Companies have been trying to get the ball rollin' for a few years now, but we haven't really seen a solar charger hit the sweet spot between convenience and performance that makes us want to shell out our hard earned dough (or ill-gotten booty). Regen's ReNu doesn't look bad, for example, but it's not exactly something you can take camping. If you are a Grizzly Adams-type, however, Power HotSpot might be something worth looking into. The latest from Solis Energy, a company heretofore known for its commercial solar products, this is a portable unit that can power 12 volt "noncritical" devices via a standard car power adaptor, anywhere that gets a decent amount of sunlight. Retails for $375.
No bonus points for calling this one, but it looks like Atom support has returned to Mac OS X 10.6.2 -- less than two weeks after it was unceremoniously removed to the dismay of hackintoshers. Of course, this new "fix" doesn't come courtesy of Apple, and it does take the art of hackintoshing to some risky new levels. Developed by a member of the InsanelyMac forum, the hack is actually a full-on replacement kernel for OS X, which means it will require a good bit of fine tuning to get installed, and some considerable faith in the developer on your part. It does seem like quite a few trailblazers are happy with it, however, so hit up the links below if you're ready to take the plunge.
Beware: there are spoilers here for the Doctor Who Christmas specials, as we look ahead to David Tennant's last two episodes...
Okay, we should be clear on this from the off. If you like watching Doctor Who episodes and knowing nothing about them beforehand, this is not an article you want to read.
While chunks of what we're rounding up here has been mentioned before, but there are still spoilers ahead...
Unless you've been living under a cultural rock, you probably know that New Moon, the second installment in the wildly successful Twilight human-vampire romantic saga, opens Friday.
This time around, brooding vampire Edward must compete with werewolf Jacob for the attentions of Bella, the human heroine of the books and movies.
But with its sexy-but-chaste leads, this teen bodice-ripper series may be sending its target audience of teen and tween girls a mixed message, some fans say.
Then And Now
Back in the '70s and '80s, Hollywood preached a clear message in its teen horror films: have sex and die; stay a virgin and live.
"Let's look to Halloween," says Kevin Doughty, 17, referring to a classic example of the genre. "Jamie Lee Curtis, virgin through the entire movie. Lived."
A student at Mount Miguel High School in Spring Valley, Calif., Doughty thinks the Twilight films promote conflicting values. Bella and her vamp boyfriend, Edward, don't have sex, but in one scene, Edward comes into her room at night to watch her sleep in her underwear.
" I don't have the strength to stay away from you anymore," Edward says to Bella. "Then don't," she responds.
Society must decide if it is willing to accept relationships between humans and robots before the machines become so sophisticated they start demanding rights, a legal expert has warned.
Rapid advances in technology mean cyborgs, or human-like robots, are no longer a vision of a distant future.
The machines have been made famous by films like Terminator and Blade Runner but real life is increasingly catching up with fiction.
Earlier this year researchers announced they had created robot ‘scientists’ – complete with the ability to think for themselves.
As the machines become more sophisticated, they will increasingly seem more like humans and could demand ‘human rights’, Anna Russel, from the University of San Diego warns.
One of the flashpoints could be over relationships, including sexual relationships, with humans, she claims.
In an article titled “Blurring the love lines” she warns: “While this humanoid is a giant leap forward technologically, if a self-aware, super-intelligent, thinking, feeling humanoid is developed, the legal system will be hard-pressed to distinguish this creature legally from human actors on grounds not stemming from a religious or moral prejudice.”
Lawyers have to start thinking now about what rights should be accorded to cyborgs, she argues.
Most societies will want to regulate such relationships but Russel claims they have to prepare themselves for how they would respond if the cyborgs clamoured for sexual freedoms.
As the technology improves “it will be inevitable that legal issues would be raised and the love lines blurred,” she warns.
“In what way would such sexual activities be regulated, however, and how regulation would work is not clear.”Society must decide if it is willing to accept relationships between humans and robots... more
People could expend more energy playing the Wii Sports games or doing aerobics and yoga with the Wii Fit than during a brisk walk, the researchers found.
The study said a third of the activities on the games console required energy expenditure that is the equivalent to "moderate intensity exercise" of the kind the Government recommends to keep fit and healthy.
Adults in Britain are recommended to take 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise five or more days a week.
It comes after the Wii became the first games console to be endorsed by the NHS and elderly people are taking up the games to stay active in residential homes.
More than 50 million Wii consoles have been sold globally since it was launched in 2006. As well as traditional video games, there are a range of sports and a balance board for players to stand on to practice activities from skiing and yoga to dance and aerobics.
Lead author Dr Motohiko Miyachi said: "The range of energy expenditure in these active games is sufficient to prevent or to improve obesity and lifestyle related disease from heart disease to diabetes."
The study was funded by Nintendo.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Active video games, where people need to jump up and down or dance about as part of the game, are a great way to get moving more and help beat obesity.
"Activity like this throughout the day can easily add up to the 60 active minutes children need or the 30 minutes that adults need five times a week."People could expend more energy playing the Wii Sports games or doing aerobics and... more
Meditation is good for the body as well as the mind, scientists have discovered, as the practice significantly reduces the risk of a heart attack for people with heart disease.
Patients with heart disease who practised Transcendental Meditation cut their chances of a heart attack, stroke and death by half, compared with non-meditating patients, the first study of its kind has found.
Stress is a major factor in heart disease and meditation experts say the technique can help control it.
Transcendental Meditation, practised by the Beatles and based on an ancient tradition of enlightenment in India, involves sitting quietly and concentrating to focus the mind inwards by silently repeating a mantra. The practice is said to induce inner peace by allowing thoughts to flow in and out of the mind.
The results of the research are being presented at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Orlando, Florida.
The researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in collaboration with the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, calculated heart attacks, strokes and deaths as one result and found a 47 per cent reduction in meditating patients.
They also had lower blood pressure and significant reductions in their stress levels, the researchers said.Meditation is good for the body as well as the mind, scientists have discovered, as... more
Women should wear clothes that bare 40 per cent of their flesh to maximise their chances of attracting men, new scientific research indicates.
Striking the right balance between revealing too much and being too conservative in how much skin is on show has long been a dilemma for women when choosing the right outfit for a night out.
However, a study by experts at the University of Leeds has come to the rescue by calculating the exact proportion of the body that should be exposed for optimum allure.
The findings were based on work by four female researchers, who discreetly observed women at one of the city’s biggest nightclubs from a balcony above the dance floor.
Using tape recorders hidden in their handbags, the researchers took note of what female clubbers were wearing and how many times they were approached by men asking them to dance.
For the purposes of the study, each arm accounted for 10 per cent of the body, each leg for 15 per cent and the torso for 50 per cent.
Women who revealed around 40 per cent of their skin attracted twice as many men as those who covered up.
However, those who exposed any more than this also fared worse. Experts believe that showing too much flesh puts men off because it suggests they might be unfaithful.Women should wear clothes that bare 40 per cent of their flesh to maximise their... more
Included on the official site as part of their videos for The Waters of Mars is an interview with Russell T Davies where he discusses what the phrase, "He will knock four times" means. See it in the player below.
Last Wednesday, Germany's Max Plank Institute for Solar System Research released amazing, detailed video footage of the sun's surface, captured in incredible detail not visible with the naked human eye.
The video was captured by SUNRISE, the largest solar telescope ever to have left Earth, which was tethered to an enormous helium balloon and flew to the edge of the Earth's stratosphere, reaching a cruising altitude of 37 kilometers above the Earth's surface.
Jenson Button the current (not current_) World Drivers Champion has taken a guided tour of rival F1 team, McLaren' Woking technology center as talk over his contract to race for Brawn F1 next year are still not clear.Jenson Button the current (not current_) World Drivers Champion has taken a guided... more
In 1890, a group of eminent musicians (including Peter Tchaikovsky!) got together to screw around and experiment with what was then a wacky novelty. On this early Edison Phonograph recording, the group alternately showboats, teases each other and generally pokes the new technology with a stick.
Recording quality (and the fact that everybody is speaking Russian) makes it difficult to understand what's going on. Luckily, there's a translation after the cut...
This Edison phonograph cylinder recording from 1890 was made by Julius Block, a Russian Businessman of German descent (The Old Man with the Umbrella in this video) who became fascinated with the phonograph (and even convinced Tchaikovsky to sign an endorsement). The recording was re-discovered in the Pushkin archive of St.Petersburg, Russia in 1997, and was labelled with the names of the participants: Anton Rubinstein (composer), Elizaveta Lavrovskaya (singer), Peter Tchaikovsky (composer), Vassily Safonov (pianist and conductor), Alexandra Hubert (pianist), Julius Block (the host himself). One can imagine the scene - a group of eminent musicians each standing around this new 'wonderful invention', being gently encouraged to say something. So there are a few words of banter, some musical scales, whistles, etc., much of which is only just audible.
Here is the translated contents of this recording:
A. Rubinstein: What a wonderful thing [the phonograph].
J. Block: Finally.
E. Lawrowskaja: A disgusting...how he dares slyly to name me.
W. Safonov : (Sings a scale incorrectly).
P. Tchaikovsky: This trill could be better.
E. Lawrowskaja: (sings).
P. Tchaikovsky: Block is good, but Edison is even better.
E. Lawrowskaja: (sings) A-o, a-o.
W. Safonow: (In German) Peter Jurgenson in Moskau.
P. Tchaikovsky: Who just spoke? It seems to have been Safonow. (Whistles)In 1890, a group of eminent musicians (including Peter Tchaikovsky!) got together to... more
Cops are hunting for a group of robbers caught on camera assaulting a cabbie in Staten Island while wearing Halloween costumes of the popular video game characters.
The four young men were in a yellow cab around 4 a.m. on Nov. 1, apparently after a Halloween party, when one of them reached into the driver's pocket, police said on Wednesday.
The hack, 48, stopped at a gas station at 863 Arthur Kill Road in Great Kills and asked the suspects to pay and leave. Instead, they beat him up, stole his cash and fled, cops said.
A surveillance video shows two of the men - wearing colorful overalls and caps resembling Mario and Luigi - wrestling the cabbie while a third man dressed in a tuxedo appears to act as a lookout.Cops are hunting for a group of robbers caught on camera assaulting a cabbie in Staten... more
It’s been more than two months since the popular semi-private BitTorrent tracker Demonoid went offline due to hardware problems, but the site’s full return is now imminent. Demonoid’s tracker is already up and running again and according to an update from the site’s staff, the site will follow soon.
Yar, that was fast. Less than a day after Microsoft updated its Windows Marketplace for Mobile with new advanced anti-piracy measure, some apt xda-developers community member has managed to crack the new code -- in under two hours, according to Chainfire's posting. The hack itself won't be posted, but we're sure other astute programmers, many of more nefarious intention, will be able to have their way with it just as easy. Sad for developers who've been wanting something more secure -- better luck next update.
Activision Blizzard Inc said it sold 4.7 million copies of "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2", or $310 million of sales, on its first day, setting a new record for the video game industry.
The shooting game went on sale on Tuesday in the most highly anticipated debut of the year. Fans had lined up for hours outside retail stores like GameStop in advance of the midnight release.
Well, you knew this was coming -- AT&T's amended its advertising lawsuit against Verizon to include Big Red's new holiday ads, including that oh-so-cute Island of Misfit Toys spot, and demanded that they be taken off the air. At question is the same map of AT&T's 3G coverage used in the other commercial, which Ma Bell says misleads customers into thinking it has no service at all in large swaths of the country. Best part? AT&T's lawyers had to describe the ad in their new filing, leading to passages like this:
Color us shocked and elated. Boxee, the white-hot startup that has risen from nothing to everywhere thanks to its internet TV software portal, has just announced that a deal has been inked between it and an undisclosed "hardware partner." If you'll recall, we actually heard that the outfit was mulling the production of its own set-top-box back in January, and now it looks like Roku, Apple TV and a host of other mini PCs will have yet another formidable rival vying for space underneath the tele. The firm isn't spilling any details whatsoever on the so-called "Boxee Box," but we are told that mockups and the like will be presented at the Boxee Beta Unveiling on December 7th. Oh, and as if you aren't excited enough already, chew on this -- the company has informed us that they believe "this will be the first of several living room devices you'll see running Boxee in 2010," so don't be shocked if your favorite game console or Blu-ray player gains an embedded Boxee app in the near future.
Bent TV is at it again, making "Star Wars" story lines into cartoon rap videos. Their first installment covered the basics, but didn't really give us the full flavor of these hardcore hooligans. This time Vader laid down the law, Leia got in her gold bikini, and Obi Wan went all Flava Flav.
