Thursday, September 8, 2011

TiVo Unveiling New TV Recorder


With 1.9 million subscribers or less than half the 4-plus million it had in 2007, these have been difficult times for TiVo. But the struggling DVR pioneer is hoping there is still demand for its set-top boxes.

The company is about to unveil TiVo Premiere Elite, with four tuners that let you record up to four shows at once, plus 2 terabytes of storage, room for up to 300 hours of high-definition programming.

The $499 box is supposed to be available later this year, pending a Federal Communications Commission waiver (of a requirement to include analog tuners). Given the plunge in subscribers the lingering question is how many remaining on the service will be lining up by then to get one?



Read more...

AMD A4-3300 and A4-3400 APUs ready to ship, take on Intel for your budget PC dollar


That's right folks, AMD's A4 APUs are here and ready to take on Intel in a battle for the bottom end of the mainstream desktop market. These dual-core desktop parts pack integrated graphics courtesy of the company's Radeon line. Both also boast a 65W TDP and 1MB of L2 cache. The only difference here is speed and price: the 3300 clocks in at 2.5GHz with a 440MHz GPU for $70, while the 3400 moves on up to 2.7GHz and a 600MHz GPU for only $5 more. They're not exactly speed demons, but should be able to hold their own against similarly priced Pentiums -- especially if you don't plan on buying a discrete graphics card. You can pick one up now at Amazon and other select retailers.



Read more...

Monday, February 14, 2011

The Best Edited Space Photos

These are not original images but the photographs edited by astronomical photographers, the original materials are from the large professional telescopes & high-resolution cameras.

Most of the original materials selected by participants are from the European Southern Observatory’s large professional telescopes, visible and infrared survey telescopes (VISTA), APEX submillimeter telescopes and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array and other astronomical equipments.

 



Read more...

Asteroid Surfing Could Be The Best Way To Get To Mars


Getting to Mars is going to involve building a huge spacecraft and loading it up with tons of fuel and radiation shielding. Unless, we could just tag along with a spacecraft that's already headed in that direction, like an asteroid.

For an asteroid ferry to work, you'd have to be able to find a rock that's going to pass within a million miles or so of both Earth and Mars, which seems like a long shot. But, if you can wait until 2068, there will be two of them, both of which would drop you off close to Mars in under a year. The plan is pretty simple: just wait around in Earth orbit for the right asteroid to come by, jump on with all your gear, and then jump off again when it swings past Mars.

In addition to not having to, you know, build your own spaceship and stuff, asteroids also offer lots of radiation protection. This is important, since a round-trip voyage to Mars has the potential to increase cancer risk by up to 20% thanks to those nasty cosmic rays. In addition to being big and made of rock, space rocks would potentially have craters and caves that astronauts could hide out in, Millennium Falcon style. Just so long as they make sure it's actually a cave first.

Instead of just waiting around for a Mars-bound asteroid to randomly swing by Earth, another option is to just go wrangle an asteroid ourselves and push it where we want it to go. If we can get to one early enough, even a relatively small solar sail could provide enough thrust over time to nudge an asteroid into a useful Earth to Mars (or Mars to Earth) orbit. The eventual plan would be to stick one or more asteroids in permanent round-trip orbits, so you'd have a continual free ferry service from Earth to Mars and back.

Read more...

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Kung Pow - Enter The Fist (2002)

Kung Pow - Enter The Fist (2002) DVDRip XviD-DMZ AVI | 701.7 MiB | 640x272 | XviD @ 1 111 Kbps | English | MP3 @ 128 Kbps - 2 channels | 1h 18mn Genre: Action | Comedy

Plot:
Enter the Fist is a movie within a movie, created to spoof the martial arts genre. Writer/director Steve Oedekerk uses contemporary characters and splices them into a 1970s kung-fu film, weaving the new and old together. As the main character, The Chosen One, Oedekerk sets off to avenge the deaths of his parents at the hands of kung-fu legend Master Pain. Along the way, he encounters some strange characters, one of which is a cow trained in the martial arts.


Download Links:

Hotfile 

Read more...

Ong Bak 3 (2010/DUBBED/DVDRip)

 Ong Bak 3 (2010/DUBBED/DVDRip) AC3 | Size: 1.39 GB

Filename: rx-ongbak3-xvid.avi
Source: R1 DVD5
Size: 1.40GB | 1CD
Genre: Action
Video: 720×384, 1570 Kbps, 23.976 fps
Audio: English, 448kbps, AC3
Directed By: Tony Jaa, Panna Rittikrai
Starring: Tony Jaa, Dan Chupong and Primorata Dejudom

Plot:
Ong Bak 3 picks up where Ong Bak 2 had left off. Tien is captured and almost beaten to death before he is saved and brought back to the Kana Khone villagers.


Download Links:
Part1
Part2
Read more...

Rambo III (1988)


John Rambo's former Vietnam superior, Colonel Samuel Trautman, has been assigned to lead a mission to help the Mujahedeen rebels who are fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the Buddhist Rambo turns down Trautman's request that Rambo help out. When the mission goes belly up and Trautman is kidnapped and tortured by Russian Colonel Zaysen, Rambo launches a rescue effort and allies himself with the Mujahedeen rebels and gets their help in trying to rescue Trautman from Zaysen.



Single Download:

Download Links:
FileServer

HotFile

DuckLoad

BitShare

Read more...

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Facebook Rolling Out Brand New Photos Interface

Tonight, we’re seeing Facebook‘s all-new design for displaying photos rolling out to quite a few users. It features larger images, a lightbox-type UI and other features that put Facebook in even more competition with Flickr on the casual and social photography front.

We got wind of these new Facebook Photos features some months ago around the end of September. And while some users have had this feature for a while, we were beginning to wonder why Facebook was delaying a general roll-out.

However, Facebook did confirm yesterday that the new photo viewer was on its way to all users soon; and tonight, we’re seeing this new interface from several accounts.


One major benefit, from Facebook’s perspective, is that users will be able to browse through many photos in the lightbox layer without disrupting the underlying page and “losing their place.” Other features include hi-res photos, photo-download links and bulk tagging options.

In fact, as we noted last fall, many of these feature upgrades strongly mirror recent changes to Flickr’s own UI during the summer of 2010.

Along with Tag Suggestions, a.k.a. nascent facial recognition technology, Facebook’s photo offering, which has long been a distinguishing factor of the social network, is remaining strong and competitive.

Check your Facebook account to see if you have the new interface; if you don’t have it tonight, expect it to come over the next couple weeks.

Read more...

Researchers From Harvard And MITRE Announce World's First Programmable Nanoprocessor


We've seen plenty of breakthroughs involving nanowires over the years, but none of those have involved an actual programmable processor -- until now, that is. That particular "world's first" was just announced by a team of researchers from Harvard University and the MITRE Corporation this week, and it's being described as nothing short of a "quantum jump forward in the complexity and function of circuits built from the bottom up." As for the processor itself, it consists of an array of nearly 500 germanium nanowires that have been criss-crossed with metal wires on a chip that's just 960 micrometers (or less than 1 millimeter) square. That becomes an actual processor when the researchers run a high voltage through the metal wires and switch the individual intersections off and on at will -- we're simplyfing things a bit, but you get the idea. What's more, the researchers note that the architecture is fully scalable, and promises to allow for the assembly of "much larger and ever more functional nanoprocessors." Head on past the break for the official press release.

Read more...

Intel 'Not Blinking' On MeeGo, Nokia Workers In Protest


Nokia's decision to switch to Windows Phone for its devices has triggered harsh reactions both from Intel and within Nokia itself. Intel in a statement said it was "disappointed" with Nokia but said it was "not blinking" on supporting MeeGo. The chip designer said to Laptop it already supported other operating systems and that there were other platforms besides phones to support.

"We remain committed and welcome Nokia’s continued contribution to MeeGo open source," it said. "MeeGo is not just a phone OS, it supports multiple devices. And we’re seeing momentum across multiple segments -- automotive systems, netbooks, tablets, set-top boxes and our Intel silicon will be in a phone that ships this year."

The reference was likely to the Aava Core, an Atom-based phone developed by a startup.

Intel's loss of Nokia as a phone manufacturer is a major hit to its mobile plans in spite of its response. The company has been trying to reports from Finland have noted that hundreds of Nokia workers, possibly as many as 1,000, have walked out of Nokia's Tampere office in protest at the decision. Most of them are believed by HI to work on Symbian and are objecting to upcoming job cuts that will almost certainly scale back the software team as Nokia exits Symbian on smartphones.

The Tampere office was already expected to be closed, but over half of the 3,000 employees working there are involved in Symbian. Only the feature phone OS version, Series 40, is expected to survive in the long term. Some at the location also work on MeeGo and may see their involvement scale back.

 

Read more...

Intel To Start Shipping B3 Stepping Cougar Point Chipset From February 14


Intel seems to have fast-tracked its Cougar Point chipset flaw rectification. The silicon giant claims that it will be in a position to start shipping B3 stepping of Cougar Point chipsets (Intel P67, H67, etc,) from 14 February, to OEM partners. According to the latest PCN (product change notification), number 110456-00 dated 2/9/2011, Cougar Point B3 will carry the following changes/features:

  • Revision ID will change from 04h to 05h
  • BIOS Update (Revision 1.1.4 of the BIOS Specification Update and Reference Code)
  • B3 stepping package is pin compatible with B2 stepping package
  • Minor metal layer change from B2 to B3 improving lifetime wear out with no changes to functionality or design specifications.
Of the above, the last bullet point affirms that the SATA 3 Gb/s port defect issue, which caused physical parts of the chipset to wear out abnormally fast, degrading performance, is resolved.

 
Read more...

Crop Circles Theories


Out of nowhere, they seemingly appeared. Ring around the collar of an extraterrestrial nature that simply won’t go away. The intricate designs are discernible form the air, weirdly painted on the canvasses of corn fields. This phenomenon first started appearing in England and now is happening just about everywhere else around the world. What are they and where did they come from? What artist created them, what kind of brush did he use?

WHAT ARE THEY?
Crop circles are strange geometric designs carved in various fields and that have appeared throughout the years in rural farms. People continually insist these are the works of alien visitors from outer space or some other dimension.

The phenomena first appeared to be reported in England in the late 1970's.

Although two men, Dave Chorley and Doug Bower came forward in 1991 and claimed to have been making crop circles in England since the 1970s, many cereologists (crop circle enthusiasts) claim the designs and the technology needed to make them are for more complex than what a crew of humans could possibly have produced with mere planks, rope and wire. Moreover, some claim the intricate patterns are even difficult to reproduce with a computer.

These cereologists put forth paranormal or extraterrestrial explanations for the circles. Many theories abound; each one equally captivating in its own right.

HOW MANY ARE THERE?
About 10,000 crop formations have been reported globally since the late 70's. Hundreds have even been reported throughout the US. The first alleged US crop circle was reported in 1964.


A GREAT HOAX?
In 1991, more than a decade after the phenomenon really took off; Chorley and Bower, who both lived in Southampton, England proclaimed that the circles were an idea conceived as a prank. Allegedly, they were drinking buddies at a pub near Winchester, Hampshire and it was during an evening in 1976 over drinks, that the idea for creating these circles first occurred to them.

Inspired by the 1966 Tully Saucer Nests, Bower and Chorley claimed to have made their crop circles using planks, rope, hats and wire. They went on to explain they used a four-foot-long plank attached to a rope, which they said allowed them to easily create circles, some at least eight feet in diameter. As proof, the two men were able to make a 40-foot circle in 15 minutes.

However, the pair became frustrated when their work did not receive significant publicity, so in 1981 they created a circle in Matterley Bowl, a natural amphitheatre just outside Winchester , Hampshire. This area is surrounded by roads from which a clear view of the field is available to drivers; an ideal spot to impress anyone driving by.

Their designs were at first simple circles. Bower and Chorley made more complex patterns to drive the point home that indeed human hands were more than capable of creating such baffling field art.

So why would they finally admit to making them after pulling their hoax off successfully for so many years? The answer, Bower claimed, was extra-marital rather than extraterrestrial.

Bower's wife had become suspicious of him, noticing high levels of mileage in their car. She soon suspected him of adultery. At last Bower confessed to her. Shortly thereafter, he and Chorley informed a British national newspaper that they were behind the mysterious circles.

HOAX METHOD
Chorley detailed his technique as such: simple wire with a loop, hanging down from a cap - the loop positioned over one eye. This eye could be used to focus on a landmark to aid in the creation of straight lines. However, later designs of crop circles became dramatically more complicated and it would seem more detailed tools would be needed.

Chorley died in 1996, and Doug Bower has made crop circles as recently as 2004. Bower has said that, had it not been for his wife's suspicions, he would have taken the secret to his deathbed, never revealing that it was a hoax.

EXOTIC THEORIES
It is hard to fathom that a crew of humans could make these spectacular sights unnoticed by anyone else. This has been one of the underlining arguments in support of more exotic theories as to the origin of crop circles. We present some of the more common theories below:

Aliens
Author Colin Andrews published a book entitled Crop Circles, Signs of Contact. In it, he concluded that approximately 80% of all crop circles investigated in England from 1999-2000 were man made. He felt this was one of the most important research findings to date because it boiled it down to one amazing fact: the remaining 20% of crop circles showed no sign of human creation. His conclusion then called for an extraterrestrial source for the circles.

This claim has been contested by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a world-wide organization that encourages the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view.

CSICOP notes that some of the alleged 20% of the so-called “genuine” crop circles have been documented as man-made. CSICOP alleges there is no reliable criterion for distinguishing between “genuine” crop circles and those that are man-made hoaxes. CSICOP is today known as CSI. So, in the end, CSICOP asserts there is no way to prove beings from outer space made them, at least scientifically.

Relation to Nazca Lines
The Nazca Lines are a series of geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches 53 miles or more than 80 kilometers between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru.

These bizarre lines were created by the Nazca culture between 200 BC and 700 AD. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys and lizards. The most amazing fact about them is that they cannot be recognized on the ground, only from the air.

Since it is presumed the Nazca people could never have seen their work from this vantage point, there has been much speculation on the builders' abilities and motivations. Were they sending messages to the heavens, communicating with extraterrestrials? Maybe the extraterrestrials made them to communicate with the Nazca culture? Could it be that crop circles are merely an updated version of Nazca phenomena? There is no evidence, but there are clearly some eerie similarities.

Plasma Vortices
One research scientist holds that “columns of ionized air” swoop down like little mini-tornados. It is these anomalous events that create the shapes in the crops.

Dr. W.C. Levengood, who published the paper, Anatomical Anomalies In Crop Formation Plants believes what is creating the crop circle is a complex energy system that he describes as a "spinning plasma vortex" of ions with microwave frequencies that rapidly heat water in plants, causing them to collapse to the ground with stems not cracked or broken.

Further, the microwave frequencies can heat up water in the plant's growth nodes which burst out, creating small holes that have often been found in extraordinary crop patterns. Those complex energies can also affect the seeds. Dr. Haselhoff never actually mentions where these supposed vortices come from or why they even exist.

Manifestations of Dreams
Joseph E. Mason believes our dreams have something to do with the formation of crop circles.

His extensive experience with dreams and meaningful coincidences is all part of the story. He believes that the crop circle formations are related to our collective unconscious.

Whereas most serious researchers favor the theory that the formations are, for the most part, manmade or the work of aliens, Mason believes crop circles may well be “a function of the collective unconscious of mankind,” as opposed to actual physical entities from another solar system.

Could our minds really have that kind of power?

Great Balls of Light
The Deepening Complexity of Crop Circles, by Dr. Eltjo H. Haselhoff, was the first popular scientific book about the world-wide appearance of crop circles.

Below are some statements that Dr. Haselhoff has made concerning crop circles:

“The complexity of the crop circle phenomenon is tremendously underestimated… because its true nature is unknown to the general public. Obviously, there are people trying to imitate the real thing, but the suggestion that these entire crop formations are made by men with simple flattening tools is by far insufficient to explain the well-documented observations.”

Dr. Hasselhoff claims those observations include “unambiguous and consistent biophysical anomalies” in the flattened plants, inside the circles, all of which have been published in peer-reviewed scientific literature.

Along with the increasing number of crop circle events, there are also a growing number of eyewitnesses, who claim to have seen how crop circles appeared before their eyes in just a few seconds.

If they are to be believed, several of these people say that bright, “fluorescent balls of light” hovered above the fields at the time circles magically formed before their eyes.

“After some straightforward research, it was discovered that the plant stems inside these formations had increased in diameter, as an effect of intensive heating, with an astonishing circular symmetry,” reported Dr. Haselhoff.

This effect perfectly matched the radiation pattern of an electromagnetic point source at a height of four meters and ten centimeters above that field, Dr. Haselhoff said.

Dr. Haselhoff claims this is solid physical evidence that these eyewitnesses spoke the truth. Dr. Haselhoff applied this analysis to other crop circles, which had been investigated by others in the past. He claims to have obtained identical results.

Curiously, his analysis failed dramatically on several man-made crop circles. The logical conclusion is that “balls of light” must indeed be involved in the creation of crop circles.

He submitted his findings to the international and peer-reviewed scientific journal Physiologia Plantarum, a plant biology journal, where the article was eventually published.

“This has important consequences,” Dr. Haselhoff would later claim. “The hypothesis that these balls of light are involved in the creation of crop circles is now no longer just a hypothesis, but a scientifically accepted fact.”

Dr. Haselhoff's findings are in perfect agreement with the opinion of the American researchers John Burks, Levengood and Nancy Talbot – the famous BLT Team. They suggested in two other scientific articles that the plant alterations in crop circles were the result of electromagnetism.

Naturally, the trio, like other crop circle enthusiasts, has been attacked by skeptics.

Dr. Haselhoff sums up his feelings on crop circles:

“Something very strange is going on. No-one can deny this. Anyone who claims the opposite clearly does not know what he is talking about… I consider it the duty of every scientist to figure out what on earth is going on.”

THE SKEPTICS
The main criticism of alternative theories is that evidence of paranormal origins, alleged eyewitness testimony aside, is relatively scant. Crop circles are easily explained, the skeptics say, as the result of pranksters.

In fact, numerous cases have been documented where researchers declared crop circles to be "the real thing." However, all too soon they are confronted with the hoaxers who created the circle. Another damning fact is the media coverage effect.

As media coverage of the crop circles increased throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, the frequency at which crop circles appeared also increased, as well as the number of locations they were sighted in. This leads many to believe that the creation of crop circles is a ‘copy-cat’ activity. After all, would aliens increase the frequency of creating crop circles due to greater media coverage? Not likely, it would seem.

THE CONCLUSION
The answer to the mystery of crop circles is still a perplexing one. Be it in the deep inner reaches of outer space or within the mysterious workings of human psychological projection, the real source is unknown. However, whether they be balls of light or messages from beings of higher intelligence, they all appear to happen with enough frequency to people that would throw doubt to the hoax theory. Additionally, it seems hard to believe that men with simple rope contraptions could create some of the complex patterns that are even difficult to replicate on paper with a protractor and compass.

We must consider then:
If a race from another part of the galaxy wanted to communicate, would they do so by using our crop fields as some kind of canvas to communicate? We have to be especially aware that many believe that mathematics will lead us to language that may allow us to communicate to other lifeforms that are extraterrestrial in nature.

As we stand on the threshold of a brave new world, as space exploration continually progresses in its quest to answer the mysteries of the universe we would be remiss to neglect the mysteries right in our very own crop fields. We need to encourage further exploration of the crop circle riddle. Maybe one day the mystery of crop circles will be answered but until then it appears crop circles will baffle us for some time.



Read more...

Friday, February 11, 2011

Flood Formed Giant Martian Sinkhole


LIKE water draining from an unplugged bathtub, meltwater flowing through deep cracks in the Martian rock may explain the origins of the enormous Hebes Chasma canyon.

About 100,000 cubic kilometres of material had to be removed to form the scar, which is five times the width and depth of the Grand Canyon. But where that material went has been a mystery, as there are no surface channels through which water and sediment could have exited.

John Adams of the University of Washington in Seattle and colleagues proposed in 2009 that heat from magma beneath the surface caused ice held in the rock to melt and released water locked up in salts. The water then drained away through underground cracks, leaving a void into which the overlying rock collapsed, to form the canyon.

Now, a tabletop experiment has bolstered this theory. Martin Jackson of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues filled a box with viscous silicone oil, representing a watery slush, and covered it with sand and small glass spheres. As the oil was allowed to drain out through slits in the box's floor, a structure resembling Hebes Chasma appeared (Geological Society of America Bulletin, DOI: 10.1130/B30307.1).

Water from the canyon may have erupted onto the surface again. This would account for a nearby valley called Echus Chasma that looks as if it was carved by water, but for which there is no other obvious source. "You've got signs that a huge amount of water just erupted out of nowhere from depth and flowed down, scouring out a valley," Jackson says.

Similar collapses might have helped form other giant canyons on Mars, perhaps including Valles Marineris, the solar system's largest, though other factors like tectonic stretching were likely involved too, Jackson says.

 

Read more...

doPDF Free PDF Converter 7.2.355


doPDF is a fairly basic program that's utterly bereft of features beyond its main function: to let users create PDF documents from within any program using the native Print option. Along with whatever printer you've got hooked up that shows up in the Print dialog box, doPDF adds an eponymous option. Select it, hit print, and you get the chance to change the name of the PDF you're creating. Hit enter and the PDF gets created, then automatically opens for you to proofread it.

Lacking any customization features and the control panel to manage them, doPDF is definitely meant for fast PDF creation with a minimum of fuss. It does support a multitude of languages, a minor feature except to those who don't use English as their primary language. One benefit of not having any major features is that doPDF takes up almost no RAM.

doPDF gives a simple output dialog box for altering the name and saving location of the PDF, and by clicking on Advanced Options, users can manually adjust the resolution of the PDF they're creating. However, unless you know precisely how resolution changes will affect the size of your PDF, this can be a bit tricky. doPDF is great for those not looking for a lot of a options, but for any project requiring a bit more finesse, it's worth looking at the competition.

Description
Using doPDF you can freely convert documents to searchable PDF files from any Windows application. It installs as a printer driver and helps you generate the PDF files by simply selecting the "print" command from any application (you can convert your Word documents, Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, AutoCad drawings, company's reports, contracts, workflows, agreements, marketing plans, forms, products list, price list, charts, emails or web pages). The resulted PDF files can be viewed on any computer with a PDF viewer (reader) installed. doPDF has a lot of features that allows you to: modify the paper size, modify the resolution (from 72 to 2400 dpi), change page orientation (portrait, landscape), and change the quality settings.

Download Link:

Read more...

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Quick-PDF PDF To Word Converter v2.2 Portable

 Quick-PDF PDF To Word Converter v2.2 Portable | 5.4 MB

Many people seem to feel puzzled about how they can edit their numerous PDFs or at least convert them to Word documents. Indeed, converting a PDF to Word or an RTF file is not that obvious. These document formats have in-depth differences after all.

Easy and Accurate
All the more do astonish the great capabilities of PDF to MS Word product! With this neat piece of software you would never imagine the task had some complexity beneath! It really looks like magic: simply drag-and-drop the desired PDF to programs window, click the Start button and get a Word document that accurately duplicates the source PDF file as a result.

The process is as easy as it could ever be! You dont need to mess up with hundreds of settings; forget about problems with PDF version incompatibilities; dont ever spend a minute on post-editing the resulting file. With Adobe PDF to Microsoft Word every document you convert looks exactly the same as before the conversion.

Download Links:

Read more...

Starcraft 2: Heart Of The Swarm Release Date For 2011 Moved


After the unlikely leak of the Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm Video showing some sort of ending, Blizzard had its scheduled 2011 released move. Sources are saying that they will be changing some elements in the Starcarft 2 Heart of the Swarm storyline. Have you guys seen the video that I am talking about? Well if you havent, then you can watch the Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm leaked video below. The release date for the Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm has been moved to 2012 according to sources. A production company named The Third Floor appeared on a watermark in the leaked video, this company has Blizzard as its client.




Read more...

Researchers Steal iPhone Passwords In Six Minutes


Losing your smarpthone is bad enough. But if you lose your iPhone and don't issue a remote wipe command (available for free with the Find My iPhone app) then you could find yourself in a world of hurt. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute Secure Information Technology (Fraunhofer SIT) can jailbreak and decrypt passwords from the iPhone's keychain -- for say, your Gmail account, corporate VPN, home WiFi, and MS Exchange -- in about six minutes using existing, known exploits. Sorry kids, your flimsy lockscreen passcode won't help. Video proof, after the break. 




Read more...

Asteroid Makes Sharpest Turn Yet Seen In Solar System


On Friday, a metre-sized asteroid called 2011 CQ1 was spotted zipping only 5480 kilometres above the Earth's surface. That is the closest near miss on record, beating the previous record holder, a rock that buzzed Earth in 2004 called 2004 FU162, by a few hundred kilometres.

When something that small comes close to our planet, Earth's gravity is sure to bend its orbit. In this case, the approach was so close that the little asteroid's path bent by 60 degrees, reports Don Yeomans of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Short of collisions with a planet, that's the biggest orbital change ever recorded by observers. It was large enough to shift the asteroid from one category of objects into another. As Yeomans and his JPL colleague Paul Chodas explain in an online update:
Prior to the Earth close approach, this object was in a so-called Apollo-class orbit that was mostly outside the Earth's orbit. Following the close approach, the Earth's gravitational attraction modified the object's orbit to an Aten-class orbit where the asteroid spends almost all of its time inside the Earth's orbit.
Gravitational encounters between objects large and small have been rearranging the solar system since it formed some 4.56 billion years ago. We now believe even planets have been shuffled in their orbits. In this case, we had the good fortune to spot a very large change in the orbit of one very small object around the sun.

But now that 2011 CQ1 has had its 15 minutes of fame, we are unlikely to spot the small, dim object again, says Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society, a space advocacy group in California: "We'll probably never be close enough to it again to be able to pick its dim light out from the background of stars."

 

Read more...

Activision Ends Guitar Hero And True Crime Franchises


The music game genre helped many musicians get back into the mainstream and titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band were some of the strongest selling franchises for game publishers in years past. Apparently, the strong sales of music games have ended for Activision.

The company has announced that Guitar Hero is no more. The company has stopped development on the game franchise and will disband the Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue all development on titles in the franchise for 2011.

The game publisher blames the killing of the Guitar Hero brand on declines in the music game genre. Guitar Hero isn’t the only previously very popular franchise to get the axe, development on True Crime: Hong Kong has also been stopped.

 

Read more...

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985)


Former Green Beret John Rambo is serving time in a federal prison. When the US military hears of American soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam war possibly still being alive and held captive, Colonel Trautman is authorized to send Rambo in to rescue them. For Rambo, this is what he would do best. If only the pencil-pushers would stop getting in his way.


Download Links:

Single Download

FileServe

DepositFiles
 
EasyShare

FileFactory

FileSonic

Read more...