Jackie may be the first name of the greatest comedic martial artist/actor ever, but it is now also the name of the best basketball-playing robot too.

Meet Jackie, by day he is an articulated robot palletizer manufactured by Columbia Okura in Vancouver, but by night he becomes a kick-ass, hoop throwing superhero. The robot is a member of the Beck’s Hybrid team, (specialists in hybrid crops), and was recently on display during their “Becknology Days” event.

Jackie is usually used to collect skids of corn, but Bob Stuart an on site engineer, managed to tinker with the mechanized star. He loaded up a program that allowed Jackiel O’Neil, (sorry), to shoot baskets like a pro. In fact, he is even better than a pro—Jackie has not missed a shot to date!

The robot itself is fairly small but it is set atop a loading crane. The engineer attached the arms to the budding NBA hopeful’s sides and added circular discs acting as an alternative to hands. A ball is retrieved from a tube that is attached and then fired towards the 7-foot basket by means of a catapult motion. Jackie completes one successful shot every five seconds.

Big things are in store for this OP wannabe, next year Stuart says, “[sic] We’re going to try and see if we can get it (the robot) to continually shoot basketballs or maybe we’ll even play catch.” Even play catch! We cannot wait.[Indystar].

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jpatokal writes “Singapore Airlines will be rolling out the A380 superjumbo on October 26th, and a surprise awaits in the seat of every passenger: their personal Linux PC, running Red Hat. In addition to running the in-flight entertainment, passengers can also use a full copy of StarOffice, and there’s a USB slot for importing/exporting documents or plugging in your own keyboard/mouse. Screen size is 10.6″ (1280×768) in economy, 15.4″ in business and a whopping 23″ in first class (along with free noise-canceling headphones). The system is already available on current B777-300ER planes and will also be outfitted on the upcoming B787 Dreamliners.”

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hhavensteincw writes “Only two weeks after Wal-Mart launched its latest forway into Web 2.0 land, Facebook users have hijacked a page aimed at selling back-to-school supplies to college kids to instead post rants about the company’s labor practices. Of the 100-plus comments, none relates to dorm decorating as Wal-Mart had originally envisioned.”

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Welcome to your latest installment of “Basic Gadgets Decked out in Precious Materials.” Today’s contender is a 2GB flash drive by S.T. Dupont, retailing at a cool $700.

The materials of choice are Lacquer and Palladium. Though the metal maybe reason enough to relieve you of your bills, S.T. Dupont has also gone the great length of fashioning the flash drive’s surface with its trademark diamond-head pattern. If that shall not convince you to blow your pocket money, perhaps the choice of three colours; turquoise, pink and black shall have you queuing up? No? We didn’t think so. [Slashgear].

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Kifoth writes “For 8 years, SBC and Telekom Malaysia controlled South Africa’s only telecommunications company, Telkom. Telkom had a government granted monopoly in order for it to connect the large parts of South Africa that had been neglected under apartheid. Instead of helping, SBC abused their position and raised Telkom’s prices to be among the highest in the world. The billions they made here ultimately went to fund their AT&T merger. From the article: ‘SBC, described as “congenitally litigious”, is said to have played a major role in the failure of South Africa’s telecoms policy to develop a competitive telephone service. Under SBC’s control Telkom not only failed to meet its roll-out obligations but behaved “as a tax on industry and a drag on economic growth.”‘”

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quirdan writes “With the discovery last week of the connection between Vista’s poor networking performance and audio activities, word quickly spread around the Net. No doubt this got Microsoft’s attention, and they have responded to the issue. Microsoft states that ‘some of what we are seeing is expected behavior, and some of it is not’; and that they are working on technical documentation, as well as applying a slight sugar coating to the symptoms. Apparently they believe an almost 90% drop in networking performance is ‘slight,’ only affects reception of data, and that this performance trade-off is necessary to simply play an MP3.”

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HDTVs are designed for HD playback, but there are often problems in picture reproduction when playing back media in standard definition (SD), such as from traditional DVDs. HDTVs usually display in either 720p, 768p or 1080p. DVDs, TVs and VCRs usually come in at 480i. The image would thus need to be converted to be represented accurately and this is the primary reason for poor SD reproduction on HDTVs. The video processor, or scaler, is responsible for converting the images. A poor scaler will lead to flicker and rough edges. Hit the link to see which HDTVs the guys at Exteme Tech declared to be kings of SD reproduction.

The Pioneer Elite PRO-940HD plasma television took home the best rating in the test with 9/10. The HDTV was the best in its class with regards to overall picture display in SD, but comes at a price of $1475 – $1974 depending on the retailer.

The Vizio VP42 gained an 8/10 rating. The wide viewing angle, excellent colour and contrast production as well as the cheaper price point of $900, secured this set as a favourite.

Finally, in joint second place was the Sony KDS-55A2020. Also scoring 8/10, the UI and picture quality were both note worthy. This RPTV was considered to be comparable to higher end 1080p plasmas and crystal flat panels. For the performance, the $1799 price tag was considered very reasonable.

Hit the link to get more information on SD playback, including how you can set your own HDTV to better display standard definition content. [Extreme Tech]

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We’ve gotten a number of submissions about the new tricks the massive Storm botnet has been up to. Estimates of the size of this botnet range from 250K-1M to 5M-10M compromised machines. Reader cottagetrees notes a writeup at Exploit Prevention Labs on a new social engineering attack involving YouTube. The emails, which may be targeted at people who use private domain registrations, warn the recipient that their “face is all over ‘net” on a YouTube video. The link is to a Storm-infected bot that attacks using the Q4Rollup exploit (a package of about a dozen encrypted exploits). And reader thefickler writes that the recent wave of “confirmation spam” is also due to Storm, as was the earlier, months-long “e-card from a friend” series of attack emails.

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Dcube have hit the block with the snazzy looking D5 PMP. The specifications includes; either 1/2/4/8GB flavours, 2″ (176×220) 260K colour display, MP3/WMA/OGG/AVI support, integrated FM tuner, either 40hours audio or 7.5hours video playback and all of this comes in at only 42g. So why tell you guys about another generic PMP?

The note worthy feature is the inclusion of Klisten’s Wiseaudio technology. This ensures an automatic tuning process to reproduce the best possible sound. Basically, that means no messing with your equalizer. It may be just a gimmick, as sound reproduction is surly a matter of personal preference, but nonetheless it is an interesting addition and one we would be keen to try. State side price and launch details are not available at present. (Those Koreans may just keep the goodies for themselves). [The MP3 Players].

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mrcgran writes “Users of Skype for Linux have just found out that it reads the files /etc/passwd, firefox profile, plugins, addons, etc, and many other unnecessary files in /etc. This fact was originally discovered by using AppArmor, but others have confirmed this fact using strace on versions 1.4.0.94 and 1.4.0.99. What is going on? This probably shows how important it is to use AppArmor in any closed-source application in Linux to restrict any undue access to your files.”

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Dear Trekstor

Your PR division sucks/may never have learnt how to read aloud. Given both of those possibilities are not mutually exclusive, we have a strong inclination to believe both statements are true. You are doing a great job at proving us right, all thanks to your new iBeat blaxx MP3 player. Do not get us wrong the little fascist, music playing device looks quite the accomplished gadget. We are confident it plays just as well as you promise, but we have a little problem with the name. We are guessing, (not being complete morons), that anything named “iBeat blaxx,” is probably not going to go down well with anyone who is not an absolute jerk-off. What do we know? Still, if you see the light and would like to apologise to all those many, many individuals you have offended, please feel free to drop us a line at tips@gizmodo.com. Further, as your publicity department could apparently not organise a piss up in a brewery with due competence, perhaps our trusted readership could assist you in the naming process? If you would like to take us up on our offer, please see below for suggestions.

Kind Regards

Gizmodo
[Product Page via Shiny Shiny]

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Lauren Weinstein writes “The day after the issue of cable system incompatibilities with the new HD TiVo and similar devices was discussed on Slashdot, the cable television industry has responded with a workaround proposal in a new FCC filing, though key issues remain to be fully resolved.”

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There is so much wind knocking around on our planet it would be a shame not to use any of it. Tamiya & Loopwing’s wind power generator supplies enough energy to drive a small toy car, for some serious, environmentally friendly fun.

The kit supplied is flat packed, so you will have to get your DIY skills on. The pack of fun consists of two gears, a capacitor that will not take you back to 1985, a small steering module for your diminutive vehicle and a wind powered charging station. Exposing the assembled kit to 5miles/s winds for 5minutes will give you, a massive, 3.5hours of drive time. We are not sure if $30 could be spent any wiser.

A word of warning: Make sure your partner is not present for this assembly process or you may start arguing about where part 3B goes; a fight shall develop and before you know it, your Essential X-Men comic, edition number one, shall be no more. (That hurt so bad—damn Ikea bed frame). [TOKYOMANGO].

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Lucas123 writes “Putting the images and film online will allow NASA to more easily share and showcase its achievements, including photos from its Mars rover missions and from its manned and unmanned voyages to the Moon and beyond, according to Computerworld’s Todd Weiss. Much of NASA’s archived photos and film is currently divided up into more than 20 different imagery categories, making it hard to find specific images or archives unless a user knows exactly where it is. “Much of what is in the collection may be surprising when it is released,” according to NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs.”

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Via has produced a fanless processor, called Eden, clocked at 500MHz and only requiring 1 watt of electricity when in use. [Treehugger].

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KentuckyFC sends us a report of gamma rays detected at a Japanese nuclear plant, whose origin was thunderclouds high overhead (abstract, article PDF). The theory is that showers of electrons caused by cosmic rays, when they encounter the high electric fields present in thunderstorm clouds, can be accelerated to energies above 10 MeV and result in bremsstrahlung photons detectable on the ground.

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Elektroschock writes “Stephane Rodriguez, a reengineering specialist who became popular for his article on MS Office 2007 binary data, now comprehensively debunks Microsoft’s new Open XML format. With small case studies he demonstrates the impossible challenges third-party developers will face. His conclusion: it is ‘defective by design.’ Next week members of the International Standard Organization are likely to approve the format as a second official ISO standard for office documents, even though most nations have submitted comments. Rodriguez claims he is ‘not affiliated to any pro-MS or anti-MS party/org[anization]/ass[ociation].’”

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Berkeley Breathed has a note up on his site: “Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus’ host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com..”

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E++99 writes in to let us know about a development in paleo-anthropology. It seems that up until now, scientific consensus has placed the divergence of man from the ape line five to six million years ago (based on “genetic distances”). But newly discovered fossils in Ethiopia place the divergence at least twice as far back, and perhaps as long ago as 20 million years. They also largely put to rest any doubts that man and modern apes both emerged from Africa. From the article: “The trail in the hunt for physical evidence of our human ancestors goes cold some six or seven million years ago… Beyond that… fossils of early humans from the Miocene period, 23 to five million years ago, disappear. Fossils of early apes especially during the critical period of 14 to eight million years ago were virtually non-existent — until now… [T]he new fossils, dubbed ‘Chororapithecus abyssinicus’ by the team of Japanese and Ethiopian paleo-anthropologists who found them, place the early ancestors of the modern day gorilla 10 to 10.5 million years in the past, suggesting that the human-ape split occurred before that.”

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Pricey but nearly perfect, this high-def DVR boasts net-connected features and, of course, beautiful video.

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buddyglass writes “The majority of Slashdot readers are no doubt appreciative of Linux in the general sense, but I suspect we all have some application or aspect of the platform that we wish were more stable, performant, feature-rich, etc. So my question is: if you were able to devote a ‘significant’ number of resources (read: high-quality developers) to a particular app or area of the kernel, and were able to set the focus for those resources (stability, performance, new features, etc.), what application or kernel area would you attempt to improve, and what would aspect you focus on improving?”

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Those bad-asses at Technabob unearthed a little, navigating gem. This sexy bitch is Korea’s HTMS, Provia A1 GPS navigator. Once again proving Korea rocks technology like the Sony Bravia advertisement slogan. Hit the jump for the details.

The navigation system is detailed by impressively intricate 3D maps. By the look of it they are so detailed, we do not think you even have to bother looking at the road whilst you drive. As you are not looking at the road, why not entertain yourself? The Provia A1 supports full screen video playback in many formats. I know what you are thinking—how are you going to see your route whilst watching “What Women Want”? Picture-in-picture mode has got you covered. If you prefer digital TV instead, there is a DMB receiver packed in behind the glorious, 7″ (400×800) touchscreen display. Pricing and launch details are not available as yet.

The heart of the Provia A1 is an Intel PXA270 processor clocking out at 520MHz. On board memory of 256MB can be upped to a relatively tiny 2GB via SD. Once again, those Korean’s are not likely to share the love. I for one am not jealous, as I can change the colour scheme on my Tom-Tom 500—put that in your feature pipe and smoke it HTMS! [Technabob].

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It was bound to happen: AT&T is going after the commercial snakes groups trying to profit from the iPhone unlocking. Apparently they can hunt these mercenaries down. You can still 100% unlock with the TurboSIM method but, once again, there is only one way to really blow up the Death Star: Support the iPhone Dev Team to get the FREE software unlock and keep advancing native software development for the iPhone.

Press Release
August 25th, 2007

iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com). was poised and ready to release remote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST. The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received a telephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately 2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).

After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firm presented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whether AT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legal action. The logistics of different continents as well as it being a weekend factors into how the situation develops.

Until an assessment is made of the potential of legal action, Uniquephones is unable to release the unlocking software for sale. The company spokesperson also said that the company would also be evaluating what to eventually do with the software should they be legally denied the right to sell it. A substantial delay caused by any legal action would render the unlocking software a less valuable commodity as well as creating unforeseen security issues for the company

Oh, and keep your eyes open during tomorrow and the weekend because the shit is about to hit the fan. [iPhone Unlocking]

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Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Server went down earlier today. This resulted in Windows XP and Vista installations being incorrectly labelled as counterfeit. ‘Reduced functionality’ ensued. The issue is now resolved. [Boing Boing].

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Sometimes you look across your desk and think, “If I was pimp daddy enough, this expanse would resonate style.” Enter the Lamponi lamp collection.

These desk lights are made of genuine, disused (we hope), moped parts. They are designed individually to exact customer requirements. Yes, you guessed it, they are not cheap; prices range from $1772 – $2044. You cannot put a price on high fashion, made of junkyard scraps or not! The fittings are all the real deal, apart from the lamp itself; a road legal light on your bedside table would probably be better at blinding you. Not much use when you need light to read that terrible Dan Brown book all your friends think is so cool.

If you are thinking of whipping your wallet out, do not do it. Instead, take it out in a calm manner and call Mr. Leopardi, tell him you have just taken your wallet out in a cool and collected fashion and would very much wish to purchase one of his splendid lighting products. We offer you this good advice because Mr. Leopardi, who builds these fantastic artworks, does so from scratch. He takes his sweet time too, possibly because they are expertly crafted and they take ages to get down to perfection. Alternatively, it could be because Mr. Leopardi is in fact a big-time gangster and does not like to be rushed. We can deduce this from our astute observations that all gangsters enjoy the finer things in life and have names ending in vowels. Who would have thought the Godfather would have been such a great learning resource? (The last comment was a joke; Mr. Leopardi is not a gangster in any underworld, he is a colloquial gangster because his lamps are so cool he makes other lamp designers look like poo. Lawsuit averted). [Product Page via Shiny Shiny].

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JosefAssad writes “In a decision centering around a question of a violation of the Artistic License, a San Francisco court has denied an injunction against Matthew Katzer in the favor of Robert Jacobsen of the JMRI project. Importantly, the decision makes the point that the Artistic License is a contract, an interpretation that the Free Software Foundation has been keen to avoid as a legal stance. The JMRI project has a page up with the legal background and developments.”

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Hackers have managed to downgrade the Xbox 360 kernel. This gives rise to greater room for homebrew apps development. [Bink].

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An anonymous reader writes “At the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference in San Diego, two Israeli professors, Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, have demonstrated a new method to shrink images. The method is called ‘Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing’ (PDF paper here) and it figures out which parts of an image are less significant. This makes it possible to change the aspect ratio of an image without making the content look skewed or stretched out. There is a video demonstration up on YouTube.”

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We have an endearment to cassette inspired gadgets and those who create them. For that reason, we applaud Chinavasion for their spectacular MP3 Cassette Player. It is shaped like a cassette. It is an MP3 player. Does it require any more tricks to seduce you? Probably not, but nonetheless, there is still a little something up its plastic sleeve.

The MP3 player is not shaped like an audiocassette without reason; it can actually be played through a cassette deck! It does not come supplied with any memory at all; you must supply your own SD/MMC card (2GB maximum). It shall only playback MP3 encoded tracks, has a USB2.0 connection, rechargeable battery and only supports Windows 2000 (anyone still use this?)/XP. Launch dates and pricing details not confirmed at present.

If you have wondered what your MP3s would sound like pumping out of archaic stereo deck you have lying about, wonder no more. Much like our once, thick, luscious hair, the cassette used to do quite a nifty job. Unfortunately, like our present day, sad comb over, the cassette is also forced into attempting to impress the ladies by pretending to be something it is not. It probably is not going to work out great for it either, but you have to love the effort. Take a bow Mr. Cassette MP3; we still love you with all of our partially balding heads. Guys, lose the comb overs—no one loves the effort. [Product Page via Technabob].

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Stony Stevenson notes a NYTimes story on labor unrest caused by high-tech privacy concerns. One organization of taxi drivers plans a 48-hour strike, while another opposes any such action. “One taxi group plans to strike from 5 a.m. Sept. 5, through 5 a.m. Sept. 7, in opposition to New York City’s requirement that all cabs be equipped with GPS technology beginning Oct. 1… saying GPS infringes on drivers’ privacy… The Taxi and Limousine Commission passed a rule stating that all New York City cabs must have touch-screen display panels, credit card readers, and GPS beginning this year. Many taxis already are equipped with the technologies, which allow passengers to get news, route data, and other information. The TLC claims that the technology will not be used to invade drivers’ privacy but will provide real-time maps and help passengers recover lost property.”

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The RED ONE HD camcorder is such hot-shit property, its name invokes awe in the bellies of those that await its release. According to Jim Jannard, Red Digital Cinema CEO, the $17,500 device will begin distribution on August 31st, 2007 and a second delivery should be received by September 7th. If you are having a tough time remembering what all the fuss was about, shame on you; hit the link to see specification that will make you drool with 11.4M pixels of detail at 60fps. [Red User, Thanks Winston].

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Digital Cube makes some kick-ass PMPs and the s-Station NetForce 2 is no exception. What makes this outing special is the inclusion of that speedy HSDPA connectivity.

HSDPA has never before been implemented in a standalone PMP and this gives the s-Station Netforce 2 reason to be a little bit big headed about its technological muscle. The other features include; Wi-Fi connectivity, a sizable 4.3″ screen (800×480), an Alchemy 1250 CPU and either a 30GB or 60GB hard-drive. The devices are set to retail at approximately $530 (30GB) and a very decent $581 (60GB).

Digital Cube has a very bad habit of single handedly advancing the PMP market in such a way, the rest of the PMPs feel like they are worthless and need a big hug to carry on with their cross media playback. That would be all well and good, but they then go and make the rest of us feel like we are living somewhere in the prehistoric, as they only ever release these goodies in South Korea. We know South Korea rules when it comes to press photos and technology, but guys, have some compassion! [I4U]

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Finally, get the clip without losing your foreskin! The Sansa Clip will have tiny MP3 players running scared; the Shuffle and the Zen Stone better watch out, as the little Clip is set to show them a thing or two in miniscule music playback. Jump for the details.

Available in both 1GB and 2GB varieties the storage size is standard in the field, what is not standard is the inclusion of an FM radio, OLED screen, voice recorder and a more than reasonable 15 hour battery life. Playback formats supported will be MP3 and WMA only, but at $40 (1GB) and $60 (2GB), what are you complaining about? The small guy with big tricks is set for a September debut in those fun colours of black, red, blue and our favourite, pink. At this rate the Sansa Clip may even have a certain fatty running scared. That’s right, run faster you fat-ass, Sansa’s onto you! [Audio Junkies].

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qwerty writes “A paper to be presented at the upcoming academic conference Automated Software Engineering describes a new method to detect code theft and could be used to detect GPL violations in particular. While the co-called birthmarking method is demonstrated for Java, it is general enough to work for other languages as well. The API Benchmark observes the interaction between an application and (dynamic) libraries that are part of the runtime system. This captures the observable behavior of the program and cannot be easily foiled using code obfuscation techniques, as shown in the paper (PDF). Once such a birthmark is captured, it can be searched for in other programs. By capturing the birthmarks from popular open-source frameworks, GPL-violating applications could be identified.”

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From the vaults of the FCC comes this a stylish looking desktop stereo from Phillips, titled the BTM288. Good looks are not its only appealing feature either, hit the jump for extracts from the submitted user manual and the juicy DL.

The music system will be launched with Bluetooth functionality, allowing pairing between any audio source that has Bluetooth goodness inside. Not only will it be able to pump out the tunes wirelessly, it will also be able to handle speaker phone functions too. Another tasty addition is the ability to rip tracks directly to a USB storage device from a connected Bluetooth gadget or from a CD. The obligatory capacity for AM/FM/CD and MP3 playback are all present, as would be expected.

This little fellow sure does pack quite a punch. Sure, there have been similar endeavors in the past, but this looks neat and discreet. There are a lot of features beneath the mirrored hood that could end up being very useful for getting your music about. I know my current setup is pretty shambolic; I use a wire to get tunes to my stereo! Anything that will look good, stream our music, take calls and rip tunes for us, has our attention. No word on price or release date, but watch this space. (Not literally…stop it now; you’re freaking us out). [Technabob].

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Is there anything more annoying than stubbing your toe on the side of your bed? Yes there is—all your wires getting in a hefty mess is infinitely more aggravating. Cordhog understands our pain and have devised this ingenious solution. It is a ball like structure that wires wrap around and that is it! Much like football (ours, not yours), all the best things in life are pretty simple and this is testament to the solution. It reminds me of those little histone proteins the DNA coils itself around all tight and cute; now we can all have histone wire solutions to prove how incredibly geeky we are.

The annoyance of messy wires may not hurt on the outside, but a wired disarray will slowly kill you on the inside. (Take it from me, I know). To tidy your colossal cable clutter you shall have to set aside, a very reasonable, $6 for six Cordhogs. That’s Mark’s Christmas gift sorted! [Uber Review].

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For the fourth year running Gabe and Tycho are throwing the mother of all gamer parties. This year it’s located in the downtown area of the Emerald City, and though just one of the three days of panels, game demos, and nerdcore is completed, there’s much to discuss. Read on for impressions from a first-time PAX-goer of the best nerd ticket in the city, with details on the Wil Wheaton Keynote, the first PA Q&A session, and a plenty of information on the duo’s game On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One.

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Apparently someone flushed something big and nasty down the Intarwebs’ tubes and the whole thing went down in flames. Or at least, the Onion says while a world of commentards yawns, scratches its balls and then says, Gaaaaaaahd, that’s so old. [Dizzy Thinks]

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theodp writes “In response to Beloit College’s 10th Annual Mindset List, which takes a stab at describing the worldview of the incoming Class of 2011 (grew up with bottled water; have always had the World Wide Web), Valleywag’s Nick Douglas presages The Mindset of the Class of 2029 (have always been able to use a cell phone on a plane; ‘Lord of the Rings’ looks fake and the effects are laughable).”

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An anonymous reader writes “Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government’s $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software’s icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use.”

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After investing a cool $84 million in devising a porn filter the Federal Government in the land down under are now reeling, thanks to a 16-year-old schoolboy. Tom Wood, (who could actually be a porn star with that name), managed to hack the security measure within 30 minutes of it going live, last Tuesday (21/08/07).

Not only did our hormone raging hacker get round the filter, he managed to preserve the status bar, indicating a functional security system. Not only is it possible for him to look at porn, he is able to deceive his parents into thinking he only ever uses the Internet to check New Scientist—the sneaky devil!

The Australian government, understandably embarrassed by the situation, attempted a remedy. A new filter called Intergrad was uploaded to central servers for domestic distribution. A whopping 40 minutes later, Tom rescued puberty-infested individuals across Australia once again.

Senator Coonan, a government official did the best she could to salvage the sorry situation with, “Unfortunately, no single measure can protect children from online harm and … traditional parenting skills have never been more important.” Basically what I interpret that to mean is; “Tom is really getting on our tits; if you don’t want your kids looking at porn don’t have them in the first place.”

The flawed Internet filter is available as a free download here. As for Tom, he is no doubt quickly being escalated to national treasure status. Add him as a friend to your Facebook account, tell him he rocks and ladies, get him laid; if his cyber security cracking skills do not impress you, what ever will? [Herald Sun].

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Raver32 writes “Tuesday morning, Aug. 28 brings us the second total lunar eclipse of 2007. Those living in the Western Hemisphere and eastern Asia will be able to partake in at least some of this sky show. The very best viewing region for viewing this eclipse will fall across the Pacific Rim, including the West Coast of the United States and Canada, as well as Alaska, Hawaii, New Zealand and eastern Australia. All these places will be able to see the complete eclipse from start to finish. Europeans will miss out on the entire show, as the Moon will be below the horizon during their mid and late morning hours.”

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The Palm Centro has been courting much attention lately thanks to a host of blurry pictures and news of its diminutive stature. Today we have the first (leaked) press photo shot of the device and it does not look half bad.

We have no news in the way of clarified specification from that of what has already been reported. The main details are; the device shall run on EVDO and it shall be pitched at the youth market. Further, the full QWERTY keypad will be complimented by a touchscreen and the price will be a speculated, very reasonable, $99. Sprint shall have exclusive rights for 90 days, after the 90 days mark a free for all shall likely ensue.

The new picture shows a sophisticated looking device, not only will it be the smallest Treo to date, but the supposed youth market orientation may have been altered from earlier suggestions. After all, the colour scheme looks sophisticated and the youth only like their devices in a generic, iPod white plastic finish, as depicted in earlier shots. No official word on specification or release date as yet, but we will keep you posted. (Hey, it’s what we do; don’t sweat it).

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

An anonymous reader writes “AT&T has disclosed another fire started by one of the 17,000 Avestor batteries in its broadband network. The first fire caused a violent explosion in suburban Houston. This second incident occurred just 20 miles away.”

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An anonymous reader writes “So Intel has their quad-core Penryn processors all set and ready to launch in November. There are benchmarks for the dual-core Wolfdale all over the place, but this seems to be the first article to put the quad-core Yorkfield to the test. It looks like the Yorkfield is only about 7-8% faster than the Kentsfield with similar clock speeds and front-side bus.”

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jshriverWVU writes to let us know about the release of Wine 0.9.44. Wine is a free implementation of Windows on Unix/Linux. New in this release are: better heuristics for making windows managed; automatic detection of timezone parameters; improvements to the built-in WordPad; better signatures support in crypt32; still more gdiplus functions; and of course lots of bug fixes.

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grrlscientist writes “A new form of communication between wild vervet monkeys and humans is causing humans distress — and a collapse of their food supply. Approximately 300 vervet monkeys in Kenya are sexually harassing the women of a village so they can steal their crops. None of the attempts to discourage the monkeys has so far worked.”

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Well, well, well. Earlier this week we wrote about a report (the second one we’d ever heard of!) saying that gunfire had damaged a fiber optic cable, causing a bit of an internet slowdown in the northeastern part of the US. Turns out that wasn’t exactly accurate — though the real story isn’t necessarily any less bizarre. It appears that the cable was actually cut with a saw, most likely by thieves hoping it was copper that could be sold. Of course, fiber optic cables don’t contain copper, so the thieves ended up with something worth a lot less than they expected. But what about the gunshot? Well, it turns out that when crews arrived to fix up the cable, they discovered that the replacement cable had been shot up by gunfire. It’s not explained how or why this might have happened, but the folks who store the fiber optic cable might want to come up with a better storage place.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

zlite writes “We make open source Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), mostly for geomapping and other amateur uses. One of our problems is that most people think of UAVs as Scary Things, and despite our efforts to prove otherwise there’s always the risk of regulatory crackdowns. We have amateur UAV participants from around the world, but now they’ve been joined by an Iranian in Tehran, who has made a UAV in the colors of the Iranian flag. My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I’m sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an ‘Axis of Evil’ country make advanced weapons. They could shut us down with the stroke of a pen. My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?”

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