Rob Beschizza

BBC admits that TV detector vans only work because Britons believe they do

Britain's ad-free BBC, renowned for the quality of its news and television broadcasting, is funded by an annual fee on television use. But it's also famous for its sinister TV Detector Vans, which legend has it can tell if unlicensed televisions are in operation behind closed doors.

The beeb's secret sauce will remain secret, however, as Britain's Information Commissioner has swatted down a Freedom of Information request for information on the size of the BBC's van fleet and the technology used.

The grounds given for the refusal, however, are telling enough: "if [the BBC] did so it would damage the public's perception of the effectiveness of TV detector vans," the report says. "... It relies on the public perception that the vans could be used at any time to catch evaders."

Revealing technical information would result in the loss of the "deterrent effect," and, hence, "a significant number of people would decide not to pay their licence fee."

Brits will be hard-pressed to suppress a guffaw at the nature of the disclosure and its rather obvious implications.

The request posed several questions, asking for confirmation of hand-held TV-detecting gadgets, how operators are trained to use them, how often they are deployed, technical specifications, and whether there really exists a "fleet" of detection vans at all.

In response, the BBC refused to disclose the extent of its operation, how often TV detector technology is used, and the details of how the technology works. Here's an excerpt from the ruling:

The BBC explained that the number of detector vans in operation, the location of their deployment and the frequency is not common knowledge. It relies on the public perception that the vans could be used at any time to catch evaders. This perception has built up since the first van was launched in 1952 and has been a key cost effective method in deterring people from evading their licence fee. The BBC state that to release information which relates to the number of detection devices and how often they are used will change the public’s perception of their effectiveness. If the deterrent effect is lost, the BBC believes that a significant number of people would decide not to pay their licence fee, knowing how the deployment and effectiveness of vans and other equipment will affect their chances of success in avoiding detection.

While it's technologically possible to detect emissions from television sets, some believe that the switch to LCD-based hardware, and the omnipresence of non-televisual computer monitors, has now made effective detection logistically unlikely—if there was ever a serious detection program in the first place.

The report even states that the BBC provided details of the technology to it, but reported that its disclosure would "open the possibility of people analysing them to find weaknesses to evade detection equipment."

Ruling (PDF) [ICO via The Register]

Rob Beschizza

Obama anti-robocall video

Rob Beschizza

Want to cool your PC with mineral oil? DIY kit makes it easier.

If you don't like the idea of spending an outrageous $5,000 on a ready-made PC filled with cooling goo, Puget Systems has a DIY kit priced just $315.

[We've] been running a mineral oil computer for over a year with no ill effects. In a more recent project, it has allowed us to run an extremely high end system at under 50C with virtually no noise. It has also allowed an overclock of a QX9770 from a stock frequency of 3.2GHz, to an overclocked frequency of 4.6GHz!

Shipping with the aquarium tank and cover, a motherboard tray, power lights and cabling, hard drive mounting brackets and optional lighting kits, Puget's deal lacks only one thing: the giant bucket of mineral oil you'll need to make the magic happen.

The recommended method for checking for excessive heat levels is as follows: when concerned, lower a wire basket of sliced potatoes into the enclosure. If they quickly become delicious, the oil has overheated and you should stop playing video games.

Aquarium Kit [Puget Systems]

John Brownlee

Mercenaries 2 DLC lets you roll with Barack and Palin

As the mellifluous wordsmiths over at Gearfuse point out, there is little reason to buy Mercenaries 2, which they label "the most mediocre game, ever." That's just about right. Still, Pandemic's latest DLC pack does at least have one ebullient grab at fun relevancy: it allows you to play as either Barack Obama or Sarah Palin, stealing tanks, slitting throats and blow up helicopters. Not worth buying the game for, but I imagine we'll see some fun YouTube videos out of it.

[via Gearfuse]

Rob Beschizza

Pioneer claims new player is lightest portable XM radio

The XMp3 is an mp3 player and an XM radio receiver—and the lightest such device in existence, according to Pioneer.

It has "100 hours" of storage and microSD card slot for more; an auto-record feature that remembers to grab your favorite shows; and a buffer of the last 30 minutes from multiple channels. This 3oz player is $280 and available immediately.

Product Page [XM]

Rob Beschizza

Report: Asus gets customer thrown in jail after she threatens to tell press about its dismal tech support

Asus and a customer are locked in a legal battle in China, according to reports, after it had her imprisoned for ten months when she threatened to tell the press about its use of substandard engineering samples to repair broken gear.

Huang Jin, accused by Asus of extortion but released due to insufficient evidence, is now launching a legal counter-attack, suing it for defamation, giving false reports to police, and for selling defective gear in the first place. She's also after the state for compensation for jailing her at the computer company's request.

Here's Danwei, translating a story from the Beijing Times:

Huang's ordeal with ASUS started when she was still a university student on February 9, 2006. She bought a V6800V model ASUS laptop from a Beijing retailer. Her computer had many problems including frequent blue screen freeze-ups.

Despite Huang sending back the computer several times for repairs by the ASUS, some of the problems remained. The last time ASUS repaired Zhou's computer, they replaced the CPU, but the new CPU overheated. Examination showed that the new CPU was an Intel "engineering sample" of a kind not permitted to be sold in the market.

Huang and her lawyer, Zhou Chengyu, demanded that ASUS to pay a compensation of five million US dollars, threatening to break the news to the media and take ASUS to court.

Asus, according to the report, then contacted authorities and got her thrown in the clink.

Huang has a website up to gather support for her case against Asus, but it's in Chinese. Here's a barely-readable machtrans.

ASUS charges customer with extortion, customer countersues [Danwei] Thanks, Chris!

Joel Johnson

Video: Left 4 Dead Trailer

This is pretty much just a free advertisement for Left 4 Dead, the upcoming zombie apocalypse shooter from local favorite Valve Software, but all of us at BBG sort of want to have their screaming, pulsating babies gnash their way out of our distended bellies.

John Brownlee

Beware the clomping of the candy-fueled Chicken Walker

This kid's costume is undeniably awesome, but I'm not quite sure it's what he wanted. Quoth his Dad:

So my middle son asked to be a robot for Halloween. We had a great time building this but I believe he may be a bit too tired to eat candy.

Then again perhaps not.

This, my friend, is not a "robot", it is a mech walker. At my school, if you didn't know the difference between a robot and a mech, all you'd earn is the communal snort of nasal contempt — a derisive "LOL" soaked in the phlegm of a thousand nerds — and a long walk through the slide rule gauntlet.

Otherwise, an excellent costume, Young Master Chicken Walker. I'm only curious about what the kid inside is saying to himself. Is it griping, or some sort of onomatopoeic robot noise?

Robot Costume [2wicky via Gizmodo]

Joel Johnson

"Even Grandpa's Kill -9 couldn't stop him."

Behold, the dreaded zombie process, the loneliest kid at the process table.

HALLOWEEN t-shirt [Latorra.org]

Rob Beschizza

Stay warm with Ardica jacket—and power your gadgets, too

Ardica makes a vest that conceals a large, flat battery. It provides not only power to your gear, but heat to your body.

The makers claim it holds "11 cell phone charges, 20 iPod charges and and enough juice to run a dead device or power a GPS, PDA or any other personal electronic device" so long as it requires no more than 10 watts of power. Alternatively, you can have 9 hours of low heat or 3 hours of hot.

Product Page [Ardica]

Rob Beschizza

Polar RS800CX GPS watch trains athletes

It used to be easy to cheat in marathons.

Lost in the crowd, a runner could dip into an alley here or cross a bridge there, maneuvers that would shave a few hundred yards off the field—and vital seconds from one's time. Motorcycles, rocket packs, teleportation booths: all, at one point or another, have sullied the integrity of sporting events the world over.

Times have changed, but technology changes with it. Polar USA's Polar RS800CX multisport watch includes a GPS mapper to better plan your athletic deceptions—they thoughtfully opted not to include a tracker, of course—and a "high-end training management system" which I believe includes various poison darts for silently felling competitors.

Multisport RS800CX [Polar USA]

Rob Beschizza

The Bullet: tiny wireless router plugs into any antenna for powerful unidirectional WiFi

Unless someone announces a netbook that turns into a spaceship, this is probably the most awesome thing I'll see all day: The Bullet, an 802.11abg gadget that plugs into any antenna. Plug the other into your network and voila: 1000mW of broadcast power that your standard wireless access point does not have.

The included AirOS software has all of the features you'd expect from a traditional router—bridge mode, uPnP, NAT, DHCP, port forwarding, web-based configuration, etc.,—but it's open source and comes with an SDK.

The unit itself has an Atheros CPU, 16MB of RAM and 4MB of flash, 100 Mbps ethernet, and up to 1000mW of broadcast power, in the forthcoming HD edition. It requires power over ethernet.

A lesson I learned from my adventures with Pringles Cans is that it's easy to forget about the uplink: point-to-point WiFi hookups work much better with the signal boosted at both ends. But as this thing is just $40, that's not an expensive problem.

Product Page [UBNT]

Rob Beschizza

Fancy Sudoku watch is $1,000 (and it only has one level!)

Sion writes in to tell us of a beautiful watch commorating Leonard Euler, the Swiss mathematician whose Latin Squares inspired Sudoku and similar games.

At a thousand bucks, I won't be buying one, but hey, game/math porn watch.

Product Page [The Awesomer]
Oris Limited Edition Stainless Steel Watch [Amazon]

Rob Beschizza

Infinite bubble wrap popping toy

The problem with bubble wrap is that it, like daisies and lust, does not last forever. Mugen Pop Pop, from Bandai America, brings the Japanese "Endless Plastic Bubble Popping Toy" to our shores. It comes in four colors and is in stores now.

INDULGE YOUR PLASTIC BUBBLE POPPING TENDENCY WITH MUGEN POP POP. For those tempted to reach for the nearest sheet of plastic bubbles look no further than Mugen Pop Pop from Bandai America! Hitting shelves at major retailers on October 27, 2008, Mugen Pop Pop is a highly-addictive handheld keychain device that stimulates the strangely satisfying experience of popping plastic bubble packaging.

It's not entirely authentic, larding the de-stressing experience with dog barks, chimes, honking noises "and more!," but the real question remains unanswered: can I chew it?

Dogmatic MNR [Mugen Pop Pop]

Rob Beschizza

Send email to the computer-averse with Celery

Celery is a fax machine that can receive and send email.

It's designed to make life easy for older folks who don't wish to fiddle around with computers: at the recipient's end, the machine is set up once, then simply prints out emails and photos sent to it. To reply, granny just writes a normal letter in response and feeds it in, printing the name of the recipient at the top so that the machine can figure out who to email it to.

"Even if most of your readers think its a stupid idea, I can assure you one thing, if they gift one of these to Grandma, they'll never need to find stamps and mail a letter ever again," inventor Neil Grabowsky writes in.

I feel vaguely as if we're still trying to get the 1990s right, here, but if it works, it works, right?

Product Page [MyCelery]

Rob Beschizza

The first and the last Wi-Fi Certified devices: Sony-Ericsson C905a is 5,000th gadget to receive stamp

This week saw the 5,000th gadget certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, whose program began in 2000. In the last year, 1,000 new devices were certified. Of the total, 438 are 802.11n, even though the standard is still, technically, a draft.

To get an idea of how far we've moved on in 8 years, here's the very first WiFi-certified device, the Cisco Aironet 340 Access Point and AIR-PCM340 Wireless PC Card, and the 5,000th, Sony Ericsson's C905a dual-mode cell phone.

Cisco's kit included a router and the plug-in PCMCIA module needed to communicate with it. This was expensive gear, eight years ago, marketed directly to the enterprise. Here's part of the marketing blurb from its product page:

The Cisco Aironet 340 Series is a comprehensive family of client adapters and access points that enables organizations to integrate the freedom and flexibility of wireless local-area networking into their information systems. The Cisco Aironet 340 Series client adapters and access points are designed to meet the mobility, performance, security, interoperability/management, and reliability requirements of in-building wireless local-area networks (WLANs) within enterprise-wide information infrastructures or as free standing all-wireless networks. The Aironet 340 Series products provide value-added features that are ideal for: IT professionals or business executives who want mobility within the enterprise, as an addition or alternative to wired networks, business owners or IT directors who need flexibility for frequent LAN wiring changes, either throughout the site or in selected areas, and any company whose site is not conducive to LAN wiring because of building or budget limitations, such as older buildings, leased space, or temporary sites.

Exciting stuff, huh? Times have changes, of course, and we're to the point where the lack of WiFi in pretty much anything is more remarkable than its inclusion. Here's Sony Ericsson's pitch for the forthcoming C905a cell phone, claimed to be a "real alternative" to a camera. It ships soon and is rumored to be subsidized by AT&T.

The C905 is Sony Ericsson's first Cyber-shot slider and its most advanced camera phone yet. With an 8.1 megapixel camera and real camera flash amongst its cutting-edge capabilities, it offers easy photo-taking in a phone that derives its looks from a digital camera and offers the picture quality to match. In comparison the S302 Snapshot is for those who want it all at an affordable price – good looks, must-have features and a pocket-sized slim design.

Rob Beschizza

Hand-cooling joystick for sweaty flight-simmers

Genius' MetalStrike series of PC joysticks cool the user's hand as he or she waggles. Three levels of force feedback, three levels of air conditioning and 13 programmable buttons should make it appetizing for those among you who still play flight simulators or proper space shooters.

•Vibration feedback function lets you experience the effects of taking off, landing, stalling, bumps, crashes, etc.
• Three levels (off/1/2) of air control to keep your hand cool plus feel the effects of flying.
• 4-axis: X, Y, Z, and rudder for Aileron, Elevator, Throttle and power control ideal for simulated flight games.
• Turbo function for auto repeat - good for shooting in flight games.
• 13 programmable buttons include fire trigger, four fire buttons and eight base buttons.
• 8-way ‘point-of-view’ hat switch to change your view points

Product Page [Genius]

Rob Beschizza

Robots for you

Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute has a slideshow of robots made by its Field Robotics Center. Robots!

Pictured is a winterized version of its Nomad rover, designed to search for and classify meteorites in Antarctica.

Robots at the FRC [CMU]

John Brownlee

Impervious to custom firmware hackers, there's less reason to buy a PSP-3000 than ever

Despite Sony's missteps, the Sony PSP is a great system, but in sheer spite of Sony's missteps, hackers are the ones who have made the PSP a great system. Although not as many as there should be for a system of the PSP's maturity, there's some excellent games available, but where the PSP shines is as portable emulation and homebrew device, and for that, Sony has less part than ever, consistently fighting against the same hackers and programmers who — if embraced — might have given Sony the leg up over the Nintendo DS.

So no shocks here: the recent release of the PSP-3000, aka the PSP Brite, is looking pretty hacker proof, with all its previous kernel holes patched up, preventing the installation of custom firmware and unsigned code. In particular, famous PSP hacker Dark Alex — who usually can turn around a new custom firmware within hours of an official Sony release — has made no progress worming his way into the PSP-Brite.

And that's ignoring the awful interlacing issue. There's still plenty of reason to buy a PSP, but not a PSP-3000. If you're looking to buy one and get the most out of your system, the PSP Slim or the PSP Phat is the way to go.

PSP is impervious to hackers [PSP Fanboy]

John Brownlee

The Sonic Lounger treats "stress" the same way 19th Century quacks treated "hysteria" (i.e. vibration)

There's something about this Sonic Lounger that invites perverted suspicion. The leg stirrups, the strange vibrating speaker positioned directly over the uterus, the arm clamps... it has every look of a Victorian era medical device for the treatment of "hysteria" in women, its operation overseen by a bejowled, constantly sweating physician who can never stop licking his chapped, mottled lips.

However, according to its manufacturers, the Sonic Lounger is simply for "relaxation." For the price of $9000, "it massages and resonates the entire body with crystal clear vibration, transferring high fidelity music into the skin, bones and tissue, allowing the subtleties and depth of sound that cannot be heard with the ears to be viscerally experienced."

So, in short, it is the 21st century's answer to the medical masturbation devices of the 19th century. Neat! I don't know what's cooler: that they're still making these, or that they are still euphemistically marketing them.

Sonic Lounger [Taiz Designer via DVICE]

John Brownlee

Pac-Man Pumpkins, carved to pixel perfection

There is nothing particularly hard about making yourself a last-minute set of Pac-Man pumpkins, merely some paint and the industry to use your pumpkin saw to carve out individual pixels on Pinky and Clyde. Still, these are very fine.

Pac Man Pumpkins [Instructables]

John Brownlee

Video: Hexpodmeisterschaft spider-bot does the Mambo No. 5

In my nightmares, mannequin-head spiderbots like the Hexapodmeisterschaft do the Mambo No. 5 all over my paralyzed body. And here's what makes me wake up in a cold sweat: I love it.

[via Laughing Squid]

John Brownlee

The Claw media destroyer is a compact disc hole puncher

Although they often seem to scratch in a breeze, CDs and DVDs are actually surprisingly resilient. Almost any disc that has merely been scratched can be repaired, since the data remains intact. If you want to destroy a CD or DVD, scratching it isn't enough: you need to puncture the data layer sandwiched between the outer label and the reflective surface of the disc face. Pro tip: almost any disc that, when held up to a lamp, does not allow light to shine through can be fixed.

For paranoids, that means taking a key to their old burnt disc isn't enough. The Sanyo Claw Destroyer promises to destroy any CD or DVD permanently. It works by punching hundreds of little holes in the surface of the disc (with a noise level similar to an electric pencil sharpener), as opposed to my first delightful guess: a shredder that spits out a compact disc confetti of razor shards from its back-end.

Sanyo The Claw Media Destroyer [Amazon via Gadget Grid]

John Brownlee

The Pramulator bomb shaped baby carriage

Spotted by our happy welding lads at MAKE, John Knotts' gorgeous, Enola Gay shaped baby carriage, christened the Pramulator... the perfect mode of conveyance for the larval progeny of history's great lothario, Mr. Slim Pickens.

Pramularo [Bent Fabrication via MAKE]

John Brownlee

Predator's beer funnel

Or Sub Zero's, I guess, as the method of delivery for a triumphant libation after a particularly brutal Mortal Kombat style fatality. Take your pick of any spine ripper. It's only $13.99, but it is a little late to order it for your Halloween party tonight, so instead, we will open up this post's comments to field this hypothetical question: which liquor most resembling spinal fluid would you chug out of this thing? Please justify your answer.

Skull Beer Funnel [Decorations and Props via Nerd Approved]

John Brownlee

Forbes catalogs Apple's flops

Forbes has posted a gallery of ten of Apple's more ignominious flops. There's a good chunk of the usual suspects here: the Lisa, named after Steve Jobs daughter, buried en masse in a Utah landfill, the Pippin, the Newton. But there's also some forgotten gems, like Apple's vaporware "Taligent" OS.

I also found this observation on why the G4 PowerMac Cube failed to be interesting:

The PC's unique shape, a cube with a top-loading toaster-style CD drive, seemed poised to create a PC design revolution. Instead, Apple announced it was putting the machine "on ice," in a press release a year after the Cube's launch.

Apple's mistake in that case, says Kay, was depending more on Jobs' personal taste than market research. In a study Kay worked on as an analyst at IDC a year before the Cube's launch, researchers gave users blocks of foam in various shapes and surveyed them on which blocks they preferred and why. Kay found that users opted for "dramatic" shapes--those that had at least one dimension very different from the others.

The Macbook Air, for instance, with one extremely thin dimension, would have scored highly. But by the same measure, the G4 Cube "was exactly the wrong product," Kay says.

Apple Product Flops [Forbes]

John Brownlee

The New York Times illustrates the car of the future

Nuzzled in the sidebar of an otherwise typical New York Times piece on the rapidly evolving comfort tech of your average consumer vehicle's options, this brilliant illustration by Bruce McCall of the world's most advanced and dangerous car.

Father drives while simultaneously watching Casablanca and getting a haircut, while Junior bakes a pizza, whips a toy airplane around his head as hard as he can and considers getting a few slam dunks in. Meanwhile, Mother uses a remote control to change channels on a television she could easily reach to adjust herself, but her laziness is redeemed by the fact that she is apparently a Popeye fan.

Even the pets are kept occupied: Fido is entranced by the admittedly captivating plots of the Bone channel, while Whiskers lazily watches a motorized mouse move back and forth... which will eventually, in the manner of felines, prompt him to wig the shit out, lodge himself in hissing terror underneath Father's accelerator and cause the very same horrific car crash that Junior is cheering on through the occulus his backseat Chronoscope.

Fully Loaded [NY Times via book of joe]

John Brownlee

Boxing Tonight: GameBoy animated boxing cartoon is the best thing you'll see today

Beyond the utterly trance-like GameBoy chiptune soundtrack (which has been given, let me assure you, Humbert's excited chirrup of approval) it will not immediately be apparent why we, gadget-obsessed Control+C/Control+V monkeys, are posting Boxing Night, an absolutely brilliant animation by Camilo and SidAbitBall.

Part of the reason involves how Boxing Night was actually created. The chiptune soundtrack isn't merely a stylistic affectation. According to the website, the animators created a method to synchronize animations with a GameBoy in realtime through a homebrew hardware interface.

But even if the whole thing hadn't been accomplished on a GameBoy, we'd still post it. Unfortunately, to explain why, we'd need to spoil the plot. Hint: the spoiler's in the categories.

Just hit play. This is inconceivably awesome. It's the best thing you're going to see all day.

Boxing Tonight [Bricovision]

Joel Johnson

Power On Self Test: EVE as young boy

[A fine looking young man via Scott Simpson's Flickr stream]