1. Parents picking up their
children in the Freehold
Borough School District, New Jersey, must look into a camera that
will take a digital image of their iris. Funding for the project,
more than $369,000, was made by a grant through the National Institute
of Justice, a research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice.
The T-PASS was installed on the front office computers at three
schools. The platform provides entry-access controls, visitor management
and the capability to scan a driver’s license and import
the information into the database. The software keeps a log and
digital record or any visitor entering the school, replacing a
four-column paper spreadsheet. www.techweb.com 2. The pages that are printed by your color laser printer include
tiny dots, almost invisible to the naked eye. The dots form a code
that can be read by the US Secret Service, ostensibly to track
down counterfeiters. Now, for the first time, the code has been
cracked. The Secret Service has admitted before that the tracking
information is part of a deal struck with selected color laser
printer manufacturers – including Xerox, Canon and many others.
If a color laser printer is used to forge a document and agents
get sight of the document, the codes can be read. www.theregister.co.uk 3. The US online search engine Google has bowed to China’s
censorship restrictions to gain access to the country’s booming
Internet market. Google.cn, its new site for China that debuts
Wednesday, would adhere to Beijing’s strict limits on web
access. Google joins other major US Internet companies already
doing business under censorship rules. It said it would remove
links to sites considered offensive by the Chinese government.
The new site will not host blogs or email as a way of avoiding
legal problems with the authorities, who have employed sophisticated
filters to block access to certain websites. Agence France Presse
(via Common Dreams News Center) 4. Simon Thompson, 41, extended his middle
finger at the mobile
speed camera as he passed it whilst driving safely under the speed
limit. Simon was astonished when half an hour later the two policemen
who had been operating the camera knocked on his front door. The
officers handed Simon a fixed penalty notice for £80 for
making offensive gestures under the Public Order Act. The Sun Newspaper 5. MIT’s Media Lab has built a prototype computer capable
of closing the digital divide between poor nations and the industrialized
world. It runs on a 500 Mhz processor, has a 7” color screen
and a hand crank that provides 10 minutes of power for every minute
of cranking. Popular Science Feb 06 6. A conservation group has found what appears to be a new species
of mammal, discovered in the dense central forests of Borneo. WWF
caught two images of the animal, which is bigger than a domestic
cat, dark red, and has a long muscular tail. The creature, believed
to be carnivorous, was spotted in the Kayan Mentarang National
Park, which lies in Indonesian territory on Borneo. BBC News Website 7. Quadriplegic Matt Nagle became the first
paralyzed person to
control an artificial hand by brain power alone. A “Braingate” chip
implanted in Nagle’s motor cortex allows him to reach out
and grasp objects by thinking about moving his own paralyzed hand.
Nagle’s neuro-cybernetic interface also allows him to control
the lights, TV and a computer. “My mother was scared of what
might happen, but what else can they do to me?” Nagle said. “I
was in a corner, and I had to come out fighting.” www.wired.com
