Text messaging is a wonderful business to be in: about 2.5 trillion messages will have been sent from cellphones worldwide this year. The public assumes that the wireless carriers’ costs are far higher than they actually are, and profit margins are concealed by a heavy curtain
It must have been an appalling moment when a Viking realised he had paid two cows for a fake designer sword; a clash of blade on blade in battle would have led to his sword, still sharp enough to slice through bone, shattering like glass. You really didn’t want to have that happen,
said Dr Alan Williams, an archaeometallurgist and consultant to the Wallace Collection, the London museum which has one of the best assemblies of ancient weapons in the world. He and Tony Fry, a senior researcher at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, south-west London, have solved a riddle that the Viking swordsmiths may have sensed but didn’t quite understand
Cryptol, a domain specific language for the design, implementation and verification of cryptographic algorithms
, is now available to the public. Cryptol was originally designed for the NSA. It allows for a quick evaluation and continued revisions, and is available for Linux, OS X, and Windows — via Slashdot
Pop culture is finally hitting the eject button on the VHS tape, the once-ubiquitous home-video format that will finish this month as a creaky ghost of Christmas past. After three decades of steady if unspectacular service, the spinning wheels of the home-entertainment stalwart are slowing to a halt at retail outlets. On a crisp Friday morning in October, the final truckload of VHS tapes rolled out of a Palm Harbor, Florida, warehouse run by Ryan J Kugler, the last major supplier of the tapes
The Apple computer was invented in a garage. Same with the Google search engine. Now, tinkerers are working at home with the basic building blocks of life itself. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering — a field long dominated by PhDs toiling in university and corporate laboratories
Some people just can’t wait to open their Christmas presents. That apparently was the case with a short and very fast thief who went to a store in Murray, grabbed a present and made a clean getaway on all fours.
At Smith’s Food & Drug in Murray, a popular place these days is the manager’s office, where they have the surveillance video.
You had to see to believe it, but it happened. So, it’s crazy,said Tracy Jacobson, with Smith’s Food & Drug.A suspicious character entered through the front door.
I’ve never seen him shop in here before; brand new customer, didn’t even have his Fresh Value card,store manager Roger Adamson said.What happened next is already becoming legend.
I mean, how likely is that? For a dog to walk into a store, go down the pet aisle, get his bone and walk out?Jacobson said.
— via ksl.com
A new material could give a chameleon a run for its money — it can rapidly change colour to match that of any in the visible spectrum. The synthetic material can be likened to an opal, a mineral that owes its variety of colours to its layered structure: regions with a high refractive index, in which light travels slowly, are interleaved with regions with a low refractive index. Light waves with a wavelength — or colour — similar to that of the space between layers are scattered in a way that gives opal its iridescent sheen
The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother? When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. The study, which included extensive brain imaging, is the most dramatic demonstration to date of so-called blindsight, the native ability to sense things using the brain’s primitive, subcortical — and entirely subconscious — visual system
Bruce Boxleitner, who played Alan Bradley and the title character in Walt Disney Pictures’ 1982 film Tron, is currently filming a role for the studio’s upcoming Tron 2.0. He joins fellow original cast member Jeff Bridges and newcomers Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett in the anticipated action-adventure
Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%. IE8 is just around the corner, but current market share data suggests that Microsoft has no effective tool to stop the bleeding at this time — and Mozilla can pick up two out of every three users Microsoft surrenders
Researchers at Princeton University in America have discovered an entirely new way to generate laser light. The new lasers were found after scientists working with a quantum cascade laser noticed an unexpected beam — and one that needed less power than a conventional laser beam. Quantum cascade lasers are much smaller than the solid-state lasers found in DVD players. These nanotechnology devices are a tenth as thick as a human hair and 3 millimetres long
The heat source is a pair of headlights. A car door alarm signals emergencies. An auto air filter and fan provide climate control. But this contraption has nothing to do with transportation. It is a sturdy, low-cost incubator, designed to keep vulnerable newborns warm during the first fragile days of life. Unlike the notoriously high-maintenance incubators found in neonatal intensive care units in the United States, it is easily repaired, because all of its operational parts come from cars. And while incubators can cost $40,000 or more, this one can be built for less than $1,000
Microsoft issued a reprieve for Windows XP. To promote adoption of its new Windows 7 OS, Microsoft planned to make Windows XP unavailable in February. Now, Microsoft will allow Windows XP licenses to be received until 30 May. Many businesses had stuck with Windows XP rather than upgrade to Windows Vista due to incompatibility issues
The internet was supposed to bring vast choice for customers, access to obscure and forgotten products and a fortune for sellers who focused on niche markets. But a study of digital music sales has posed the first big challenge to this long tail
theory: more than 10 million of the 13 million tracks available on the internet failed to find a single buyer last year. The idea that niche markets were the key to the future for internet sellers was described as one of the most important economic models of the 21st century when it was spelt out by Chris Anderson in his book The Long Tail in 2006. But a study by Will Page, chief economist of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, a not-for-profit royalty collection society, suggests that the niche market is not an untapped goldmine and that online sales success still relies on big hits
Previously thought to be limited to HTTP and HTTPs web traffic, the touted Australian Internet filter will also target P2P traffic. In response to a comment posted by a user on his department’s blog, Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy has admitted that BitTorrent filtering will be attempted during upcoming trials
Sharing a movie with an insensitive eight-armed animal may not be every woman’s perfect date. Renata Pronk did it for science, and made two significant discoveries. Her unsettling news for Christmas revellers preparing to tuck into seafood platters is that octopuses can watch television and understand at least some of what they see. Discriminating viewers, however, they enjoy only high-definition programs. In a second finding, the Macquarie University marine biology researcher resolved a long scientific debate, discovering that octopuses, despite their intelligence, lack individual personalities
Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed. It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut. A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily. Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies
W Mark Felt Sr, 95, associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, better known as Deep Throat, the most famous anonymous source in American history, died at his home in Santa Rosa, California. Felt secretly guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to pursue the story of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate office buildings, and later of the Nixon administration’s campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies — via Slashdot
A new MacGyver-esque mobile phone hack could bring cheap, on-the-spot disease detection to even the most remote villages on the planet. Using only an LED, plastic light filter and some wires, scientists at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute have modded a mobile phone into a portable blood tester capable of monitoring HIV, malaria, leukemia and detecting diseases. Blood tests today require either refrigerator-sized machines that cost tens of thousands of dollars or a trained technician who manually identifies and counts cells under a microscope. These systems are slow, expensive and require dedicated labs to function. And soon they could be a thing of the past
A new working model of the mysterious 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers
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