| Behavior, too, gets screened at airports
The next time you go to the airport, there may be more eyes on you than you notice. Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside baggage attendant. They're called behavior detection officers, and they're part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described them as "a wonderful tool to be able to identify and do risk management prior to somebody coming into the airport or approaching the crowded checkpoint." The officers are working in more than a dozen airports already, according to Paul Ekman, a former professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who has advised Hawley's agency on the program.
Sabayon Linux: Something for everyone
The Sabayon Linux live DVD distribution, based on the unstable branch of Gentoo Linux, has been in development for several years and caters to a wide variety of users. Having started out with a beautiful but mainstream appearance, it now boasts one of the most unique looks in Linux and more usability options than most other distros. The distribution offers premium open source games, accelerated desktop effects, a large and varied software suite, and several variations. Besides the full release, Sabayon also comes in a Business Edition and usually a Mini edition. With all it has to offer, Sabayon has something for everyone. .
Intel Ships first 'Extreme' Mobile Processor
Intel expanded its line of "Extreme" processors to include chips for notebooks, as well as a new flagship desktop processor on Monday. In addition, the company also disclosed its plans to debut battery-friendly quad-core processors for laptops by next year. The announcements come as Intel celebrates its one-year anniversary of introducing the Core microarchitecture. .
Hybrid fuels Eaton's future
Hybrid technology to be marketed starting next year by Eaton Corp. will provide up to 60 percent better fuel economy for the trucks that use it, cut their idling time by up to 87 percent, cut fuel emissions and reduce noise, the company says. That is impressive and needed, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, said. ``Energy needs in the next 20 years worldwide are going to grow 50 percent, and in order to meet those needs, we need to be more energy efficient,'' Upton said Thursday as Eaton announced at its Galesburg Truck Components engineering facility that it will put its medium-duty, diesel-electric-hybrid drive system into production in 2008. Upton and Stephen Johnson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, were in Galesburg to hear Eaton executives announce plans for the commercialization of their diesel-electric-hybrid drive system.
09 August 2007
Nicholas Negroponte's nonprofit One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project reported Monday that it has authorized mass production of its XO laptop. The decision triggers the supply chains of the some 800 parts used for the laptop that is targeted for use by children who can't afford traditional PCs. The production runs are based on the release of OLPC's Beta-4 (engineering model. In announcing the mass production approval, OLPC said the Beta-4 features three major innovations: Fully readable in bright sunlight, the B4 offers a paper-like reading experience for users. A new hinge lets users tilt the laptop's screen to take advantage of an optimum reading angle. Ruggedly durable, the B4 is constructed to tolerate severe weather and environmental conditions as well as falls from as high as five feet.
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