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I was walking through a deserted downtown on Christmas Eve with a friend, past the lonely, gray Treasury Building, past the snowy White House with no president inside. “I hope the terrorists don’t think this is a good time to attack,” I said, looking protectively at the White House, which always looks smaller and more vulnerable and beautiful than you expect, no matter how often you see it up close. I thought our guard might be down because of the holiday; now I realize our guard is down every day. One thrilling thing about moving from W. to Barack Obama...

On August 1, 1981 MTV was born and the first video was Video killed the Radio Star, by the Buggles. It was a fitting tribute to the evolution of technology, wherein dinosaurs who could not adapt were left behind. Maybe we can bring the Buggles back to sing an ode the 2000's, the aughts, or whatever unsatisfying name you prefer for this past decade. We could call the song Google Killed the Media Stars. While those in the MSM are the ones (predictably) lamenting their relegation to buggy-whip status, the rest of us have immensely enjoyed the evolution and democratization...

Filmmaker James Cameron is famous for blockbusters like Titanic and The Terminator. His latest movie, Avatar, just opened after a massive media blitz during which Cameron himself hit the talk show circuit, along with his on-screen stars. Since the high-tech 3-D film may have cost $300 million to make, Cameron is highly motivated to promote the film so as to recover the costs and make a profit. And herein lies the contradiction between the film's story and the filmmaker's own life.-- snip --Cameron's native Canada is one of Day's supplanting societies, just like the United States and Australia. Cameron is...

True, money can't buy me love, but $26 worth can buy me plenty of lead time to get out of Dodge when a Predator is on the way to blow up my tent. According to this Wall Street Journal story, Predator drones are just as wildly popular with the Iraqi bad guys as they are with the U.S. military good guys. Something tells me that the new generation of the Predator is going to have some serious upgrades.

The report card is mixed regarding next-generation nonkinetic, or limited effects, weaponry ­developed by the U.S. and its allies. Cyber-warfare turns on three critical aspects--attack, defense and assessment. Information-technology industry officials say attack capabilities are receiving attention and funding. Defenses against cyber-attack have begun attracting support because of persistent adversaries who flourish in the Wild West atmosphere of the Russian and Chinese cyber-worlds. The big shortfall, they agree, is in battle damage assessment (BDA). "I'm trying to render an enemy system nonfunctional with a nonkinetic attack," says John Osterholz, BAE Systems vice president for integrated cyber-warfare and cyber-security. "How do...

The military is a major user of supercomputers (the fastest computers on the planet). These machines were first developed, as were the first computers, for military applications. These ultra-powerful computers are used for code breaking, and to help design weapons (including nukes) and equipment (especially electronics). The military is also needs lots of computing power for data mining (pulling useful information, about the enemy, from ever larger masses of information.) Because there's never enough money to buy all the super-computers (which are super expensive) needed, military researchers have come up with ways to do it cheaper. A decade ago, it...

Mumbai: Two weeks ago, AGL Resources Inc., an Atlanta, US-based natural gas distribution company, decided to shift its call centre operations from India to the US. The centre was operated by India’s third largest information technology (IT) services company, Wipro Ltd. Along with similar instances of Delta Airlines Inc., United Airlines Inc. and Chrysler Group Llc reported earlier in the year, this could raise a flag for Indian business process outsourcing (BPO) firms which earned nearly $15 billion (Rs69,450 crore today) from such back-office work in the year to March AGL said that were no consumer satisfaction issues. “Wipro employees...

American college prof develops cell-phone tool to help illegals cross borderIllegal aliens crossing the U.S.-Mexico border now have a cell phone tool to chart the best route, find food and locate people who will help them enter the country – courtesy of a professor at a state-funded university. Ricardo Dominguez, a University of California, San Diego tenured visual arts professor and activist, designed the Transborder Immigrant Tool, an application much like a global-positioning system used in cars, to help illegals find the best locations for food, water and groups to assist them as they sneak into America. Dominguez is also...

While rumors of a possible Verizon-compatible iPhone in 2010 persist, one analyst has predicted that Apple will instead bring the iPhone to another GSM-based carrier in the U.S.: T-Mobile. In a note to investors released this week, Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel Partners said his firm believes that T-Mobile, and not Verizon, will be the beneficiary when Apple's exclusive agreement with AT&T expires next year... AT&T's exclusive contract with Apple for the iPhone is due to expire in 2010... While the iPhone in its current iteration is compatible with T-Mobile's network, it is not capable of connecting to its high-speed...

Israeli scientists have discovered a way to create beating heart cells using human skin cells reprogrammed to become stem cells. The findings could lead to advances in disease research, and could in theory be used to repair damaged or diseased tissues. Published in the latest issue of Circulation, the findings by Professor Lior Gepstein of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology could make it possible to clinically repair damaged human hearts...

For the inspiration behind the next generation of avionics, just look around you; it is to be found in the consumer electronics we use every day. The touchscreen interactivity and broadband connectivity of today’s smart phones and laptops is poised to enter the flight deck. The signs are already here. Garmin International has introduced touchscreens with its G3000 integrated flight deck, selected for the HondaJet and PiperJet light business jets. In addition to wide-screen liquid crystal displays, the G3000 has a pair of vehicle management system controllers with touch-sensitive screens and desktop-like menu icons. Garmin says the user interface draws...

These images may look like just pretty patterns, but they are visual representations of songs sung by whales and dolphins.

Inventor Raphial Morgado has been invited as a guest speaker a the Oregon chapter of SAE to discuss and demonstrate his Massive Yet Tiny (MYT) engine. Also working on building 5.5-inch versions to demonstrate this 40x power-to-weight ratio engine.Inventor Raphial Morgado has been invited as a guest speaker a the Oregon chapter of SAE to discuss and demonstrate his Massive Yet Tiny (MYT) engine. Also working on building 5.5-inch versions to demonstrate this 40x power-to-weight ratio engine. We've got several updates to report on Angel Lab's Massive Yet Tiny (MYT) engine -- the internal combustion engine with multiple firings in...

The U.S. Army Special Forces is equipping 18 A Teams (officially known as ODAs, or Operational Detachment Alpha) with Land Warrior electronic equipment. But the Special Forces gear will have one special addition; satellite communications. Normally, Land Warrior comms use line-of-sight (FM) radio. But in the hilly Afghan terrain, and with the dispersed tactics used by Special Forces, satellite communications makes more sense. This is yet another field test for the cancelled Land Warrior project. Last Summer, the army sent an infantry brigade, equipped with Land Warrior gear, to Afghanistan. All this is happening, in spite of the fact that,...

How "Photo Tagger" lets anybody recognize you Facebook likes to talk about privacy, but the truth is the site is all about revealing yourself. A new app, however, may take Facebook's hey-look-at-me culture one step too far. It's called "Photo Tagger," from a company called Face.com. It uses amazing photo recognition technology to take your uploaded photos, go out to the Web, and identify them through "tags." That in itself doesn't sound all that bad, but when we tried this in the newsroom, it scared the crap out of just about everybody with a Facebook account. Here's why: While it's...

Several high-priority and high-priced satellites crucial to U.S. national security are slated to launch over the next 15 to 18 months, according to Bruce Carlson, director of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). During a keynote address here at the Strategic Space Symposium, Carlson did not provide details of the upcoming missions. Most of the NRO’s satellite programs are classified. Carlson noted the launches to make the point that the NRO continues to perform its mission despite having had its struggles in recent years. But Carlson also said the NRO has suffered a steep decline in its research and development...

It’s worth looking at how life used to be. Now, as early as a thousand years ago, people didn’t have laptops. Back even further, in the hunting and gathering days — the 60s — there were no computers of any kind. At all. The primary method of social networking was drawing pictures on cave walls. So, for instance, if one of the cave dwellers was hunting buffalo, instead of using his cell phone to update his Facebook status to “kilin buf-lo,” he’d go to the cave wall and draw a picture on it of a buffalo next to himself holding...

BENEATH ALL of the anger and frustration surrounding the current flu vaccine supply problem is a simple fact - as we gear up to fight a new flu strain in our first pandemic winter in 40 years, we employ a really old technology to make flu vaccines. The nation needs to find a better option. The basic way we make flu vaccines has changed little since the 1950’s. It relies on hen’s eggs. Each year, a seasonal flu vaccine is developed to cover three strains of flu that are circulating. And, each year the flu viruses change a little bit,...

GPS device can track children Updated: Tuesday, 27 Oct 2009, 12:13 AM EDT Published : Tuesday, 27 Oct 2009, 12:13 AM EDT KELLY JOYCE | FOX 35 News ORLANDO, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - A GPS device the size of your pinky finger is about to hit store shelves and the web. Some parents say it's a good way to keep track of children given all of the children disappearing in central Florida. The "insignia little buddy tracker" is a Best Buy brand GPS system that's about to hit store shelves. It's already drawn so much interest it's on back...

Oct 21, 2009 — Plants are not as stationary as one might think. Parts of them, like seeds, can travel for miles. One good example is the maple seed. Its little helicopter seeds can catch an updraft and fly a long distance from the tree. Now, engineers at University of Maryland have imitated its physics and designed a radio-controlled mono-copter that can sustain stable flight for hours...