Responding to a successful petition requesting the construction of a Death Star, the White House responds with ” This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For “, an explanation of the station’s formidable construction costs and poor bang-for-the-buck: “Remember, the Death Star’s power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
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White House quotes Vader
Michael Robertson Gabe Lawrence When Michael Robertson heard news of AutoRip , the new Amazon service that automatically adds high-quality MP3s to Cloud Player when you buy a CD, he must have had a sense of deja vu. After all, the entrepreneur introduced a similar service way back in 1999. Unfortunately, it wasn’t licensed by the recording industry, and they sued it out of existence. He tried again with a licensed service in 2007, but only one label would cut a deal and the company failed to gain traction. In a Friday interview with Ars Technica, Robertson told us that the major labels’ decision to license AutoRip represents a sea change in their attitudes toward cloud music services. Until the last couple of years, the labels were relentlessly hostile to the idea that consumers should have the freedom to store DRM-free music online. But a series of business failures and legal defeats forced the labels to face reality. And so fourteen years after Robertson first floated the concept, consumers finally have the freedom to instantly get an MP3 when they buy a CD online. Robertson’s first company, MP3.com was one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley when it launched what we would now call a cloud music service, My.MP3.com, in 1999. The service included a feature called “Beam-It” that allowed users to instantly stock their online lockers with music from their personal CD collections. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Amazon AutoRip: How the labels held back progress for 14 years
The ACLU points to the TSA’s recently-issued “ Market Research Announcement ,” “in which the agency expresses a desire to expand its Pre-Check whitelist program by allowing private companies to carry out risk analysis of Americans that would determine whether they are ‘trusted’ enough to participate in the trusted traveler program.” If this comes to pass, it would represent a big step toward transforming the TSA’s Pre-Check whitelist into the sort of passenger profiling system proposed under the Bush Administration post-9/11.
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TSA again weighs possibility of using commercial data to profile air travelers
Wysips popped by our trailer at the show this year to celebrate the 90% transparency of its photovoltaic display overlay achievement with us — and therefore with you. Last time we had a chance to peek through Wysips’ solar cell the transparency was sitting at 70% which was way short of today’s level and manufacturer requirements if this thing is ever to see the light of day. The current setup will not generate enough power to negate the need for a charger, not even close but what it could do is power all your music playback, for example while your phone is exposed to the sun. Wysips’ goal for 2014 is to reach a power return of 10 mWc per cm² as of today the output is closer to 3, though seeing as most of the effort has been focused on reaching this production-ready transparency, they’ve hope this will be attainable. Sampling should begin in march this year with potential for a product in the marketplace in September this year. Honestly, the demo sets available were pretty worn out looking, though the overlay spoke for itself in that it was still visible at extreme angles but barely when viewing straight on. Part of our demo was plugging an LED into the array that had been retrofit into an iPhone and seeing the LED light come on when the solar cell is exposed and go out when covered. Here’s hoping we get a proper working demo in the coming months though for the here and now, consider us guardedly impressed. A few pics comparing overlay versus no overlay are in the gallery below. Gallery: Wysips solar-cell display reaches 90% transparency milestone, we go eyes-on Filed under: Cellphones , Peripherals , Science Comments
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Wysips solar-cell display reaches 90% transparency milestone, we go eyes-on
No offense to James Earl Jones, but I can’t imagine how anybody could watch the above video of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s little known tryout in the role of Darth Vader, and not see he makes the superior Sith Lord. I mean, it’s not even close. Come on, George. You know you have one more Special Edition left in you before you go. Tell you what — you include this vocal track, and I’ll forgive you for inserting Jar Jar into all the Dagobah scenes, or whatever other nonsense you had planned before we fanboys drove you screaming into retirement. More »
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Arnold Schwarzenegger: Great Darth Vader or the Greatest Darth Vader?
Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge The Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge provides a FREE online study group with certification exam preparation materials for quickly learning about the latest version of Windows…( read more )
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Windows Server 2012 “Early Experts” Challenge
Everyone you know is sick, or getting sick, or they’ve become a lifeless husk of human skin full of flu germs where there was once organs and bones and blood. Don’t believe it? Check out Google’s influenza tracker , which shows just how massive this year’s spike is. More »
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This Is How Bad the Flu Is This Year
An anonymous reader writes “According to ABC entertainment president Paul Lee: ‘We’d love to do something with Lucasfilm, we’re not sure what yet. We haven’t even sat down with them. We’re going to look at [the Star Wars live-action TV series], we’re going to look at all of them, and see what’s right. We weren’t even able to discuss this with them until [the deal] closed and it just closed. It’s definitely going to be part of the conversation.’ Not only that, but it’s also been announced that some of the 50 completed episode scripts that producer Rick McCallum has previously mentioned have been written by none other than Ron Moore of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica fame.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Star Wars Live-Action Show Could Still Happen
It’s not hard to find a cheap router, but you probably don’t want to use most of them for your actual network. German hacker Peter Feuerer decided to turn a $20 TP Link 703n into an internet radio using a cheap ATtiny85. More »
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Convert a $20 Router Into an Internet Radio
If you have something you feel you desperately need to tell Mark Zuckerberg, now might be a real good time. For the handsome sum of $100, you can send a message to Mark’s Facebook inbox, without being automatically sent to spam. How nice. More »
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You Can Send a Message to Zuckerberg’s Inbox (For $100)