lazzyhacker

Microsoft will provide eight security patches next Tuesday, some of which are described as “critical”.

The patches are part of Microsoft’s monthly security update which comes round on the second Tuesday of each month.

The company said users can expect critical fixes for Windows, the Office suite, MSN Messenger and the Exchange email server.

Microsoft will also release a new version of its online malicious software removal tool, which protects against major and known viruses.

Microsoft did not release any security patches last month.

A Virginia judge has sentenced spammer Jeremy Jaynes to nine years in prison for sending over 10 million e-mails a day with the aid of 16 broadband lines. Because the case marks the first felony prosecution for spam, however, Judge Thomas Horne postponed the sentence while the ruling is appealed.

Jeremy Jaynes, who was considered one of the top ten spammers in the world by Spamhaus, was found guilty last November and the jury recommended a nine-year prison term. Jaynes’ lawyers contended that the Virginia law under which he was prosecuted violated free speech rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Jaynes was accused of grossing up to $750,000 per month with his unsolicited junk e-mail. Because he used aliases when sending the spam, he had violated a new Virginia law designed to help crackdown on spam.

Jurors also convicted Jaynes’ sister Jessica DeGroot, but only recommended she receive a $7,500 fine for her part in the operation. Lawyers for the prosecution contended that her involvement went deeper, but lacked solid evidence.

Following several days of analyst predictions, Sony today announced that more than 500,000 PSP Value Packs were sold in the first two days the device was available last month. The company also said that the first week sales of the PSP generated more than $150 million at North American retailers.

“The launch of PSP was everything we hoped for, with extraordinary consumer demand driving sales of hardware units alone upwards of $150 million in first week sales, far and away above those generated by any other product in the space,” said Kaz Hirai, president and chief executive officer, Sony Computer Entertainment America. “In only two weeks, PSP is having an immediate impact across the entire industry as consumers are clearly voting it the product of the year in 2005.”

The Pentagon has awarded $12m to researchers to build a robot to perform surgery in the battlefield.

“The result will be a major step forward in saving lives,” said Scott Seaton, who works for the lead US contractor, SRI International.

The “trauma pod” will be based on the concept of the existing Da Vinci surgical system in use since 2000.

There is growing concern in the US about rising troop casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

SRI has prepared a video for the Pentagon showing how a robot might operate on a wounded soldier in the middle of enemy fire and then evacuate them.

Two major challenges

Their main challenge would be to improve the Da Vinci system, which has been used in civilian hospitals successfully to perform operations such as removing cancerous prostates and repair heart valves.

This has three robotic arms, which are operated remotely by the surgeon using joysticks.

The arms are passed into the body through an opening only half an inch across.

The main challenge is how can we get high-quality medical care onto the battlefield as close to the action and as close to the soldiers as possible
John Bashkin
SRI International

The surgeon gets a three-dimensional image of what is happening because one of the arms carries two tiny cameras.

But two major improvements are needed on this system to make it operational on the battlefield:

* The Da Vinci system uses nurses to change the surgeon’s instruments in the robot’s arms - a process that has to be made automatic in the battlefield; and

* the connections between the operating console and the robot “surgeon” has to be wireless and shielded from enemy interception.

“The main challenge is how can we get high-quality medical care onto the battlefield as close to the action and as close to the soldiers as possible?” said John Bashkin of SRI.

“Right now, the resources are pretty limited to what a medic can carry with him.”

How many of you whants a robot to do your next surgey.I dont know
about this if the robot screws up who would you sued.

note this is a Korean car:
The PHEV Car is a hybrid vehicle driven by a compressed air engine combined with electric motor. PHEV CAR is driven by expansive force of compressed air and it also uses a battery driven motor when it is necessary.

Compressed air engine is operated by two strokes (suction (expansion)-exhaustion) when the internal combustion engine is operated by four strokes (suction-compression- explosion- exhaustion)

Compressed air engine is operated during the start, acceleration or going up a hill where the electric motor consumes a great deal of power rapidly. The compressed air engine converts back to the electric motor when the vehicle reaches a speed of 20-25 km/h(32-40 mi/h).

By using the PWM and the computer controlled method, the PHEV CAR converts automatically from the compressed air engine to electric motor in 0.2 second and the vehicle may be operated independently with each engine or even together simultaneously according to the road conditions.