Thirty years from now, we’ll use bionic eyes giving us zoom vision
for faster reactions. Nanobots injected in our bloodstream will complement our immune system. Artificial muscles built with electroactive polymers will help us to be stronger and faster. So you think it’s science fiction? Not at all. You’ll see that some people are so convinced that this kind of human enhancements will happen that they predict than in a few decades, all sporting events will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes
California is introducing new laws to help eradicate spyware. The bill bans the installation of software that can be used to take over another computer and allows customers to seek $1000 in damages if they’ve fallen victim to this kind of malicious software. Can this really help cut down spyware or will it just be another fatally flawed piece of legislation?
New navigation systems in Japan can quickly tell drivers which roads have traffic jams. A computerised FM radio broadcast system that collects and sends information from more than 28,000 infrared and radio-wave beacons installed along roads, they can also calculate how many seconds it would take to drive through virtually every block of the nation’s cities and then find the fastest routes
Federal officials are developing government-wide identification card standards for federal employees and contractors to prevent terrorists, criminals and other unauthorized people from getting into government buildings and computer systems. The project is known as the Personal Identity Verification Project, and is being managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Microsoft is abandoning one of its most controversial attempts to dominate the internet after rival companies banded together to oppose it and consumers failed to embrace it. It has announced that it would stop trying to persuade web sites to use its Passport service, which stores consumers’ credit-card and other information as Internet users surf from place to place
A red wolf that escaped earlier this month from the Binghamton zoo has been found dead. Officials at the Ross Park Zoo say the wolf’s body was found late yesterday afternoon in a ravine on private property behind the zoo. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the wolf was shot by a moron
Netcraft has released an Anti-Phishing Toolbar that provides detailed information about the web site you are visiting (sites’ hosting location, country, longevity and popularity) at all times to help users to validate fraudulent URLs
eBay has announced that its users no longer will be able to sign in to its Web sites using Passport, Microsoft’s identity-management technology. Earlier this year, online job site Monster.com dropped Passport. The defections raise doubts about the technology’s future
A week after San Francisco’s Genetic Savings and Clone revealed the sale of their first cat to a customer, GS&C acknowledges it has been hired by anonymous buyers in Hollywood to bank genes of show business animals
Russia has announced that it will no longer ferry US astronauts to space for free as it has been doing for two years. From 2006 the US will be expected to pay
Transparent electronics is an emerging technology which aims to produce invisible electronic circuits. Now, researchers from Oregon report they made a major advance in transparent electronics. Their zinc-tin-oxide thin-film
materials are amorphous, physically robust, chemically stable and cheap to produce at just above room temperature. These new materials and transistors offer many new possibilities for consumer electronics, transportation, business and the military
There’s a trailer for Sin City on Apple’s preview site. The film is being co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller himself. The video is dinky in size but it is gorgeous, it really looks like they somehow took Miller’s comic style and made it into a movie. High contrast, sometimes looks like line art, cool sparse use of colour — via Slashdot
Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs. But the inventor of the underlying technology won’t make a cent. Today, Jim Russell does consulting from a lab in the basement of his Bellevue home to keep in the game and supplement a modest pension from Battelle
British design engineer Glynne Bowsher and his team, the British Steam Car Challenge, have almost finished building a super-fast steam-powered vehicle reminiscent of the Batmobile. And this car puts a new technological breath of life into what is regarded as a traditional means of power
An all IPv6 backbone was launched this weekend in China. CERNET2 is the biggest next-generation Internet network in operation in the world and connects 25 universities in 20 cities. The speed in the backbone network reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second
This week CleanSoftware.org was launched, a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components
Authorities in New Zealand’s South Island say thieves have dismantled and carried off most of a 30-metre long bridge. Large sections of the aluminium bridge were taken from a wetland reserve south-west of Dunedin. It had been installed with the aid of a helicopter. Authorities say the bridge pieces will probably be sold for scrap
Dropping its daily diet of stories on crime, corruption and evil wrongdoing, Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper printed only good news in its Christmas issue. No parking tickets today — traffic wardens have day off!
the newspaper with 12 million readers wrote. The paper turned a scandal involving the opposition Christian Democrats on its head, cheering a generous severance payment of 52,000 euros that the disgraced general secretary, Laurenz Meyer, received after quitting under pressure on Wednesday
Ben Browder, best known as Farscape’s John Crichton, will become a Stargate SG-1 regular starting from season nine, joining the SG-1 team although is role is unclear. He will fill the gap left by Anderson who’s unlikely to return except for small appearances. Claudia Black, Farscape’s Aeryn Sun, is also going to play in a fair number of episodes
A 16-foot wide asteroid has passed the Earth in a phenomenally close call. The Asteroid, named 2004 YD5, passed just below the 22,300 mile range where geostationary satellites sit. What makes the incident most interesting is that the asteroid was not seen until after it passed the Earth, due to the well-known Cosmic Blind Spot caused by the Sun
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