There are some images so surreal that you just can’t quite wrap your head around them. This one comes via Neatorama:
Yes, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. That’s Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr. T’s lap (Santa T?), giving him a smooch, at a White House Christmas party in 1983. The First Lady actually requested Mr. T come to the party dressed as Santa Claus. This photo was printed in countless newspapers and magazines around the world.
Motorcycle sales have hit a new record as consumers abandon cars in favour of two-wheeled mode of transport. While car sales slumped last year, figures from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries show sales of motorbikes and scooters climbed by 3.2 per cent to 134,000
It seems that a recent reply-all storm
at the State Department caused the entire e-mail infrastructure to crash. A notice sent to all State Department employees warned of disciplinary actions which will be taken if users reply-all
to lists with a large amount of users. Apparently, the problem was compounded by not only angry replies asking to be taken off the errant list, but by the e-mail recall function, which generated further e-mail traffic. One has to wonder if capacity planning was performed correctly — should an e-mail system be able to handle this type of traffic, or is it an unreasonable task for even the best system? — via Slashdot
It’s not the first time researchers have tried to emulate flapping as a way to fly aircraft, but US Air Force funded researchers are now looking at how bats move to develop future micro-aircraft. According to USAF researchers, birds, bats and insects have some highly varied mechanical properties that researchers have not utilised in engineering flight vehicles. The idea is to reproduce bat mechanics and develop technology could lead to small, remote controlled aircraft that could move in places where fixed wing aircraft have a hard time like interiors of buildings, caves or tunnels, researchers said
Plustek’s $700 Reader scans books through a cool optical character recognition tech that understands words even when they’re faded or smudged on the physical page. It can duplicate books in PDF and various other file types. But the killer app, and one whose ease of use is probably a bit controversial, is that the scan also automatically creates MP3 files of books. This means you can make an audio file of any book you own in only a few steps
pureSilicon is demonstrating the highest-density SSD available today: the 1TB Nitro Series. This represents a major advance for the storage industry since it combines maximum density with high performance and low power demand. Four of these drives deliver 4TB in the same space as a standard 3.5-inch HDD, so server footprint requirements and energy consumption in data-intensive applications can be considerably reduced
Palm today announced what promises to be the product that finally matches and even betters the Apple iPhone, and certainly looks to be the most important product announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. It’s based on a completely new operating system, called Palm webOS, and Jon Rubinstein, executive chairman of Palm, explained the thinking behind it
University of California, Irvine researchers are applying lessons learned from music and video peer-to-peer file transfer networks to a system for reducing traffic jams on the roads. Their Autonet plan would centre around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the clients
in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They’re building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions
Rare footage of one of the world’s most strange and elusive mammals has been captured by scientists. Large, and with a long, thin snout, the Hispaniolan solenodon resembles an overgrown shrew; it can inject passing prey with a venom-loaded bite. Little is known about the creature, which is found in the Caribbean, but it is under threat from deforestation, hunting and introduced species. Researchers say conservation efforts are now needed
Security vendors Sophos and Kaspersky Lab this week said they would block UK police attempts to hack into people’s computer systems without a warrant. The UK Home Office last week said it was working with the European Parliament on plans to extend police powers to conduct remote searches of computers. UK police already have the power to hack into suspect systems without a warrant, due to an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act, which came into force in 1995
A combination of drugs could trick the body into sending its repair mechanisms into overdrive, say scientists. The technique could be used to speed the healing of heart or bone damage, they claim. The bone marrow of treated mice released 100 times as many stem cells — which help to regenerate tissue
The SD Association — a global organisation founded by Panasonic, SanDisk and Toshiba that sets standards for, and promotes, Secure Digital technologies (read: SD cards) — has announced SDXC (Secure Digital Extended Capacity) technology, which promises SD cards for devices like digital cameras, with a theoretical maximum capacity of 2TB — that’s 2,000 gigabytes of storage. Today’s maximum SDHC cards hit 32GB. But Panasonic has announced already its intentions to produce a 64GB SDXC card, and 128GB shouldn’t be more than a few handfuls of months after that
Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides Guilt Upon Accusation
, which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement, they are immediately guilty. The punishment — summary Internet disconnection
B Ramaling Raju, chairman of Satyam Computer, has resigned after admitting revenue and profits for the Indian outsourcing company were inflated. Satyam’s stock plunged, auditor PriceWaterhouse faces questions and Merrill Lynch dropped advisory services. Satyam provided IT services to Cisco and more than 650 companies. Shares of Indian IT outsourcing company Satyam Computers plunged nearly 80 percent after its chairman admitted he had inflated the company’s revenue by 33 percent and profits by 10 times
Apple has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software. At present, most music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store can only be played through an iTunes interface or iPod. The agreement with Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner Music will end digital rights management (DRM) software currently attached to iTunes music
The emerging field of transparent and flexible electronics not only holds the promise of a new class of device components that would be more environmentally benign than current electronics; being able to print transparent circuits on low-cost and flexible plastic substrates also opens up the possibility of a wide range of new applications, ranging from windshield displays and flexible solar cells to clear toys and artificial skins and even sensor implants
Seagate has begun volume shipments of a new desktop hard-disk drive that offers 1TB of storage space across two disks. What makes the drives special isn’t the capacity — a 1.5TB drive from the same company is already available — but the density at which data is stored on each of the disk platters inside the drive. Seagate’s 7200.11 drives spread the 1.5TBs across four disk platters but the new Barracuda 7200.12HD drives manage to store 1TB of data across just two platters
Australia’s use of coal and carbon emissions policies are guaranteeing the destruction of much of the life on the planet
, a leading NASA scientist has written in a letter to Barack Obama. The head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor James Hansen, has written an open letter to Barack Obama calling for a moratorium on coal-fired power stations and the use of next-generation nuclear power
The Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant. The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives a coach and horses
through privacy laws. The hacking is known as remote searching
. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room
The richest repository of cultural material in the country would have to be the ABC — so it is exciting and maybe even alarming to hear that Auntie is experimenting with the idea of opening up its archives so that members of the public can access and even re-use and remix the material. The experiment is taking place under Pool, the social media project developed within Radio National. Pool is a groundbreaking experiment in User Generated Content. Users can upload text, music, photos, videos, documentaries or whatever and the content is made available for others to view and use
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