENKOV RADIATION has been observed for some time now. As have the negative refractive indexes of super lenses.

However, we can do little more.

Freedom in China ultimately depends on the citizenry. Barring external intervention, the future of a people are determined by the people. Period.

Back in 1989, Czechoslovakia had a population of about 15.6 million. In November of that year, 800,000 citizens assembled in Prague and demanded freedom. 800,000 is about 5% of the nation's population.

The story repeated itself in all of Eastern Europe. Once it was free from the external intervention of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Europeans collectively decided that they wanted freedom, and they got it. They forced their authoritarian governments out of power.

The story is quite different in China. No one is imposing authoritarian rule on China. If the Chinese people wanted to enjoy the same democracy and human rights that we have in the West, then the Chinese people could get democracy and human rights tomorrow. The problem is that most Chinese either support authoritarianism or are indifferent to it. President Hu Jintao (the dictator of China), all by himself, cannot impose authoritarian rule on China. Hu has a lot of supporters.

That is the difference between Eastern Europe and China. I respect the Eastern Europeans.

You jest, but:
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=dn89 98&feedId=drugs-alcohol_rss20

The link is on the Tentacle's page. The direct link is http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn9117 .