Dean Kamen, the engineer who invented the Segway, is puzzling over a new equation these days. An estimated 1.1 billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. Those figures add up to a big problem for the world‚Äîand an equally big opportunity for entrepreneurs. To solve the problem, he’s invented two devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide much-needed power and clean water in rural villages
The first experimental demonstration of quantum telecloning has been achieved by scientists at the University of Tokyo, the Japan Science and Technology Agency, and the University of York. Telecloning combines cloning (or copying) with teleportation; ie, disembodied transport. The scientists have succeeded in making the first remote copies of beams of laser light, by combining quantum cloning with quantum teleportation into a single experimental step. Telecloning is more efficient than any combination of teleportation and local cloning because it relies on a new form of quantum entanglement — multipartite entanglement — via Warren Ellis
The City of Chicago wants to blanket its streets and neighbourhoods with a wireless Internet signal, granting residents and visitors access to the Web wherever they are — on streets, in homes, offices and shopping malls. Chicago’s chief information officer said that the city will invite technology companies to submit proposals this spring on how to build and offer citywide wireless broadband [BugMeNot]
Houston’s police chief is suggesting putting surveillance cameras in apartment complexes, downtown streets and even private homes. Scott Henson with the American Civil Liberties Union calls Hurtt’s proposal to require surveillance cameras as part of some building permits — radical and extreme
Paul Dell builds web sites. So, he has had a URL stating as much: dellwebsites.com. Somehow, Dell, the giant computer vendor thinks that people would be confused by that is and is suing for 100,000 Euros in damages — via digg
Amazon is in advanced talks with the four global music companies about a digital-music service that could be launched as soon as this summer. It would feature Amazon-branded portable music players, designed and built for the retailer, and a subscription service that would deeply discount and preload those devices with songs
Telstra is likely to proceed with its next generation broadband network regardless of the regulatory outcome it receives, an analyst says. Goldman Sachs JBWere analyst Christian Guerra said broadband was critical to Telstra’s future and Australia’s largest telco could not afford to abandon the fibre to the node (FTTN) rollout altogether
Microsoft will close the book on its appallingly bad FrontPage web design programme with the release of Office 2007, formerly known as Office 12, late this year
Noted physicist Dr Franklin Felber will present his new exact solution of Einstein’s 90-year-old gravitational field equation to the Space Technology and Applications International Forum in Albuquerque. The solution is the first that accounts for masses moving near the speed of light. Felber’s antigravity discovery solves the two greatest engineering challenges to space travel near the speed of light: identifying an energy source capable of producing the acceleration; and limiting stresses on humans and equipment during rapid acceleration — via Warren Ellis
The latest definitions file for Microsoft’s Anti-Spyware beta flags Symantec’s Norton Antivirus products as a password-stealing trojan and prompts users to delete portions of the programme. Users who follow the instructions lose their installation of Norton, requiring delicate Windows registry edits and a complete removal/reinstall of Norton. Microsoft’s support forum is quickly filling up with complaints about this problem, many from businesses that have been pretty hard hit. This should be a cautionary tale about deploying beta products in production environments
Yorick Sample I Felted originally uploaded by Red Wolf
This is the first Yorick sample. It’s done in a New Zealand yarn: Naturally Woodland 12 Ply (77% mohair, 14% acrylic 5% nylon)
The mohair felts nicely. The acrylic/nylon coloured bits come through well. It’s still really fuzzy, so it may need a bit more felting to get proper definition on the eyes. The fuzz makes it difficult to see the row of holes that define the top of the skull.
I think this really needs to be done in a less hairy yarn.
A blind UC Berkeley student is suing Target, saying the retailer is violating the civil rights of those who cannot see because its web site is inaccessible to them — via digg
The Firefox memory leak is not a bug. It’s a feature. The feature
is how the pages are cached in a tabbed environment. To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab. This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox’s memory usage can climb dramatically. It’s a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web
Children at a Florida elementary school refused to sell lollies to raise money for a field trip, having just completed an educational unit on health and well-being. The widow of Dr Atkins was so moved by their commonsense that she donated $16,000 to their school so they could afford the trip without selling junk-food — Boing Boing
Harry Whittington, 78, was alert and doing fine
after US Vice President Dick Cheney sprayed Whittington with shotgun pellets on Saturday at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas. Does this mean it’s open season on lawyers? — via Boing Boing
Several companies are developing electronically controlled lenses to provide enhanced vision. Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person’s eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light
A Staffordshire, England woman’s garden drain was clogged with what may be a small dead octopus. Vicky Springitt thought it was an old banana skin until her 9-year-old son Isaac pulled it out with a pair of tongs. Nobody seems to know where the creature came from — Boing Boing
A team of New York physicists has confirmed that a tabletop contraption made at UCLA does in fact generate nuclear fusion at room temperatures, using pairs of crystals and a small tank of deuterium. But unlike less reliable reports back in the 1980s, there’s no talk this time of producing endless supplies of power. Rather, the technology could lead to ultra-portable x-ray machines and even a wearable device that could provide safe, continuous cancer treatment — via Science Blog
A former Australian city councillor has been charged with assault for shushing a woman who wouldn’t stop talking on her phone at a screening of Brokeback Mountain. Pauline Clayton was on holidays in Texas, catching the movie in Texas cinema, when the woman’s phone rang. After she ignored a shushing gesture, Clayton touched her lightly on the shoulder. After Clayton touched her a second time, the woman went berserk, screamed obscenities, and got two cops and swore out an assault complaint — via Boing Boing
It appears that Eddie, the retarded UFO navigator, wasn’t allowed to play with the big boys. While his mates were off creating a rather nifty crop circle (KMZ) in Billingley, Yorkshire, Eddie was booted a couple of fields over and left to his own devices (KMZ). Feel free to make up your own wacky explanation
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