More Evidence of “Trek Tech!”

Remember “Star Trek: The Voyage Home?” (The one us Trekkers playfully call the “Save the Whales” movie!) One of the things that they mentioned about in that movie was “transparent aluminium.” Scotty was willing to give away the formula if the guy that owned the company would make some for him. Well, this is an old article, but my brother-in-law, Jon, sent it to me and pointed out that they ARE working on just that… transparent aluminium! Wow!

Military: New Aluminum Windows Stop .50-Caliber Bullet

“A new type of transparent armor made of aluminum could one day replace glass in military vehicles. The product is called aluminum oxynitride. It is being tested by the Army and the University of Dayton Research Institute in Ohio. The material is a ceramic compound with a high compressive strength and durability, according to an Army statement issued this week. It performs better than the multilayered glass products currently in use, and its about half the weight. It is virtually scratch-resistant. ‘The substance itself is light-years ahead of glass,’ said 1st Lt. Joseph La Monica, who heads the research. Glass is still used in the new process, being sandwiched between an outer layer of the polished aluminum oxynitride and a polymer backing.”

How cool is that?

How Cool is This? Warp Drive May Be Possible!

USS Enterprise NCC-1701I am a HUGE Star Trek fan, as you may know. And, Star Trek has been very “prophetic” already, predicting hand-held “cell phone” like communicators, pad computers, diagnostic beds in healthcare, etc. Well, how about warp drive? Scientists now believe that warp drive may, indeed, be possible as well! Way to go, Gene Roddenberry!

Star Trek warp drive is a possibility, say scientists

“Two physicists have boldly gone where no reputable scientists should go and devised a new scheme to travel faster than the speed of light. The advance could mean that Star Trek fantasies of interstellar civilizations and voyages powered by warp drive are now no longer the exclusive domain of science fiction writers. In the long running television series created by Gene Roddenberry, the warp drive was invented by Zefram Cochrane, who began his epic project in 2053 in Bozeman, Montana. Now Dr. Gerald Cleaver, associate professor of physics at Baylor, and Richard Obousy have come up with a new twist on an existing idea to produce a warp drive that they believe can travel faster than the speed of light, without breaking the laws of physics. In their scheme, in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, a starship could “warp” space so that it shrinks ahead of the vessel and expands behind it. By pushing the departure point many light years backwards while simultaneously bringing distant stars and other destinations closer, the warp drive effectively transports the starship from place to place at faster-than-light speeds. All this extraordinary feat requires, says the new study, is for scientists to harness a mysterious and poorly understood cosmic antigravity force, called dark energy. Dark energy is thought responsible for speeding up the expansion rate of our universe as time moves on, just like it did after the Big Bang, when the universe expanded much faster than the speed of light for a very brief time. This may come as a surprise since, according to relativity theory, matter cannot move through space faster than the speed of light, which is almost 300,000,000 meters per second. But that theory applies only to unwarped ‘flat’ space. And there is no limit on the speed with which space itself can move: the spaceship can sit at rest in a small bubble of space that flows at “superluminal” – faster than light – velocities through normal space because the fabric of space and time itself (scientists refer to spacetime) is stretching. In the scheme outlined by Dr. Cleaver dark energy would be used to create the bubble: if dark energy can be made negative in front of the ship, then that patch of space would contract in response. ‘Think of it like a surfer riding a wave,’ said Dr Cleaver. ‘The ship would be pushed by the spatial bubble and the bubble would be traveling faster than the speed of light.'”

What is amazing is that this is EXACTLY the way Star Trek described how warp speed travel was possible… a “warp bubble.” How totally weird is that!!?!?

To be fair, I have heard noted physicist and string theorist, Michio Kaku, talk about this on the Discovery Channel before this… but it was cool that is made news this week!

PodcastStation Discontinued!

As you know, when I got my new laptop, I had to switch to PodcastStation from PodProducer because I needed a system that supported a USB microphone (PodProducer doesn’t unfortunately.) Now, the makers of PodcastStation are “throwing in the towel” due to development costs. That’s a shame! Here’s the e-mail owner’s of the software received:

“Dear Friends of PodcastStation:

Sales, development and support of PodcastStation has been discontinued and PodcastStation software is no longer available.

We appreciate the loyalty of our fans and hardcore users, but the simple fact is that the cost of maintaining the product far exceeded its ability to generate income.

For our registered users, we will be posting technical support FAQs on our PodcastStation site soon, including instructions for re-registration.

You’ll want to take down your links to PCS at the soonest opportunity.

We appreciate your support over the past two years with PodcastStation and helping us to get into the hands of those who really enjoy using it.

If you wish to contact us directly please send inquiries to info@audionlabs.com.

Best regards,

Kimberly Brown
Audion Laboratories, Inc.
206-842-5202 x 203”

It is awesome software, and they are an excellent company… it is a shame to see a product “die” like this. But, I understand that sometimes you have to make hard business decisions.

Netflix Experiencing Problems

DVD shipments were curtailed at it’s distribution plants due to a computer problem… but they are working on it! I heard on NPR this morning that Netflix will return some of the monthly fee for this month back to customers due to this problem as a credit.

Netflix admits it’s experiencing shipping delays

“Netflix is currently experiencing “significant shipping issues” that are preventing the popular movie rental service from delivering discs. Affected customers have been notified by e-mail. The initial shipping delay was reported on Tuesday and reported in the company’s blog to have been mostly resolved on Wednesday.”

This has apparently NOT effected their “on-demand” streaming service, however.

“Patch Tuesday” Update – More Patches and Fixes

This last “Patch Tuesday” brought some important fixes for Microsoft users. Especially Word and Vista IPsec users, take note!

Eleven major soft spots addressed by latest Patch Tuesday

“The full effect of yesterday’s round of patches from Microsoft is just now being felt. This time, it’s not the worldwide DNS flaw that’s the big issue, but the typical stuff that afflicts Microsoft products, including and especially Office. One of the ‘critical’ vulnerabilities addressed yesterday affects older versions of Microsoft Word, and was acknowledged by the company last month. It involves intentionally malformed documents that, when parsed by Word, cause it to crash but also leave memory corrupted. Within that corrupt memory can lurk remnant code that could then be executed to give a remote, malicious user unauthorized privileges. You’d think that perhaps an Office 2003 Service Pack would be the answer to this problem, as systems with that service pack loaded were reportedly unaffected, as were systems with Office 2007 with or without SP1. But this week, Microsoft did elect to address the issue with a separate fix. Another of the 11 issues addressed with this round includes a bizarre problem, rated just ‘important’ rather than ‘critical,’ having to do with IPsec: In Windows Vista, IPsec is a component that enables a fully encrypted connection, but with other systems that can host it (for instance, Windows Server 2008). It enables businesses to avoid having to deploy sophisticated, and often entangled, VPNs to secure their connections and open up file system access to privileged users. In Vista, IPsec is closely tied with the group policy system, which is also part of its Advanced Firewall. These group policy objects determine how and whether certain security features are employed; and in the case of this particular security hole, the policy system can be fooled, and network traffic that’s supposed to be encrypted, won’t be. This fix affects both Vista and WS2K8, both 32- and 64-bit versions. In a clear indication that no Windows component is, by design, safe if it can communicate with other systems, it was discovered that an old-style heap-based buffer overflow could be triggered by, of all things, the Internal Color Management (ICM) system. This is the part of Windows that manages color profiles for displays and printers, translating hues from image files into true representations for the screen, and in turn into equally true representations in print.”

Firefox 3.1 May Have Built-In Support for Ogg

Even though it may tick off the W3C, Mozilla is experimenting with direct Ogg audio and video support as the default for the new HTML 5.0 Audio and Video tags.

Firefox 3.1 will try native Ogg video and audio, despite W3C

“Should a Web browser be capable of decoding audio and video for itself? Mozilla is seriously experimenting with the notion, despite a turn of events in the open source community that may mean its experiment won’t be a standard. For years, one of the most significant debates in the field of Web browser development concerns the issue of openness versus choice. Specifically, should a Web browser support an open standard for embedding audio and video elements by default, or should it continue to enable Web site developers to include the formats of their choice, thus compelling users to download the appropriate, corresponding plug-ins? The debate turned a corner last December, when the World-Wide Web Consortium apparently backed down from its plan to enable default codecs for its planned

Just When You Thought Your Hardware Was Up-To-Date… Sigh!

They have approved new USB and Fireware specs! Ack! I finally got all my home hardware “up-to-date” with USB 2.0, and now they are prepping USB 3.0! Sigh. But they will be fast! The new Firewaire will be 3.2 Gbits per second, while USB 3.0 will be 4.8 Gbits per second!

Next-generation FireWire finalized, but USB 3.0 will be faster

“The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recently approved IEEE 1394-2008, a faster version of the standard known to most simply as FireWire and used for connecting PCs with digital video devices or external hard drives. ‘The new standard includes all of the amendments, enhancements and more than 100 errata which have been added to the base standard over the last 12 years,’ IEEE chair of the working group Les Baxter said in a statement. ‘This update provides developers with a single document they can rely upon for all of their application needs.’ Specifically, the new classification will help increase the speed of FireWire from its current maximum of 800Mbit per second (with FireWire 800) to up to 3.2Gbit per second. Along with the S3200 that offers 3.2 Gbps transfer rates, the IEEE also approved S1600, which will offer 1.6 Gbit/sec. IEEE 1394 will eventually be scaled up to 6.4Gbit/sec, the organization indicated. Both interfaces can be used with existing FireWire 800 cables, easing the migration for users of the current standard. FireWire has been popular among Sony and Apple products, but most of the PC industry still relies on USB to help power devices and transfer data. Even with the anticipated speed increase, it’s still highly unlikely that FireWire will be widely adopted. The IEEE expects FireWire 3200 to roll out in October. Products with the new standard will not go on sale immediately, manufacturers will need to implement the technology into future products. Apple is largely expected to be the first company using FireWire 3200. The October launch is absolutely crucial because the Intel-backed USB 3.0 is expected to arrive by the end of 2008, bringing with it a maximum speed of 4.8Gbps. USB 2.0 offers speeds of 480Mbit per second, which still gave manufacturers a use for FireWire 800.”

20% of TV Viewers View TV Over the Internet

Wow! That sounds like a high figure for IPTV users… but it sounds good! Whether it is hulu.com, revision3.com, or direct downloads of shows… more folks are definitely watching TV via TCP/IP (the Internet!)

Surveys: Many people are now watching TV online

“As much as 20 percent of all TV viewing in the US now happens online, says a survey released this week by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI), supporting other recent research which also indicates that the Internet is fast turning into the top choice for many. For the first time this year, a significant part of the online audience for primetime TV episodes is not watching some portion of the show on TV, according to IMMI’s new survey results. Recent launches of sites like Hulu, offering full episodes of programs, is surely bolstering the trend. For some shows, online viewing is higher than DVR playback. Yet the IMMI researchers also contend that only about one-third of American households own DVRs, whereas about 82 percent of them have Internet access. About 29 percent of ‘traditional live TV viewers’ use a DVR frequently, in contrast to just 22 percent of online TV viewers. Around 50 percent of all online viewing was characterized by IMMI’s respondents as ‘TV replacement,’ whereas 31 percent of the time, it was described as ‘catch-up viewing,’ and 18 percent of the time as ‘fill-in viewing.’ Online TV as a ‘TV replacement’ is certainly nothing new. As previously reported in BetaNews, in a study conducted by Burst during the recent Hollywood writer’s strike, almost half of those surveyed were spending more time than usual online, in order to avoid repeat programming on TV. Although that particular study didn’t ask the TV defectors how they spent their time online, it’s probably a good bet that a lot of them were viewing videos. Europe seems to be much further ahead of the US in watching TV online, according to a survey by Motorola. Even back in mid-2007, when that survey was published, 45 percent of respondents across the UK, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy claimed to be watching at least some TV online, with France taking the lead at 59 percent.”

Now We’re Talking… a Personal Jetpack!

Now this looks cool! Think of it as a “Jet Ski” for the sky… sorta! At any rate, looks like it would be fun!

Jet pack makes maiden flight at Oshkosh air show

“The first public flight of a futuristic personal jet pack on Tuesday didn’t exactly conjure up images of ‘The Jetsons’ flying saucer car, the power and grace of Superman soaring faster than a speeding bullet or the heroic Buck Rogers fighting evil warlords in outer space. But the maiden launch of the Martin Jetpack, at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture show here, nonetheless provided a lift to the dream that ordinary people could one day fly free, albeit not as naturally, as a bird. And without wings or a pilot’s license. The rocketlike human flight machine, offered at the introductory price of about $100,000, is being marketed by the Martin Aircraft Co. of New Zealand as ‘the world’s first practical jet pack.'”

1 156 157 158 159 160 231