GeekSpeak for December 13, 2008

The team, excavating a York University site, discovered a skull containing a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped. Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilised brain.

Microsoft's Silverlight technology is apparently so easy to install and use on PC's and Mac with the Netflix streaming video services, it no longer has the need for 50 technical support folks.

Yesterday Sony launched the open beta for Playstation Home, the virtual world designed for Playstation Network community members.

The recovery of data from a damaged DVD helped convict a California man of multiple rapes earlier this year.

Ubisoft is releasing the retail, boxed version of Prince of Persia on the PC with absolutely digital rights management (DRM), which means no copy protection. However, Ars Technica is doubtful the company is doing this out of the goodness of its heart.

The East Japan Railway Company (JR East) decided to update their Tokyo Station with a revolutionary new piezoelectric energy generating floor. The system will harvest the kinetic energy generated by crowds to power ticket gates and display systems!

Similar to Apple's TimeMachine feature for Macs, The latest version of OpenSolaris offers easy access to ZFS filesystem snapshots via using their Time Slider feature integrated in the Gnome file manager.

Technicians at Nevada Lightning Laboratory were able to wirelessly power 800 watts of light bulbs at a distance of 5 meters. By comparison, the MIT/Intel wireless system using magnetic coupling is capable of 60 watts at 2 meters. Intriguing as this might be, they have no plans to pursue intellectual property for this discovery. The concept of using resonant coils to wirelessly couple power was patented by Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago.

Holosonics has introduced a directional speaker unit that many retail chains are currently testing for use in their stores. Instead of blasting music and announcements from an omnidirectional public-address system, directional loudspeakers -- or Audio Spotlight systems, as Holosonics calls them -- make sound audible only in certain designated locations.