like everyone in my apartment building that still has original key cores

This is some high tech shiat

Minimal Security [/dev/random]

via Belgian Security Blognetwork on 12/15/08

Credit: http://flickr.com/photos/fboyd/2494909325/.

bioengineering

1. Why bother waiting for transplant organs when you can just grow your own* in less than a week?

* I realize the techniques and technology is in its infancy compared to what we would like to imagine, but this is an offshoot of crazy tissue engineering researach.  A functional bionengineered trachea is a first step - a good first step - towards high technology medical care that we envision in scifi books and movies.

2. Sometime bionengineering goes wrong.  You end up with a bionengineered freakish dictator on an alien world.  Throw in convicted prisoners, a kidnapping and quest for redemption and you've got a script.  Even better if you can wrap it into a space western...

iJesus tidbits

# 1. The iPhone brought touch screenes to the masses in an almost unprecedented way.  Its not the only phone with such capacities, even if the capaility is hidden.  The Android G1 also has touchscreen capabilities, but they're not readily available to developers.  Hopefully it will be used by developers.

# 2. Some people love their iPhones for so much more than a telephone.  I'll admit to being a Galcon addict.  But some people just want Atari throwbacks...

# for (i=3, i<aleph one; i++).  The iPhone Dev Team, the awesome group that brought a toolchain,  iUnlock, Anysim, assorted jailbreaks, Pwnage & BootNeuter , QuickPwn think they're 1 step away from a software unlock for the 3G iPhone.

Daily Comics

PVP Online - I read this like a cliched housewife watches trashy soap operas and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Ugly Hill - Why not just tell the kid to go play in the street?

Penny Arcade - Wrong question.....

American political musings

1. We all know that Proposition 8 passed in California.  Why people are trying to fight a amendment in the courts is amusing, since the courts can't void a vote by the people to change the state constitution.  The democratic process was followed, despite how people feel about the outcome, the courts are the wrong place to fight it.  People should be looking towards a future voting cycle when the state constitution can be amended again.

2. Ted Stevens, the man who brought us the Tubes has lost his senate seat.  What bothers me more, is that the convicted felon lost by only three thousand votes out of 315573 votes counted.

3. Most people have seen that Alberto Gonzalez and Richard Cheney have been indicted by a grand jury  in southern Texas, for alledged prisoner abuse and corruption in a prison system.  However, if this gets moved out of the state courts and into the federal court system, the defendents have an interesting twist to deal with.

"...the defendant must be prepared to argue that acts underlying the charges were performed pursuant to his federal authority."

China tidbits

1. Autocracy at risk

2. Instability will irritate this

3. Given 1. & general downturn in the global IC market, I don't see how 2009 will be the same as 2007.

io9 goodies

io9 brings a ton of goodies today

Hunter Prey - New Scifi movie that seems to have just wrapped up shooting. io9 has stills and an interview with the director. I'm looking forward to this film.

Unreal structures - Why take photographs of buildings when you can build buildings out of photographs?

Moon - More movie madness, this time on a distant moon. Its about what happens to you in space when you get cabin fever...

Concern about LHC style research

The Large Hadron Collider is down for repairs, at the tune of almost $26 million. While this is within the operating budget of CERN, the total cost of the device is expected to approach at least 6 billion USD, all of which is paid for by various nations and organizations. Given that we're moving towards a global depression (depending on who you read), what prospects do we have of such grandiose, multinational research projects in the coming decade if nation-states are primarily focusing towards sustaining themselves?

Update: io9 also wrote about this.

Spook technology

Teleduplication - The art of duplication something without access to the object. In this case, duplicating someones keys with photography and image processing.

Triggerfish - A government technology for cell phone tracking without the assistance of cell phone networks. Article has an amusing point regarding the Patriot Act actually restricting the use of the device.

Little Brother - Big Ripples?

Back in spring, Little Brother was published. Revolving around teenagers, their capabilities and capacity to instigate change; I found it to be a powerful application of hacker culture and ethic applied to solving a problem.

Of course, I wasn't the only person who had any sort of interest in it. The book dealt with Terrorism, Censorship, Torture, Kidnapping, Psyops, and Romance and of course, Hacking. A what-if book, concerning the homeland of America.

iPhone bits

iPhone Hacks brings some interesting tidbits about the iBluetooth project. This is aimed at providing full bluetooth profiles for the bluetooth controller on the 2g/3g iPhones. I'm waiting for A2DP support.

Ars Technica has an expose on the new Opentable application, available from the App Store. I've been a fan of opentable for a while and this will only help in roping me further into their service.

Daily Comics

XKCD - Makes me want to play marbles...

Penny Arcade - Macabre. I like.

Is it a photo or a photoshop?

Saturns' turn at space porn

Think ahead a few hundred years

Archeologists investigating our time will have some interesting finds...

How the WorldWeb has fallen..

This artist's work reminds me of something that could've fallen from Dan Simmon's mind...

New Cooling System for Data Centers

Reuse existing resources - free outside air
Reduce cooling costs -> reduced operating expenses -> greater margins or cheaper services on the same profit margin. Cheaper services -> more customers -> more profits.

She could've been a spabe

The Borg Queen had some cool concept art. If only HR Giger could've done the art design for the Borg...

To make myself use this thing

In order to make myself use this thing, I'm going to stop using google reader for shared items. Instead, I'll be posting cool things here.

Status of things

First, a bit of light reading to set things in motion here

COMIX

Its been a long while since I've updated this bloody thing.

1. I'm working at GWU full time, going to school part time. There is an interesting story to that. Changing your engineering major your second semester junior year is probably not the best thing to do. It will be a posting at some near point in time.

2. My senior thesis project is drawing to a close. The project, File Encryption and Transmission system, FETS for short, allows users to connect a black box to their computer and securely transmit files from one location to another location using the telephone network. Its an FPGA based project, which will warrant a couple postings highlighting what the project is, and how it was implemented.

3. Life has been crazy the past year; musical addictions and a myriad of things I had no idea I was going to be getting myself into. All will be revealed in time.

Arson out

ps. still aint eated pork (willingly) in the past year