Thanks to the wisdom of Homeland Security and the TSA, travellers may now be asked to grant screeners access to your laptops when you fly. While this is pretty shitty for obvious reasons, CNET is offering some advice on how to cease the pigs from finding all your homemade tentacle anime. 1. Before […]
Thanks to the wisdom of Homeland Security and the TSA, travellers may now be asked to allow screeners access to your laptops when you fly. While this is pretty shitty for obvious reasons, CNET is offering some advice on how to stop the pigs from finding all your homemade tentacle anime.
1. Before going on any international trip, back up all of your important and potentially humiliating, incriminating, or troubling data. This includes any copyrighted content which you may not be able to prove you own. 2. Create an encrypted disk image/encrypted folder of that data. This can be done with Pretty Good Privacy, Truecrypt, or software built into many operating systems. 3. Remember the password. This is very important, as if you forget it, you lose all your data. 4. Upload the encrypted data to a reliable place on the Internet (or two). Personally, I use Amazon S3, which charges 15 cents per GB-month of storage plus 17 cents per GB of data transfer. 5. Wipe your laptop clean (do this properly, or the data might be accessible after the fact with forensics software), and install a fresh copy of your OS onto it. 6. Travel. You should have no problem at U.S. Customs (or in any other country) as you won’t have anything problematic on your computer. 7. At your hotel/office, fire up your Web browser and download the encrypted data file from Amazon’s servers. 8. Decrypt the data.
I’ve actually gotten to the point where most of my in-progress work is sitting in the cloud somewhere, but if that’s not the case uploading and encryption could be the answer.
OS X users can also add a little security through obscurity by hiding their user names at login:
1. Open System Preferences -> Accounts 2. Create a dummy user to populate the screen. Put up a picture of a kitten as the desktop and some photos in iPhone. 3. Click on the lock and click on Login Options. 4. Click “Display login window as: Name and password.” 5. Login as the dummy user when asked. The rest of your accounts should be nicely hidden and inaccessible except by TSA agents with a background in OS X.
The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.There’s a Zune event going on up at the Microsoft event this day and the Zune team showed off a few demos of games. Two cool aspects are that Zune XNA games supports 8-player ad-hoc wireless game play, and while there’s no 3D hardware acceleration, it can use software rendering for 3D. The demo for the first-person shooter, Potato Chase, put these features on display.
Potato Chase controls pretty smoothly with the Zune Pad. You push slightly on any edge and it moves you forward, backward, left or right. Click the middle, or any of the edges, and it fires a bomb toward your adversary. You can host a game, or join a game wirelessly with up to eight other players. While it is a primative demo, there was a minimal amount of slowdown while playing with two other people. There’s also an API feature that uses album art to build the walls of the battle arena, however it wasn’t functional on the demo units. Pretty cool stuff from the XNA team.
I’m hanging out at Microsoft with all the Zunatics here, and they’ve just made an interesting announcement regarding games on the Zune. If you’ll take a moment to look at your Zune, I think you’ll find there are, fact, no games at all. Well, they’re looking to change that - the guys here are creating […]
I’m hanging out at Microsoft with all the Zunatics here, and they’ve just made an interesting announcement regarding games on the Zune. If you’ll take a moment to look at your Zune, I think you’ll find there are, fact, no games at all. Well, they’re looking to change that - the guys here are creating a really robust game development suite that’ll have integration not only between all the different Zunes, but also with your Computer and your Xbox 360.
The XNA dev environment shares a big amount of code between the devices, and they’ve shown how easy they’ve made co-developing for the different platforms. People can develop the games entirely on their 360s for an annual fee and an easy download, and you actually can develop for the Zune for free.
It turns out the Zune’s hardware is actually comparatively beefy (good processor, more RAM than handhelds really need, etc), and the games I just tested out ran smoothly and the touchpad control felt intuitive. Wireless was fast and simple, and joining my little Potato Chase game was seamless.
They were reticent to comment on future integration with the 360 and Computer, for example “squirting” a game to your 360 and playing it with the controller, but it definitely seemed like whatever the consumer base wants is possible. I don’t think you’ll be playing anything too crazy on your Zune (and not for a while) but I have the ability to tell you that Doom-likes and lots of casual games are going to be just right for it.
Once upon a time horses were the kings of the open trail. The ideal horses were treated like royalty and their riders were worshiped for their skill. Unfortunately, those days are over. The Naturmobil pictured here was was built by Abdolhadi Mirhejazi of Dubai and it is powered by a single horse walking on a treadmill, encased in a plastic prison like some sort of common hamster. When the horse gets exhausted, a battery kicks in to power the car along with the lights and the electrical system.
Thanks to its lightweight frame and complex gear system, the Naturmobil can can reach speeds of around 50 mph when the horse is really hauling. However, the cruising speed generally tops out at a more leisurely 12 mph. Mirhejazi hopes to parade his invention throughout the world in an attempt to secure financing for a second generation 4 horsepower Naturmobile that he plans to use for tourist transportation. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. [Xpress via Neatorama via DVICE]
I’m sad to report that uber-horology has jumped the shark. This example of a concept by Urwerk proves that watchmakers are basically putting slips of paper into a hat (”tourbillon,” “digital,” “goat-powered”) and picking out permutations to sell. In this case they picked a random number, say $200,000, and stated their “wind-powered” “digital” “lunar phase” […]
I’m sad to report that uber-horology has jumped the shark. This example of a concept by Urwerk proves that watchmakers are basically putting slips of paper into a hat (”tourbillon,” “digital,” “goat-powered”) and picking out permutations to sell. In this case they picked a random number, state $200,000, and stated their “wind-powered” “digital” “lunar phase” watch is the cat’s pajamas.
How is this watch supposed to work? You basically blow into it to wind it and then wait for your wippet-thin, Italian wife to leave you for blowing into your watch.
T-Mobile USA has launched its 3G wireless network in New York City today. Other major markets will get 3G coverage later in the year. The service is currently restricted to four models, Nokia’s 3555 and 6263, and Samsung’s t819 and t639. These phones grant Web browsing and downloading at speeds twice that of non-3G T-Mobile phones. Later this year T-Mobile will launch handsets that are four times as fast as non-3G models. The future releases will utilize High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which grants speeds of around 600 kilobits per second.
BlackBerry smart phones with HSDPA won’t be available until next year, stated Neville Ray, senior vice president of engineering and operations at T-Mobile USA.
T-Mobile’s network isn’t compatible with other HSDPA phones because T-Mobile’s spectrum in the United Says differs from phones sold by AT&T and overseas manufactures. T-Mobile bought its licenses in a 2006 government auction but has had to wait before getting the 3G network up and running. Much of the spectrum it purchased was being used by defense and law enforcement and it has taken time for these entities to give-up the airwaves.
“It’s been a tough road, but they’ve been very cooperative in current months,” said Ray. The speed of the rollout of 3G to other cities is now more dependent on how fast the company can get new equipment up and running, he added.
T-Mobile and Nokia are forming a partnership in Europe to provide new World wide web services and social communities to handsets throughout Europe. All of their European customers will have access to T-Mobile’s web’n’walk and Nokia’s Ovi World wide web services.
Mobile social networks will be upgraded by offering T-Mobile’s MyFaves application. The partnership will also create “widget cooperation” between the mini-programs offered by both companies.
Nokia, which is the world’s largest handset manufacturer, will customize its devices for T-Mobile services. T-Mobile, a mobile phone telecommunications provider, will give its customers enhanced access to Nokia services.
There are no plans as of now to move the partnership out of Europe. Deutsche Telekom, which owns T-Mobile, said that it thinks about the U.S. market as separate from the European market.
Avi Greengart, an industry researcher with the firm Current Analysis, sees Nokia as the biggest winner in its partnership with T-Mobile. T-Mobile is another European carrier that has signed up to offer Nokia’s Ovi services.
Ovi isn’t offered in the United Says. IDC’s Chris Hazelton thinks that Nokia is currently trying to win more market share in the United States. To breakout in the U.S. market, Nokia will need to support services offered by carriers inside the United States. But services like Ovi are seen by Hazelton as part of Nokia’s long-term strategy for services outside the United Says.
Oh Spam, my how you have grown! Thirty years ago, on today, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of personal. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an “insult… to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network.” Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough. Now you comprise 80 percent to 95 percent of all e-mail sent, your crafty trojans and pesky viruses have infected millions of personal, and you’ve cost IT departments almost $200 billion to combat you. But since it’s your birthday, instead of telling you like we usually do to GTFO, let us sing you a little song instead. It goes something like this:
The Associated Press, along with more than 100 member newspapers, launched the Mobile News Network today. The service was geared to run on the iPhone but will also work on other mobile phones. Mobile News Network will deliver local news based on the user’s ZIP code from local participating news organizations. National and international news will come from the Associated Press.
The application will be paid for with advertising dollars. 107 newspapers are currently participating. Revenue raised from advertising will be shared among the news organizations.
Google and Yahoo have news services for mobile devices, but AP’s Mobile News Network offers easier access to local news stories.
Apple has no formal role with the service but the company did offer advice on how best to build the service for the iPhone.
The two largest newspaper companies in the United States, Gannett and Tribune, haven’t joined the Mobile News Network yet but are evaluating whether or not to join in the future.
If the service is to become truly national, it is my thought that Gannett and Tribune will have to join. The service differentiates itself from other mobile news services by providing local news. Gannett and Tribune own quite a few local papers and if Mobile News Network is to become something different it will need these two publishing giants to join the network. Otherwise, the selling point of the service will remain local to the 107 papers that have joined.
Once upon a time horses were the kings of the open trail. The ideal horses were treated like royalty and their riders were worshiped for their skill. Unfortunately, those days are over. The Naturmobil pictured here was was built by Abdolhadi Mirhejazi of Dubai and it is powered by a single horse walking on a treadmill, encased in a plastic prison like some sort of common hamster. When the horse gets exhausted, a battery kicks in to power the car along with the lights and the electrical system.
Oh Spam, my how you have grown! Thirty years ago, on today, you came into the world as a little misguided e-mail sent by an equipment engineer over Arpanet to promote a new line of personal. You were quickly shot down by other Arpanet users who called it an “insult… to have an obvious commercial message sent out over a research network.” Yet, at some point in time, people stopped protesting you loudly enough. Now you comprise 80 percent to 95 percent of all e-mail sent, your crafty trojans and pesky viruses have infected millions of personal, and you’ve cost IT departments almost $200 billion to combat you. But since it’s your birthday, instead of telling you like we usually do to GTFO, let us sing you a little song instead. It goes something like this:
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