...will he ever win?

Rob Weir has posted a timeline of work done on Apache OpenOffice and some associated commentary. "As the timeline shows, most of our attention on the project has been spent on community building and infrastructure migration efforts. We're not engaging in a race to see how fast we can come out with a release, or to show how quickly we can crank out minor releases. A huge portion of our effort has been to ensure continuity for the many millions of users of OpenOffice.org, by far the most popular open source productivity suite."

This response from Michael Meeks may also be worth a look.

March 14, 2012 03:02 PM

This 3D-printed model of the Tower Bridge is only 200 micrometers long. To put that into perspective, the distance between the towers is the width of a human hair. This model is the product of research at the additive manufacturing department of the Vienna University of Technology

The models were fabricated much like normal stereolithography – a laser shines onto a vat of light-sensitive resin. The resin hardens when exposed to light, and the model is built up layer by layer. These nanoscale models were made using a process called “two-photon lithography,” something we’re not going to pretend we understand completely but here’s a nice paper that provides a good overview. Needless to say, the precision these prints exhibit are nearly ludicrous. The researchers claim a precision of ±1µm, a respectable amount of precision for very high-tech machining applications.

The researches posted a video of the fabrication of a nanoscale F1 race car filmed in real-time. Check that out after the break.

Filed under: cnc hacks

March 14, 2012 03:01 PM

Around the turn of the century, the FBI was pursuing a case against a suspect—rumored to be Las Vegas strip-club tycoon Michael Galardi, though documents in the case are still sealed—when it hit upon a novel surveillance strategy.

The suspect owned a luxury car equipped with an OnStar-like system that allowed customers to "phone home" to the manufacturer for roadside assistance. The system included an eavesdropping mode designed to help the police recover the vehicle if it was stolen, but the FBI realized this same anti-theft capability could also be used to spy on the vehicle's owner.

Read the comments on this post

March 14, 2012 03:00 PM

Two teams of researchers have apparently gone on record as saying they plan on cloning the mammoth. In 2008, when the mammoth genome was announced in the journal Nature, we took at look at that possibility, and concluded it wouldn't work. Given the recent press attention, we thought we'd rerun an updated version of the relevant section from our original report.

Given that the genome is often called the blueprint for an organism, Nature took the liberty of commissioning an evaluation of what it would take to rebuild the mammoth using that blueprint. The challenge is enormous: each one of the mammoth's chromosomes are likely to be over 100 million base pairs long; the average surviving fragment of DNA we've obtained from mammoth remains is under 200 bases long.

That means the sort of cloning technique that we use on currently living mammals wouldn't work, since it relies on a genome that's largely intact. The cloned cells can undoubtedly repair some DNA damage, but nothing like the scrambled fragments we have from mammoths. There's always the chance that some mammoth remains contain larger fragments of DNA, but basic chemistry indicates that we're unlikely to ever find anything close to an intact chromosome.

Read the comments on this post

March 14, 2012 02:53 PM

In a bid to save its 4G network after being rejected by the Federal Communications Commission, LightSquared has hired lawyer Theodore Olson, who helped President George W. Bush take office by winning the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, and former Department of Labor Solicitor Eugene Scalia.

Olson told Politico that it's too early to say what LightSquared's legal strategy will be. LightSquared gained conditional FCC approval for a new 4G-LTE network using both satellites and cell towers in January 2011, but the FCC pulled the plug on the network last month after extensive testing showed it would interfere with GPS devices. In the wake of that decision, LightSquared has reportedly explored potential lawsuits against the FCC and GPS industry members.

"What happened to LightSquared is 'an egregious example' of the government encouraging a company to invest an enormous amount of money to meet a national objective and then 'pulling the rug out from under them capriciously and precipitously,'" Olson said, according to Politico. “'On the face of things, it looks to me like the government has acted arbitrarily after inducing the expenditure of an enormous number of resources.'”

LightSquared argues that the GPS industry had years in which it could have modified devices to avoid interference from spectrum licensed to LightSquared, but failed to do so. The GPS industry argued in turn that modifying all existing and future devices would be impractical. Swayed by results of government testing, the FCC concluded that the GPS system was not ready to handle interference from LightSquared's proposed network, and withdrew its conditional approval.

Read the comments on this post

March 14, 2012 02:43 PM

BioShock Infinite Creative Director Ken Levine doesn't want to give too much away about the backstory for the Handyman—the hulking, giant-handed metal enemies that have been featured prominently in promotional teasers for the game. All he'll say for now, as part of a new trailer for the game, is that he sees the character as "a tragic figure" with "a certain sadness about who they are and how they got there."

Levine does discuss the Handyman's role as an antagonist, though, saying that the agile, high-leaping automatons will often pick up other nearby characters and throw them at the player. "I think that everyone around them finds them quite terrifying, including sometimes your enemies, because they just become tools of the Handyman to get at Booker."

In the video, Art Director Shawn Robertson says the Handyman's huge, articulated hands were inspired by the porcelain dolls of the early 1900s, which aimed for realism but ended up coming just short, creating what he calls "the original incarnation of the uncanny valley."

The new trailer continues a weekly series looking at all of the major enemies for the highly anticipated Bioshock Infinite. Last week's video showcased the gun-toting Motorized Patriots, described as a sort of "clockwork terminator."

Read the comments on this post

March 14, 2012 02:33 PM

Clamps are an essential tool in any photographer's toolbox, and it would be difficult to improve on them. Nasty Clamps have done just that by taking flexible arms similar to those found on the previously reviewed Gorillapod and attaching it to, you guessed it, a clamp.

I've used mine by clamping it to the chair in front of me and attaching my Olympus audio recorder (via the 1/4" tripod mount) when I've needed to record lectures, choral concerts, and interviews. I've also attached external flashes to two clamps and had a quick, lightweight OCF setup. And while it's not supportive enough to hold up a dSLR, it more than accommodates my Panasonic GF2 as a lightweight alternative to a tripod (or GorillaPod for those who don't own one). Unlike the GorillaPod the flexible arm is expandable, and you can also pick up a hotshoe adapter that makes it easier to attach OCF flashes (which can be used on an any 1/4" tripod screw, not just a Nasty Clamp).

While the made-in-USA Nasty Clamps are a bit pricey their utility more than makes up for the cost.

-- Oliver Hulland

[For those who are looking to save a bit by going DIY here's a nifty guide to make something similar at home.]

Nasty Clamp
$44

Available from and manufactured by Nasty Clamps

March 14, 2012 02:30 PM

"We came across this trying to sort out why the application never threw errors which said what the problem was," Tom writes, "I wouldn't have minded (much) but the random number generator was something to behold."

Private Function GenerateApologyMessage() As String
    If Now.Millisecond > 900 Then
        Return "Whoops!  Something went slighty awry..."
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 800 Then
        Return "How embarassing, I seem to have failed that task!"
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 700 Then
        Return "Whoops!  Something went slighty awry..."
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 600 Then
        Return "How embarassing, I seem to have failed that task!"
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 500 Then
        Return "Whoops!  Something went slighty awry..."
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 400 Then
        Return "How embarassing, I seem to have failed that task!"
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 300 Then
        Return "Whoops!  Something went slighty awry..."
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 200 Then
        Return "How embarassing, I seem to have failed that task!"
    ElseIf Now.Millisecond > 100 Then
        Return "Whoops!  Something went slighty awry..."
    Else
        Return "How embarassing, I seem to have failed that task!"
    End If
End Function

March 14, 2012 02:15 PM

White House CIO Brook Colangelo has revealed some harrowing details about his first days on the job. Entering the White House along with Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2009, Colangelo "delivered the first presidential BlackBerry" and mobile devices to other top administration officials. Yet the White House's technology was in such poor shape that for the first 40 days, e-mail was down 23 percent of the time.

On January 26, "Our e-mail servers went down for 21 hours," Colangelo told attendees of the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference in Arizona this week. "In my professional career, there has not been a worst day since or ever."

Three or four more outages followed in those first 40 days. The White House proceeded to replace its e-mail systems and storage area networks, and started staffing its data center 24 hours a day. Uptime improved, but there was still a nine-hour outage in February 2011, taking down e-mail and Internet access, according to Computerworld. Colangelo resorted to faxing updates to Obama while he was on the road.

The 2011 outage spurred the White House to finally open a second data center for disaster recovery. Other modernization efforts included replacing desktops, which were still using floppy disk drives at the time Colangelo came on board. About 82 percent of the White House's technology had reached end of life when Obama's administration began.

The need for IT modernization in a government agency is nothing new, but the extent of the White House's problems is surprising. Computerworld has the full story.

Read the comments on this post

March 14, 2012 02:07 PM

This mannequin head was purchased years ago on sale for less than $3. As with many things one sees while shopping, it didn’t have a purpose at the time, but seemed like it would be useful later. Add in an Arduino, some servos, and electronics parts that were acquire in a similar manner, and you have all the ingredients needed for a cool hack.

The build is well documented in the video after the break, and we especially like at 2:24 when who we suppose is the mom says “Look at this mess!” Apparently the next iteration will be a robot to clean everything up!

This iteration is quite impressive though, as it uses a webcam to track objects using a servomotor and lists the code used. For a view of it tracking stuff along with a view of the PC, fast forward to around 8:45. In addition to tracking the parts using the servo, the non-webcam eye changes color from green to yellow depending on if it’s tracking or not. It also featured a blinking necklace, which is also a plus in our eyes.

For more random head-like creepiness, be sure to check out [Boxie the Creepster]!

Filed under: robots hacks

March 14, 2012 02:01 PM