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If you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution, let me suggest an idea that you might not have considered: You should learn computer programming. Specifically, you should sign up for Code Year, a new project that aims to teach neophytes the basics of programming over the course of 2012. Code Year was put together by Codecademy,* a startup that designs clever, interactive online tutorials. Codecademy’s founders, Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski, argue that everyone should know how to program—that learning to code is becoming as important as knowing how to read and write. I concur. So if you don’t know...

A security researcher, Trevor Eckhart, recently made a startling discovery. Hidden inside every Android and iPhone is a program called Carrier IQ (CIQ), which is capable of monitoring virtually everything you do on a SmartPhone. And then it has the ability to send all that data back to your wireless carrier and then who knows where it will wind up and how it will be used. Perhaps these phones have become too Smart for our own good. This is our worst nightmare potentially being realized. With our freedoms being eroded at a rapid rate, this is a biggie. A cellphone...

When Project Utopia was unveiled by Yacht Island Design and naval architects BMT Nigel Gee, there was a certain healthy scepticism about the floating 11-storey lair. But gadget site Firebox is now offering it for sale as a Christmas gift. Price is 'on application' but the company says you should expect to pay several hundred million 'minimum'. The site also offers other surreal and very expensive gifts, such as a flying Back To The Future DeLorean car (yours for £70,000) - an idea familiar from ultra-luxury American catalogues such as Neiman Marcus, which in the past has offered gifts like...

FR is usually full of smart guys unlike liberals. Had to ask this question, anyone who owns a website probably heard on Filezilla or just heading to your host cpanel to change or update info on your site. Our IT guy is on vacation and we wanted to add some stuff (specifically images) to sub sections say, departments section A or go SECTION B. Like ESPN with basketball as 1 section to NFL to section 2. We opened up Filezilla and all we could find is folder DOCS, CGI BIN, DISTRIBUTOR and IMAGES. The actual sections are missing so we...

The U.S. Army recently awarded a contracting firm a nearly half a million dollar contract to support its “Power Dreaming Project.” Wired Danger Room reports the following scenario that the Army hopes to begin testing next here to help soldiers suffering with PSTD: A soldier tries to sleep. But he is not safe in his dreams. Jolted awake by a nightmare, the combat veteran fumbles in the dark for his 3-D glasses. He puts them on. Around him are the faces of people whom he trusts. They fight the darkness with him. The soldier’s re-lived this scene in his head...

Can someone recommend a good pop-up stopper (preferrably free)? I have one installed but pop-ups have nearly stopped my PC from downloading anything. Thanks.

Cyber-attackers could have stolen defense contractor's passwords October 08, 2011 Passwords for servers at defense contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) may have been stolen during a wide-ranging cyber-attack. The Kobe Shipyard and Machinery Works, which builds submarines, and the Nagoya Guidance and Propulsion Systems Works, which makes missile-related products, were among installations compromised in the attack, which was reported to the Metropolitan Police Department on Sept. 30. In total, 45 servers and 38 personal computers at 11 of MHI's facilities were infected with viruses. An analysis of a virus used in the attack suggests the perpetrators used simplified Chinese...

It was only a matter of time: the weakest link in the otherwise awesome idea that is a remote-controlled military, represented by the thousands of Predator and Reaper drones, has always been its biggest strength: the fact that it is remote-controlled. Which means that with no person on location, the system has always been susceptible to infiltration in the form of intermediation between the offsite pilot and the actual equipment. Such as a virus. And as Wired reports, a viral infestation, the biggest nightmare for the the US drone fleet, has just struck. "A computer virus has infected the cockpits...

Link only - Small-business nightmare: 8 million sites hacked to harm customers' computers

What is said to be the world’s first zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell class 8 truck rolled through roads in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach recently. Vision Industries delivered the truck to Total Transportation Services, a national trucking company, at the end of July to be tested in California ports. The truck will do short-haul routes typical of the other trucks currently operating in the ports in the coming six months.

Apple, which owned more than 94% of the market in the second quarter last year, saw the iPad’s share slide to 61.3% according to Strategy Analytics. Over the same period of time, Android tablets jumped from a 2.9% share to a 30% share last quarter.

The Sun's website appears to have fallen prey to hackers who redirected viewers to a fake news story claiming Rupert Murdoch had been found dead at his home. The hacking group LulzSec took credit for the attack on Twitter, saying: "We have owned Sun/News of the World". Viewers of the tabloid website were redirected to a mocked up news story with the headline "Media moguls body discoverd [sic]". The story continued: "Murdoch, aged 80, has said to have ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night, passing out in the early hours...

TOKYO (Reuters) – Vast deposits of rare earth minerals, crucial in making high-tech electronics products, have been found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean and can be readily extracted, Japanese scientists said on Monday.

A Nobel Laureate speaks out on the Energy Catalyzer June 22, 2011 by Ivy Matt Dr. Brian Josephson, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on superconductivity, has recently released a YouTube video of an interview of himself conducted by Judith Driscoll, Professor of Materials Science at Cambridge University. The stated purpose of the video is to wake up the media to the E-Cat story, which has not been widely reported on in the mainstream media of the English-speaking world. While some cold fusion advocates hypothesize the existence of a conspiracy of silence to suppress news...

Military doctors struggling to treat post-traumatic stress disorder are quietly adding a new tool to their arsenal: A controversial brain-wave therapy they say can heal troubled veterans and even send once-broken troops back into combat. Staff Sgt. Justin Roberts is one of hundreds of service members finding relief with the experimental remedy. While working at a combat hospital in Iraq for more than two years, Roberts, now 32, was exposed to the grisliest of war’s suffering. Every day he helped treat troops, captives and Iraqi civilians who suffered devastating wounds from gunfights, bombings and IED attacks. Click above to play...

<p>The RoboCop look is coming nationwide, a law enforcement supplier says, and Johnson County deputies are on the cutting edge as they test cameras they wear on their ears.</p> <p>Executives at Taser International Inc. hope the company’s new device spreads as quickly among police as its zappers did in the 1990s.</p>

DARPA Z-man program will develop biologically inspired climbing aids to enable soldiers to scale vertical walls constructed from typical building materials, without using ropes or ladders. Geckos, spiders and small animals are the inspiration behind these climbing aids. Nanopatents and innovations - In 2010, DARPA demonstrated a fully loaded soldier (300 lb) wearing reattachable pads (magnets and microspines) scaling a series of 25-foot walls built from mission-relevant materials using Z-Man technology. In 2011, DARPA began the transition of Z-Man prototype technologies (magnets and microspines) to the Armed Services. Draper is a not-for-profit research and development laboratory focused on the design,...

Lockheed Martin, one of the world's largest defense contractors, was hit hard by hackers this week who used falsified SecurID electronic tokens to gain access. The breach threatens the security of vital data on present and future military technology. Which, you know, sucks for us and our allies abroad who depend on Lockheed to help keep us safe during the ongoing violence in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. It isn't clear what, if anything, was stolen during the breach. It isn't even clear what the hackers want, but the attacks are being traced back to an hacking campaign back in...

It is not uncommon these days to read news articles about breakthrough energy technologies that have the potential to change the energy complex as we know it. There are many researchers working on developing cold fusion, batteries, solar panels, microgenerators, artificial photosynthesis, etc. and every now and then we will hear announcements of important findings that scientists have made. In almost all cases however, the discoveries reporte are made on the experimental level, in laboratory settings and much more time, money and work is required before commercialization will be possible. It seems though that more often than not these technologies...

ARLINGTON, Va.--The Office of Naval Research (ONR) intends to launch on May 16 a new Internet wargame, recruiting a community of more than 1,000 players to collaborate on solving real-world problems facing the Navy. Scheduled to run for three weeks, the Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) exercise will recruit online players from across the government to suggest ways of combating piracy off the coast of Somalia. “MMOWGLI is an online game designed to find and collectively grow breakthrough ideas to some of the Navy's most complex problems--those 21st-century threats that demand new forms of collaboration and truly...