Everyone knows that GPS devices have varying degrees of quality when it comes to providing routing directions. Generally speaking, none are great, especially when it comes to local roads. Some are better than others, but it generally depends on the location. Still, it seems a bit extreme to dub GPS devices with poor navigation skills as "child killers." However, that appears to be what some researchers have done in a report on GPS driving systems as tested in the Netherlands. Apparently, most of the navigation systems don't recognize that certain residential areas are really designed for local access only, rather than having cars travel through them. So they send people through those roads, where pedestrians have the right of way. From that, the researchers take the leap (and it's a big one) to calling them "kid killers." It's one way to get attention for your research, but not exactly the best way to get yourself taken seriously.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The feed brings us a New Scientist review of the repairs and new instruments that astronauts will bring to the Hubble Space Telescope next August (unless the launch is delayed). The resulting instrument will be 90 times as powerful as Hubble was designed to be when launched, and 60% more capable than it was after its flawed optics were repaired in 1993. If the astronauts pull it off — and the mission is no slam-dunk — the space telescope should be able to image galaxies back to 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HalvarFlake writes "With all the hoopla about the remotely exploitable, kernel-level buffer overflow discussed in today's security bulletin MS08-0001, what is the actual bug that triggers this? The bulletin doesn't give all that much information. This movie (Flash required) goes through the process of examining the 'pre-patch' version of tcpip.sys and comparing it against the 'post-patch' version of tcpip.sys. This comparison yields the actual code that causes the overflow: A mistake in the calculation of the required size in a dynamic allocation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As there appears to be a growing market for p2p lending services, that has some wondering if there's also a market for p2p venture capital as well. In p2p lending, a group of ordinary folks all team up to lend people money. The various players in the space have had somewhat mixed results so far, but there's a lot of attention. However, for most companies, getting access to capital involves options between taking out a loan (which needs to be paid back plus interest) or selling equity (usually to venture capitalists). In that case, the money comes from someone who takes some percentage of ownership and hopes to cash in not on the interest, but on the growth of the value of his or her shares. So, it might make sense to wonder whether the p2p lending companies might eventually move into p2p venture capital as well... except that we already have p2p venture capital: it's called the public equities markets. If you actually tried to do that with private companies, you'd quickly run into all sorts of trouble with the SEC, which is pretty strict in terms of regulating how a company goes about raising money in exchange for equity. In fact, there are many who believe that a startup may be toeing the SEC's line simply by saying that it's out raising venture money. So, for a variety of reasons, both regulatory and because public equities markets already are p2p venture capital offerings, it's hard to see there being a huge market for companies to get into offering p2p venture capital.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Following up on today's BBtv episode about deepfried cellphones, Dario Agosta writes in...

Just finished watching your exilarating video segment on BBtv about the cellphone - deep-frying party (hmmm, wonder how my motorola would taste, tried to get rid of it for years to no avail), and suddenly it dawned on me: I have a friend, Mirko, who is a designer and an artist who *actually* fries... well pretty much everything.

Yes, I have weird friends. Um, no, come to think of it he's one of the most normal ones. Here is a picture of a deep-fried iPod, more on his site: Link.

Stony Stevenson alerts us to a US Department of Homeland Security program in which subcontractors have been examining FOSS source code for security vulnerabilities. InformationWeek.com takes a glass-half-empty approach to reporting the story, saying that for FOSS code on average 1 line in 1000 contains a security bug. From the article: 'A total of 7,826 open source project defects have been fixed through the Homeland Security review, or one every two hours since it was launched in 2006...' ZDNet Australia prefers to emphasize those FOSS projects that fixed every reported bug, thus achieving a clean bill of health according to DHS. These include PHP, Perl, Python, Postfix, and Samba.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over in the UK, some proposals for copyright reform have been announced, and there's not much interesting there. It takes recommendations from the infamous Gowers report, which we noted at the time was too balanced for its own good. For example, it includes an officially declared right for consumers to make personal copies (something that's worth mentioning following the recent RIAA kerfuffle), but it also puts in place an anti-circumvention clause a la the DMCA. There are, of course, huge problems with anti-circumvention rules that make it suddenly illegal to do something that is otherwise perfectly legal (like making private copies for personal use). By adding in an anti-circumvention clause, the personal copying clause is effectively meaningless, because the industry just needs to add any DRM, no matter how weak, and claim that any personal copies circumvent. The fact that the UK version of the RIAA has thrown its support behind these changes (while warning that it better not include any lessening of rights to copyright holders) should tell you all you need to know about how much actual "reform" there is in this particular attempt at copyright reform.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

1. Be sure the OPML app is running.

2. Update to get version 0.40 of FlickrFan.

3. Now, when you upload a picture using the drop folder a web page will display with HTML text that you can copy/paste into a blog post or other web page. Screen shot.

4. You can disable this feature on the Drop Folder prefs page. Screen shot.

If you have any questions please post a comment here.

The FCC hasn't appeared to have much of an issue with the various telcos spouting off about how they need to block certain kinds of traffic. In fact, even when AT&T agreed to keep its network neutral (sort of, but not really), FCC chair Kevin Martin made it clear that he wouldn't hold AT&T to its concessions on network neutrality. However, when a cable company, such as Comcast, starts doing some traffic shaping... well, that's a different story. There was a big fuss last year about Comcast's traffic shaping efforts. While it took a little while, the FCC has now said that it's going to probe Comcast's traffic shaping actions. Now, as we've said from the beginning, if Comcast feels it needs to do this kind of traffic shaping, that's one thing -- but there's simply no good reason (and a number of bad ones) not to be upfront and let its customers know about this. In fact, that appears to be a part of the FCC's thinking, as well, noting that the FCC allows "reasonable network practices" to protect a network, but: "when they have reasonable network practices, they should disclose those and make those public." Martin clearly has no love for cable companies, but how the FCC handles this issue could become important in determining how the FCC deals with other traffic shaping issues in the future.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

djmoore writes "Over at Make Magazine, watch this video of a French amateur radio operator making and testing his own vacuum tubes. It looks like he built much of his own equipment as well. The Make poster notes: 'I love the ease with which he performs these rather high-end skills (like glass forming), the gestural flourishes (like it's hand magic), and the Zelig-esque soundtrack.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This is not a real lion's mug but rather an animatronic lion mask with stereo night vision and amplified hearing. Want your own? Over at Instructables, Solion posted his detailed HOWTO on making the mask. Instructables co-founder Eric Wilhelm tells me that this is the first project on the site that has more than 100 steps. Solion has also made a wolf and bear using the same kind of animatronics. Dig the demo videos at the end, step #117. Wow!
Link

An anonymous reader writes "FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Tuesday that the commission will investigate complaints that Comcast actively interferes with Internet traffic as its subscribers try to share files online. A coalition of consumer groups and legal scholars asked the agency in November to stop Comcast from discriminating against certain types of data and to fine Comcast $195,000 for every affected subscriber. While known for months in tech circles, the issue wasn't given broad attention until an Associated Press report last year, in which reporters tested and verified the data blocking."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

technirvana sends us to ReadWriteWeb for the scoop on the announcement this morning that representatives from Google and Facebook are joining the DataPortability Workgroup. Quoting: "The group is working on a variety of projects to foster an era in which users can take their data from the websites they use to reuse elsewhere... Good bye customer lock-in, hello to new privacy challenges. If things go right, today could be a very important day in the history of the internet. The non-participation of Google and Facebook, two companies that hold more user data and do more with it than almost any other consumer service on the market, was the biggest stumbling block to the viability of the project. These are two of the most important companies in recent history — what's being decided now is whether they will be walled-garden, data-horders or truly open platforms tied into a larger ecosystem of innovation with respect for user rights and sensible policies about data."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Back in 2006, Detroit Tigers relief pitcher Joel Zumaya almost missed the ALCS playoffs due to an injury, caused not by hurling baseballs at 100+ miles per hour, but by excessive video game playing of the popular guitar simulation, Guitar Hero. Fast forward a few years, and once again, there are now reports of an increased number of injuries as a result of playing the Nintendo Wii, due to the more physically involved play associated with the new game system. The reports do seem a bit alarmist, however. Anyone that has actually played with the Wii quickly learns to control themselves (and also learns that the excessive movement that could potentially cause injury is actually not even needed). Even Nintendo's own study has shown that Wii playing is not great exercise, so it is highly unlikely that anyone is really going to heed the article's advice and stretch prior to playing Wii. The article mentions an increase in the number of Wii-related ER cases, but fails to give any supporting data to this anecdote. So, until some supporting numbers are published to prove the contrary, it is probably a safe bet that rollerblades cause more ER visits than Wiis.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Comcast announced a service at CES that sounds an awful lot like Netflix. I already pay Comcast over $100 a month for various services. I pay Netflix $20 per month, and what Comcast is proposing is even more useful and easier than what Netflix offers. If it actually is, it would be easier to turn off the Netflix service.

Netflix has a unique opportunity with X years of preference data for users that they still have active relationships with. Open the service up so that other websites can integrate their services with yours, the prototype being a dating site that matched people with others who like the same kinds of movies. Build a network of utility to lock users in with a feather instead of a deadbolt.

The uniqueness of Netflix is about to go poof. Time to build a new kind of uniqueness. It might be too late, but let's hope it's not. I don't really expect Comcast to share data with other service providers. It's not in their nature. Netflix -- zig while they match your (old) zag.

As I said above I'm glued to the TV, but I'm also on Twitter, and blogging, and email, and IM and I'm subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds, and I've been noticing that slowly the TV news organizations are integrating new Internet services with their TV offerings. They're all getting started, and eventually I'm pretty sure they'll be where Yahoo is now. The thing is, it works. For example, newmediajim is a cameraman for NBC News and he's on Twitter and sometimes I'm watching the other side of his camera on MSNBC and twittering with him before and after. A guy named creepsleepy is a radio guy in Manchester, interviewing presidential candidates, wouldn't it be great if I could listen to his interviews while he twitters his progress? Well, there's no doubt that soon we'll be doing that.

We're finally really at the convergence so many have predicted for so long. With the help of a few members of the community Yahoo can get there first.

BTW, I read on the NY Times site that Yahoo is going to open up more to developers. Hmmm. If you want to impress end-users and shareholders run it in MSM. If you want to get through to developers, use the developer blogs. Let us have the story first, otherwise you don't seem very serious about it.

Tom Parker, a MAKE columnist and author of the classic reference for making quick guesses on anything, Rules of Thumb, has launched a Rules of Thumb website.

Rulesofthumb.org is officially up and running! The site is fully searchable with the backend machinery to let users rate new contributions IN or OUT of the main db providing a Darwinian weeding mechanism which will let the content improve in value over time. The site tracks your success as a rater and/or contributor and has the basic tagging features which will allow users to discover emergent categories (ala David Weinberger in Everything is Miscellaneous...) I'll be experimenting with variations of tag clouds once I establish a reasonable base of users.

Link

Gregor Stipicic writes "Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. 'This is not science fiction,' Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.