The 2006 Ig Nobel Prize in mathematics was awarded to Dr Piers Barnes and Ms Nic Svenson of CSIRO for figuring out how many photographs to take of a group of people to be confident of getting at least one where no-one’s blinking
Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University in Denmark have teleported matter. The experiment involved for the first time a macroscopic atomic object containing thousands of billions of atoms. They also teleported the information a distance of half a meter but believe it can be extended further — via Boing Boing
Whether you’re looking to exact revenge on a cheating spouse or to simply quiet that noisy neighbour once and for all, InstantHitman.com can help. Let our team of experienced contract killers make a bold statement on your behalf! If you’re reading this fine print, you’re either a search engine, a lawyer, or just really bored. In any event, this site is obviously a joke. Please, don’t kill anyone, and don’t hire anyone to kill anyone. Got it?
Amazon’s A9 search engine has dropped some of its most widely touted features, including the ability to remember everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed detailed, street-level images of major cities
In evolutionary circles, giant rats and miniature elephants have long been accepted as the products of accelerated evolution in isolated environments such as islands, but McGill paleontologist Virginie Millien has been the first to establish just how quickly these odd-shaped animals got that way. In fact, island mammals evolve about three times faster than their mainland counterparts, says Dr. Millien, who based her findings on an analysis of the documented evolutionary rates of 88 island mammal species, about half of which were rodents — via Warren Ellis
Can a surveillance drone be made virtually invisible? VeraTech, a US company thinks so, and their patent application explains how. Persistence of vision
turns the fast-moving rotors of any helicopter into a near-transparent blur, while the slow-moving body looks solid. So why not make the entire aircraft spin as it flies, turning it into a single faint blur in the sky?
The US government is loosening its grip on the domain name system and is edging closer to giving ICANN a greater measure of autonomy in making decisions about the future of the Internet
A hoop of superconducting magnets several kilometres wide and similar to a particle accelerator could hurl satellites into space — or perhaps weapons around the world — at a fraction of current launch costs, suggest the findings of a report funded by the US air force. Their interest stems from the ring’s potential to launch small, 10-kilogram satellites into orbit, though researchers were not told what kind of satellites the military had in mind. Any payload lofted with such a ring would need to withstand a staggering 2000 times the force of gravity as it accelerates to over 23 times the speed of sound — before hitting a ramp into the heavens
Jon Lech Johansen, known as DVD Jon
after he cracked CSS encryption at the age of 15, has now reverse-engineered Apple’s FairPlay DRM — but not to crack it. Instead Johansen’s company, DoubleTwist Ventures, wants to license the tech to media companies shut out by Apple from playing their content on the iPod. And, soon, on the iTV. Johansen could end up selling a lot of hardware for Apple
A 29-year old Swede, who was the first to be convicted under last year’s new file-sharing laws, has been cleared on appeal. The court of appeal did not consider the screen dumps provided by the Antipiracy Bureau enough evidence to be able to convict the man. Since the crime does not carry a high enough punishment under Swedish law to allow for a search of the defendant’s house, this means it will be virtually impossible to prove file-sharing crimes in the future
International security expert Bruce Schneier claimed processing power has increased to such a degree that data has become a pollutant
Alton Verm, an unbelievably stupid man from Texas, is fired up because the Conroe Independent School District uses the book Fahrenheit 451
as classroom reading material. He wants to ban a book about book burning because It’s just all kinds of filth
. Not that he’d know, because he hasn’t even read it — via yourhoustonnews.com
Academics may be given limited access to books banned under terrorism laws, Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says. His comments came after the University of Melbourne removed three books from its library, fearful it may be breaking laws which prevent the distribution of literature which praises terrorism or terrorists — via The Age
Yahoo is set to allow third-party developers to use its consumer e-mail programme create new web services
A flexible material that automatically repairs damage and also pinpoints where it has been wounded has been developed by US researchers. They say it could eventually prove useful for airplane maintenance
Dell has started a US recycling program that features free home pickup of any Dell computer or peripheral. Dell already offers similar programs in Europe and Canada. After enduring tough criticism over the years from environmental groups, tech companies have started offering more ways for consumers to properly dispose of computer gadgets and to conserve electricity while using computer gear. Among tech companies, environmental advocacy group Greenpeace has singled out Dell and mobile-phone maker Nokia for their ecologically conscientious policies
A woman in Surrey, England couldn’t figure out why her car wouldn’t start. An Automobile Association patrolman arrived on the scene and the two realised that the woman’s dog had swallowed the car’s immobiliser chip fob. The immobiliser contains an RFID chip that must be within a certain proximity of the steering column for the key to work. The patrolman put the dog in the front seat, turned the key and the car started right up — via Boing Boing
The format war on next generation DVD may be over before it has begun, thanks to a breakthrough by a British media technology company. New Medium Enterprises claims to have solved a technical production problem that makes it possible to produce a cheap, multiple-layer DVD disk containing one film in different, competing formats
The British Library has called for a serious updating
of current copyright law to unambiguously
include digital content and take technological advances into account
Amcom Telecommunications said it would start selling high-speed ADSL2+ broadband services in the final quarter of this year, at least 15 months after the telco first started talking about the technology
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