Yearly Archives: 2009

Ukraine Begins Employing Giant Combat Robots for Security [Robots]

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"TIS is proud to inform that we are the first in our Kominternovsky region to employ Giant Humanlike Combat Robots within the Security Department. Model TIS-1CB." That's the caption for this photo. What are they up to in Ukraine? Updated.

Seriously, if anyone has a detailed explanation for this thing, please shoot me an email. [Pravda]

Update: Thanks to all those who sent in the explanation for this strange metal fellow. Sergey G's details, in particular, were very helpful:

TIS (Transinvestservice) is logistics company near Odessa. They had problems people finding their warehouse (you know - knowing to turn left after 15 km and stuff like that), so TIS set up an giant robot made from old cars as a signpost.

As a side-note: "Giant Human Like Battle Robots" is a popular meme in Russia and Ukraine. "When [are we] going to employ Giant Humanlike Battle Robots to protect our borders?" was a winning question for Putin on his nationwide interview with Internet folk. Yuschenko (Ukrainian president) was asked this as well since then.



Apple Owns iSlate.com Domain: The Mystery Deepens [Apple Tablet]

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The Apple Tablet, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, has just gotten a little more interesting. Thanks to some crack investigative reporting, MacRumors discovered that Apple purchased the domain for "islate.com" back in 2007. Dum dum dum!

What we know: islate.com was registered to Apple in 2007, through an intermediary (to disguise its true owner). At the moment, that domain doesn't seem to lead anywhere—and there are a couple explanations. First, Apple bought it as a protective measure, to stop anyone else from using that "i" prefix with that particular word. Second, Apple had or has plans for either a product or a project by that name. Third, it's the tablet. Or fourth, it's Apple's take on Slate.com (sample headline: Why I Hate Christmas Presents). Maybe we'll find out just what that means in January, when the tablet is rumored to be announced. [MacRumors]



How Rorschach Stole Christmas [Christmas]

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I dare you to try to listen to this retelling of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas without giggling repeatedly. Even if you haven't read or seen Watchmen, it's ridiculously fun and absolutely worth ten minutes of your time.

According to the YouTube credits, the script for this tale was a group effort by Comics & Cartoons, a 4chan community, but nevermind the script, I don't think the story would've been the same without the fantastic imitation of Raw Shark. [Thanks, Matt!]



Your Christmas Tree Can Burn Down a Room in Under 60 Seconds [Christmas]

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This is a video that I can't even describe with the usual oh-woah-wow-look-at-this sort of excitement, because it just plain scares me. It shows how a Christmas tree can burn down an entire room in less than a minute.

While I know that this video was filmed under controlled conditions, a room set up by researchers with safety measures to keep the fire from spreading, I still can't watch it without glancing over at my own Christmas tree and shivering. [Wired]



The Case for Greener Building Metrics

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The building industry demands compelling metrics to justify sustainable building designs. However, cost effectiveness measures often are not based on standard methods for gauging economic worth. A hybrid approach combining process-based and input-output-based life cycle assessments is advocated by t

Wiry or Weakened, the New Corporate Image?

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Lean can mean strong and efficient, but for many of us the term lean has become a symbol for a reduced way of working and living. We all make hard yet necessary choices at work and at home to get by. Has your workplace management gone too far even given the economic climate, or are they right on tra

Insurance Expert admits massive Civil Disobedience likely in avoiding mandated Health Care coverage

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Says Insurance Industry should push for even tougher Penalties

From Eric Dondero:

Virginia-based health care consultant and former insurance executive and president Robert Laszewski believes penalties in the new health care legislation are not stringent enough to disuade Americans from avoiding mandatory coverage.

Laszewski (photo), a regular commentator on cable news business shows, would like to see fines beefed up before the final legislation comes out of Senate/House mark-up.
From NewsMax:

proposed fines are too weak and the subsidies too meager to truly motivate people to buy insurance, Laszewski said. This means the people most motivated to buy coverage through these exchanges will be those who already have health problems — who are money losers for insurers.

"There aren't a lot of families with an extra $6,500 in their checking account," Laszewski said. "The problem with this bill is the subsidies are really quite modest, and there really aren't any penalties."

The NewsMax piece goes on to explain:

Insurers need a mix of healthy people enrolled in their coverage to help balance out claims they pay for patients who use more insurance.

The Senate bill calls for fines for people who do not purchase coverage and are not exempt from a mandate to buy it. They start at $95 in 2014 and rise to $750 by 2016.

Others are preparing to Fight Back against all Mandated Coverage

Many libertarians an others on the Right, have threatened to avoid taking mandated coverage based on principle, even if it means jail time. Others are threatenening lawsuits against what has been deemed as an Unconstitutional requirement to purchase a product.

At least one organization is already threatening to challenge the requirement as far up as the US Supreme Court. The Liberty Counsel, run by President Mathew Staver, issued a statement vowing that the group:

"is prepared to challenge the constitutionality of the bill since Congress has no authority to require every person to obtain insurance coverage and has no authority to fine employers who do not provide the coverage standards that are required in the bill."

Staver further stated, quoted from WND (via GiveUsLiberty blog):

He told WND that if the plan gets to the point of being signed into law by Obama, “We will sue.”

He said Liberty University will be a plaintiff along with other groups or individuals.

“The thrust is that Congress lacks the power to force health care coverage on individuals,” he said. “It lacks the power to fine employers that do not have or provide health care coverage according to the mandates of the bill.”

For more information, or to get involved - LC.org

Editor's Note - We are adding GiveUsLiberty blogspot, a Christian libertarian blog, to our Right Libertarian Blog Roll. Please give them a visit and consider adding them to your Favorites.

/tæ?tu/ | The Loom

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phonetics“My name is Steve Kleinedler, supervising editor for the American Heritage Dictionary, where I have worked since 1997. One of my many responsibilities is pronunciation. The tattoo is a stylized version of a phonetic vowel chart — it shows the relative position of the tongue in the mouth when those vowel sounds are articulated. I had a smaller, simpler version done on my upper back in 1993, and I’ve been wanting to get the full version for quite some time.

“The design is by Kyle Nelson of Stoltze Design and the tattoo artrist was Mike Helz of Stingray Body Art.”

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.


Obama decides to continue Holiday in Hawaii despite Muslim Terrorist attack on US

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Nigerian Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to blow up a Delta jet yesterday en route from Amsterdam to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in the US. The suspect is a UK Engineering student. He attempted to combine a powder and liquid explosive mix before he was overpowered by a fellow passenger. The suspect now claims to have ties to Al Qaeda, based in Yemen. He told authorities that he was traveling to Detroit for a "religious seminar."

The White House is taking a cautious approach.

From the BBC, 3 hours ago:

President Barack Obama, on holiday in Hawaii, has ordered increased security for air travel.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said the president was monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile the Washington Post reports:

The FBI is investigating the incident. President Obama, celebrating Christmas in Hawaii, was informed about it, a spokesman said... Officials said they are not prepared to raise the terrorism alert level, currently at orange -- or the second-highest of five levels -- for domestic and international air travel.

WaPo notes a delay in notifying Obama, who "was told of the incident about three hours after the plane landed."

UPDATE!

Ace of Spades is now headlining that the Washington Post changed their story to reflect a more favorable "hands on" view of the White House. They changed their original piece deleting the mention of Obama being told of the Terrorist incident 3 hours later. Asks Ace:

So why was the President allowed to snooze in Hawaii undisturbed?

I'm trying to not get too partisan about this, but it sure seems to me that this evidences a casualness about terrorist incidents that seems pretty dangerous.

Political Correctness at CNN: Interviewer Ali Velshi clamps down on mention of Muslim-named Terrorist Suspect on Live Air

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CNN Anchor Ali Velshi was born in Kenya, and raised in Ontario, Canada. The son of a liberal Canadian parliament member, Velshi has a history of opposing rightwing politicians in Canada and working for Democrat elected officials here in the United States.

Interviewing Republican Congressman Peter King yesterday on CNN, Velshi shut him up in mid-sentence. Velshi halted the Congressman from mentioning the name of the suspect of yesterday's attempted bombing of a NorthWest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The suspect in custody is 23-year old Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He is identified as an Engineering student at University College London.

Transcript (h/t Conservative Blog Watch):

REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK (via telephone): Basically the person's name. I understand he's a 23-year-old Nigerian who boarded the flight in Nigeria, his name is Abdulmattal (ph)...

VELSHI: Representative King, I've got to tell you, we have not got any information on anyone being charged. So thank you for bringing us information. But would ask you not to name anybody on TV right now, we do not have any word of official charges. Let me know what else you know other than the identity of the person who may be charged.

KING: His name did appear in a database as far as having a terrorist nexus.

Later on in the interview:

VELSHI: Ok, I understand that you do know -- or you believe you know the name of the identity. We're not in a position to say that on CNN yet. We are working to confirm that.

KING: Again, my understanding is his name was in the database. That he does have al Qaeda connections. Certainly extremist terrorist connections and his name popped up pretty quickly.

The name of the suspect had been released hours earlier by Fox News, Reuters, and various other media outlets.

Structural details of an environment-sensing protein complex could guide development of new drugs

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Many mysteries remain about TCS signaling mechanisms, partly because the proteins involved are complicated and contain floppy, mobile regions that make structural analysis arduous. Researchers in Japan recently achieved a breakthrough on this front, however, by assembling a high-resolution reconstruction of the ThkA/TrrA TCS complex from Thermotoga maritima.

How To Guides: The Best of 2009 [How To]

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As any diligent weekend reader knows, we don't just find and explain the news around here, we like to do stuff; hack things; make gadgets better. Here's the cream of this year's how to guide crop:

Make Your PC and Mac Share Stuff Like Best Friends: Getting PCs and Macs to play nice over a home network seems like something that should be trivially easy by now; incompatibilities like that feel like a relic from the 90s. Yet somehow, after all these years, it's still a pain in the ass. Unless, of course, you read this guide.

Totally Overhaul Your Phones With Google Voice : You've probably heard about Google Voice in abstract terms, and with a unified, multi-phone phone number, a web-based voicemail dashboard, free text messaging and cheap international calls, it probably sounds great. Also: confusing. Here's how to get totally and painlessly set up with Google Voice.

Clean Your Filthy Gadgets: Look down at your keyboard. Your smartphone. Your PMP. Your DSLR. Your HDTV. Notice how some of the most expensive things you own are completely disgusting? Here's how to clean them up on the cheap.

Back Up Any Smartphone: Smartphones do just about everything your PC used to, so why don't we care about backing them up? We should, and in this post, we do. iPhone, Pre, WinMo, BlackBerry, Android—instructions are all there, ready to indulge your sexxxilyy cautious urges.

Make Windows 7 Play Nice With All Your Gadgets: Windows 7 is the first version of Windows that really respects the gadget hound—it knows us, it understands us, and it gives us tools. Getting your media players, phones, network devices, displays and cameras to work with Windows is easier than it's ever been, but it's also fairly different than it used to be. If you sense tension between your gear and your new Windows 7 PC, look no further.

Hackintosh a Dell Mini 10v Into the Ultimate Snow Leopard Netbook: From dumpy Dell to full-on Mac netbook in one lazy afternoon. I use mine everyday (for pooping!) and you will to.

Survive Boot Camp (and Run Win 7 on a Mac): Boot Camp, the Mac app that lets you dual boot Windows with OS X, works pretty well, except when it doesn't. Matt runs us through the simplest ways to make sure your Windows 7 install goes smoothly, and how to salvage it when it doesn't.

How To: Virtualize Any OS For Free: A great man once said, "Any sufficiently advanced virtualization software is indistinguishable from magic." Something like that, yes! Who cares. Point is, Virtualbox is free, and it lets you install pretty much any OS within any other OS, so you can introduce your Zune to your Mac, your Word to your Linux, your Ubuntu to your Snow Pussy. Again, magic! And again, free!

Install Homebrew On Palm Pre 1.2.1There's really no reason not to crack your Pre open for homebrew, which offers new apps, new functionality, themes, etc. Plus, software updates don't usually break your patches, like iPhone updates do jailbreaks. The version numbers in this guide are old and the software tools a bit different, but hey, the equivalent tools still work.

Rip Your Music Like a Pro: Please, please don't just leave your music ripping up to iTunes. Do right by your music, by ripping it as cleanly and purely as possible. It's actually pretty easy, once you've got the right tools. Your ears will thank you.

Back Up All Your Stuff For Free, No Hard Drive Needed: Excuse the grotty MacBook, it's been replaced. Which was pretty painless, because I backed up all my important stuff for free! Peace of mind, people.

Kick Your Torrent Addiction With Usenet: Usenet trolls sent me actual death threats over posting this article, which apparently threatened to ruin their top-secret file haven (did you jerks know I went on the radio with this thing? Ha!) So it with it with the utmost glee that I backlink here. Usenet is awesome—faster than just about anything else, and full of sweet, sweet filezs. Here's how you, person who doesn't really know what Usenet is, can be saturdating your internet connection within an hour.

Bake Your Own Chrome OS, Right Now: You can actually download the real Chrome now, so it wouldn't really make much sense to follow this guide today. But it's worth a read, if just to see how close Chrome matched our sad, modest expectations. To the people who said they hope Chrome is nothing like the imagined version in this post: oh well!

Install Windows Mobile 6.5 Right Now: A lot of newer Windows Mobile phones have official updaters, so you can bring your handset up to speed without resorting to hacks. Older ones, though, don't. The ROMs will be different that listed in this guide—better, now—but the process still works.

Calibrate Your Turntable For the Best Possible Sound: Because having a poorly calibrated turntable is more damaging to your audiophile cred than not having one at all.

Manage An All-Lossless Music Library With iTunes: From a music listener's standpoint, lossless music is the way to go. From a person-who-has-to-use-iTunes-because-that's-just-how-things-are-nowadays' standpoint, it doesn't. Luckily, it is possible to make iTunes and a lossless library play nice.

Remote Control Your Home Computer From Anywhere With VNC: VNC, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Vee-Enn-See: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Vee. Enn. See.

Use BitTorrent Like a Pro: It's embarrassing to admit that you don't know how to use torrents properly in this day in age, but let's face it—most people don't. Give them this guide! Or use it yourself, discreetly.

Create Stunningly Realistic High Dynamic Range Photographs: Love them or hate them, high dynamic range (HDR) photos are something any good photographer should know how to take. Ex Gizzer Johnathan Mahoogles lays down the steps to snapping hyperreal photos, one by one.

Rip Blu-ray Discs: Optical media is dead! Well, it should be. Here's how to help kill it, by ripping your entire Blu-ray collection to your PC where it belongs.

Hackintosh a Dell Mini 9 Into the Ultimate OS X Netbook: Remember that Dell 10v hackintosh guide up above? This is that, except for the older, more popular Dell Mini 9.

Install Ubuntu On Your PS3 For Vintage Gaming Emulation: So your PS3 can run Linux, BFD. But what the really means is that your PS3 can play pretty much any vintage game, ever, through emulators. It's all about phrasing!

Add Wi-Fi To Your Xbox 360 Smartly and Cheaply: I was really hoping this guide would be obsolete by now, but man, Xbox wireless adapters are still way, way too expensive. Buying and bridging an entire router, as described here, is still a better deal.

So that's about it (for this year)! Let us know in the comments if there's anything you'd like to see in 2010. Happy holidays, folks.



What a RC Plane Sees When You Try to Kill It With Fireworks [Robots]

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Giz reader BushmanLA sent in a video of his kids trying to shoot down his flying R/C drone with fireworks. From the perspective of the UAV.

Some of the shots look like they're close, but all I can think about is how fucked we are when the Terminator thing goes down and all we have are sparklers. Videos like this make me think the liberal middle class (me) should think again about the NRA and shotguns. [Pasqualy]