Mythbusters’ Savage: I got past TSA with razor blades

Chris Matyszczyk- Many of you will be flying today. You will be going to see those to whom you feel closest, or, indeed, most indifferent, in order to give thanks for your feelings.

You will also have to enjoy the watchful eyes, hands and smiles of the TSA inspectorate.

You may not find it entirely comfortable. However, like “Mythbusters” presenter Adam Savage, in the rush to leave the house, you may have forgotten that you have a couple of 12-inch razor blades secreted about your person.

Savage, in the highly entertaining monologue that I have embedded, describes how earlier this year he was flying and happened to forget to remove potentially dangerous objects from his belongings.

via Mythbusters’ Savage: I got past TSA with razor blades | Technically Incorrect – CNET News.

U.S. seizes sites linked to copyright infringement

Steven Musil – The U.S. government has launched a major crackdown on online copyright infringement, seizing dozens of sites linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods.

Torrent sites that link to illegal copies of music and movie files and sites that sell counterfeit goods were seized this week by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. Visitors to such sites as Torrent-finder.com, 2009jerseys.com, and Dvdcollects.com found that their usual sites had been replaced by a message that said, “This domain name has been seized by ICE–Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court.”

“My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!” the owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak, which listed more than 70 domains that were apparently part of the massive seizure. …

The seizures came after a Senate committee unanimously approved a controversial proposal earlier this month that would allow the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) allows a Web site’s domain to be seized if it “has no demonstrable, commercially significant purpose or use other than” offering or providing access to unauthorized copies of copyrighted works.

The proposal has garnered support from dozens of the largest content companies, including video game maker Activision, media firms NBC Universal and Viacom, and the Motion Picture Association of America and Recording Industry Association of America lobbying groups. However, critics such as engineers and civil liberties groups say the COICA could balkanize the Internet, jeopardize free speech rights, and endanger legitimate Web sites.

The battle against online file sharing has ramped up. Earlier today, a Swedish court upheld the copyright conviction of the founders of The Pirate Bay, a notorious file-sharing site. In October, a U.S. district judge issued an injunction against Lime Wire, the company that operated the popular file-sharing software LimeWire. In May, a judge granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry’s claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, committed copyright infringement, engaged in unfair competition, and induced copyright infringement.

via U.S. seizes sites linked to copyright infringement | Digital Media – CNET News.

The government seizing web sites now?  Well, my music is free to download and there is other good high quality free music if you know where to look. You know, the Internet was born entirely of web sites which had no “commercially significant purpose” so this move by the music industry (which totally screws the musicians who make the music) annoys me.

People who want free music will move to alternatives to Limewire like Cabo and Frostwire… and if they get all of these shut down, there will be new programs, new networks. This seems like a losing battle with all the stolen music which is already out there, plus the ability of so many different programs to rip songs from music CDs.

Will they really make a dent in file sharing? Perhaps this is more of a symbolic gesture.

iPhone wants iTunes, endless reboots, must be restored, restore fails. Unknown error 20000 9 28 lame!

My iPhone is royally screwed up.

Lesson: Have your important contacts printed out, especially if you will be visiting a city with no Apple store.

WARNING: There is no solution below. I must have a hardware problem.

The  “iPhone wants iTunes” image and the white apple logo of death is all I see on my screen, my iPhone won’t boot.

Under Windows XP, I have completely uninstalled and re-installed the latest version of iTunes (10.1), and that includes all the helper apps like Bonjour. I have put the iPhone into Recovery Mode about 10 times and restored.

Hours of work getting my contacts and apps back. It works for a minute, then crashes out, even when I’m not using it. My phone keeps going back to the “plug USB into iTunes” screen.

Endless loop: “Verifying iPhone restore with Apple” then “Preparing iPhone for restore.”. then “The iPhone “iPhone” could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (20000). Or error 9, or error 28 which is a hardware problem.

Apple’s advice on line: Disable all of your security software so we and every other hacker can remotely rape your computer.

Disabled all firewall and anti-virus software so all of the hidden little Apple apps can infect my computer and phone home… (I’ll be wiping  the drive completely and re-installing my clean OS after this violation.) Same problem.

Next to try:

DFU means Device Firmware Update. If a restore using Recovery Mode doesn’t work you will want to use DFU Mode as a last resort. When placing your iPhone into DFU Mode it does not load the OS before attempting the restore…

Open iTunes and connect the iPhone to your Mac.

Press and hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button at the same time.

After exactly 10 seconds release the Sleep/Wake button. Continue holding the home button until you iTunes pops up a message telling you that it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode.

The iPhone screen will remain black

NOTE***: It may take a few attempts to get your iPhone into DFU mode. Generally, I hold down both buttons then release the Home button just before I think the Apple logo would appear. If you are still holding both buttons down and you see the Apple logo you are holding them down for too long!

Switch computer to a faster network and try the above. Result: “Extracting software…”  (For 25 minutes?!? I have a 100 MB connection, plenty of memory and a fast CPU, what are they doing for 25 minutes?)  “Waiting for iPhone…” (iPhone screen shows progress bar…. no progress for 3 minutes… then it starts moving…. 7 minutes later I get: )  “Your iphone has been restored to factory settings and is being restarted. ….”

It restarts, I get the image telling me to plug in to iTunes. My iPhone says, “iPhone is activated”. My contacts: Gone. Apps: Gone. What is my voicemail password again? Getting prompted for that. AT&T can reset it, but each time your restore fails, they will have to reset it again.
So, I’m restoring from another back up. “Restoring iPhone from backup…” which I did before… this time I’m using an older backup. “Settings for your iPhone have been restored…” please leave it plugged in while it restarts. Apple logo, progress bar on the phone….

Worked. Contacts are there… all aps and data  gone… Fun fun.

No, it didn’t work. 45 minutes later, the phone crashes and shows the white apple logo again. Reboots, comes back for a few minutes at a time, followed by the “plug in to iTunes” screen or being completely dead most of the time, then working for about 5 minutes before crashing again.  This is after multiple restores to factory defaults.

I plug in to iTunes and now my contacts are all gone. As I tapped “favorites”, I watched all of my friend’s names turn into just their numbers as my iPhone lost its mind.

Was up until 3 am getting my contacts restored and my apps back. Worked for a few hours, then crashed back to the iPhone wants iTunes screen.

This is how I spent my vacation:

You must restore this iPhone. Plug in to iTunes. Wait a long time.

The iPhone could not be restored. An uknown error occurred (28).

You must restore this iPhone. Plug in to iTunes. Wait a long time.

The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9).

I do not trust iTunes.  I don’t want it on my computer at all.

If this is a plot to get me into the store so I’ll buy the latest iPhone and renew my contract, it may backfire.   Droid? :-/

WikiLeaks release could damage diplomatic relations, former envoy says

Jill Dougherty – Diplomatic cables expected to be released soon by WikiLeaks could contain highly sensitive information that reveals U.S. negotiating positions, secret intelligence and other confidential matters, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia told CNN.

The expected online disclosure has to be taken seriously, said James F. Collins, who served as ambassador to Moscow from 1997 to 2001 and is currently director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

… The threat by WikiLeaks, the online whistle-blower website, to publish the information has prompted the State Department to undertake a massive review of diplomatic documents. A source tells CNN that every diplomatic mission document from 2006 to 2009 is under review.

The United States has started to alert nations around the world about the possible leaks.

In preparation for the WikiLeaks dump, the British government warning United Kingdom news organizations about the publication of any material which could endanger national security. The Ministry of Defence on Friday issued a so called “D-Notice.”

In the rarely used notice, the MOD told the media that before they publish potentially sensitive stories of a national security nature, they should seek the advice of a senior military official to avoid breaking the order.

A senior Israeli government official said the American government contacted the Israeli government a few days ago to inform them about the possibility of internal U.S. communications about Israel being publicly released. …

via WikiLeaks release could damage diplomatic relations, former envoy says – CNN.com.

Revolutionary idea: Put all the cards on the table for everyone to see, not just political leaders, but everyone. I think this is called democracy or something. Wikileaks is really picking on the U.S. They should leak from other countries too, China and Russia and Iran and Israel and so on. Perhaps they already do and it just doesn’t make the news? My iPhone died today (endless reboot cycle asking me to plug it in to iTunes) and so I picked up a newspaper. The article I read in the Sacramento Bee about what is going on between North and South Korea was so one sided that I couldn’t really understand what was going on. No mention of why North Korea attacked South Korea.

Second-hand smoke kills 600,000 people a year: Study

Second-hand smoke globally kills more than 600,000 people each year, accounting for 1% of all deaths worldwide, according to a new study.

The alarming findings – published on Thursday in the British medical journal Lancet – are based on a survey of 192 countries in 2004.

Researchers estimated that annually second-hand smoke causes about 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 deaths from lower respiratory disease, 36,900 deaths from asthma and 21,400 deaths from lung cancer.

Children account for about 165,000 of the deaths, according to the researchers.

“This helps us understand the real toll of tobacco,” said Armando Peruga, of the World Health Organization, who led the study. He said the estimated 603,000 deaths from passive smoking should be added to the 5.1 million that smoking claims annually.

The study found that 40% of children and 30% adults regularly breathe in second-hand smoke.

Nationally, second-hand smoke causes 46,000 deaths from heart disease each year.

via Second-hand smoke kills 600,000 people a year: Study.

Scientists Spot Brain Center for ‘Out-of-Body’ Experience

New research is taking a little of the mystery out of the phenomenon known as the “out-of-body” experience.

A team of Belgian scientists have linked the sense of disembodiment central to the experience — the feeling of leaving one’s body and then floating outside it — to abnormal activity in a specific region of the brain.

This activity appears to short-circuit the processing of sensory information and the ability to locate oneself in time and space, the team said.

“Self-perception is nothing else but a creation of your brain,” explained study lead author and neurosurgeon Dr. Dirk De Ridder, of the neurosurgical department at Antwerp University. “We found a key spot in the brain in which different areas are normally activated whenever stimulus comes in, so you can relate that stimulus to yourself, which helps create a unified perception of ourselves.”

“The ‘total perception of self,’ ” he added, “is built out of different parts. And one of these parts is that your consciousness belongs within your body.”

“But when something goes wrong in that brain area so that the integration of all the incoming information — sight, sound, smell, the senses — is not happening as it should, then you can feel that you’re not in your body,” De Ridder said. “You can get an out-of-body experience. You’re perfectly conscious. But you just feel as if you’re not actually sitting in your body.”

His team reported its finding in the Nov. 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

De Ridder’s team discovered what they believe is a hardwired connection between the out-of-body experience and specific abnormal brain activity. They did so while observing the unanticipated side-effects of a treatment offered to a 63-year-old Belgian patient suffering from tinnitus, more commonly known as “ringing in the ears.”

To alleviate his condition, doctors had implanted electrodes in a region in the right side of the man’s brain known as the temporoparietal junction.

Unfortunately, stimulation of the electrodes failed to halt the ear-ringing. However, in the process of doing so, the attending physicians found that the patient repeatedly experienced what he described as an out-of-body experience. …

via Scientists Spot Brain Center for ‘Out-of-Body’ Experience – Drugs.com MedNews.

Deputies: Motel guest trashes room to find ‘midget’

In what was apparently a phone prank, a motel guest said someone called his room and told him to smash the things inside in order to free a “midget” trapped next door.

Spartanburg County sheriff’s deputies told WXII sister station WYFF that they were called to a Motel 6 on Sunday night after a guest nearly punched through to the next room with a wrench.

A motel worker called deputies after she discovered the man had damaged the television, mirrors, and the wall between rooms, according to a police report.

When deputies arrived, 73-year-old Joseph Jones told them someone had called his room about 11 p.m. and said he was a manager at the motel. Jones said the male caller told him the previous guest had installed highly sophisticated cameras in his room. The caller told Jones not to bother looking for them and instead, the caller would instruct him on how to get rid of the cameras.

Jones said the caller asked him if the TV was on, and if it was to turn it off and unplug it. Jones said he did as he was told.

Next, he was told to remove the back toilet cover and to smash the TV with it. He did and the cover shattered without breaking the TV screen, so he was instructed to throw the TV outside. Jones did as he was instructed.

At some point, according to the report, Jones gave the caller his cell number so he did not have to keep running back to the room phone.

The instructions continued, Jones told deputies. The male caller told him cameras were also behind the mirrors in the room, and that he needed to smash the mirrors. Jones grabbed a wrench that he found in the room and smashed the mirrors, the report said.

Jones said the caller then said that a “midget” who was 4 feet 3 inches tall was barricaded in the room next to him and that he needed to help police get to him. With that, the report said, Jones took his wrench and began to break away the wallboard behind the room door. He broke through to the next room but then stopped due to complaints from other guests about the loud noises. While Jones was telling deputies his story, he got another call on his cell phone from the male suspect. The report said Jones gave the phone to a deputy, who took the call. According to the report, there was a man on the other line stating that he survived gunshots and was coming back to the Motel 6. The man was asking if all of the cameras were destroyed. The man on the phone then realized that he was speaking to someone other than the guest. He then said, “I have the wrong number,” and disconnected. The number that the man called from was blocked. …

via Deputies: Motel guest trashes room to find ‘midget’ – Local News – Winston-Salem, NC – msnbc.com.

Stonehenge builders ‘used ball bearings to move giant slabs of stone’

Neolithic engineers may have used ball bearings in the construction of Stonehenge, it was claimed today.

The same technique that allows vehicles and machinery to run smoothly today could have been used to transport the monument’s massive standing stones more than 4,000 years ago, according to a new theory.

Scientists showed how balls placed in grooved wooden tracks would have allowed the easy movement of stones weighing many tons.

No-one has yet successfully explained how the heavy slabs used to build Stonehenge were shifted from their quarries to Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire

Some, the ‘bluestones’, weighed four tons each and were brought a distance of 150 miles from Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Attempts to re-enact transporting the blocks on wooden rollers or floating them on the sea have not proved convincing.

The hard surfaces and trenches needed when using rollers would also have left their mark on the landscape, but are missing.

Experts hit on the new idea after examining mysterious stone balls found near Stonehenge-like monuments in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

About the size of a cricket ball, they are precisely fashioned to be within a millimetre of the same size.

This suggests they were meant to be used together in some way rather than individually.

The Scottish stone circles are similar in form to Stonehenge, but contain some much larger stones.

To test the theory, researchers from the University of Exeter constructed a model in which wooden balls were inserted into grooves dug out of timber planks.

When heavy concrete slabs were placed on a platform above the balls, held in position by more grooved tracks, they could be moved with ease.

Archaeologist Andrew Young described the experiment in which he sat on top of the slabs to provide extra weight.

He said: ‘The true test was when a colleague used his index finger to move me forward – a mere push and the slabs and I shot forward.

‘This proved the balls could move large heavy objects and could be a viable explanation of how giant stones were moved.’ …

via Stonehenge builders ‘used ball bearings to move giant slabs of stone’ | Mail Online.

 

Three teenagers survive 50 days adrift in Pacific

Three teenage boys have been found alive after being lost in their boat in the Pacific Ocean for 50 days.

The boys, from the Tokelau Islands, a New Zealand-administered territory in the South Pacific, had been given up for dead after an unsuccessful search.

A tuna fishing boat picked them up near Fiji and is taking them to hospital for treatment for severe sunburn.

The boys survived on coconuts, water they trapped on a tarpaulin and a seabird they managed to catch.

‘Strong mental spirit’

The boys – Samu Perez and Filo Filo, both 15, and Edward Nasau, 14 – had gone missing from Atafu atoll in a small aluminium boat after an annual sporting event on 5 October.

They were presumed to have died after unsuccessful searches by the New Zealand air force. …

via BBC News – Three teenagers survive 50 days adrift in Pacific.

Bonn physicists create a ‘super-photon’

Illustration: the Super-Photon
Martin Weitz – Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons. Until recently, expert had thought this impossible. This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the x-ray range. Among other applications, they might allow building more powerful computer chips. The scientists are reporting on their discovery in the upcoming issue of the journal Nature.

By cooling Rubidium atoms deeply and concentrating a sufficient number of them in a compact space, they suddenly become indistinguishable. They behave like a single huge “super particle.” Physicists call this a Bose-Einstein condensate.

For “light particles,” or photons, this should also work. Unfortunately, this idea faces a fundamental problem. When photons are “cooled down,” they disappear. Until a few months ago, it seemed impossible to cool light while concentrating it at the same time. The Bonn physicists Jan Klärs, Julian Schmitt, Dr. Frank Vewinger, and Professor Dr. Martin Weitz have, however, succeeded in doing this – a minor sensation. …

This photonic Bose-Einstein condensate is a completely new source of light that has characteristics resembling lasers. But compared to lasers, they have a decisive advantage, “We are currently not capable of producing lasers that generate very short-wave light – i.e. in the UV or X-ray range,” explained Jan Klärs. “With a photonic Bose-Einstein condensate this should, however, be possible.”

This prospect should primarily please chip designers. They use laser light for etching logic circuits into their semiconductor materials. How fine these structures can be is limited by the wavelength of the light, among other factors. Long-wavelength lasers are less well suited to precision work than short-wavelength ones – it is as if you tried to sign a letter with a paintbrush.

X-ray radiation has a much shorter wavelength than visible light. In principle, X-ray lasers should thus allow applying much more complex circuits on the same silicon surface. This would allow creating a new generation of high-performance chips – and consequently, more powerful computers for end users.

via Bonn physicists create a ‘super-photon’.