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The device actually already has yaw, as the video above shows (you can spin the craft around). As for pitch, I can't find a video, but I'm under the impression that it does have pitch control, being able to do loop-de-loops.

Who needs to burn through 20 feet of steel? Or even 2 feet of steel?

What's even more crazy is that their ultimate goal is to reach a megawatt of power and burn through *2000* feet of steel per second. I'd imagine seeing a phalanx of tanks, and with one 3 second FWOOOONG! from the laser, our military crosscuts through them all in one sweep. Here's the Wired article I'm referring to: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/unexpectedly-navys-superlaser-blasts-away-a-record

Reminds me of this: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/slime-mold-grows-network-just-like-tokyo-rail-system/
Some researchers placed food sources in the same configuration as Tokyo Rail stations and then introduced a slime mold. From TFA

Initially, the slime mold dispersed evenly around the oat flakes, exploring its new territory. But within hours, the slime mold began to refine its pattern, strengthening the tunnels between oat flakes while the other links gradually disappeared. After about a day, the slime mold had constructed a network of interconnected nutrient-ferrying tubes. Its design looked almost identical to that of the rail system surrounding Tokyo, with a larger number of strong, resilient tunnels connecting centrally located oats. “There is a remarkable degree of overlap between the two systems,” Fricker says.

Interesting:

U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators

Just saw this article yesterday about how the Bioshock movie was put on hold indefinitely because of its R-rating. It's too bad because I think Bioshock could make for an interesting movie, especially since Gore Verbinski refused to censor the movie down to a PG-13 rating.

The results would only surprise those who don't know anything about how informal media markets are structured. These people didn't do their homework. Read: b-bstf. (2004). A Guide To Internet Piracy. 2600 Hacker Quarterly Summer. http://web.archive.org/web/20070512002747/old.wheresthebeef.co.uk/show.php/guide/2600_Guide_to_Internet_Piracy-TYDJ.txt and Howe, J. (2005): The Shadow Internet Wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.01/topsite.html This is why you need social scientists (sociologists, anthropologists, media and communications studies people) in a group of engineers and statisticians to conducts such studies.

That is incorrect: Wired.com: And of course, the best Jeopardy players sometimes ring in before they may have come up with the answer, if they have, dare I say it, a gut feeling or sense of intuition that theyâ(TM)ll be able to answer correctly, right? Watson canâ(TM)t do that, can it? Brown: The IBM Research team made a decision that we were not going to ring in unless Watson had already computed an answer with high-enough confidence. There are human players who may have an intuition that they know the answer but donâ(TM)t quite have it on the tip of their tongue, and are willing to ring in because they are confident enough that they will come up with the correct answer in the few seconds they have to actually answer after theyâ(TM)ve won the buzz. That was an implementation decision for Watson that it had to have an answer with a high-enough confidence before it would attempt to ring in. http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/ibm-watson-speed/

Wires. That requires an external provider, either a private monopoly or the government. And of course that lets them tap the wire.

You might be able to get around that by using encryption (if that's legal in your country and if the encryption is easy enough to use). But encryption isn't going to help you communicate if your government pulls the kill switch on the internet, as Egypt's dictatorship did on Jan. 28. Moglen's talk was on Feb. 5, so you'd think he'd mention that, but he never mentions Egypt once in the whole talk. It could easily happen in the U.S.

Note that a large portion of the money for DARPA is going to cybersecurity research with Mudge of the L0pht as the DARPA Program Manager.

[1] http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/219725/government_employs_hackers_in_brave_new_scheme.html
[2] http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/darpas-star-hacker-looks-to-wikileak-proof-the-pentagon/
[3] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/07/internet-creators-ask-hackers-help/

Startpage is the only privacy oriented search engine that I know of. It does not retain your personal data, does not record your IP address, or use identifying cookies. Startpage.com also offers a proxy service. The word proxy is listed after each search result, and if you click on that you get to view the web page through a proxy.

If you type https: instead of http: in front of Startpage.com, an encrypted connection will be used.

Katherine versus Google

By the way, I have never seen Glen Beck on TV because I do not have cable or satellite. Is he on FOX News? FOX News is not one of the 6 channels that I get with my rabbit ears antenna.

And then there is this wired article

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/#ixzz0v7drHZhm

Especially because those same critics are afraid to face Boll mano a mano IRL.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.12/ragingboll.html

The FTC has said that if you write a review of a product, you have to disclose if you received the product for free. I don't know if that regulation is applicable in this context.

When I hit that page, the first blurb that comes up is:

"Argued that the widespread use of Predator drones is a justifiable form of self-defense"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/03/drone-attacks-legit-self-defense-says-administration-lawyer/

Thanks! I will add that to my list.

That's funny. My car is essentially crap in the street.

And considering that you can make ethanol from hay, then I'll be looking for your car at the next Kentucky Derby.

His name was Mark Klein.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70914

that was Narus equipment then, as well. The Egyptians saw how good AT&T had gotten at it, and ordered themselves up some of that spy pie.

I think the following explains a lot, including the sexual assault allegations.

"Julian is incredibly like-able, incredibly enjoyable to be with – if you are agreeing with him. If you criticise him, he is very abusive. He has a very high IQ but very low EQ [emotional intelligence]." - Now Wikileaks suffers its own leaks

“I am the heart and soul of this organization, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier and all the rest,” Assange wrote Snorrason. “If you have a problem with me, piss off.”

“I believe that Julian has in fact pushed the capable people away,” Snorrason said in an interview with Wired.com. “His behavior is not of the sort that will keep independent-minded people interested.” -- Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt

At least four other senior WikiLeaks activists have also left, including the site's former spokesman, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who accused Mr Assange of "behaving like some sort of emperor", adding: "Our raison d'être was transparency, but we were not transparent ourselves."

Mr Domscheit-Berg and other ex-WikiLeaks staff will tomorrow launch a rival site, OpenLeaks, which promises to be "democratically governed by its members, rather than one group or individual." - Now Wikileaks suffers its own leaks

Why would any number of governments need to conduct a conspiracy against Wikileaks when they already have Assange's ego working in their favor?

Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory. —Sir Bernard Ingham

  “the enemy is making a false move, why should we interrupt him?” -- Napoleon

Even easier with the democrat:
obama appoints riaa lawyer as solicitor general
Obama Picks New FTC Boss Former MPAA Lobbyist
Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept.
Obama Appoints RIAA Defense Lawyer to Key DOJ Position

Dr. McCoy, the problem you are describing has been measured in controlled lab conditions. Engineers confirmed that bridging the two antennas with a single finger results in a signal drop of around 20 decibels.

Fixed that for you

The problem was solved with free bumpers, and users learning to avoid touching the gap. See this wired article: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/ [wired.com]

I still don't understand why this problem hasn't been fixed by now. The mere fact that users need to learn to avoid this "gap" in order to get proper functionality out of their phone is kind of insane.

Death grip was caused by human fingers bridging a gap between the 3G antenna and the WIFI antenna, and it could happen with a single finger touching the gap. No actual "Grip" required. The problem was solved with free bumpers, and users learning to avoid touching the gap. See this wired article: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/

Mots of those reports are horribly overblown. Most people (including me) have never been able to reproduce anything more than reducing 4 bars down to 3 bars. I've never dropped calls by "holding it wrong", even when I've only got 1 bar of signal.

I suspect it only happens when the *cell tower* is overloaded. It's not the phone that can't pick up the signal, it's the cell tower dropping whoever has the weakest signal - not because the signal is too weak, but just because it has to pick someone to drop when overloaded. The phones with the weakest signal are the most likely to be in range of some other nearby tower, which is hopefully not overloaded. In the wired article you posted, it may be that the nearby tower dropped the phone, causing it to quietly re-connect to a completely different tower that's too far away to get good signal.

Chuckle,
Yeah, why bother actually addressing the problem instead of swallowing Apple's nonsense hook line and sinker. Just read the article in the GP post, and you will see the author is clueless. (look how he holds it). He's still defending is prior position which has been proven wrong time and time again.

Compare that to the real problem: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/

Except that that's total crap and has been gone over on slashdot so often that I refuse to even give you a link.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/

I did it for you. I know, it gets old, but Education is a continuous job.

Two antennas aren't going to solve the death grip, and CDMA antennas are not much different than 3G/GSM antennas. (And the iPhone always had two antenna halves, one on either side). Antenna length is almost always dictated by frequency in use, and the CDMA bands are pretty close to the 3G bands such that the same antennas can be used for both.

Death grip was caused by human fingers bridging a gap between the 3G antenna and the WIFI antenna, and it could happen with a single finger touching the gap. No actual "Grip" required. The problem was solved with free bumpers, and users learning to avoid touching the gap. See this wired article: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-its-the-antenna-stupid/

Apple pushed the myth of the death grip, to try to divert attention from their design flaw. It was never about the grip. It was only about bridging that gap. The free bumpers eliminated the problem.

If the Verizon phones lack that gap, then any signal decrease caused by holding it is the same as you see on any other cell phone but don't confuse that the antennagate on the original iphone 4.

Me neither. Cos otherwise Sony will sue me for having commented.

HAL.

As much as I'm opposed to the idea, I think we need to put the thing into context. This is being pushed by politicians not in an attempt to block Free Speech (like Egypt did) but because they fear some massive hacking attack.

Given that politicians are openly saying Hackers might try to hack into Hoover Dam and open the floodgates, killing thousands, that's WHY they are claiming they want a kill-switch. Of course, the idea of cutting the internet is actually an unfeasible remedy; we have ISPs already cooperating to help stop DDoS attacks etc.

I'd like to think he's doing it because of near-unanimous Republican pressure

He was doing the same thing with a filibuster-proof (D) congress.

Bush had lobbyists all over his cabinet, while Obama has made official rules against it

Except for the Cornhusker Kickback/Louisiana Purchase / "every American must buy health insurance with no public option" bill (aka: Exactly what insurance companies wanted).
And appointing RIAA lawyers everywhere -- why block lobbyists when you can hire them instead?

Now, is he as bad as Bush? Probably not (well, at least not yet)... but he isn't much better either.
Which is pretty bad if you're barely above that bar (arguably one of the worst presidents in history).

Looking at the picture from TFA, it doesn't look that much bigger than a typical smartphone while folded. Personally, short of smart contacts, I'm holding out for an expanding virtual display like the multiverse cops in The One had.

Every three years, the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office entertain proposed exemptions to the DMCA, passed in 1998.

This is more than just "Kill Switch" legislation (don't believe the PR saying it is something else).

The most interesting part is -- you can't actually read the part about the kill switch. It doesn't say redacted -- IT'S JUST MISSING

Yeah, arguing from absence of evidence works real well:

"Don't believe the PR that Obama isn't an illegal immigrant from Nigeria"
"The most interesting part is, his Nigerian birth certificate and passport are nowhere to be found. It's not classified or anything -- IT'S JUST MISSING

Don't know if it will -- they actually made a deal with EMI a while back: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/emi-drops-suit-against-grooveshark-music-service-licenses-it-instead/ Somehow, it's staying around.

Dictator: Shut down your satellite access
US: Oh were really sorry those wascally hackers keep breaking our pass codes! Were trying really hard to lock them out (changes password to fred ) there that should do it.

One could construe their satellite hacking problems in Brazil to be laying ground work for this position.

The first thing any competent security agency would do, is to get officers/agents into a position of authority and trust inside the sneakernet. If you can't trust your neighbour or your "group leader", the concept falls apart. But if the united states defense departement hadn't tracked the position of these brazilian satellite pirates, they would have gotten away with it idefinetly.

Foreign? It's not just foreign. I see it happen at American sites all of the time. Heck, BoingBoing is both one of the biggest fans of Creative Commons licenses and one of the biggest abusers. They always post the CC license link prominently when it allows copying, but when it doesn't they just post the image anyways. And they're about as commercial as a website gets charging some of the heaviest ad rates around. ($20 CPM.) They reportedly raked in more than $1 million in 2006. (http://blogbuildingu.com/articles/making-money-blogging-profiles-of-6-very-successful-blogs)

There's a reason why their masthead lists two lawyers but no staff photographers. They would rather pay the lawyers to spew squid ink about fair use than to pay anything to the people who contribute the art. This attitude, of course, is not unique to this site. A number of sites do it.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/04/george-bernard-shaws.html

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/06/startups-of-londons.html

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/ol-space-food/

So, you can't say you are 100% sure...Maybe the interaction is too small to have an effect on one's health, but nobody proved that yet.

SCIENCE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY.

Any demand to be "100% sure" that an effect does not exist is unreasonable nonsense. Nobody can do that. All we can do is make observations, derive mathematical patterns from them (we call these "theories") and make predictions based on these generalizations with the aim of finding conflicts between the theory and the observation. If we find any, the theory is wrong and we begin again. If we don't find any contradictions, we provisionally accept the theory. As the theory continues to accurately predict reality, our confidence in it increases. With respect to a long-established theory like that of gravity or evolution, it's overwhelmingly likely that any discrepancy between the theory and observation is due to an error in the latter, and one would need extraordinary evidence to overturn such a theory, e.g. the famous hypothetical "fossil rabbit in the precambrian".

Now, with respect to electromagnetic fields, we have very specific and accurate theories to describe their behavior, effects, and interactions, and these theories have lasted over a century. The neurons that make up our brains and that form our consciousness are not special, and like all matter, they are also subject to these same theories. Neurons create electrical voltages by changing the concentration of ions inside themselves relative to their environment, and this mechanism is well-understood: the mysteries of the brain are in the emergent phenomena. The chemistry is pedestrian.

Now, when we plug the numbers for consumer electronics and neurons into electromagnetic theory, we see that there is simply no effect. The radiation is too weak to disrupt the bonds that join molecule in DNA and proteins, and at the intensity used in mobile phones, the heating effect is weaker than that of a pillow at night. The theory predicts that nothing should happen.

Now, just to be sure, various researchers have looked for an effect anyway, and have overwhelmingly failed to find a link between normal levels of mobile radiation and cancer. The few spurious positive results can be attributed to bad experimental design (e.g., uncontrolled and self-selected survey responses) or simple publication bias (if you perform a hundred studies at a 95% confidence interval, five of them will show spuriously positive results!).

Combined, the robustness of electromagnetic theory, our understanding of the chemistry of the cell, and the failure to find conclusive causal evidence paint as certain a picture as one can paint using the canvas of science. The theory says that mobile phones shouldn't cause cancer. When we look for cancer, we find nothing. We have no plausible explanation for how they could cause cancer. The only reasonable conclusion to draw is that absent further and significant evidence, cell phones do not cause cancer.

No, it's not 100% certain. It's also not 100% certain that there's no luminfiferous aether, and we can't be 100% sure that rotting fruit doesn't turn into insects by itself. If you want to believe in a cancer risk anyway, you're no better than someone who believes in hexes, astrology, or homeopathy.

Is this comparable to Netflix in terms of privacy, too? Because the second iteration of the Netflix Prize was postponed after a lawsuit charged that it breached customer privacy.

Very few medical conditions are caused purely by lifestyle choices...

You'll need to show a little proof here.

On the other hand, "Personal decisions are the leading cause of death", Dr. Ralph L. Keeney of Duke University, 2008
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/files/2009/01/keeney.pdf

A discussion of his paper, with a variety of points of view, at the Operations Research Forum
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/2009/01/06/personal-decisions-are-the-leading-cause-of-death/

And for the rest of us, the Wired article on his paper is here
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_keeney

The Japanese spent ages working on a death ray in World War 2. How long til something like this ends up in active service?

Something like this? :D

"The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown" http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom some are open for all :)

Yet again, Slashdot links to some parastic site that copied the original story rather than the source: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1.

TFA on Lottery Post was plagiarised from Wired.

Original story: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1

FYI, I think this is a Wired story by Jonah Lehrer:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1

If so, please modify the post to direct traffic where it ought to go.

Cheers!

The same article appeared in Feb 2011 issue of Wired even though Lottery Post doesn't seem to go out of its way to attribute the author and cite the issue properly.

The UK would be very interesting. You would be facing the GCHQ/NSA (US bases) at home. Would they suggest net/web 2.0 stays up to track everybody in realtime and offer locations of interest to ~Forward Intelligence Teams (FITs).
Find and "remove" the leaders and the lone-wolf types who suddenly become very active.
The "phone network" is the GCHQ so your data call to an ISP outside the UK would just add another number to be tracked back to you and then blocked/recoreded.
Public phones, mobile phones may only allow a sub set of calls, eg a "white list" of local emergency services and the police tip line.
Mesh wireless network is just more quality signals intelligence to act on. The US and UK are very very good at tracking any wifi, cell or sat phone.
Look up and you will see the next gen Nimrod/Islander or drone collecting all the realtime voice prints on any "linux phone".
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1268535/Superspy-sky-soon-patrolling-British-cities-search-hidden-terror-cells.html
Use any phone after the 'emergency' and your voice of interest will add some new billing/address/id or just location. CCTV can do the rest.
Ham radio would be the same. They have learned from the French use of minitel (1980's French computer network) setting up protests.
Whats left? U.S. military satellite transponders ie "The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown" http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom ?

Or is it that my computer's clock is really off? Because it was done in December of 2011 according to the video in the article. Anyway this hardly is something new since there was this £500 launch this summer in fancy orange styrofoam http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1288688/The-incredible-pictures-edge-space--taken-30-digital-camera-attached-balloon.html and even this 150$ launch from September 2009 and subsequent Project Icarus http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/

In the real future, this guy wouldn't even make it past the front door.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/09/found_divebars/

(Ah well. They were wrong about CueCat too. And Apple. And push. And...)

.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/egypt-isp-shutdown/
Gov calls, sends, codes all the 'big' isp's a message. Smaller isp's, private groups get a DHS visit.
You wake up, turn on your adsl modem, cable, optical device ect no lights for you today.
Ring the telco, at best a recored message, or nothing.
Dust off your sat phone or phone an isp outside the USA with your CC.
Can that US sat phone running in the US on a US CC be turned off or tracked http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078689 as in Iraq?. Can international calls be blocked?
Whats left? Ham radio is registered, ie the gov would have a "list" of users and detection would not be hard...
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom Brazilian Sat-Hack like or risk a data hand over to a fleeing tourist/diplomat/press?
NO CARRIER

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/egypt-isp-shutdown/
Gov calls, sends, codes all the 'big' isp's a message. Smaller isp's, private groups get a DHS visit.
You wake up, turn on your adsl modem, cable, optical device ect no lights for you today.
Ring the telco, at best a recored message, or nothing.
Dust off your sat phone or phone an isp outside the USA with your CC.
Can that US sat phone running in the US on a US CC be turned off or tracked http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078689 as in Iraq?. Can international calls be blocked?
Whats left? Ham radio is registered, ie the gov would have a "list" of users and detection would not be hard...
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2009/04/fleetcom Brazilian Sat-Hack like or risk a data hand over to a fleeing tourist/diplomat/press?
NO CARRIER

This almost makes me cry:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1

"Weinberg and his men proved the efficacy of thorium reactors in hundreds of tests at Oak Ridge from the â(TM)50s through the early â(TM)70s. But thorium hit a dead end. Locked in a struggle with a nuclear- armed Soviet Union, the US government in the â(TM)60s chose to build uranium-fueled reactors â" in part because they produce plutonium that can be refined into weapons-grade material. The course of the nuclear industry was set for the next four decades, and thorium power became one of the great what-if technologies of the 20th century."

I am amazed if this technology can deliver what it is being portrayed as being capable of, that no one else is doing this. Wired had an article on this over a year ago which I found fascinating. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes