We just talked about TED in our last post and incidentally their next video was about LEGO the next day. Nice~
More Data?
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Friday, July 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The Helium 3 Irony
Wow, Nanami Madobe, Microsoft's official Windows 7 OS-Tan (personification of an operating system, usually in the form of a virtual girl), has been on the front page of BrickTech for more than a month, as noticed by a reader in our Chat Box on our Sidebar:
Apparently Nene Anegasaki, another virtual girl, from the dating simultion game Love Plus, is more in demand than Nanami. She was mentioned over on BrickGamers.
Anyway, it's about time we solved this 'girl war', so we're finally updating BrickTech with a new comic! This comic is just giving a possible scenario due to recent news about the shortage of a certain element which is required to detect a certain type of bomb. So if we just think about it, some terrorists could use this advantage for their benefit. Mainly, we're talking about this...
Confused?
The US is developing a technology to detect smuggled uranium and plutonium, used to make nuclear bombs, but this machine requires Helium 3, and US is running out of this element. Talk about irony.
So why can't they just make Helium 3? Well, there's another problem. See, Helium 3 is formed when Tritium decays, but the US stopped making Tritium in 1989. This makes the demand for Helium 3 become 10x the supply.
If Tritium sounds familiar, it's because it's a by-product of Deuterium, and if THAT sounds familiar, then you must be Otaku or Geeky enough for BrickTech to know that Deuterium is used in the Star Trek universe for the Warp Core inside a Warp Drive used in Starships.
Tritium is also used in certain glow-in-the-dark products as Tritium is radioactive and well, glows. It's not found in your typical glow in the dark as those need light first before they glow.
Anyway, the US had planned to make up to 1,400 of these nuke bomb detectors, which costs USD800,000 each, for a total of 1.1billion dollars, to be placed in ports around the world so they can be detected in shipping containers before they enter the US.
Well all is not lost, they can actually rely on an older technology to detect these nuke bombs, but this older tech also has a problem of detecting cat litter as a nuke bomb too - seriously. Talk about toxic waste.
Source : New York Times
Apparently Nene Anegasaki, another virtual girl, from the dating simultion game Love Plus, is more in demand than Nanami. She was mentioned over on BrickGamers.
Anyway, it's about time we solved this 'girl war', so we're finally updating BrickTech with a new comic! This comic is just giving a possible scenario due to recent news about the shortage of a certain element which is required to detect a certain type of bomb. So if we just think about it, some terrorists could use this advantage for their benefit. Mainly, we're talking about this...
Confused?
The US is developing a technology to detect smuggled uranium and plutonium, used to make nuclear bombs, but this machine requires Helium 3, and US is running out of this element. Talk about irony.
So why can't they just make Helium 3? Well, there's another problem. See, Helium 3 is formed when Tritium decays, but the US stopped making Tritium in 1989. This makes the demand for Helium 3 become 10x the supply.
If Tritium sounds familiar, it's because it's a by-product of Deuterium, and if THAT sounds familiar, then you must be Otaku or Geeky enough for BrickTech to know that Deuterium is used in the Star Trek universe for the Warp Core inside a Warp Drive used in Starships.
Tritium is also used in certain glow-in-the-dark products as Tritium is radioactive and well, glows. It's not found in your typical glow in the dark as those need light first before they glow.
Anyway, the US had planned to make up to 1,400 of these nuke bomb detectors, which costs USD800,000 each, for a total of 1.1billion dollars, to be placed in ports around the world so they can be detected in shipping containers before they enter the US.
Well all is not lost, they can actually rely on an older technology to detect these nuke bombs, but this older tech also has a problem of detecting cat litter as a nuke bomb too - seriously. Talk about toxic waste.
Source : New York Times
More Data?
Friday, September 25, 2009
Windows Live Messenger 9 (2009) 14
Unless you're using Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger 8.5 (2008), you would have recently been prompted to upgrade to the latest version of WLM 9 (2009), or also known as version 14 to tie with the rest of Microsoft's Windows Live Services. This is because Microsoft wants to streamline all their Messengers to the latest version, which means any version prior to 8.5 (like 8.1, 8.0) will have to upgrade to version 9 (2009 or 14) before you can log into your Messenger.
However, come next month, even users of 8.5 will be forced to do the same so everyone will have to use at least version 14.0.8089.726. Meaning even if you're running version 14.x you'll still have to upgrade to this version (at least) in October. Want to know more?
This recent force (and next month for the rest of 8.5 and 14.x users) have resulted in some users switching over to Yahoo Messenger (which coincidentally, also only supports version 9.0, with 8.0 users being locked out). As both WLM and YM support both Yahoo and Microsoft accounts, both can use either contacts so you don't need to run both Instant Messengers (IM) at the same time.
However, with Microsoft's recent force (and next month as well), you might see a case of people jumping over to Yahoo instead, as some people have had problems once upgrading WLM. You can read more Microsoft's statement (as well as some people's problems) here.
You can get the latest version of WLM here, which will download the required WLM files, as well as other Windows Live Services, IF you want them. Keep in mind you don't have to install ALL Windows Live Services to use WLM.
To read more about WLM, you can read about our previous post here.
However, come next month, even users of 8.5 will be forced to do the same so everyone will have to use at least version 14.0.8089.726. Meaning even if you're running version 14.x you'll still have to upgrade to this version (at least) in October. Want to know more?
This recent force (and next month for the rest of 8.5 and 14.x users) have resulted in some users switching over to Yahoo Messenger (which coincidentally, also only supports version 9.0, with 8.0 users being locked out). As both WLM and YM support both Yahoo and Microsoft accounts, both can use either contacts so you don't need to run both Instant Messengers (IM) at the same time.
However, with Microsoft's recent force (and next month as well), you might see a case of people jumping over to Yahoo instead, as some people have had problems once upgrading WLM. You can read more Microsoft's statement (as well as some people's problems) here.
You can get the latest version of WLM here, which will download the required WLM files, as well as other Windows Live Services, IF you want them. Keep in mind you don't have to install ALL Windows Live Services to use WLM.
To read more about WLM, you can read about our previous post here.
More Data?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Crash, Boom, Bang?
If you haven't heard by now, Microsoft has re-named its Web search engine from Live Search to Bing, in an attempt to make it more "user-friendly". However, this "new" search engine got into a little trouble recently when it was found to be selective of the type of results to show depending on the search being queried. Want to know more?
In particular, it was sensitive towards searches that would highlight the "bad" side of Microsoft. This came to be known via here, and a screen capture here proved the point, especially since it has now been changed to reflect no "censorship", as seen from here. Just to be fair, Google was put to the test as well, as seen here. Well, it's good to see Microsoft redeem itself than to deny!
In particular, it was sensitive towards searches that would highlight the "bad" side of Microsoft. This came to be known via here, and a screen capture here proved the point, especially since it has now been changed to reflect no "censorship", as seen from here. Just to be fair, Google was put to the test as well, as seen here. Well, it's good to see Microsoft redeem itself than to deny!
More Data?
Friday, August 21, 2009
640Kbps Should Be Enough For Everyone
The following comic is based on a true story
There is only a handful of people who know about this event which transpired, and we're happy to let you know that BrickTech is one of them :) As to who and what this refers to, we'll leave you to figure that one out ;) Rest assured, we swear upon our LEGO® plastic miniature figurines, it's the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Sometimes fact IS stranger than fiction.
By the way, if you didn't catch the relevance of this post's title, then you're not as old as us :P
By the way, if you didn't catch the relevance of this post's title, then you're not as old as us :P
More Data?
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Internet Censorship
Those who have observed Malaysia's 12th General Election on 8th March 2008 will have noticed the Opposition won 5 states from the dominant Government via the Internet, which the Govt had little control over while they were controlling the mass media.
This was even mentioned by Vinton Cerf, Father of the Internet @ WCIT 2008 - which you can read more about him here in our previous post (at the bottom of that post). He mentioned about how the Internet has shown it plays an important role in politics, and it has even resulted in the world's first blogger to be voted into Parliament, which is Malaysia's case, is Jeff Ooi. So what has the Gov tried to do? Read on for more.
As a result, in order to work towards securing the 13th GE in 2012 from being lost, the Govt has begun to blog like the Opposition, and has recently decided to attempt to filter the Internet, just as how China tried with their Green Dam project.
However, as Jack of BrickGamers have said, if even the Middle Kingdom can give up (at least for now), perhaps it's futile for the Govt here to consider pursuing this when it actually contradicts the MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Bill of Guarantees, which prohibits Internet censorship to encourage foreign investments in the country.
So far the Govt has said the filter is only to censor pornography, but we all know power can be abused in the wrong hands once laws are laid down, and in anycase, it still violates the MSC's Bill.
This was even mentioned by Vinton Cerf, Father of the Internet @ WCIT 2008 - which you can read more about him here in our previous post (at the bottom of that post). He mentioned about how the Internet has shown it plays an important role in politics, and it has even resulted in the world's first blogger to be voted into Parliament, which is Malaysia's case, is Jeff Ooi. So what has the Gov tried to do? Read on for more.
As a result, in order to work towards securing the 13th GE in 2012 from being lost, the Govt has begun to blog like the Opposition, and has recently decided to attempt to filter the Internet, just as how China tried with their Green Dam project.
However, as Jack of BrickGamers have said, if even the Middle Kingdom can give up (at least for now), perhaps it's futile for the Govt here to consider pursuing this when it actually contradicts the MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Bill of Guarantees, which prohibits Internet censorship to encourage foreign investments in the country.
So far the Govt has said the filter is only to censor pornography, but we all know power can be abused in the wrong hands once laws are laid down, and in anycase, it still violates the MSC's Bill.
More Data?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
