Rain and sun at the famous arts festival inspired a large-scale and spontaneous recitation of the famous “Double Rainbow” meme.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Geek Gestalt – CNET News

An interesting article in USA Today gives us some interesting stats about smart phones and stats. First off, 30% of all phones in the use in the US now are internet connected “smart phones” . 19% of users have downloaded some sort of travel related App. Most importantly, 47% of travelers have used their phone GPS to find a destination or location. That is a significant uptake in the use of GPS devices in phones. Also, many people (29%) are using their internet connected phone to shop for airfares and hotels, which suggests that it is very important for travel related sites to be mobile friendly. Certainly, this is a major shift in the public’s use of cell phones over the last couple of years, at least in the US.

Suggested product: Garmin nüvi 255W 4.3-Inch Widescreen Portable GPS Navigator (Factory Refurbished)

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

The Apple App Store has apparently reached a significant milestone, with now more than 250,000 apps in store, according to this report in Fortune (and to be fair, they are quoting yet another site to get to that number). However, that number may include “versions” of an app made for a different location or city, or some other minor variation. There are about 50,000 publishers, so on average they have 5 apps each. Some companies have hundreds of apps, often variations on a theme. This number doesn’t include a signficant number of adult / sexy apps that were removed in the last little while as well.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

If you know who this is and where she’s located, you could win a prize in the CNET Road Trip Picture of the Week challenge.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Geek Gestalt – CNET News

I found this story over at Reuters about the company ISuppli that has looked into the tablet market, and has decided (somehow) that no matter what happens, Apple will continue to dominate the tablet marketplace. The most telling quote from the story is that they firm doubts that anyone will match the “overall performance experience” of the IPad, which would include it’s performance as well as the many apps and such available for it.

However, I have to say that this seems to fly in the face of the growing number of tablet style devices in the pipeline. In the mainland Chinese market, many companies have already developed knockoffs of the ipad running all sorts of different operating systems, and as the production of these devices ramps up, the costs of the components continues to drop.

Major players such as Microsoft and Google are both on track to have various companies using their operatings systems on tablet devices, especially as 2011 rolls around. Micorsoft may be a very strong competitor in the business marketplace, and Google’s ever expanding Android operating system continues to see huge improvements in it’s app offerings. It is very likely that within a couple of years, there will be little difference in Apps between Apple and other companies.

While Apple may enjoy the first mover position, they are very likely to be facing stuff competition. The real question is the actual size of the tablet marketplace, which may be in it’s infancy, similar to what happened when the original Palm Pilot style devices came out. Almost all of the players from that initial market have fallen to the wayside, and the devices have morphed into the smart phones we know today. Perhaps today’s tablets are nothing more than a step towards something much more useful and robust.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Broadband Wireless Access

The title is what I consider to be the chant of the ignorant, the greedy, the people I nicely refer to as “generation Diss”, who disrespect anyone and everything that doesn’t give them all they want for free.

ACTA is a trade agreement and treaty between many nations (most except the usual suspects), which seeks to define and redefine the nature of copyright works, distribution, and such. It’s a complex subject, best covered in this article. It has far reaching implications, and the one that has the vocal minority of moochers and file traders upset is provisions for a “3 strikes” or similar structure that would require ISPs to be a little more diligent about what their networks are used for.

In simple terms, the current internet is a wild west scenario. Everyone has a horse, a gun, and a covering over their face so nobody can recognize them, and many choose to use this to steal from others. They will say it isn’t stealing, just “copying”, but in the end, they have something of value without having either paid for it or having the rights to it, which in most people’s worlds is either stealing or receiving stolen property. Either way, there is a small but vocal part of the internet user community that is concerned that ACTA will pull away their masks and leave them exposed, suddenly unable to do all the “free” things they have been doing before.

News flash for the freeloaders: If you cannot do it in the real world, why the heck should you be allowed to do it online? You cannot carry your laptop into Best Buy, open a DVD, and make a copy for yourself and leave, why should you be allowed to do it online? Worse why should you have anonymous protection to do it online, with the ISP standing in the way shielding you? It is insane to think that basic acts which would be illegal in person in the real world should suddenly become legal because you can do it remotely.

Too bad for those who would mooch everything and pay for nothing: The free ride may be coming to an end.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

I really enjoy reading the Techdirt blog mostly because it’s fun to watch Mike Masnick tie himself in knots trying to prove things. He is forever posting very speculative things, drawing conclusions that just aren’t obvious, and then to solidify these masterpieces of logic, he then quotes and links them in later posts, treating them like the god’s honest truth. It’s almost comical to watch him go at times.

Today’s stupidity is a UK poll from “third way” Think tank Demos that shows that shows that the 10% of the people they surveyed that download music buy more music in a year than the average person. This is the type of stuff Mike loves, because it is so full of holes that he can drawn any conclusion he likes and make it “stick”. First off, he calls it a study, which is a serious upgrade from a 1000 person one time phone poll. Then he goes on to rant

Those who engaged in unauthorized file sharing tended to spend £77 on media per year, while those who did not spent about £44. And yet file sharers are the enemy? And the industry wants to kick them offline so they discover less new content? How will that help?

It’s an amazing reach for a poll that reported such low numbers of file downloaders (only 10%, less than half the numbers reported pretty much every other poll and study out there), and fails to remove people who don’t buy music at all. It also doesn’t show any relationship between age group and activity, nor does it appear to reset the numbers to reflect the actual UK population. They also don’t account for the idea that this is a phone poll that a significant number of people attempting to hide their illegal activities might have actually lied about.

It’s meaningless numbers, pumped out by a group that is attempting to sway the UK government off of a Three Strikes plan that would kick illegal file traders off the internet. Mike Masnick latches onto it, and will in the future reference it as “file downloaders buy more music”, even though he knows it’s junk science polling at it’s finest.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Stuff Channel

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has rejected a plea by ISPs to halt Bell Canada’s traffic throttling while it investigates the matter. The CRTC believes that it’s a “serious issue,” but not serious enough to force Bell Canada to put an end to the practice before the investigation is wrapped up.

Read More…

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Ars Technica

While Wall Street has had something of a love affair with Apple’s stock until very recently, it appears that they’re finally catching on that not everything may be as rosy as stated. With Apple and AT&T announcing numbers on iPhone sales and iPhone activations, respectively, there’s a 1.7 million phone gap between those numbers. Taking into account the recent launches of iPhones in other countries (estimated at 350,000 to 400,000 iPhones so far) and a 20% estimate on people buying iPhones solely for unlocking, there are still nearly 700,000 iPhones unaccounted for… suggesting that they’re sitting on store shelves, piling up as unsold inventory. That number suggests at least some gap between perceived demand and actual demand — while also raising questions about how much effort it will take to eat through that inventory.

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superglaze writes “ZDNet UK has a feature on how the malware economy is turning into a recognizable traditional IT economy. Leasing botnets? Malware support? Welcome to the new age of computing. As the piece suggests, it’s all gone Darwinian. ‘One indication of the maturity of the black economy, according to Telafici, was the recent case of a hacker who wrote a packer [software used to bypass antivirus protection], “threw in the towel recently as it wasn’t profitable enough — there’s too much competition. They opened the source code and walked away.”‘”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hugh Pickens writes “Bruce Schneier has a story on Wired about the new official standard for random-number generators the NIST released this year that will likely be followed by software and hardware developers around the world. There are four different approved techniques (pdf), called DRBGs, or ‘Deterministic Random Bit Generators’ based on existing cryptographic primitives. One is based on hash functions, one on HMAC, one on block ciphers and one on elliptic curves. The generator based on elliptic curves called Dual_EC_DRBG has been championed by the NSA and contains a weakness that can only be described as a backdoor. In a presentation at the CRYPTO 2007 conference (pdf) in August, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed that there are constants in the standard used to define the algorithm’s elliptic curve that have a relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can completely break any instantiation of Dual_EC_DRBG.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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couch_warrior writes “Microsoft is now working on a system that will back up the contents of your brain. The pilot project lacks a direct brain interface, but “MyLifeBits” will provide a simulacrum of actual memories. No mention is made as to whether Microsoft will claim to own the digital rights to the content of your life, or what license fees you will have to pay to access your own memories.” Honestly this looks like a bunch of hooey to me, but I figured others would be better suited to say.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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While Comcast has been getting a lot of flack for blocking BitTorrent, some network neutrality activists have also been calling out Verizon for the way its DNS servers work. The DNS specification requires that servers return an error if the user tries to look up an invalid domain name. Instead, Verizon’s DNS servers re-direct users who mistype an address to a Verizon-branded search page where Verizon gets to display advertising. (Incidentally, my ISP, Charter, does the same thing.) I agree with Ed Felten that this “feature” is obnoxious, especially because it can break applications that expect to receive DNS error messages. But I don’t think it’s really a network neutrality issue. Verizon’s DNS server does not “block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade” anyone’s access to Internet content or services, which was the standard proposed in last year’s Snowe-Dorgan legislation. Users who type correct URLs aren’t impeded in any way from accessing the sites they want to visit. Responding to a failed DNS query with a search page is probably a bad idea, but it’s very different from “redirecting a user from Google’s search page to Verizon’s,” which the article implies Verizon might do in the future. Moreover, it’s worth keeping in mind that you’re not required to use your ISP’s DNS server at all. ISPs provide DNS servers as a courtesy, the same way they might provide you with a free email account. But you don’t have to use it. You’re free to point your computer to another DNS server, such as OpenDNS, just as you can use a third-party email service such as GMail. And if you do that, the settings of Verizon’s DNS server won’t affect you at all. It’s definitely fair to criticize Verizon for failing to follow the DNS specification, but calling it a network neutrality issue is a bit of a red herring.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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jfruhlinger writes “One of the selling points of the iPhone was its revolutionary touch-screen full keyboard. But a study has shown that text messages sent from iPhones contain significantly more typos than messages from phones with other kinds of keyboards — and aren’t entered any faster.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ponca City, We Love You writes “In October 2006, Netflix, the online movie rental service, announced that it would award $1 million to the first team to improve the accuracy of Netflix’s movie recommendations by 10% based on personal preferences. Each contestant was given a set of data from which three million predictions were made about how certain users rated certain movies and Netflix compared that list with the actual ratings and generated a score for each team. More than 27,000 contestants from 161 countries submitted their entries and some got close, but not close enough. Today Netflix announced that it is awarding an annual progress prize of $50,000 to a group of researchers at AT&T Labs, who improved the current recommendation system by 8.43 percent but the $1 million grand prize is still up for grabs and a $50,000 progress prize will be awarded every year until the 10 percent goal is met. As part of the rules of the competition, the team was required to disclose their solution publicly. (pdf)”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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stemceller passed us a link to the official site for Johns Hopkins, which is reporting on some research into cognition. Generally, doctors have understood our best learning to be done at a young age, when the brain has a ‘robust flexibility’. As we get older, our brain cells become ‘hard-wired’ along certain paths and don’t move much – if at all. Or, at least, that was the understanding. Research headed by the hospital’s Dr. Linden has taken advantage of ‘two-photon microscopy’, a new technique, to get a new picture inside a mouse’s head. “They examined neurons that extend fibers (called axons) to send signals to a brain region called the cerebellum, which helps coordinate movements and sensory information. Like a growing tree, these axons have a primary trunk that runs upward and several smaller branches that sprout out to the sides. But while the main trunk was firmly connected to other target neurons in the cerebellum, stationary as adult axons are generally thought to be, ‘the side branches swayed like kite tails in the wind,’ says Linden. Over the course of a few hours, individual side branches would elongate, retract and morph in a highly dynamic fashion. These side branches also failed to make conventional connections, or synapses, with adjacent neurons. Furthermore, when a drug was given that produced strong electrical currents in the axons, the motion of the side branches stalled.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Cisco shares take a big dive and it has an impact on tech stocks across the board, affecting even the fat kids like Google and Apple.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Wired Top Stories

ancientribe writes “There’s a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow the notorious Storm away in size and sophistication, according to researchers, and it’s a direct result of how Storm has changed the botnet game, with more powerful and wily botnets on the horizon. This article provides a peek at the ‘new Storm’ and reveals the three biggest botnets in the world (including Storm) — and what makes them tick and what they are after.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Futurepower(R) writes “Even though I have Automatic Updates turned off, on August 28, 2007, between 3:49 and 3:51 AM PDT, Microsoft installed new files on my Windows XP computer.” Nine files are updated on Vista and on XP SP1, a different set of on each, relating to Windows Update itself. Microsoft-watch.com’s Joe Wilcox and ZDnet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes confirm the stealth update.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

Looking like something Doc would own in Back to the Future, Richard Mille’s Planetarium-Tellurium clock is a beautifully intricate device, able to provide extremely accurate details about the workings of our Solar System. The clock provides not only the exact positions of the Earth, Venus, Mercury, the Sun and the Moon (who needs the other planets, anyway?) but the current axis of the Earth, its position relative to the Sun, the rotation of the Moon, and even the current signs of the Zodiac.

Mille used a famed astronomer-physicist to help with the exact calculations, and the only data that’s a bit faulty is the current axis of the Earth — which can get off by plus or minus one degree every 7.7 years (just faulty, faulty craftsmanship.) No price or release info just yet, but we’re going to guess it’s going to cost somewhere between a flux capacitator and a human kidney. [WatchLuxus via Technobob]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Want to make friends with sex offenders but aren’t quite sure where they live? Let Vision 20/20 help you. The free web-based program gives users the ability to find the location of any sex offenders living in their area — including the crimes and the intensely creepy mugshots for each. The program is easy to use — simply input your address, city and zip code, and a flashy map pops up with mustached, Village People-style markers showing you where your local neighborhood creep is.

According to the Vision 20/20 website, there’s 650,000 registered sex offenders in the US and they’ve got them all placed neatly on a map for you. Try it — it’s fun for the whole vigilante-loving family. [Vision 20/20 via TechCrunch]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Looking like something created in a joint venture between Nickelodeon and a mysterious Alien Race, the mi VDO FX DV Cam, made by B2Stuf allows would-be LonelyGirls to take pictures, record video and edit their films on-the-go. The cam includes a 1.5″ color screen, a 4x digital zoom, a built-in speaker, an SD slot that is expandable up to 2GB, and 18 built-in special effects.

The quality isn’t great — but that really doesn’t matter when it comes to YouTube, especially if you’ve got a kitten laying around, just waiting to do something adorable. The gadget is available for $99 at Target and is particularly great to have whenever an orgy spontaneously occurs. [B2Stuf via ChipChick]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

If there’s one thing the world sorely needs it’s some sort of place where robots can go to chat, find love, and make plans to destroy Humanity. Luckily, South Korea is well-aware of their plight and has announced plans to build “Robot Land” — a city entirely created for the robotics industry. The city will feature facilities for research, development, and production of robots — it’ll even have a stadium for robot-related competitions, like the much-heralded “Who Can Malfunction And Kill Everyone First” contest.

The project will cost $530 million dollars and will begin construction sometime in 2009 — which is also the year North Korea begins construction on their very own “Crazy Killer Robot Land” — a land that may or may not have nuclear weapons. [WaziWazi via SciFi]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Samsung has officially acknowledged the Bluetooth-enabled YP-T10 and the YP-P2, though no pricing was discussed. Even more mysteriously, Samsung didn’t announce the equally rumored YP-S5 at the same time.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

The owner of phone reseller CertiCell has apparently traded iPhone unlocker George Hotz three locked 8GB iPhones and one Nissan 350Z to get Hotz’s unlocked iPhone unit. This trade teaches us the virtue of patience and how hacking an iPhone can get you ridiculous amounts of stuff. [Jtag]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

PinStack.com has posted new pictures of the upcoming BlackBerry Pearl 2, as well as some new spec information that will make your eyes bleed in profound joy. According to Pinstack, the new Pearl 2 will have a slew of improvements — from a better email layout and display to improved voice control software. It’ll also have a WiFi-browser, an external entry MicroSD, a 3.5mm headset jack and the 4.3 OS installed.

Still not much information on pricing or a release date, aside from the Thanksgiving rumor, but we’re definitely liking the slimmer body — it’s something we could really see ourselves settling down and starting a family with. [Pinstack]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

In CEO-orgasming news, Pano Logic announced their network-based Pano Device, which, using a main host, virtualizes a copy of Windows XP and Vista without the need for an actual PC. Coming equipped with an Ethernet jack for the network connection, along with three USB ports, a VGA port for the display and audio I/O jacks for dedicated speakers and microphones, the tiny Pano promises to cut Total Cost of Ownership by 70%.

The Pano Device requires a Pano Management Server that hosts copies of XP or Vista and will cost $20 dollars a month per Pano device attached to the network. The server and device will be available in September and will bring a tear of joy to a business owner’s eye. [Panologic via Electronista]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

>>>>A guy claims that he’s figured out how to use the iPhone’s accelerometers to do wacky stuff and games such as the ones shown in the video. Real? Or fancy video editing? We’ll find out soon, since he promised to post the source in his blog. [Medallia]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

According to an internal employee email, the year-and-a-half old ad campaign from AT&T that claims they’re the network with the fewest dropped calls is reportedly over. This decision comes from JD Power giving T-Mobile the most dropped calls award in most markets, as well as Consumer Reports rating AT&T at the bottom of their lists for reliability and satisfaction. So what will the Death Star Network use instead? “More Bars in More Places”, apparently (to the detriment of AA members everywhere). [DSLReports via Wired via Consumerist]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

This might look like a normal, albeit outdated, landline phone, but it hides a whole lot more than that behind its unassuming exterior. It actually contains a motion detector that’ll give you a call and allow you to listen in on whatever’s happening in the room. It’s perfect for listening in on, uh, robbers. Yes, that’s it, robbers. [Product Page via Product Dose]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

A lot of the DIY projects we feature require soldering, which unlike soldiering, doesn’t usually involve loss of life, but is still painful as crap. Instructables has a guide on soldering for beginners, which is totally useful if you didn’t spend a semester soldering your fingers together because your female lab partner didn’t know what she was doing (but managed to help you through the “math” part of the class). [Instructables via Lifehacker]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Although laptop coolers are all pretty mediocre when it comes down to cooling, this cooler design from Bostjan Majcen actually looks quite nice. The fan in the middle is hidden behind an Apple logo—which pleases the Apple fans—and the body itself has four USB ports and a tilted, lifted stand so you can see your screen better. If they made that fan in the middle powerful enough to actually do something other than blow slightly warm air gently on our crotch, we’d actually like one of these. [Yanko Design]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Nokia’s really into this new fangled Bluetooth techno-mology, shooting out Bluetooth addons like they shoot out phones—scattershot, hoping they hit something good with at least one. They’ve got the LD-4W GPS module, BH-903 Stereo Bluetooth Headset with A2DP, BH-0-2 (non-Stereo) Bluetooth headset, MD-7W Bluetooth speakers, and the DC-1 Power Pack. These are all made for standard Nokia phones, save for the headsets, which will probably work with most other Bluetooth devices. The most interesting one is the BH-903, which doesn’t just have A2DP, but AVRCP, PBAP, HFP, HSP, and TSFU profiles. [Nokia via All About Symbian]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

There’s been a lot in the news lately about China’s penchant for putting cancer-causing lead paint on children’s toys that they then ship to the States. If you’re worried that the pacifier you’re about to stick into Nerd Jr’s mouth is hazardous, just grab one of these intimidating-looking X-MET3000TXR+ (now that’s a gadget name) from Oxford Instruments. It’ll scan for lead as well as arsenic, cadmium, mercury, chrome, nickel and other hazardous metals, ensuring that the only thing going in your kid’s mouth is good old-fashion American plastic. [Open PR via The Raw Feed]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

This Princeton Bluetooth adapter is probably the smallest USB adapter we’ve seen yet, being made of mostly a USB tip and a tiny little body. The USB adapter works on both PCs and Macs, has Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, and sticks out only a tiny bit so you don’t accidentally snap it off. If our laptops didn’t already have Bluetooth, we’d be on this faster than Big Daddys on Little Sisters. [Princeton]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Most MP4 watches look fantastic if you’re 12 years old and really love plastic and rubber watches, but Epoq’s latest MP4 watch brings a slight bit of class to the video watch business. Made of stainless steel, this watch has a 1.5-inch LCD screen, 2GB memory, MP4 video and MP3/WMA/WAV audio. $199 isn’t cheap, but how else are you going to get video on a watch? [First To You via Sci Fi]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

You saw the photos of me nerding out with Panny’s 103-inch TV and an Xbox 360, now see the video of it in action. Yeah, I’m standing way, way too close, and I did get pretty motion sick playing for more than five minutes, but it was totally worth it. The video, shot by enterprising videographer Alex Goldberg, includes commentary by Panasonic Display President Andrew Nelkin, who really loves himself some Wii Boxing.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

It was around this time last year that Sprint raised their SMS rates to $0.15, allowing you to get out of your contract for free, since it constituted a material change. They’ve gone and raised SMS rates again, from $0.15 to $0.20, but this time they say that it DOESN’T constitute a material change. What the hell? Sprint says SMS isn’t covered under your contract, and is an opt-in service. Have they changed their contracts since last year? Or is this just bullshit they’re spewing to fool some customers into thinking they can’t get out of their contracts free this time? [RCRNews via Boy Genius via Wireless Info]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

We’ve gotten a bunch of new commenters lately, thanks to both our growth and the fact that more people know how to comment by reading these commenting posts. Although most of them are good, a few of them are dicks. It’s a full-time job spotting the dicks, so we want you, the commenters, to tell us who you think deserves the banhammer. Email us whenever you see a guy (or gal, they can be assholes too) that needs to be off the site.

Don’t know how to comment? Here’s how:

1) Click on the “Register” link on the top right of the page. Fill out the form by choosing a username, password and email for your eventual comment account.

2) Choose a post, click on it, and scroll to the bottom.

3) Fill in the comment.

4) Refresh the page to see if your comment shows up. If it hasn’t within a day or two, try again with a comment that won’t get you banned.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

After studying the movements of women for years, finally we get scientific confirmation of what we’re seeing: Researchers at Cambridge University in the U.K. have figured out exactly what makes a perfect swivel-hipped walk with “a more angular swaying and bounce to the hips.” The mathematicians got out their slide rules, calculators, blow-up dolls and binoculars, scientifically determining the perfect ratio of waist to hips. Their results? The closer that ratio is to 0.7 (waist measurement is 70% of the hip measurement), the sexier the swagger. And guess who has that exact ratio? Jessica Alba, pictured above. Follow us for more examples (NSFW).

Other babes of historical importance were also mentioned, such as Marilyn Monroe (pictured at left), with a target ratio of 0.69, making it almost to the level of perfection of Jessica, but not quite. This 0.7 ratio translates into a waist of 25 inches and 36-inch hips, making that tick-tock walk look absolutely perfect. But the ratio is not necessarily related to measurements or weight—just the difference between those two measurements. However, we’re betting that if those numbers get a whole lot larger, the illusion is lost.

Other possessors of that magic 0.7 ratio: Sophia Loren, Alessandra Ambrosio and Venus de Milo.

From Wikipedia:

A WHR of 0.7 for women and 0.9 for men have been shown to correlate strongly with general health and fertility. Scientists have discovered that the waist-hip ratio (WHR) is a significant factor in judging female attractiveness. Women with a 0.7 WHR are usually rated as more attractive by men from European cultures.

Glad we got that straight. It’s all mathematical. [Telegraph]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Remember a few weeks ago how the Australian government was getting ready to spend many millions of dollars on internet porn filters? We ridiculed the second part of the plan, which was to force ISPs to filter the internet, but the first part of the plan was to hand out free client-side filters that could be installed on computers by parents. The cost to the government was a mere $84 million Australian (about $70 million US). It should come as no surprise, though, that a teenager claims it took him all of about half an hour to crack the filter. Even better, he says he did so in a way that the icon still shows on the computer, so parents will think the software is still working. Of course, there are always ways to get around filters and it’s not hard for many kids to figure them out. Still, rather than recognizing that the government has wasted many millions of dollars on a futile program, one of the main political backers of the program said it only highlights why the country needs to spend even more on filters, including those ISP filters that won’t work either.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

The battle of the 1080p home theater projectors gets even more rip-roaring today with Sanyo tossing its somewhat clunky looking Sanyo LP-Z2000 projector into the ring, at least in Japan. This 3-LCD $3000-ish monster looks more like an industrial-strength toaster, but still nails the specs with an HDMI 1.3a port, 1200 lumens and a 15,000:1 contrast ratio.

It’s also doing its best not to wake up the neighbors, matching that Mitsubishi LVP-HC6000 projector we showed you the other day in the noise department, also quoting a nearly inaudible 19dB sound emanating from its cooling fan. However, like that Mitsubishi, this Sanyo projector’s aimed at the Japanese market first, set for an October release.

The big news is that there’s a whole lot of activity now in the low-cost 1080p projector front, bound to find its way across the Pacific, and it’s putting even more competitive heat on the Epson with its Powerlite and Panasonic and its PT-AE100U, both projectors already released for $3000 stateside. Will some enterprising manufacturer try to undercut these $3K players? Do we hear $2000 for a 1080p shiner? [Akihabara News]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

How much do we at the Giz love toasters? Yeah, a lot. Arthur Wu’s Toasty design is tasty for these reasons: one—cute switch on top; two—it looks like a tape deck. Oh Noes, however, include:

Only one slice toasts at a time, which is pure badness in my book; and, as yet, it’s only a concept. Arthur, you need to do a double-toaster and keep those ’80s tapeheads happy. [Yanko]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Today is the last day of voting for the Laptop Confidential II Contest. If you haven’t seen them yet, take a look at the finalists here, and then follow the MORE link at the end of this post to cast your vote. The winner will receive his or her choice of any laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor inside, with a value of up to $2000. Let the voting begin, and may the best film noir video win!

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Roland Piquepaille sends us word of first results from the Borexino detector in Italy, where an international team of more than 100 researchers has detected low-energy solar neutrinos for the first time. These results confirm recent “theories about the nature of neutrinos and the inner workings of the sun and other stars.” In particular, it’s now almost certain that neutrinos oscillate among three types, namely electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. The Borexino detector lies almost a mile underground near L’Aquila, Italy, and it sets new standards in the purity of the materials used in its construction.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Slashdot

A trio of cameras from Kodak, the Z812 IS Megazoom, the V1233 and the V1253 have shown up on the Let’s Go Digital website, who apparently got it from the Kodak website. More details and pics about the three compacts below.

The Z812 IS Megazoom
12 x optical zoom
Schneider Dreuznach Variogon lens
Optical Image Stabilization
0.23-second click-to-capture delay
8 Megapixels

The V1233 Easyzoom
12 Megapixels
4,000 x 3,000 pixels
720p resolution video
2.5-inch LCD color display
Schneider-Kreuznach lens
5 x optical zoom
Face detection technology
Automatic focus and metering

The V1253 Easyzoom
12 Megapixel
720p resolution video
3.1-inch widescreen color LCD display
Kodak Color Science Chip
Schneider-Kreuznach lens
5 x digital zoom
Face detection technology
automatic focus and metering

No prices yet, but expect to see them at IFA. [Let's Go Digital via i4U]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Last week, the FTC announced that a judge had shut down the operation of a diet pill spammer after it turned out (shockingly, we know) that the claims made by the spammers about the pills were either completely false or (at best) unsubstantiated. While the spammers were in violation of the CAN SPAM law, it would seem that they should be in violation of other fraud regulations as well, such as false advertising. Of course, with so much spamming going overseas these days, perhaps what’s more amazing is that these guys were in the US and it was possible to find them in order to shut them down. We’re sure someone somewhat less easily shut down will quickly fill in the void.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Techdirt

The auction for seats on the first Airbus A380′s flight starts today: Singapore Airlines will fly it from their home city to Sydney. All profits will be shared between different non-governmental charity organizations, so not only will you have the opportunity to be first to fly the biggest passenger aircraft of all time, you will also help children in the process.

Bidding starts at $3.80 in economy and $380 for a luxury package, but knowing that the A380 two-year delay is a result of wiring faults, I think I will pass this time. [Singapore Airlines via BBC]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Beneath the wood exterior lies an old Ericsson phone, modded by a Russian. There’s another pic after the jump.

The only thing that surprises me is that its creator didn’t inlay it with bling. [New Launches]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo

Taiwan-based Acer, the third largest PC company in the world, has acquired US-based Gateway. It will continue to operate with different brands for the time being. [Reuters]

Originally Syndicated via RSS from Gizmodo