Speed Driver™ Geared Screwdriver

Speed Driver™ Geared Screwdriver

As a result, in low torque applications, screws go in and out 4 times faster and with less stress to your arm and wrist. The patented switching mechanism also allows on the fly switching between the 4:1 speed mode and the 1:1 standard mode. The Speed Driver™ has a ratcheting feature with three working positions; forward, reverse and locked. The cushioned handle is made from a chemical resistant material and has been designed to comfortably fit in your hand. The handle also has a convenient storage fixture with a screw cap to keep up to 8 extra bits ready for use. The Speed Driver™ has a standard 1/4' (6.35mm) magnetized hex opening to hold all standard driver bits in accordance with ANSI and DIN standards.

Will Mark Cuban (Finally) Revolutionize Hollywood? - His plan to break the video window. By Edward Jay Epstein

Will Mark Cuban (Finally) Revolutionize Hollywood? - His plan to break the video window. By Edward Jay Epstein:

To be sure, Hollywood has a long history of resisting new forms of delivery. When television first came on the scene in the 1940s, the studios attempted to kill this infant medium by refusing to let the networks show films from their libraries or use their facilities to produce programs. When the VCR was introduced, the studios attempted to strangle it with eight years of litigation. Even when Sony and Warner Bros. launched the DVD, the other major studios did not join them for a year or so. By now, the top studio executives recognize that the electronic delivery of digital movies is inevitable—it is only a question of who will defy Wal-Mart and when.

tennis game

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Count like a computer using your hands

Archimedes death ray

2.009 Product Engineering Processes: Archimedes

Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth.

samy is my hero.

samy is my hero.

I began to examine the site some more, seeing how they restrict things, what they restrict, taking some breaks to look at profiles of really hot girls, trying to add them as friends and getting rejected, and getting back to making my profile cool so that they would add me as a friend later. Chicks dig cool profiles. After a little bit of messing around, I found that I could put in a longer headline than what they allowed. Hell, I could even get around their other restrictions and get HTML in there in order to add cool "effects" to my page that other people can't add. Yeah, that will get me chicks. Girls want guys who have computer hacking skills.

Let's see here...what would make my profile rock. Well, the most popular profiles on myspace pretty much consist of people with the IQ and English delivery skills of Kanye West so I don't want to mimic those, but popularity begets popularity. I need some more friends. I need people to love me. I delved into the bug and found that I could basically control the web browsing of anyone who hit my profile. In fact, I was able to develop something that caused anyone who viewed my profile to add my name to their profile's list of heroes. It's villainous. I was ecstatic.

link from the buttonman

Apple announces video iPod

Apple announces video iPod:

The speculation can thankfully come to an end. For now. Steve Jobs pulled out the usual stops at the California Theatre in San Jose today to announce the birth of a video-capable iPod. The device looks remarkably similar to existing iPods, with one small difference: the screen is now wider. The device still sits upright in your hand, albeit it it is somewhat wider. But don't let its girth fool you, because it's quite thin on the depth side. More on that in a second.

The device sports a 2.5' TFT display at 320x240 and 260,000 colors, with support for H.264 video. It also has TV-out in the forum of mini-jack to 3 RCA composite cables.

There will be two models, 30GB and 60GB, priced at $299 and $399 respectively. The Steve says that the 30GB model can hold 75 hours of video. The 30GB model is 31% thinner than the existing 20GB model, while the 60GB is 12% thinner.

TheStar.com - 2-year wait for transferable phone numbers

TheStar.com - 2-year wait for transferable phone numbers:

Canada's wireless industry association says it will be two years before mobile phone users are able to keep their phone number when switching service providers, a timeline some industry critics say is unacceptably long.

The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association said yesterday that the country's major wireless carriers — Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless and Telus Mobility — plan to jointly introduce so-called wireless number portability on a national basis in September 2007, following a short service trial.

"This is a reasonable and frankly aggressive schedule," said Peter Barnes, president and chief executive officer of the Ottawa-based wireless association, which is basing the timeline on recommendations from a commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers report.

But John Lawford, a research analyst at the Ottawa-based Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa, which has accused the wireless industry of settling into a comfortable oligopoly, said there's no reason it should take two years to bring number portability to wireless consumers.

"I was expecting six months," said Lawford. "What's the problem? We only have three companies, so this shouldn't be so difficult."

Number portability means businesses that switch service providers don't have to go through the disruption and cost of changing business cards, their letterhead and advertising. It also means individuals don't have to go through the inconvenience of notifying friends and family of their new phone number.

Without it, wireless customers often feel captive to their mobile phone providers. Virgin Mobile Canada said a recent survey it conducted showed that as many as 30 per cent of consumers would switch service providers if the option were available to keep their phone number.

Barnes defended the two-year delay by pointing to a number of regulatory and technical hurdles that need to be worked out, including changes to billing systems and business processes.

He said the system being considered is highly complex. Known as an "intermodal" system, it will also allow consumers to keep their phone number when switching from a landline local phone service to a wireless service — and vice versa.

"When this is launched, Canada is going to be one of three countries in the world to have full intermodal (number portability)," said Barnes.

Andrew Black, president of Virgin Mobile Canada, which resells pre-paid mobile phone services over Bell Mobility's network, said the move is a clear-cut delay tactic for a long overdue service.

"There's no excuse to take this into 2007," said Black, who says he was shut out of the industry's decision-making process.

"Canadians are losing out, and it's not fair. They (the carriers) want to spend the next two years locking customers into long-term contracts so they won't be able to switch."

Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of the Virgin Group of companies, said in a release that the big carriers are "dragging their heels." He plans to run an open letter in major newspapers tomorrow urging consumers to protest the delay.

The Canadian industry has resisted number portability, arguing there is low consumer demand and warning of higher handset prices and service fees.

But when Industry Canada urged the federal telephone regulator in February to "move expeditiously" on the issue, the major wireless carriers immediately announced plans to voluntarily introduce the service, resulting in the hiring of PricewaterhouseCoopers to prepare a detailed project plan.

"The fact that the U.S. has done it means the technical problems are resolved and the method of doing it is known," said Ian Angus, president of telecom consultancy Angus TeleManagement Group.

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security:

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

There's lots of innovation going on in security - we're inundated with a steady stream of new stuff and it all sounds like it works just great. Every couple of months I'm invited to a new computer security conference, or I'm asked to write a foreword for a new computer security book. And, thanks to the fact that it's a topic of public concern and a 'safe issue' for politicians, we can expect a flood of computer security-related legislation from lawmakers. So: computer security is definitely still a 'hot topic.' But why are we spending all this time and money and still having problems?

Let me introduce you to the six dumbest ideas in computer security. What are they? They're the anti-good ideas. They're the braindamage that makes your $100,000 ASIC-based turbo-stateful packet-mulching firewall transparent to hackers. Where do anti-good ideas come from? They come from misguided attempts to do the impossible - which is another way of saying 'trying to ignore reality.' Frequently those misguided attempts are sincere efforts by well-meaning people or companies who just don't fully understand the situation, but other times it's just a bunch of savvy entrepreneurs with a well-marketed piece of junk they're selling to make a fast buck. In either case, these dumb ideas are the fundamental reason(s) why all that money you spend on information security is going to be wasted, unless you somehow manage to avoid them.

For your convenience, I've listed the dumb ideas in descending order from the most-frequently-seen. If you can avoid falling into the the trap of the first three, you're among the few true computer security elite

eBay to nab Skype for $2.6 billion | CNET News.com

eBay to nab Skype for $2.6 billion | CNET News.com:

update eBay plans to buy Net telephone provider Skype in a move aimed at boosting its sales volumes and supplying seamless voice communications to its consumers.

Company executives said Monday that eBay plans to pay $1.3 billion in cash and $1.3 billion in stock to the global communications company. It has agreed to hand over up to an extra $1.5 billion, for a total payout of more than $4 billion, if Skype meets certain financial targets by 2008, according to a presentation to investors on Monday morning.

The move, expected to be complete by the end of the fourth quarter, marks the biggest acquisition in eBay's 10-year history. In another big-time merger, eBay acquired online payments company PayPal in 2002 for about $1.5 billion. It more recently picked up Shopping.com for $620 million in cash.