clipped from www.engadget.com We’ve seen a couple innovative wind power solutions pop up, but none that claim to offer the benefits of maglev wind turbines, which use full-permanent magnets to nearly eliminate friction by “floating” the blades above the base. According to developers, the technology is capable of scaling to massive sizes, with a proposed $53M turbine able enough to replace 1000 traditional windmills and power 750 thousand homes. Additional benefits include the ability to generate power with winds as slow as three miles per hour, operational costs some 50 percent cheaper than windmills, and an estimated lifespan of 500 years. That all sounds great, but the real proof will come when these things get put to use, which may happen sooner than you’d think: Development is proceeding rapidly in both the US and China, with Chinese power company Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology currently building a $5M factory to produce the turbines in capacities from 400 to 5,000 watts.

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clipped from python.org “Python is fast enough for our site and allows us to produce maintainable features in record times, with a minimum of developers,” said Cuong Do, Software Architect, YouTube.com.

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clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com Giant Crystal Cave Comes to Light In the new issue of the journal Geology, García-Ruiz reports that for millennia the crystals thrived in the cave’s extremely rare and stable natural environment. Temperatures hovered consistently around a steamy 136 degrees Fahrenheit (58 degrees Celsius), and the cave was filled with mineral-rich water that drove the crystals’ growth. clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com

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I’ve been blogging some stuff here (as you’ve seen) and realized that I was still using my overly secure admin account. While there is nothing wrong with that (seeing as how I’ve got a 16 character password on it), when other people comment on my blog entries it says “Admin posted…” instead of my actual name.

So I fixed that and added a new user for myself so I dont have to use the admin account anymore. For those of you who may be looking for another account to take over or hijack…. good luck. Maybe to help you out on your brute force attempts I’ll give you some clues.. my password is 16 characters long, contains upper case and lower case letters, numbers, special characters, and extended ASCII characters.

So, with that said. The only reason I bring that up is this…

If you had a password cracker on ONE computer, doing 200 thousand password attempts per second, and my password was ONLY lowercase, it would take your computer 7010150287 YEARS. To guess.

Now lets say you’re an uber hacker and have 100 computers doing the same thing.. it would take 70101503 years.

Okay, so that’s fun. Now.. I have a 16 Character password, with the aforementioned stats, it would take your 100 computers 83655305534090900 years.

Have Fun! Oh, if you want the link to the resource for that Here You Go!

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clipped from www.engadget.com We’ve all toyed around with those gDisk exploits in the past right? You know, those programs which turned the left-over storage from your Google GMail account into a remote hard drive. Good, because The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google plans to launch a remote storage service as early as “a few months from now.” Or so say “people familiar with the matter.” While a Google spokeswoman refused to comment on specific storage plans, she did say, “storage is an important component of making Web [applications] fit easily into consumers’ and business users’ lives.” The service would be free (GMail already tops 5GB of free storage) with additional storage available for a fee. Interesting when you consider the launch of Android, Google’s possible bid for a chunk of 700MHz spectrum and rumored interest in Sprint’s WiMax infrastructure. Hell, perhaps this might even kickoff that rumored .Mac overhaul you faithful subscribers have been waiting (and waiting) for.

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clipped from www.engadget.com CAD fans, prepare to get stoked. Objet Geometries — a “world leader” in photopolymer jetting — has announced that it will debut a system capable of producing 3D parts and assemblies made from different materials in a single build. The device, known as the Connex500, utilizes the company’s “PolyJet Matrix,” which can create 21 composite materials and seven separate model materials. “The Connex500 opens a new chapter for the 3-D printing and rapid prototyping industry,” said Adina Shorr, CEO of Objet. The machine is capable of producing both rigid and flexible material, and can create polypropylene-like surfaces. Honestly, the process the Connex500 uses is pretty complicated stuff, but you really only need to understand one basic fact: you will never again be missing a piece from your chess set.

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clipped from www.engadget.com If you think doing five months of hard time in the slammer for uploading a feature film to the internet is tough, try using Windows for nearly half a year when your heart belongs to Linux. Unfortunately, this heartbreaking scenario is indeed true, as the “ex-administrator of the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker” is now being forced to use an operating system in which the US government can install monitoring software on. According to Sk0t, who has served his jail time and is now sitting through five months of home confinement, he believes that the government “should have software that conforms to [him],” especially considering how expensive it would be to replace all of one’s software… sans a job. Of course, his alternative seems to be just living out the sentence without using a PC at all, but c’mon, we all know that ain’t happening.

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clipped from www.engadget.com This one’s just hitting the wires folks, but apparently, Nintendo has established an official raincheck program to somewhat alleviate the Wii shortage frustrations that are sure to overwhelm those scouting one for the holidays. Details are scant at the moment, but we do know that Nintendo of America will be partnering with GameStop to allow patient buyers to fork out $249 up front in exchange for a guaranteed Wii “by the end of January.” We aren’t told whether or not the program is effective immediately, but we’d certainly assume it is. Update: We’re hearing the program actually won’t go into effect until next Friday. We’ll keep you posted on anything official.

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clipped from www.engadget.com We’ve seen some interesting solutions to keeping UAVs powered for extended missions, but none so diabolical as actually landing on the enemy’s power lines and using their juice to power up. That’s the plan behind the Power Line Urban Sentry (PLUS) project currently being run by the Air Force Research Laboratory and private firm Defense Research Associates, and it’s already yielded UAVs that can land on power lines and charge in three hours. The project started with attempts to charge by simply flying near power lines, but when that method yielded only micro-watts of juice, focus shifted to actually landing on the lines. the team is also working with an outfit called the Center for Morphing Control to disguise the UAVs when they sit on the lines — so far, they say, they’ve made a small UAV “look like a Coke can.”

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I’ll be honest with you. I dont know the first thing about car buying. But Mark over at MindfulMusings has a great lesson to be learned when it comes to car buying. I wont go into details here as he does a great job at explaining how to get the best deal. Head on over to his Car Buying Guide and learn some good things.

One other thing I would like to point out, is that there are some states that have issues with saltwater and sand. The dealer will try to wiggle an undercoat or ’super clearcoat’ into your contract. Cars do not come with this by default, the dealer adds it on and expects the buyer to pay up to $400 for it. Contracts are negotiable!!! If you dont want that on your car, you can tell them that you want a car that does not already have it (chances are they wont have one) or that you simply wont pay for something you didnt ask for. You can write all over that contract too. Cross things out, or even add things. If the dealership signs it, they have to live up to it. It’s a legal document. So you can cross out that $400 undercoat. That’s just one thing I learned from another ex-car salesman.

Hope this helps somebody out!!

Technorati Tags: car buying, tips, tricks, salesmen, car sales, contracts, guides

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