For the cost equation, car manufacturers need to get about half of the job done by improving the technology. The other half deals with volume. The 30 cars Ford has on the road were all hand-built and custom-made, so there are no economies of scale. Increasing production volume will bring down the cost further.

On paper, fuel cells look great, said Nick Lenssen, an analyst at IDC's Energy Insights.

"We just haven't been able to make them work on an economic level yet. Even with some of the low temperature fuel cells there is complexity in converting the fuel into hydrogen onsite unless we eventually have some sort of hydrogen distribution system, which is decades away," he told TechNewsWorld.

Fuel Cells, Part 2: The Future of Power

Microsoft adds privacy tools to IE8
So-called porn mode tools to debut in IE8 Beta 2 this month
By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
August 25, 2008

Microsoft Corp. today spelled out new privacy tools in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) that some have dubbed "porn mode" in a nod to the most obvious use of a browser privacy mode.

A privacy advocate applauded the move, calling it a "great step forward," while rival browser builder Mozilla Corp. said it is working to add similar features to a future Firefox.

Slated to appear in IE8 Beta 2, which Microsoft former chairman Bill Gates promised will release this month, the three new tools share the "InPrivate" name, which Microsoft filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office several weeks ago.

The most intriguing tool, and the one that has prompted the porn mode label, was called InPrivate Browsing by Microsoft. When enabled, IE8 will not save browsing and searching history, cookies, form data and passwords; it also will automatically clear the browser cache at the end of the session.

Other new tools will include InPrivate Blocking and InPrivate Subscription, which notifies users of third-party content that can track browsing history and subscribe to lists of sites to block, respectively. Microsoft will also tweak its existing "Delete Browsing History" by adding an option to preserve bookmarked sites' cookies even when all others are erased.

Microsoft adds privacy tools to IE8

Ethan Bronner, New York Times
August 26, 2008

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on a historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet.

Equipped with high-powered cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have significant scholarly impact.

The 2,000-year-old scrolls, found in the late 1940s in caves near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem, contain the earliest known copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible (missing only the Book of Esther), as well as apocryphal texts and descriptions of rituals of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus. The texts, most of them on parchment but some on papyrus, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

Only a handful of the scrolls exist in large pieces, with several on permanent exhibit at the Israel Museum here in its dimly lighted Shrine of the Book. Most of what was found is separated into 15,000 fragments that make up about 900 documents, fueling a longstanding debate on how to order the fragments as well as the origin and meaning of what is written on them.

The scrolls’ contemporary history has been something of a tortured one because they are among the most important sources of information on Jewish and early Christian life. After their initial discovery they were tightly held by a small circle of scholars. In the last 20 years access has improved significantly, and in 2001 they were published in their entirety. But debate over them seems only to grow.

Scholars continually ask the Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the scrolls, for access to them, and museums around the world seek to display them. Next month, the Jewish Museum of New York will begin an exhibition of six of the scrolls.

The keepers of the scrolls, people like Pnina Shor, head of the conservation department of the antiquities authority, are delighted by the intense interest but say that each time a scroll is exposed to light, humidity and heat, it deteriorates. She says even without such exposure there is deterioration because of the ink used on some of the scrolls as well as the residue from the Scotch tape u... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Israel to Display the Dead Sea Scrolls on the Internet

The last time Anna Patterson invented a search engine, Google bought it. The search engine leader needed her creation to upgrade its system. Patterson's at it again. But this time, she's not selling. The former Google employee's starting a search engine, and word is that it might be three-times more robust than Google.

Cuil Search Engine

Ex-Google worker makes run at search engine giant

Internet security researchers on Thursday warned that hackers have caught on to a "critical" flaw that lets them control traffic on the Internet.

An elite squad of computer industry engineers that labored in secret to solve the problem released a software "patch" two weeks ago and sought to keep details of the vulnerability hidden at least a month to give people time to protect computers from attacks.

"We are in a lot of trouble," said IOActive security specialist Dan Kaminsky, who stumbled upon the Domain Name System (DNS) vulnerability about six months ago and reached out to industry giants to collaborate on a solution.

"This attack is very good. This attack is being weaponized out in the field. Everyone needs to patch, please. This is a big deal."

DNS is used by every computer that links to the Internet and works similar to a telephone system routing calls to proper numbers, in this case the online numerical addresses of websites.

The vulnerability allows "cache poisoning" attacks that tinker with data stored in computer memory caches that relay Internet traffic to destinations.

"I am not behind the times!"

Breitbart: "Hackers get hold of critical Internet flaw" (DNS cache poisoning)

The once-vaunted Zumwalt-class DDG 1000 advanced destroyer program — projected in the late 1990s to produce 32 new ships and subsequently downscaled to a seven-ship class — will instead turn out only two ships, according to highly-placed sources in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

Instead of more 1000s, the Navy will continue to build more Arleigh Burke-class DDG 51 destroyers, construction of which had been slated to end in 2012.

Top Navy and Pentagon brass met Tuesday to make the decision, which means the service will ask Congress to drop the request for the third ship in the 2009 defense budget and forego plans to ask for the remaining four ships.

Each of the two ships now under contract will be built, according to the new decision. That means the General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipyard in Bath, Maine will build the Zumwalt, DDG 1000, and Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls yard in Pascagoula, Miss., will construct the yet-to-be-named DDG 1001.

According to sources, the Navy also considered canceling the second DDG 1000 and building just one, but potentially high cancellation costs led to the decision to keep the ship.

Northrop Grumman DDG 1000 Website

DDG 1000 program will end at two ships

Sony's Blu-ray won the battle of high-definition DVD formats, but its PlayStation 3 gaming console has been losing the war over networked home entertainment. That will change this summer, promised Kaz Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, during a Tokyo press conference announcing new PS3 services for the U.S. market.

Sony will roll out on-demand movies and TV shows for download via the PS3's broadband-enabled PlayStation Network. It will also launch Life With PlayStation, offering news headlines and weather information with a spinning-globe user interface reminiscent of Nintendo's Wii News.

Sony has lost more than US$3 billion on the PlayStation 3 since its launch, but additional networked services and cost-trimming will bring the PS3 business unit to profitability by March 2009, said Hirai. "Sony said the things they needed to say," Gartenberg remarked. "What Sony has found in this generation was a Microsoft that was much stronger than it had been the last time around. It came to market a year ahead (with the Xbox 360) and didn't squander that year. At the same time, it's facing a revitalized Nintendo, which was the last thing everybody was expecting. All of this is putting tremendous pressure on Sony."

Sony Gives PS3 a Shot of Adrenaline: Movies and a Twirling Globe

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed. If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

Hundreds of new domain names could be created by the end of the year, rising to thousands in the future. Icann says any string of letters can be registered as a domain, but there will be an independent arbitration process for people with grounds for objection.

".meme"?

Icann & Top Level Domain Names - 'Shake-up' for internet proposed

TAKANEZAWA, Japan - Honda's new zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell car rolled off a Japanese production line Monday and is headed to southern California, where Hollywood is already abuzz over the latest splash in green motoring. The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the gases believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Honda expects to lease out a "few dozen" units this year and about 200 units within a year. In California, a three-year lease will run $600 a month, which includes maintenance and collision coverage.

Honda rolls out new zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell car

BMW GINA Light Visionary Model revealed