Tag: General Hardware

Self-Adjusting Rifle Scope

The Firearm Blog has the lead one a new piece of fancy technology brought to us by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a self-adjusting rifle scope:

Military and police marksmen could see their rifle sights catch up with the 21st century with a fiber-optic laser-based sensor system that automatically corrects for even tiny barrel disruptions.

The system, developed by a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Slobodan Rajic, precisely measures the deflection of the barrel relative to the sight and then electronically makes the necessary corrections. The lifesaving results are lethal.

The only current downside is the technology only appears to work with fluted barrels:

The typical barrel of a high-power rifle has exterior grooves, called flutes, to reduce weight and create more surface area to enable the barrel to cool faster. The barrel heats up as a result of the hot expanding gases in the barrel and the friction from the bullets that are propelled by these hot gases along a helical path inside the barrel.

With the ORNL technology, glass optical fibers are placed into the flutes. These flutes are either produced by the barrel manufacturer or subsequently retrofit. The sensor system contains a laser diode that sends a signal beam into the optical fibers parallel to the bore axis of the barrel.

Still this technology looks fucking awesome and I believe it goes without saying that I want one.

Ad Supported Kindle

In their drive to make the Kindle cheaper Amazon is trying something new; an ad supported Kindle that will be sold at a $25.00 discount. The advertisements will be displayed on the users home screen and as screen savers but no advertisements will be displayed while you’re actually reading a book. This was a smart idea because displaying ads while somebody is reading would probably destroy the image of the product. If you get sick of the ads you can also pay Amazon an additional $25.00 to turn them off which was the smartest move they could make. At least that way you don’t have to worry about buyer’s remorse.

Overall this move was better than what I was expecting. The system I figured Amazon would create would involve periodically display ads between page turns. I though they would go with a system where every ‘x’ (x being an arbitrary number most likely higher than 10) page turns would display a full screen ad similar to magazines. Thankfully they didn’t go this route because it would be annoying to anybody who purchased the discounted device.

With all of this said $25.00 is not enough to make me put up with ads so I’ll continue to buy the more expensive model (with 3G because I like being able to download books anywhere). For those of you who don’t care though this may be a way to save $25.00.

iPad Makes a Great Video Player

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I don’t purchase physical media all that often. Most of the movies I buy are purchased via iTunes. The reason for this is because iTunes has a good selection of movies, I can play movies on any of my computers, and my movies can be loaded onto my iPad and iPhone. If there is a downside it’s the fact that plugging a computer into a friend’s television isn’t always a straight forward way to watch a movie and most movies played via a computer on a CRT television look like shit.

Realizing the iPad is far more portable than a television and that I sometimes like to bring movies to my friends’ houses I decided to purchase a set of Component AV Cables for use with my iPad and iPhone. Last night was the first time I actually used them and I’m happy to report they work great. The test movie was the high definition version of Tron: Legacy which looked absolutely great playing off of my iPad. It also beat the Hell out of trying to hook a laptop up to the television. Being everything has a downside one is apparently made using the iPad, there is no remote control. If you want to pause the move you have to go over to the iPad and tap the pause button on the screen. Not a big deal but it’s honestly the only downside I could find to this setup.

While playing a movie on an external display you can turn the iPad’s screen off and the movie will continue to play. However if you leave the Video app the movie will stop playing which is probably a side effect of allowing other applications to utilize the video-out capabilities of the iPad. I will also note that if you get an e-mail or other message on the iPad while it’s hooked into a television the notification sound plays on the television so it’s a good idea to turn your networking capabilities off while watching a movie if you get as many e-mails as I do.

Needless to say I really like the iPad as a video playing device. There is no real setup required beyond plugging the component cables into the television and pressing play on the iPad.

New Technology On the Road to Building ‘Mechs

I think the epitome of human science will be when we finally develop giant walking robots with guns, or more commonly known as ‘Mechs. One of the things with a ‘Mech is the massive amount of wires you have to run in order to send data and signals to various parts of the machine. Well it seems a scientist has found a way to simplify ‘Mechs by transmitting data through steel:

Tristan Lawry, doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering, has developed equipment which can transmit data at high rates through thick, solid steel or other barriers. Significantly, Lawry’s kit also transmits power. One obvious application here would be transmission through the steel pressure hull of a submarine: at the moment such hulls must have hundreds of penetrations for power and data cables, each one adding expense, weight and maintenance burden.

Obviously this can reduce the amount of wiring needed to construct a ‘Mech and also increase the reliability as the only means of stopping transmissions would be to blow the entire section off. Needless to say this is bad ass. A hat tip to Bruce Schneier for this story.

High Speed Low Drag RAM

A company named G.Skill is releasing RAM for operators who like to operate in Call of Duty. Supposedly the RAM is supposed to look like a rifle but I only seem a slight resemblance honestly. With that said it does have some neat benefits:

According to G.Skill, the new Sniper series was designed in ultra-low voltage, particularly 1.25V. This feature alone points to a possible power savings of up to 10-percent, allowing PC gamers to push other components without having to worry about overheating issues with the memory. G.Skill said it performed extensive compatibility tests across a wide range of Intel and AMD platforms to “guarantee the best performance, quality and reliability for user’s gaming needs.”

Whenever a component manufacturer can reduce the amount of power a component uses while keeping good performance it’s a good thing. Power consumption means heat which is a pain in the ass. Hell you should see the heat sinks of my Mac Pro’s RAM, damn FB-DIMMs have heat sinks large enough to be mistaken for rectangular processors.

Sprint to Get the Nexus S

It looks like Sprint is finally getting another decent phone, the Nexus S with WiMax capabilities:

Recently, we introduced Nexus S from Google, the first phone to run Android 2.3, Gingerbread. In addition to the UMTS-capable Nexus S, today we’re introducing Nexus S 4G from Google, available for Sprint. Nexus S 4G is part of the Nexus line of devices which provide a pure Google experience and run the latest and greatest Android releases and Google mobile apps.

When Google released the Nexus S I was pretty ho hum about it and still am. But the fact of the matter is Google provides frequent updates for their developer phones which means it’s the only platform that you can expect bug fixes with any consistency. Likewise having WiMax on a phone with stock Android would be a huge plus over the current 4G offerings (nothing like HTC Sense to help ruin a perfectly good phone).

It will be nice having an Android development platform available for Sprint.

WebOS 2.1 Released

Good news everybody who has a Palm Pre 2 (you know that other guy and me), HP/Palm has released WebOS 2.1. It’s an over the air update meaning your device will find it and automatically notify you of its availability. Needless to say I’ve not had much time to play with it but the update doesn’t seem all that significant.

The main additions is the inclusion of voice dialing and exhibition mode. Voice dialing is pretty self-explanatory but it allows you to dial a number by holding down either volume button and then speaking the name of the person you wish to call. Exhibition mode is rather neat as it allows your Pre 2 to display information when it’s placed on a Touchstone. The information it displays is configuration about mine is currently displaying my daily agenda. It will be a bit before any developers make real use of this feature but I can imagine some cool things coming down the pipe (I know I have an idea on how to utilize it that I’ll likely be working on in the near future).

As HP/Palm aren’t big on releasing any changelogs for WebOS updates in a timely manner I’m not sure what else has been included in this update. I’m guessing not much.

iOS 4.3 Released

Last night Apple released the newest version of their iOS operating system. As it sits you can upgrade if you’re running an iPhone 3GS or GSM 4 (the CDMA iPhone 4 doesn’t get this update), iPad, third or forth generation iPod Touch, or an Apple TV. All support for the iPhone 3G appears to have been abandoned which isn’t surprising considering how Apple doesn’t really like supporting legacy products (although they seem to support their devices longer than most phone manufacturers).

So what’s changed? Most notable is Apple has now included Wi-Fi hot spot functionality… to those who have tethering plans. This allows you to turn your phone into a Wi-Fi access point. When a device connects to your iPhone it is able to use the iPhone’s data plan. Of course being you need a tethering plan (which I don’t get on AT&T since you pay by data usage you should be able to chose how you want to use your data) this feature is potentially very expensive.

Another feature is the ability to use iTunes Home Sharing. This feature simply allows your iOS device to access your iTunes library (podcasts, music, videos, etc.) if you’ve set it up to use iTunes Home Sharing. I can see this being nice if you have a media collection too large to place everything on your iOS device.

Under the hood Apple has included enhancements to Safari’s JaveScript engine, AirPlay improvements, HDMI-out capabilities (with purchase of the Apple 30-pin to HDMI adapter), and the ability to configure the iPad’s side switch to either be a mute switch or an orientation lock.

Needless to say nothing really Earth shattering was included but that is to be expected with a point release.

I’ll Take Three

Well I’d take three if I could legally own them. A Germany company named SIGG produced a full auto rear plate for Glock pistols that is supposedly universal. I’d love to go to the range with a full auto Glock 30SF. Why? Because it would be wicked cool and I don’t think my 30-round .45 magazine would last that long (which is cool).

If only I lived in a free country where we could legally own fully automatic firearms.