Notary Public in a Notable Republic

The Geeks cover some news including: Firefox goes for world record, virtual strip searches, oil sucking nano paper and much more.

D.M.C.A. Takedown Notices

Media industry trade groups are using flawed and incomplete tactics to find copyright violators on P2P networks

[Another link|http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/]

Self-Destructing DVDs

Flexplay DVDs play on standard DVD players, but once opened, will play for 48 hours before chemically destroying themselves.

Virtual Strip Searches at US Airports

3D imaging technology appears at 10 US airports with plans for more to come. Faces are apparently blurred, but body details down to the sweat on your back are visible in the images. So far not for all travelers, only if you’re pulled aside. Anyone want to make some guesses as to who will be pulled aside most often? (Randomly, of course.)

DIY notbook

OCZ’s new [DIY|Do It Yourself] notebook is available.

Firefox Goes for a Guiness World Record

Sign up to help [make history|http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord] for the browser expected to have [20% of the browser market|http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9091959&intsrc=hm_list] by next month (July, 2008). With Firefox’s new update and [Safari’s new Javascript engine|http://webkit.org/blog/189/announcing-squirrelfish], the browser wars are definitely heating up again.

Figure out your Fuel Economy

FuelEconomy.gov can help you calculate your fuel usage.

3D Printer Prints Itself

With plans available online so you can build your own, researchers at the University of Bath have built a 3-dimensional printer/modeler that can produce components to assemble yet another 3D printer.

Oil Sucked by Nano Paper

MIT researchers have created a new paper like material that wicks up oil and not water.

Software Update Blamed for Nuclear Power Plant Shutdown

A nuclear power plant in Georgia was recently forced into an emergency shutdown for 48 hours after a software update was installed on a single computer.

AT&T Embraces BitTorrent

AT&T’s new chief technical officer, John Donovan, wants you to know that his company does not, under any circumstances, slow down BitTorrent users or throw other monkey wrenches in the operation of specific applications.

“No. Never have. No interest in it. It’s never been our policy,” Donovan told Wired.com when asked if AT&T engaged in packet shaping (the process of slowing down or blocking certain applications’ data packets to render them less efficient).

Google gets serious about the Mac

In the “20 percent time” that Google employees have to work on projects of personal interest, it turns out that an increasing number are spending time writing open-source projects for their beloved Macs.

Google has long had a fondness for the Mac, with upwards of 6,000 of its 20,000 current employees opting to use the Mac over Windows.

It is in the 20 percent employee development time, however, where this statistic becomes interesting. At Google, development time translates into products. The more Mac-friendly employees, the more Mac-related development. The more Mac-related development, the more Google-sponsored Mac-based open-source code.


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