The race for micro fuel cells that power devices is heating up. Several companies are anxiously working on developing and marketing micro fuel cells for portable devices. The most recent announcement by Samsung after Christmas allows you to run a laptop for a whole month, assuming it runs for eight hours a day.
The following is a list of fuel cell research published in the past 5 years.
- Wired News, 2002: A startup from Munich, SFC, has developed a micro fuel cell that runs on methanol or Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC).
- BBC News, 2003: NEC has unveiled a laptop computer that has a built-in fuel cell powered by 300 cubic centimeters of methanol, uses a catalyst to break this down into oxygen and hydrogen and generates heat and power as by-products.
Microsoft Windows Vista is not as secure as what Microsoft claims. According to a report in New York Times on Christmas day, a number of flaws have been discovered on the brand new OS.
On Dec. 15, a Russian programmer posted a description (in Russian) of a flaw that makes it possible to increase a user’s privileges on all of the company’s recent operating systems, including Vista. The flaw affects csrss.exe, which is the main executable for the Microsoft Client/Server Runtime Server.
Furthermore, computer security company Determina notified Microsoft on Dec. 20 of five more vulnerabilities it had identified — four affecting Vista and earlier versions of Windows, and one affecting Microsoft’s Exchange e-mail server.
Solaris 10, the most advanced UNIX has recently announced its third update. The following is a summary of features, functions and benefits of the new build.
I. Security
- Solaris Trusted Extensions - Customers with government mandated security requirements can now enforce strict access controls based upon data sensitivity in addition to it’s ownership. The Mandatory Access Control policy is the heart of the trusted extensions, which meet the CAPP, RBAC and LSPP at EAL4+.
- Secured by Default Networking - Less experienced customers running Solaris with the Secure Networking by Default profile feature will immediately reduce their risk of exposure on the Internet or LAN.
- Configuration Solaris Container Privileges - Security and system administrators may now configure Solaris containers to allow certain security windows of capability.
San Francisco-based Green Welling has filed a class action suit against Nintendo on behalf of owners of the new Wii gaming console for selling remotes with inadequate wrist straps. What is a class action suit? Wikipedia has the following definition:
In law, the class action is a procedural device used in litigation to determine the rights of and remedies, if any, for large numbers of people whose cases involve common questions of law and fact.
It didn’t take long for someone to realize the values of the shared problem for nearly half a million Wii owners. The “Wii have a problem” blog was set up for owners to submit their stories and photos of Wii.
Here is a nice CNN report that will give you enough background to start enjoying “Wii have a problem” blog - the website that is a parody and not affiliated with Nintendo. After watching the video, you can proceed to have fun of all aspects of Wii wrist straps.
Project Looking Glass: A Richer Desktop Beyond Windows/Mac
0 Comments Published December 21st, 2006 in Java.Project Looking Glass - a 3D Java-based desktop project sets off to explore the possibilities of advancing the 2D desktops such as Windows or MacOS by open sourcing the early development prototypes. The project is working with Ubuntu community to make LG3D available via a multi-verse software source. They are also working with OpenSolaris team.
The project is very much in its infancy. The design goals of Project Looking Glass (LG3D) include:
- High productivity to support aggressive 3D exploration
- Solid platform for use in future products
- High performance and scalability
- Powerful 3D capability support
- Existing 2D application integration
- Framework to support two-and-half-dimension window manager
- Rich set of componentized libraries
- Rich user feedback based on animation
- Support for visual designer oriented tool chain
Continue reading ‘Project Looking Glass: A Richer Desktop Beyond Windows/Mac’
The hypes of Apple’s iPhone ended when Linksys released the iPhone series. The iPhone series has two families - iPhone and WIP.
The iPhone family has four members, from basic VOIP handset that requires a PC to the most expensive standalone CIT400 model. The differences lie in the level of convenience the product gives to end user and the “VOIP software” that is pre-installed on the phone.
The benefits of VOIP are nothing new to many of us as we have used PC based VOIP solution, such as Skype. However, there are people out there who are not comfortable with or do not like phone calls using a PC. These people are the targeted buyers of iPhone.
Oddly, only one out of four iPhone model run without a PC. The rest of the model requires a USB base station with external power and twelve steps to install the telephony kit.
NASA Ames Research Center and Google have signed a Space Act Agreement that formally establishes a relationship to work together on challenging technical problems. The whole aim of the collaboration is to make NASA massive data accessible to all stakeholders.
Google will help NASA in the following areas:
- Large-scale Data Management, e.g. incorporating agency data sets in Google Earth extension - Google Moon for public viewing, manage large-scale technical data for the benefits of NASA employees.
- Massive Distributed Computing, e.g. science data search utilizing a variety of Google technology, application of distributed computing power to scientific research.
- Human-computer Interfaces, e.g. user studies and cognitive modeling for human computer interaction.
The collaboration between Google and NASA will surely boost Google’s corporate image as consultant of rocket science computing. It is also beneficial to NASA as the vast majority of the information about our planet and universe collected over the years are scattered across technical archives and tapes. NASA needs Google’s strength on information technology to “sort out” those data.
The news release also mentioned the possibility of presenting NASA data in areas such as real-time weather visualization and forecasting, high-resolution 3-D maps of the moon and Mars, real-time tracking of the International Space Station and the space shuttle in the future. Most of these features may be available as extensions to Google Earth.
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the founders of Skype, are set to launch a global broadband television service in 2007, promising viewers, content owners, advertisers the best of the internet coupled with the best of TV. The project is The Venice Project.
The project is a type of IPTV where a digital television service is delivered using the Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure. The advantages of IPTV include interactive and personalized service, video-on-demand (VOD) and convergence of ICT services.
Traditionally, there are two main hurdles for IPTV - bandwidth and content protection. Friis and Zennstrom believe they have pretty good answer to these problems.
IPTV is very sensitive to packet loss and delays. The bandwidth demand for IPTV is a huge leap as compared to VOIP. On average, Skype only uses 3-16 kbps while IPTV starts with hundreds of kbps. However, Friis believes that the bandwidth available to the general household has reached a point where IPTV is ready for the prime time.
Continue reading ‘Skype Founders to Capitalize on Online Video’
On 14 Dec, Albert2 - the fastest Supercomputer in Europe and the third fastest worldwide used in industry - was delivered to the BMW Sauber F1 Team for their demanding work in aerodynamics. With over 12 Teraflops peak performance the system ranks 60th on the Supercomputer TOP500 November 2006 list.
BMW Sauber F1 Team uses FLUENT® CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) code, one of the most powerful and widely used CFD tools in Formula One racing. FLUENT technology can be applied to a number of areas of the racing car, allowing team engineers to quickly and accurately test a number of possible designs before developing only the most promising for wind tunnel testing.