Archive for March, 2008

Arkansas school has an 11-year-old IT department — no, really, an 11-year-old

Monday, March 31st, 2008

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Seeing as our high school network hijinks pretty much led to semi-permanent suspension, our barren hearts were actually warmed by the story of 11-year-old Jon Penn, who has been in charge of his elementary school’s 60-machine network since last year. The previous network administrator at the Arkansas school simply up and left, leaving the IT systems in shambles — and in the hands of Jon’s mom, the school librarian. Jon’s since scrubbed the aging Windows 98 machines of their accumulated viruses and spyware, and he’s installed a firewall and virus / spam filter to keep things clean while he works out a plan to move to Windows 2000 and centralized system management. Right now though, Jon’s got his hands busy doing everything from fixing everything from paper jams to revising server configurations, and it sounds like he’s having a ball — he says he’s been testing out virtualization products lately, and he’s studying up for A+ technician certification this summer. Looks like school’s a lot more fun when you’re running the show, no?

[Via Switched]

 

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Norway’s Yes-to-OOXML is Formally Protested

Monday, March 31st, 2008

An anonymous reader writes “Norway’s yes-to-OOXML may tip the vote in favor of accepting it as an ISO-standard, but the committee chairman just faxed a formal protest to the ISO. ‘I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest. You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway’s vote from No with comments to Yes.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by ScuttleMonkey

Palm Centro hits the magical one million mark

Monday, March 31st, 2008

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Palm’s miniscule and wallet-friendly Centro has managed to reach one million units sold since its launch last September. It got its legs working as Sprint and AT&T’s gateway smartphone at that fantastic $99 pricepoint, and now it’s making a bid for world domination in major markets in Europe and Asia. The one million sales have it nipping at the heels of recent superstar smartphones, the two million plus HTC Touch and the four million plus iPhone, not bad company in the least.

 

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Original post by Paul Miller

Wireshark 1.0 Released

Monday, March 31st, 2008

katterjohn writes “After almost 10 years of work, Wireshark 1.0 has been released. Wireshark is the award-winning protocol analyzer, formerly known as Ethereal. The release features several security fixes and an experimental package for Max OS X Intel.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by ScuttleMonkey

HP introduces Barcelona servers

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Original post by Chloe Albanesius

Arduino pocket piano synth - coming soon!

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Arduino Piano Synth

Coming soon to the Maker store - The Pocket Piano Arduino Shield, from Critter and Guitari -

This is a board for making the Arduino into a portable stand alone music synthesizer. It plugs directly into the Arduino board and provides 25 multiplexed keys (2 full octaves), 4 pots, status LED, reset switch, digital to analog converter IC, and a RCA audio jack. The Arduino board with its powerful AVR processor is more than adequate for a wide range of sound synthesis techniques. We have experimented with simple additive / wave-table synthesis, frequency modulation, ring modulation, sampling, polyphony, various arpeggiators. The whole thing can be powered over the Arduino’s USB port for convenient experimenting.

So very awesome - start planning that cool enclosure design, we’ll keep you posted as to availability.

Related:
Arduinosynth Alpha
Arduinosynth alpha

In the Maker store:
Mkcellavs-2
Video Synth Screens
“Critter & Guitari” Cellular Automata Video Synthesizer Kit

Mklok-2
Loud Objects Noise Toy Kit

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Original post by Collin Cunningham

Bug Labs Announces Educational Discounts

Monday, March 31st, 2008

In some sense, Bug Labs seems like one of those companies that attend DEMO or the Microprocessor Forum: interesting in the abstract, but never quite clear on how they’re going to set the market afire. Perhaps the company’s latest initiative, to seed educators with the company’s kits, is a realization of this.

A quick refresher: think of Bug Labs as a cross between PC Magazine and ExtremeTech. Customers can buy a series of interlocking hardware modules, which are avalable at varying prices. The hardware is accompanied by a set of APIs, through which customers can write their own control code.

Recognizing that the way to build interest in the product is to lure the young, Bug Labs is offering educators and students between 10 percent to 25 percent discounts.

(Why? The Zilog Z80 lesson. For years, computer science classes taught students how to program the Z80 microcontroller. And, when those students graduated, they took their knowledge to their respective engineering departments. The Z80 flourished — helped, to be sure, by Zilog’s decision to license the design to other companies and not charge royalties.)

So here’s how it works:

Students: Send an email to students@buglabs.net, with your full name, school name, and scanned school ID.

K-12 Teachers: Send an email to k12discount@buglabs.net with your full name, your school/institution name and mailing address, and your role. Discounts are open twice a year. The company is also sponsoring an essay contest for three free BUGbundles; details are available on the Bug Labs Web site.

Secondary educators: The company is offering a 25 percent discount to educators, contingent on teachers emailing Bug Labs at collegediscount@buglabs.net. Bug team members will also volunteer their time at schools who work Bug Labs into their coursework, the company said.

Original post by Mark Hachman

BUG+EDU educational discounts unveiled for little hackers

Monday, March 31st, 2008

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Bug Labs announced in January that it’d be busting out a BUG+EDU program for getting units into the hands of impressionable youngsters, and now that they’ve sold out of the first crop of units they’re getting those educational discounts off the ground. Students (with relevant ID) can now purchase modules at a 10% discount, while K-12 schools and secondary education institutions can buy Bug for 25% off. K-12 schools can also participate in Bug giveaways, while undergrad and postgrad programs can develop coursework in cojunction with Bug — long story short, some kids out there are going to get themselves some fun edumicatin’.

 

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Original post by Paul Miller

AMD launches first FireGL graphics card with DisplayPort

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Original post by Chloe Albanesius

J’ai craqué pour un AIR!

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Et oui tout est dans le titre! Même en temps Microsoftee, j’ai craqué
pour un AIR. J’explique mes raisons dans la vidéo suivante:
 


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Original post by Benjamin Gauthey

General Dynamics UK touts near real-time 3D maps for soldiers

Monday, March 31st, 2008

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It looks like soldiers could one day have their own tab key of sorts to call up detailed, 3D maps at will, at least if the folks at General Dynamics UK have their way. As Physorg reports, they’ve developed a “near real-time” 3D map system that makes use of an array of different technologies including LIDAR, thermal imaging and x-ray backscatter techniques to not only display buildings and streets, but objects and people inside buildings as well. The use of LIDAR also promises to provide measurements of doors, windows, and alleys with “millimeter accuracy.” All that obviously makes the system, dubbed Masthead, slightly less than portable, however, although General Dynamics says it’d be able to be carried in the back of a military vehicle or civilian 4×4, or in a plane for that matter. Of course, like most such projects, General Dynamics isn’t just setting its sights to military applications, with it also touting Masthead’s potential benefits for police forces in planning security measures for large events, to name one example.

[Via Physorg]

 

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Neal Stephenson Returns with “Anathem”

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Lev Grossman writes to tell us that Neal Stephenson, author of greats like Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, has another novel due for release in September. The catalogue copy gives us a small glimpse at what may be in store: “Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians–sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable ’saecular’ world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by ScuttleMonkey

Journal of Pyrotechnics

Monday, March 31st, 2008

pyroJournalLogo.jpg

I just discovered the website for the Journal of Pyrotechnics:

Issues of the Journal of Pyrotechnics [ISSN 1082-3999] appear twice a year. Early issues contained 40 to 50 pages. More recent issues contain 70 to 80 pages printed in 8-1/2×11″ format with medium-sized print. Areas of pyrotechnics addressed include fireworks, pyrotechnic special effects, propellants & rocketry, and civilian pyrotechnics. The Journal is “dedicated to the advancement of pyrotechnics through the sharing of information”. This is accomplished with a mix of different types of articles; however, most fall into two areas. One area is reports on pyrotechnic and fireworks research conducted by both professional scientists and individual experimenters. The other area is reviews of various technical and craft areas of pyrotechnics, some at an advanced level and others at a tutorial level.

At $25-40 per issue, this is clearly an industry-priced publication. PDFs of articles can be bought at .50 per page.

Journal of Pyrotechnics

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Hitachi intros short-throw CPX3 WXGA projector

Monday, March 31st, 2008

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It looks like Hitachi is aiming to give those normally confined to XGA projectors a bit of a boost, with its new CPX3 model not only boasting a slightly more home theater friendly WXGA (1280 x 800) resolution, but some short-throw capabilities as well. Exactly how short that throw is isn’t clear, however, with Hitachi only going so far as to describe the projector as boasting a wide-angle lens that’ll let you use it “close to the screen with no obstructions.” Apart from that, the 3.9-pound projector is fairly standard fare, with it packing 2,000 lumens of brightness, HDMI input, and a built-in 1 watt speaker, along with some security measures sure to please more business-minded types. While there doesn’t appear to be any official word on a price from Hitachi, a couple of retailers seem to already be selling it for around $1,000.

 

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Metaaso mermaid IPv6 P2P App

Monday, March 31st, 2008

Metasso Mermain P2P IPv6 appMetaaso mermaid is a line of products based on a Peer-To-Peer (P2P) technology, which is completely server-less and allows users to broadcast data/audio/video/text to millions around the world, without the need for heavy infrastructure, and over their very own private, secure peer-to-peer network.

What’s interesting about mermaid is that it’s the first IPv6 P2P sharing application that I’m aware of that makes extensive use of the new IPv6 address scheme, which helps get around pesky NAT issues and share data/media with your other peers.

Mermaid can also be used for P2P VoIP that doesn’t require centralized supernodes like Skype does. In addition to VoIP you can also broadcast your webcam, and your voice live, to millions of people worldwide in real-time over your own private, secure, P2P network, optimized for webcam and voice broadcast.

What else can you you do with mermaid? They claim the following capabilities:

- The ability to broadcast MOVIES in realtime to millions of people worldwide over a private, secure, server-less P2P network.

- The ability to broadcast and receive NEWS, over a server-less, P2P network spanning the globe, where you can get the news, as soon as it gets published.

- The ability to broadcast ANY audio/video source connected to your computer over your own private, secure, P2P network to millions of people around the globe.

- Multiple people connected to each other, sharing their webcams, their desktops, their voice and files (file sharing) over their very own private P2P network, bringing global, and scalable multi-node video conferencing to mainstream.

How does it work? Well according to their website, the Mermaid products are pure peer-to-peer, and do not require any major infrastructure to scale to millions of people. "What that means, is that you can create your own network, which will be identified with your network-id and password, and over that network, you can broadcast movies, webcam feeds, audio feeds, news, files to all the people connected to your network. What’s more, is that you can put your own ads to be shown on your network(s)."

They go on to explain that the more people on your network, the better. In fact, they explain, "No, you won’t need a heavy-tank computer or a gazzilion-terabytes/second network to stream to millions of people. The collective power of all the computers connected to your network will be harnessed. You can easily make do with an average PC and an average network."

Cool!

One one caveat - you need IPv6, as they explain here:

The software works like a charm on office LANs, and campus and other networks. But you want your network to be globally available right? Good, so you need to get IPv6. Call your ISP, and say you need ‘a globally routable I-P-V-6 address’. If they don’t, tell them you’re switching ISP coz they’re so lazy that they can’t click a button on their screens.

That’s pretty much it…

Yeah, cuz IPv6 is being deployed like gangbusters - NOT! I know, they keep saying this is the year of IPv6, but I’m still waiting… Still, once IPv6 does take off, interesting apps like this P2P IPv6 app will certainly take off. No doubt Bittorrent and other popular P2P sharing apps will get on board the IPv6 wagon . Due to the server-less infrastructure, it will be even more impossible to shut down pirated media since there are no centralized torrent trackers. Take that RIAA and MPAA

The software is FREE, but it is advertising supported - apparently to support their beer drinking habits.


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Original post by nafiz


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