It turns out that not only is it a massive privacy invasion, but has a 20% (!!) error rate. Besides that it’s useless, because no border guard system can read the fingerprints on the passport.

Tweede Kamer wil af van vingerafdruk in paspoort – update | Webwereld.

The boat is 39 feet long and can reach a top speed of 28 knots. Using a modified version of the unmanned Shadow surveillance aircraft technology that logged 700,000 hours of duty in the Middle East, the boat can be controlled remotely from 10 to 12 miles away from a command station on land, at sea or in the air, Haslett said.

Farther out, it can be switched to a satellite control system, which Textron said could expand its range to 1,200 miles. The boat could be launched from virtually any large Navy vessel.

Using diesel fuel, the boat could operate for up to 72 hours without refueling, depending upon its traveling speed and the weight of equipment being carried. The fuel supply could be extended for up to a week on slow-moving reconnaissance missions. the boat could be operated in as little as 5 feet of water because of its shallow draft

The CUSV would be hard to sink by accident.

If the boat overturns, it shuts down its engines, rights itself, restarts the engines and resumes the mission. Should the boat lose contact with its command, it’s programmed simply to return to its launching point or another pre-determined location.

It’s not the first unmanned boat. But Haslett said others generally have been boats simply refitted with remote control equipment. The CUSV was designed from the first step not to have a crew.

Phys.Org Mobile: Unmanned vessel could soon be working for Navy.

Beam me up Scotty: Life-size hologram-like telepods revolutionize videoconferencing | Human Media Lab :: Queen's University.

Wait – what? It BROKE an insulin pump? And it’s supposed to be safe for people to go in? Really?

Diabetic teen upset with TSA screeners at Salt Lake City Airport – ABC4.com – Salt Lake City, Utah News.

Not using a credit card is becoming a much more viable method over the internet (22% of the overall e-commerce payments), with iDeal and Paypal, but also many other methods used to pay for porn or gambling. Worldpay has made an interactive map showing the predominance of specific alternative currencies per country.

Worldpay Globe Data.

This is based on this report by worldpay.

Melville ten Cate of ECA, housed in Schiphol, claims to have secured EUR 283 million to finance the business plan I have been harping on about for the last 25 years: he wants to buy 24 light combat aircraft to start an Integrated Opposing Force (IOPFOR) which will be used as an agressor training service for NATO. Eventually he wants to add surface and naval assets to the force.

Melville ten Cate

via ECA secures funds for NATO aggressor aircraft purchase.

Their corporate website is here, where they state they’re looking for EUR 448 m to finance all the aircraft, so he’s a bit short, but able to pay for 14 aircraft.

The Financial Times ran an article which was picked up in august 2010 by other media. In the FT article he is in discussion with Iceland to use an airbase there. In this article he talks about using Sukhoi’s, in other articles he talks about using MiG 35′s, Chengdu J-10′s, Saab Gripen’s.

A Dutch paper that picked up the article and wrote its own tried to contact the company, but the contact address on the old website led to Fokker Aircraft Services, where no-one knew of the company.

In January 2011 it turned out that the Icelandic government had denied permission to use the Keflavik base. Jobs for 45 pilots at EUR 160K per year had been posted, but ECA was unavailable for contact. It turned out that the company wasn’t registered in the Netherlands. No one could contact the ten Cate brothers and no-one knows anything about their financers.

Melville ten Cate has an empty LinkedIn page.

Pprune has picked it up again here but not much activity in that thread.

Scramble has an old thread on the subject here which has been picked up again.

So it’s a mystery.

It turns out that there are pleny of studies out there that debunk the “facts and figures” the industries throw about when talking about IP theft and the costs of piracy. Here is a selection of some interesting other studies.

What Various Studies Really Reveal About File-Sharing – Slashdot.

Last month, marine biologist Luke Tipple, armed with a career in the study of sharks, accepted the request from handheld laser manufacturers, Wicked Lasers, to attach a Wicked Lasers laser beam to a shark’s fin, which he did with success. On a diving trip in the Bahamas, he fit a laser device onto a lemon shark’s dorsal fin and tested the shark’s movements.

Beamed-up lemon shark shows research promise w/ Video.

Through a process involving thin layers of material deposited on a surface and then selectively etched away, the MIT team produced a surface covered with tiny cones, each five times taller than their width. This pattern prevents reflections, while at the same time repelling water from the surface

via Researchers find a way to make glass that's anti-fogging, self-cleaning and free of glare.

It turns out that basically copying succesful apps is the best way to actually make money on the app store.

The Artificial Life of the App Store – the Best Strategy to Succeed.

This is an excellent array of methods to keep your cables organised.

Taming Gadget Cables: 30 Holders & Organizers You Can Buy.

You can buy most of them at The Container Store

Twisty cable IDs / Helix

Q Knot

Cable Zipper

Cable tie kit

Velcro cable ties

Unfortunately this shop doesn’t work in Firefox and won’t ship outside the US / Canada.

In Google’s Moon Race, Teams Face a Reckoning | Xconomy.

Turns out that yes, darker websites consume less power.

Blackle vs. Google Monitor Power Consumption Tested – PCSTATS.com.

The European Parliament has approved the controversial data transfer agreement, the bilateral PNR (passenger name register), with the US which requires European airlines to pass on passenger information, including name, contact details, payment data, itinerary, email and phone numbers to the Department of Homeland Security.

Under the new agreement, PNR data will be “depersonalised” after six months and would be moved into a “dormant database” after five years. However the information would still be held for a further 15 years before being fully “anonymised”.

The US is really going a bit crazy in their totalitarian wish to know everything about everyone.

European Parliament agrees to send airline passenger data to US – ComputerworldUK.com.

A bill already passed by the Senate and set to be rubber stamped by the House would make it mandatory for all new cars in the United States to be fitted with black box data recorders from 2015 onwards.

Section 31406 of Senate Bill 1813 (known as MAP-21), calls for “Mandatory Event Data Recorders” to be installed in all new automobiles and legislates for civil penalties to be imposed against individuals for failing to do so.

“Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part,” states the bill.

Way to go, land of the ummm free? Hitler would be jealous.

» Mandatory ‘Big Brother’ Black Boxes In All New Cars From 2015 Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!.

Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.

Blamed for Bee Collapse, Monsanto Buys Leading Bee Research Firm – BlackListedNews.com.

It looks awesome!

Boeing shows off new Super Hornet display – The DEW Line.

Feeding rats bucky balls (Buckminster Fullerine) resulted in a doubling of the lifespan for rats. Immortality is coming!

oral administration of C60 dissolved in olive oil (0.8 mg/ml) at reiterated doses (1.7 mg/kg of body weight) to rats not only does not entail chronic toxicity but it almost doubles their lifespan

via ScienceDirect.com – Biomaterials – The prolongation of the lifespan of rats by repeated oral administration of [60]fullerene.

Whilst you’re running you collect powerups and evade zombies whilst you’re on a mission. You’re put through the game narrative through your headphones.

Zombies, Run! Will Force You To Care About Exercise.

Have they gone nuts? They say that as code isn’t something physical, it can’t have been stolen. So it’s OK to take as much sources from a previous employer and do whatever you want with it.

“He argues that: [1] the source code was not1a “stolen” “good” within the meaning of the National Stolen2Property Act, and [2] the source code was not “related” to a3product “produced for or placed in interstate or foreign4commerce” within the meaning of the Economic Espionage Act.5The judgment of the district court is reversed. Judge6Calabresi concurs in the opinion and has filed an additional7concurring opinion.”

But taking a photograph of a classified document does constitute espionage? Or is that also OK now?

U.S. vs. Sergey Aleynikov, former Goldman Sachs programmer.

Edge Blending software allows you to connect multiple projectors so that they overlap and then set them up so that the output of each beamer is aligned and the brightness of the overlapping area is corrected so that the image looks seamless.

Quite a few of these packages only allow the output to be corrected in an openGL / DirectX environment.

Below is an overview of Edge Blenders that also allow the whole windows desktop to be projected over all the beamers.

Some of these can auto set up using a webcam.

Fly Elise NG Immersive Desktop costs EUR 69,- for non-commercial use, and EUR 150,- for commercial use.
These are guys in Eindhoven who built the software to power their garage built full motion flight simulator.

Vioso presenter Multi

Costs EUR 229,- / EUR 69,-

Warp Desktop

Allows 10 monitors per PC for GBP 330,-

Scalable Desktop

For up to 6 desktops.

Torsionsoft Torsionblend

Also allows projection mapping.

2 channels for CAD $799,-

The creators are looking for funding!

The Shadowrun Video Game You've Always Wanted.

Not only is it inherently distasteful to try to censor the internet and force sites to shut down, it’s also very impractical, as BREIN is finding out.

After gaining court injunctions for 2 Dutch ISPs to close access to the pirate bay, hundreds of proxy sites went up and BREIN is now going after all of them.

The Dutch Pirate Party is standing up to them.

Pirate Party Refuses to Shutdown Pirate Bay Proxy, Faces Lawsuit | TorrentFreak.

The 10-metre wide, helium-filled inflatable turbine, called the Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT), was sent up into the sky more than 100 metres above ground, where stronger winds can be found. The prototype was also used to lift the top-selling Southwest Skystream turbine, which was able to produce more than twice the power at high altitude that was generated at conventional tower height.

Altaeros aims to harness the stronger winds found more than 300 metres in the air with the use of helium-filled inflatable devices that can be quickly installed or taken down. In the short term, Altaeros wants to provide an alternative to diesel generators, but in the long term it wants to scale up the technology to reduce costs in the offshore wind market.

Blimp-like inflatable wind turbine tested at high altitude (Wired UK).

The Joint Forces Command has been established to ensure that a range of vital military capabilities, functions and organisations – such as medical services, training and education, intelligence, and cyber – are organised and managed effectively and efficiently to support success on operations.

On 2 April 2012, the following organisations transferred to the Joint Forces Command:

• The Permanent Joint Headquarters (known as PJHQ)
• The Permanent Joint Operating Bases in Gibraltar, Cyprus, British Indian Ocean Territory and South Atlantic Islands
• The Joint Force Headquarters
• The Joint Force Logistics Component
• The Joint Counter-Terrorist Training and Advisory Team
• The Directorate of Special Forces
• The Defence Academy
• The Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre
• Defence Intelligence
• Surgeon General’s Headquarters and the Joint Medical Command
• The Joint Arms Control Implementation Group
• The Defence Centre of Training Support
• The Defence Cyber Operations Group.

via Ministry of Defence | Defence News | Defence Policy and Business | New Joint Forces Command established.

This is a move which is long overdue. Hopefully this can settle the huge inter service rivalries which cost not only money, but also effectiveness.