| More PDF Blackout Follies | Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:58 pm |
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More PDF Blackout Follies
The latest installment of "As the PDF Blackouts Turn" hit today, with a U.S. government apparently releasing a redacted version of their court filing in the Balco grand jury leak case which merely stuck a black line over the text, which remains available in the document. As with prior documents, entering text cut/paste mode in a normal PDF browser such as Acrobat allows a reader to access the concealed text. Previous incidents include an AT&T filing in the NSA case."
This works with Xpdf and KPDF, too; for KPDF, use the selection tool (under the Tools menu) around the redacted section, copy to clipboard, then paste into the text-manipulator of your choice
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| The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A | Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:56 pm |
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The First Blu-ray Burner, Pioneer's BDR-101A
ExtremeTech has a review of Pioneer's BDR-101A-- the first Blu-ray burner available. The drive can do anything with CDs, is kind of slow with DVDs, and doesn't support double-density Blu-ray media, but hey, it's a start, and can burn 25GB in 42 minutes. Check out its burn speed benchmark performance at the link above."
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| Mobile Phones and Lightning a Lethal Mix | Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:56 pm |
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Mobile Phones and Lightning a Lethal Mix
In a letter to the British Medical Journal, doctors wrote that people should not use mobile phones outdoors during thunderstorms because of the risk of being struck by lightning. Usually 'when someone is struck by lightning, the high resistance of the skin conducts the flash over the body in what is known as a flashover, but if a metal object, such as a phone, is in contact with the skin it disrupts the flashover and increases the odds of internal injuries and death.
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| Robot Dogs Evolve Their Own Language | Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:55 pm |
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Robot Dogs Evolve Their Own Language
According to this article at The Engineer Online, researchers led by the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology in Italy are developing robots that evolve their own language, bypassing the limits of imposing human rule-based communication. The technology, dubbed Embedded and Communicating Agents, has allowed researchers at Sony's Computer Science Laboratory in France to add a new level of intelligence to the AIBO dog. The robot dog has learnt to see a ball and tell another one where the ball is, if it's moving and what colour it is, and the other is capable of recognising it
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| Do MMORPG's Cause People to Buy Fewer Games at Retail? | Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:54 pm |
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Do MMORPG's Cause People to Buy Fewer Games at Retail?
NPD reports that the video games industry isn't doing so hot in 2006. Information on a report found at GameSpot indicates that consoles are down, but PC titles are up, led by MMORPG sales. From the article: "Do MMORPG's benefit the industry by bringing in more actively involved gamers? Or do they bleed money away from other companies in the industry as MMORPG players spend their money on subscriptions and skip out on trying other games that hit the shelf because they already have something to go home to?"
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| » Software to Make Blue Gene Top 200 Teraflops |
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Software to Make Blue Gene Top 200 Teraflops
New Scientist has a story about the most intensive computer program ever created. It runs on IBM's big beast, Blue Gene/L, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and carries out 207.3 teraflops (trillion cacluations per second). The program, called Qbox, performs very complex quantum calculations to simulate the behaviour of thousands of atoms in three dimensions. Wow
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:51 pm
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| » Google Video Runs Ads & Shares the Profits |
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Google Video Runs Ads & Shares the Profits
Google announced yesterday Friday June 23, @05:14PM that they are testing ads on videos on the Google Video service, matching capabilities that other video services have had for a while. Up to now, Google Video uploaders could make their video available either for a fee or for free. The new ad-laced videos are available on Google Video's "free today" section. The new ads appear as banners above the video.
When the test concludes, Google plans to run auctions where advertisers bid to have their ads displayed on each video. The ad revenue will be split with the video owner. "
Time for me to start collecting phat bank from the videos I have up there.
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:50 pm
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| » Toshiba Subsidizes $200/Unit on New HD Player |
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Toshiba Subsidizes $200/Unit on New HD Player
According to a teardown analysis, Toshiba is losing $200 per unit, of its new HD DVD player, in order to gain some marketshare. Interesting that integrated circuits account for more of the cost than the drive itself. Also, this particular analyst concludes that Blu-ray and HD-DVD will "not be a repeat of VHS vs. Beta" and that a stalemate is the likely outcome
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:47 pm
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| » Inkscape 0.44 - Faster, Bigger, Better |
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Inkscape 0.44 - Faster, Bigger, Better
After 6 months of development, Inkscape 0.44 is out. This version of the SVG-based vector graphics editor brings improved performance and tons of new features: Layers dialog, docked color palette, clipping and masking, native PDF export with transparency, configurable keyboard (including Xara emulation), Outline mode for complex drawings, innovative 'node sculpting' and lots more. Check out the full release notes, enjoy the screenshots, or download your package for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:46 pm
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| » Fedora Core 6 Preview |
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Fedora Core 6 Preview
Earlier this week Jesse Keating announced the availability of Fedora Core 6 Test 1. New items in FC6T1 include Intel Macintosh support (well, mostly), update notification applet, GNOME 2.15, KDE 3.5.3, and the Fedora Core 6 Extras development repository is already available. With FC6T1's availability, Phoronix has published their own preview of this release. The article is focused on an editorial about changes to come for Fedora Core 6, as well as images from Fedora Core 6 Test 1. The next Fedora Core 6 testing release (Test 2) is due out in July, while the final release is due out this September."
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:46 pm
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| » Microsoft/Yahoo! Merger a Good Idea? |
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Microsoft/Yahoo! Merger a Good Idea?
Last month there was speculation about Microsoft's interest in joining forces with Yahoo! to battle Google. Today, a Merrill Lynch analyst recommended a Yahoo! takeover by Microsoft. From the article: "A Yahoo/MSN-Microsoft combination would have garnered approximately 41% share in the US of search queries [in April] versus Google with 44%.""
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:45 pm
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| » U.S. Secretly Tapping Bank Databases |
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U.S. Secretly Tapping Bank Databases
The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has tapped into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. Relying on a presidential emergency declaration made under the International Emergency Economic Powers, the administration has been surveilling the data from the SWIFT database, which links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year. From the article:
Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.
Jun. 25th, 2006 @ 03:44 pm
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| » Ashley Bowers |
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Ashley Bowers http://www.ashleybowers.com
Nov. 28th, 2005 @ 02:05 am
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