After some discussion on the OpenMoko community list a couple of the OpenMoko folks created an official OpenMoko CafePress shop. They’ve got some fun stuff including a t-shirt and mouse mat that have the OpenMoko schematics on them as well as a CAD design shirt. 🙂
This has to be the best Schneier Fact. Ever.
Sigh, our 12 year drought continues ever onwards..
With 12 mm for the month, Melbourne has recorded it driest September since records began in 1855. The previous driest was September 1907 when 13.4 mm of rain fell. Historically September is one of Melbourne’s wetter months averaging 57.9 mm.
Looks like we’re also set to record 12 consecutive years of below average rainfall, the previous record was just 6 years. and ss I write Melbourne’s water storages are still under 35% full as we come out of winter.
All of this makes me wonder if some of the concerns about the drought affecting electricity generation last year will start to actually happen this year.
Matt, a friend of mine, paraphrasing a comment on Slashdot:
All the documentation on building the LHC has gone online – at 1600 pages of documentation, it’s easier to build your own LHC than it is to write an OOXML translator.
Roll on September 10th!
Two weeks ago Donna spotted a mole on my back that had grown since she last noticed it, so off to the doctors we went that Monday for a punch biopsy, and the following Friday evening I get a call saying that they want me to come in to discuss the results and to get the rest of the “lesion” removed.
Uh-oh..
So back again on Monday for its removal and to learn that the biopsy results were inconclusive; they had seen “abnormal” cells but neither of the two pathologists who’d looked at it were able to see enough to tell for certain what was going on. The doctor did a great job taking it off with just a local anaesthetic – the most peculiar thing was to be able to hear this cutting sound and feel a vague tugging but nothing more! A hole in my back and ten stitches later the whole thing was sent off to the pathology lab again for examination and another appointment made for today (Friday) to get the results.
So today Donna and I went back – this time for good news..
Sections show a dysplastic naevus of compound pattern. Junctional activity is considerable, but pagetoid epidermal infiltration is not present and there is no evidence of malignancy. Excision is complete.
Summary – it’s not cancer. Apparently dysplastic naevus can develop into malignant melanoma so I’m very happy it’s gone, phew!
If you’re worried about a large or growing mole go and get it checked out. Before it’s too late..
One of the techniques used by the MIT students in their MBTA report was the impressive Warcart.
The MIT WarCart (shopping trolley)
They must be off their (shopping) trolley! 😉
In the USA a court has ordered that three MIT students not talk at DEFCON about their security assessment of the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) fare cards. Apparently the court believes that “discussing the flaws at a public conference constituted a ‘transmission’ of a computer program that could harm the fare collection system“, which is pretty sad. There are more documents at Cryptome on the case. Their presentation was to include a cryptanalysis of the Mifare “Classic” card, which takes us to our second case..
Bruce Schneier reports that a group of Dutch researchers have won in court to be able to publish their own cryptanalysis of that very same Mifare Classic card, with the court stating:
Damage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings.
An outbreak of common sense that the MIT students could only dream of. I wonder if they could appeal and cite this case as grounds to have the judgement overturned ?
Congrats to Brian May on getting his PhD published!
Indeed, when I looked at the Springer Astronomy homepage, I was greeted by the incongruous sight of Brian May next to a snippet about the thesis – directly above the blurbs for the newly-published Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers and Dictionary of Minor Planet Names & Addendum.
Oh, and no, it’s not this Brian May, he got his PhD some time ago.. 🙂
Thanks to Jeremy for pointing out to me a photo feature on the LHC at CERN. Some really brilliant pictures of truly Big Science getting built.
View of the CMS detector at the end of 2007 (Maximillien Brice, (c) CERN)
Of course, if you’re worried about this causing the world to end it’s probably worth reading the info they put out in 2003, which simply points out that the Earth will have seen this (and much more) before:
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can achieve an energy that no other particle accelerators have reached before, but Nature routinely produces higher energies in cosmic-ray collisions. […] Whatever the LHC will do, Nature has already done many times over during the lifetime of the Earth and other astronomical bodies.
To put things into proportion:
Speculations about microscopic black holes at the LHC refer to particles produced in the collisions of pairs of protons, each of which has an energy comparable to that of a mosquito in flight.
So you can put your brown paper bags away now.. 🙂
I think it’s time for a new catchphrase in politics, as we currently have the Labour Party umming and ahhing over the impact of carbon trading on NSW and VIC’s dirty coal generators and jobs, the Liberal Party saying “do nothing, quickly” in the hope of appeasing their corporate paymasters under the guise of protecting the economy and the Nationals being very quiet, probably working out how to square the impact of increased drought on their rural electorates with not falling out with the Liberal party.
ITS THE PLANET, STUPID
If you waste time faffing around trying to not damage the economy (which isn’t a given) and not addressing the issue then it very much looks like there’s not going to be much of a country left to worry about!