Archive for April, 2007

Military secrets hidden in porn collection

Sometimes people are just too stupid for their own good. It seems that some officers in the Japanese defense forces decided that storing top secret documents in with their porn collections was a good idea. Those collections were later shared with other officers who did not have clearance for the classified information. No one noticed [ READ MORE ]

Invisibility cloak available, but only in red

Engineers at Purdue University say they have completed a design for an ‘optical cloaking’ device that renders objects placed inside it invisible by bending light around them. The idea behind this isn’t new. Last year researchers in both the UK and the US working together theorized that it should be possible to bend certain wavelengths [ READ MORE ]

Driving Both directions?

Found these photos of a double ended Mini Cooper that BMW presented at a car show in Germany. It can apparently be driven from direction. Just think of the stares you would get while driving this car down the road. For that matter, forget backing out of parking spaces. Just pull in one direction, and [ READ MORE ]

Self healing walls

The University of Leeds’ NanoManufacturing Institute is currently building a proof of concept house in the Greek mountains. The Greek mountains are prone to frequent minor earthquakes. The plan is to build a house that will automatically heal cracks in the walls. The walls will contain nano particles that will liquefy under pressure, flow into [ READ MORE ]

EMI launches DRM free downloads in Itunes

This is all over the tech sites, so you may have already heard, but I thought I would post anyway because it’s such big news. EMI has announced that it will be offering its music downloads without DRM for sale on Itunes. This is a big step for the music industry, and one that is [ READ MORE ]

Museum Plagiarius: A museum of copied products

On the plagiarism note, I found this rather cool looking museum set up to show off some of the more blatant knockoffs of brand name products. In some cases even the packaging and the boxes the item was sold in were ripped off. I’m all for competition in the market place, but blatantly copying a [ READ MORE ]