Chronicling the depravities of the State.
Everyday No Days Off points out the greatest centerpiece of all time. Listed on Gunbroker for the low low price of $25,000 you to can an authentic B-38B practice thermonuclear bomb. This is guaranteed to drum up conversations with your guests.
Needless to say, I WANT!
OK this is cool. I just got notification that Palm Ares has entered public beta. This is certainly a geeks only thing. Ares is Palms WebOS development environment that runs in your web browser. Think of it as Eclipse, Visual Studio, or Xcode in the web browser and you’ll have a decent idea of what Ares is.
This means WebOS developers can not write software for Palm’s new phones without having to actually install anything on their computer. I’ve only played with it for a short while so far but will admit it’s pretty cool. Of course I’m still a fan of having my stuff on my computer with my tools so if I don’t have an Internet connection I can still work. But if you’re into this whole cloud computing thing and want to write WebOS projects this could be for you.
File this story under hilarious. Apparently some Shiite fighters in Iraq have managed to obtain video feeds from some United States drones. It seems little effort was required as the communication link from the drone back to home base lacks any form of encryption. When designing any piece of software security needs to be baked in from the get go. This goes double for a machine meant to be flown around in a war zone.
Apparently Woot! opened a user driven deal section. What’s the top item being voted on by the citizens of the Internet? Why a deal on a handgun of course.
Well it appears since the Australian government wasn’t able to get ISPs to voluntarily implement Internet filtering they are going make it mandatory via law. So long freedom of speech and thought.
I have a 15″ MacBook Pro and a question I’ve always had is how well will it take a bullet. Will the Steve Job Reality Distortion Fieldtm prevent the bullets from scratching the aluminum case? Apparently not.
Not to mall ninjas, do not use a MacBook Pro in place of a trauma plate in your class 50 body armor.
Well the 802.11n protocol was finally ratified a while ago so that means it’s time for engineers to work on the next great thing. In this article they are talking about the next standard which is to be dubbed 802.11ac. They are claiming this next standard will support speeds up to 1Gbps.
But it’s their second claim I find doubtful, that this new protocol will be out by 2012. If anybody followed the 802.11n fiasco you’ll know it took them forever to finally ratify the standard and get it out the door. I highly doubt they will get the next version out in two years.
No not a review by me, but by Engadget. So much like the first Kindle the Nook appears to be very 1.0. In other words it’s a valiant initial effort but needs improvement.
The main criticism made by Engadget deals with the software. Navigation on the Nook appears to be a slight mess with an amalgamation of submenus inside of other submenus which in turn are inside of main menus. Furthermore due to the slowness of the E Ink display’s refresh there are often periods where the LCD and E Ink are synced up leading to apparent frustrations. Overall the entire software stack is sluggish according to the review.
Engadget also mentioned the backlit LCD screen is quite unpleasant when it’s on full brightness and you’re reading the E Ink display. Apparently if you’re using the Nook to play music the LCD screen comes on every time the song changes, something that I would find annoying.
The buying experience on the device appears to be quite a bit better than that on the Kindle. Also if you’re using the Nook in a Barnes and Nobel store you can read through entire books while there. Well you can read entire books for up to an hour a day at least. This feature seems rather meaningless to me since if you’re in the store already you can go grab any book there and read through it for as long as you please while there. Still it’s an interesting feature to note.
Hearing all of this I can honestly say I’ll be staying with the Kindle (not that I was planning to change). But it’s good to see some major competition coming down the pipe from another company that knows books and book selling (as opposed to a company like Sony who traditionally isn’t in the book industry). Many I love the gadget industry, there is just so much competition.
You know the old debate, some people claim cell phone use will cause cancer while others do not. I’m firmly in the do not category. It looks like my views have been founded. A 30 year study (you need to start before cell phone use was common) of almost everybody (their words, no mine) in Scandinavia revealed no increase in brain tumors after the 1990s when cell phone use took off.
So everybody can stop bitching. If you buy into this research just don’t use a cell phone and shut the Hell up and let me use mine.
Sometimes you get good news in the morning and sometimes not. This is one of those nots. The Firearm Blog reports that Metal Storm is approaching bankruptcy.
For those of you who don’t know Metal Storm it’s an Australian based company that developed a new feeding mechanism for firearms. Instead of having detachable magazines Metal Storm’s guns stack ammunition in the barrel. The ammunition has no casing instead it’s simply powder, bullet, powder, bullet, etc. Small electrodes are placed in the barrel where the powder lays. These electrodes ignite the powder sending the round on it’s way. The advantage to this was the capability to create a weapon with less moving parts and a much higher rate of fire.
They made some rather wicked machine guns and grenade launchers. It’ll be a sad day if they go under (down under?).