A very unusual ink-jet printer cartridge, containing explosive ink, has been patented by Qinetiq, the commercial spin-off of the British Ministry of Defence.

The ink is a mixture of very fine aluminium particles, each 1 micrometre in diameter, particles of copper oxide 5 micrometres wide, epoxy varnish and alcohol. The ink is stable in liquid form, making it safe to print onto conventional paper, but forms an explosive fuse once dry.

An engineer can easily sketch out a printable fuse using computer imaging software, modifying the delay in milliseconds by changing the length, thickness and pattern of the line on the paper.

The ink can then be printed between a small strip of metal and a larger patch of explosive ink. Feeding a current through the metal strip makes it hot enough to ignite the fuse, which burns until it reaches the explosive patch. This explosion can then trigger the detonation of a much larger amount of explosives.

Qinetiq suggests printed fuses could be used for precisely controlling fireworks, triggering vehicle air bags or for conventional munitions. Ganging hundreds or thousands of fuses together could even make a miniature rocket engine capable of precisely adjusting the orbital position of a spacecraft, the company says.

Exploding ink

This 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure you'll agree, are staggering.

English as she is spoke

message intercepted

some reasons why its not so bad that the white house is spying on our phone calls and emails:

- finally mothers everywhere have a way to defend themselves when they look through their children's things and read their diaries.

- when I tell my personal problems to that sexy automated voice at virgin-atlantic customer service, I can feel that someone is really listening.

- before every phone call you make, verizon can boost profits by adding a pre-recorded message saying "to ensure the safety of the free world the following conversation may be recorded"

- we can feel safe that even if there is a mix up, we still have the right to fair trial and can't be held indefinitely without formal charges...uh...strike that...bummer.

- finally, girls will stop referring to me as their "little terrorist" and stop saying that they are going to "bomb my secret target of love".

- just as we are all born sinners, we are all born terrorists until we can prove our thoughts and text messages are pure.

- we can be sure that there are safeguards against listening to opposition parties' strategy conference calls...come on...its foolproof.

- just as we should avoid talking about condoms in school.. and instead just teach abstinence...we should stop talking about the root causes of terrorism and just focus on killing terrorists.

- if kidnapping and spying are considered terrorist activities the NSA may have to indict themselves.

- preventing terrorist attacks has finally been given the highest place in government function...above things that are more deadly...but just not as mean sounding...like basic health care.

- "civil liberty" can finally be replaced with "intelligent privacy"

Zefrank: message intercepted

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said that there are "half a dozen futures that seem to me equally probable, and among them is the possibility of civilization cutting its own throat." The catalyst for such an outcome might very well be the bureaucratic impulse to hide incompetence, embarrassment, and abuse. Today, when a U.S. national security employee, intelligence official, or member of a law enforcement agency reports wrongdoing, he or she has virtually no protection against retaliation. They are confronted with a choice between career and conscience--for there is little in history to make them confident about their continued employment should they speak out against illegal dealings or activities that put us all at risk.

In the 1980s, CIA employee Richard Barlow discovered that Pakistan, with the blessing of the Reagan and Bush I administrations, was able to buy restricted nuclear technology-related items in the United States. Barlow also unmasked a coordinated attempt by the U.S. intelligence community to lie to Congress about Pakistan's activities. The result? His security clearance was suspended, and he lost his job. The Reagan and Bush I administrations covered up Barlow's discoveries because, at the time, they needed Pakistan's help to fund and supply the Afghans in their bloody fight with the Soviets.

This was not merely a problem restricted to the presidencies of that era. The then-Democratically controlled Congress steadfastly refused to address the dangerous issues that Barlow raised and was only too happy to try to move them out of the public eye. We are now paying the price for this shortsightedness--what Barlow had discovered was an early incarnation of physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan's illegal, international nuclear proliferation network. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, has been under house arrest since February 2004. In October 2005, President George W. Bush declared that "The United States . . . has exposed and disrupted a major blackmarket operation in nuclear technology led by A. Q. Khan." But that disruption should have come nearly 20 years ago, when Barlow first raised the alarm. Khan's underground network could have been halted before he leaked nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

In light of what happened to Barlow, is it likely that anyone would come forward in similar circumstances now? His case is hardly unique, a fact attested to by the very existence of our organization, the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition. Our members include Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who reported that Operation Able Danger had information on 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta's cell well before the attacks. (Shaffer was subsequently labeled untrustworthy, in part because he admitted to taking government dime pens out of an embassy when he was a high school intern, and his security clearance was revoked.) And then there's Sandalio Gonzalez, a 32-year law enforcement agen... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

To tell the truth...

LAPD in an effort to limit the number of high speed chases in the Los Angeles are is going to test a GPS dart system. The police cars will be equipped with an air gun fitted to the radiator, that will fire a dart equipped with a Global Positioning System that will stick to the suspect vehicle. That will eliminate the need of high speed pursuits, since the police will be able to monitor the cars location. A small number of cars will be equipped with the system at first in order to test it’s effectiveness in real world situations. Although it seems like an excellent idea, I am not sure if the test will be successful, since the dart according to the reports has a range of just 20 metres.

LAPD to test the use of GPS darts to end high speed chases

Verizon Communications Inc. executive yesterday accused Google Inc. of freeloading for gaining access to people's homes using a network of lines and cables the phone company spent billions of dollars to build.

The comments by John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president and deputy general counsel, came as lawmakers prepared to debate legislation that could let phone and cable companies charge Internet firms additional fees for using their high-speed lines.

"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," Thorne told a conference marking the 10th anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. "It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers."

Verizon is spending billions of dollars to construct a fiber-optic network around the country for delivering high-speed Internet and cable TV services. Executives at other telecom companies, such as AT&T Inc. chief executive Edward E. Whitacre Jr., have suggested that Google, Yahoo Inc. and other such Internet services should have to pay fees for preferred access to consumers over such lines.

Verizon Executive Calls for End to Google's 'Free Lunch'

Researchers, including a BYU scientist, believe they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS virus, not just slow it down as current treatments do.
And, unlike the expensive, drug cocktails 25 years of research have produced for those with the deadly virus, the compound invented by Paul D. Savage of Brigham Young University appears to hunt down and kill HIV.
Although so far limited to early test tube studies, CSA-54, one of a family of compounds called Ceragenins (or CSAs), mimics the disease-fighting characteristics of anti-microbial and anti-viral agents produced naturally by a healthy human immune system.
Under a study sponsored by Ceragenix Pharmaceuticals, Savage and his colleagues developed and synthesized the compound for Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine. In his Nashville, Tenn., laboratories, Derya Unutmaz, an associate professor of Microbiology and Immunology, tested several CSAs for their ability to kill HIV.
While issuing a cautious caveat about his early results, Unutmaz acknowledged Monday that CSAs could be the breakthrough HIV/AIDS researchers have sought for so long.
"We received these agents [from BYU] in early October and our initial results began to culminate by November 2005. We have since reproduced all our results many times," he said. "We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
What studies to date show is a compound that attacks HIV at its molecular membrane level, disrupting the virus from interacting with their primary targets, the "T-helper" class white blood cells that comprise and direct the human immune system. Further, CSAs appear to be deadly to all known strains of HIV.

Have they have found a new compound that could finally kill the HIV/AIDS?

pple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs got a good laugh at the expense of rival Dell Inc., according to a report Monday.

In 1997, after Jobs returned to the company he helped start in 1976, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, was asked what could be done to fix Apple, in deep financial trouble at the time, the New York Times said.
Since returning to Apple, Jobs has revitalized the company's computer business and created its wildly successful iPod division.
Since returning to Apple, Jobs has revitalized the company's computer business and created its wildly successful iPod division.

"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Dell said to an audience of information technology managers, according to the paper.

But Apple (Research) stock surged 12 percent last week, pushing the company's market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell's (Research) value of $71.97 billion.

According to the Times, Jobs sent an e-mail message Friday to employees that read: "Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve."

In 2000, after helping the company out of financial trouble, Jobs was awarded a corporate jet and options to purchase 10 million shares, the paper said.

In 2003, Jobs' options were exchanged for a restricted stock grant of 10 million shares. At Apple's closing price on Friday of $85.59, his stake in the company is worth some $855.9 million, the paper said.

But Dell's personal wealth still exceeds that of Jobs. Last year Dell was ranked fourth on Forbes magazine's list of the 400 wealthiest people in the U.S. His personal wealth is estimated at $14.2 billion, according to the paper.

Apple's Jobs scoffs at Dell's prediction prowess

The Pew Internet and American Life Project also finds that U.S. Internet users are more apt to get help on health care, financial and other decisions because they have a larger set of people to which to turn.

Further rebuking early studies suggesting that the Internet promotes isolation, Pew found that it "was actually helping people maintain their communities," said Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto sociology professor and co-author of the Pew report.

The study found that e-mail is supplementing, not replacing, other means of contact. For example, people who e-mail most of their closest friends and relatives at least once a week are about 25 percent more likely to have weekly landline phone contact as well. The increase is even greater for cell phones.

"There's a certain seamlessness of how people maintain their social networks," said John Horrigan, Pew's associate director. "They shift between face-to-face, phone and Internet quite easily."

Meanwhile, Internet users tend to have a larger network of close and significant contacts -- a median of 37 compared with 30 for nonusers -- and they are more likely to receive help from someone within that social network.

The latest Pew report, issued Wednesday, was based on random telephone surveys conducted in February and March of 2004 and 2005.

Each year's survey involved about 2,200 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points

Alone on the Internet? Hardly...

Apple has sold more than 42 million of the devices since they went on sale in 2001, including 14 million in the fourth quarter last year. The devices can produce sounds of more than 115 decibels, a volume that can damage the hearing of a person exposed to the sound for more than 28 seconds per day, according to the complaint.

The iPod players are "inherently defective in design and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings regarding the likelihood of hearing loss," according to the complaint, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, on behalf of John Kiel Patterson, of Louisiana.

The suit, which Patterson wants certified as a class-action, seeks compensation for unspecified damages and upgrades that will make iPods safer. Patterson's suit said he bought an iPod last year, but does not specify whether he suffered hearing loss from the device.

Patterson does not know if the device has damaged his hearing, said his attorney, Steve W. Berman, of Seattle. But that's beside the point of the lawsuit, which takes issue with the potential the iPod has to cause irreparable hearing loss, Berman said.

Dumb!

Lawsuit: iPods may cause ... eh?