Warmer colours like orange and red will produce more legible signs. "Combining red, green, and blue colours even enables us to create white light, which may provide more natural illumination," Saito says.

...

Cool!

Full-colour glow-in-the-dark materials unveiled

Even though I wasn't invited (sniff), I still have to say that this is one of the most amazing wedding websites I've seen. The photography is amazing.

Congrats on your upcoming nuptials, Baudburn!

So beautiful!

Baudburn's upcoming wedding

Fab@Home is a website dedicated to making and using fabbers - machines that can make almost anything, right on your desktop. This website provides an open source kit that lets you make your own simple fabber, and use it to print three dimensional objects. You can download and print various items, try out new materials, or upload and share your own projects. Advanced users can modify and improve the fabber itself.

Fabbers (a.k.a 3D Printers or rapid prototyping machines) are a relatively new form of manufacturing that builds 3D objects by carefuly depositing materials drop by drop, layer by layer. Slowly but surely, with the right set of materials and a geometric blueprint, you can fabricate complex objects that would normally take special resources, tools and skills if produced using conventional manufacturing techniques. A fabber can allow you explore new designs, email physical objects to other fabber owners, and most importantly - set your ideas free. Just like MP3s, iPods and the Internet have freed musical talent, we hope that blueprints and fabbers will democratize innovation.

Cool...I want to make one:)

Fab @ Home: Open Source 3D printer

Modafinil is just the first of a wave of new lifestyle drugs that promise to do for sleep what the contraceptive pill did for sex - unshackle it from nature. Since time immemorial, humans have structured their lives around sleep. In the near future, we will, for the first time, be able to significantly structure the way we sleep to suit our lifestyles.

"The more we understand about the body's 24-hour clock the more we will be able to override it," says Russell Foster, a circadian biologist at Imperial College London. "In 10 to 20 years we'll be able to pharmacologically turn sleep off.

Interesting article...don't know whether to be horrified or excited about the prospects of working on my thesis 24 hours a day:)

Get ready for 24-hour living

Remember when you were promised all those amazing future tech innovations? Just around the corner was supposed to be a shining technology utopia with flying cars, personal space travel to distant galaxies, and bio-implantable cell phones. It's almost disappointing enough to make you sit at home and watch old episodes of "Space 1999".

Don't lose hope! An amazing glimpse of this promised future has just arrived at ThinkGeek in the form of the Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard. This tiny device laser-projects a keyboard on any flat surface... you can then type away accompanied by simulated key click sounds. It really is true future magic at its best. You'll be turning heads the moment you pull this baby from your pocket and use it to compose an e-mail on your bluetooth enabled PDA or Cell Phone. With 63 keys and and full size QWERTY layout the Laser Virtual Keyboard can approach typing speeds of a standard keyboard... in a size a little larger than a matchbook.

Whoa...this looks really neat...wonder if it actually works well..

Bluetooth laser virtual keyboard

These are awesome....I want one...but they are probably too much $$$ for a grad student....so I will have to build my own instead!!

What I want for Christmas

What follows is my take on “Ciscogate”, the uproar over researcher Michael Lynn’s presentation at this year’s Black Hat conference, in which he revealed that he was able to remotely execute code on Cisco routers. I have been representing Mike during this crisis, so I’m clearly partisan, and what I can say is limited by attorney-client responsibilities. But while many people are speculating about the facts, there hasn’t been much on the law, which turns out to be really interesting.

Jennifer Granick has posted the first installment of the story about her representing Mike. Its very rare you get to hear the take of a case like this directly from the lawyers involved, so this is a treat.

Earlier I suggested that everyone leave a comment on Jennifer's blog thanking her for representing Mike. I'd like to renew that suggestion. Thanks Jennifer!

After reading this, you might want to check out this collection of comments on Cryptome about the situation. It includes links to pictures of the presentation Mike actually gave, as opposed to the one that is floating around.

And seriously don't miss the truly excellent video floating around of the Cisco temp-workers slicing the materials out of the conference booklets. You can get it here or here.

The Shout | Jennifer Granick | ISS and Cisco v. Granick’s Gambling Plans

Please support Mike Lynn by contributing to his defense fund! Currently this fund exists in the form of sending funds directly to Mike via Paypal.

Mike Lynn's Paypal ID is "Abaddon@IO.com". A form to submit funds to this account can also be found at: http://www.memestreams.net/lynndefense.html

A dangerous culture regarding hardware based network devices as impervious to remote compromise has been allowed to exist. Mike has taken on enormous personal risk to do the right thing for the security research community by coming forward with his research and bringing this problem into focus.

Cisco has consistently been on the forefront of this dangerous culture. They exercise a strategy of walling off updates and information only to those with support contracts. In many areas of critical infrastructure, engineers are often limited in their ability to utilize the latest security updates due to their IOS feature train. For years, attempting to adopt SSH as the primary method of administration for Cisco hardware has provided a perfect example of Cisco's broken security culture. Their handling of this situation is putting icing on the cake. We must encourage change in Cisco's security culture.

ISS's actions to date have shown an effect of this broken security culture. ISS's handling of this critical security threat and the researcher that found it have been less then desirable. We are confident our free-market business and media environment will result in both ISS and Cisco learning lessons from this event.

We expect the FBI to be both diligent and respectful in its handling of the investigation against Lynn. The security reality of our critical infrastructure demands such a response. In this big picture, the civil and government security communities are on the same team, and should be viewed as such.

If our whistleblowers are not protected, we will eventually find we have no whistles available to us to blow. This would be a disaster for both America and the globalized world.

If we are to protect our critical infrastructure, we too must be protected.

The most important thing we the security research community can do in regard to this event is support Mike Lynn, and encourage positive change to broken security culture wherever it exists.

Right now, by supporting Mike Lynn, you support the entire community.

Mike Lynn Legal Defense Fund

Looks like they have reached a settlement, according to the AP.

Settlement between Mike Lynn and Cisco

This is not going to go the way Cisco wants it to. Its going to blow up in their face.

The general opinion that seems to be around in the blogs is clearly leaning toward Mike. None of the mainstream press has yet to cast Mike's actions in an overly negative light.

"The speaker worked with Cisco for the last six months on this and Cisco has had the patch for quite a while," said Wally Strzelec, an IT manager at Texas A&M. "I don't know what their beef is."

"Seems like Cisco's trying to cover its butt," said Tom DeSmidt, a senior security engineer for satellite TV provider Echostar. "All software has flaws you can exploit. They should embrace it rather then act this way."

And Cisco may pay for the lawsuit, in more ways than one. Ken Pfeir, CSO for Capital IQ in New York, said something like this may turn clients away. "Cisco is going about this entirely the wrong way -- they're alienating their own customers," Pfeir said. "Walking around for six months with their fly hanging open and now saying 'you didn't see anything' is a bad business practice."

As far as the lawsuit goes, Black Hat President Jeff Moss remains unconcerned and has no intention of remaining mum as the cease and desist order demands. "Apparently Cisco is going to send us a really scary letter tomorrow," he said. "I don't like scary letters so when I get it, I'll let everyone know what's going on." Depending on the outcome, a press conference is tentatively planned for Thursday morning.

The EFF should support Lynn.

Users in an uproar over Cisco/ISS suit