Finding bargains and splitting lanes: iPhone apps of the week

This week’s apps include a well-designed barcode scanner and a game that challenges you to race through traffic on a motorcycle.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

Robot in Indiana Performs Hysterectomies

robotsurgery.jpg

This isn’t something in a sci-fi movie nor is it something that people are just talking about. A hospital in Lafayette, Indiana has actually begun using a robot to perform common surgeries.

St. Elizabeth East is taking what has become a commonplace practice to the next level. Currently, doctors all over the country don’t actually perform surgeries with their own hands. Instead, they insert robotic arms into the patient and manipulate the arms at a nearby computer.

The new procedure at St. Elizabeth answers the question, “So why not just have the robot move its own hands?”

The da Vinci Surgical System cost the hospital $1.5 million, and it certainly has its fair share of skeptics. But if human error can actually be eliminated, is it worth it?

Via TMCNet

Media Defender Inolved in Revision3′s DoS Attack

This article was written on May 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

revision 3 logo.png

We don’t know how many of you are familiar with Revision3, but if you watch Diggnation, The GigaOm Show, or Tekzilla, you should be. It’s an online media company and they create and produce shows for people to watch on-demand. Over the Memorial Day Weekend they experienced a Denial of Service Attack which is usually a deliberate attack by someone who is trying to prevent a site on the Internet from functioning. They are illegal, at least in the United States, and can cause the site that is experiencing one all kinds of problems. When they happen, often times the people causing the attack are in foreign countries. To Revision3′s surprise, after looking into the attack, they traced it back to a neighbor in their home state of California. In a posting on the Revision3 blog, their CEO Jim Louderback wrote a great explanation of what happened, what they’re doing about it, and who did it.

So what neighbor in their great state is at fault for the attack? Media Defender. Yes, it’s that Media Defender, the one the MPAA hired to help them stop piracy by setting up a fake video site. They call themselves the “leading provider of anti-piracy solutions in the emerging Internet-Piracy Prevention industry” yet what business do they have attacking Revision3 who does absolutely nothing illegal? Louderback explained saying that the company apparently took offense to the fact that they use Bittorent (perfectly legal) to distribute their shows. He says, “We use the internet and peer-to-peer networks to accelerate the spread of legally traded materials that we own. That’s sort of directly opposite to what Media Defender is supposed to be doing.”

We won’t get into the details because there are many of them (which you can read here), but we are disgusted with the method Media Defender used to try and take Revision3 down for no apparent good reason. Louderback says that their logs showed Media Defender sending SYN packets, “upwards of 8,000 packets a second” which brought down their public facing site, their RSS server, and their internal corporate email, or in other words, “the entire Revision3 business.” In the process of all of this, they learned Media Defender had been abusing a Revision3 server without their approval, for quite some time.

Thankfully they’ve gotten the FBI involved looking into the situation and hopefully at the end of the day, Media Defender will have to pay for their actions. Louderback wrapped up his very informative post by saying:

We’re simply in the business of delivering entertainment and information – that’s not life or death stuff. But what if MediaDefender discovers a tracker inside a hospital, fire department or 911 center? If it happened to us, it could happen to them too. In my opinion, Media Defender practices risky business, and needs to overhaul how it operates. Because in this country, as far as I know, we’re still innocent until proven guilty – not drawn, quartered and executed simply because someone thinks you’re an outlaw.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


Eurotech Improves Four-Year-Old “Wrist Worn PC”

euro-watch.jpg

I still can’t imagine actually wearing one of these things, but for those who want more power in their wrist than most people have in their entire body, Eurotech has just announced new “computers” that fit on your wrist.

I imagine there’s a clock functionality somewhere in here, but that’s just the beginning for this “watch.” It has 128 MB of storage, a 3.5-inch touchscreen display, and USB connectivity.

You can pair up your Bluetooth devices, connect to Wi-Fi, use GSM or CDMA data connections, scan barcodes, and even track yourself with its GPS functionality.

It’s all powered by Windows CE 6.0, and surely guaranteed to improve your wrist strength.

Modular iMobot can crawl, roll, and link up

UC Davis start-up hopes to commercialize articulated faceplate bot this year to advance research.

Rumor: New MobileMe to cost $20/year, include music ‘Locker’

According to sources from music news site, The Music Void, Apple is pushing hard for labels to get on board with Apple’s new MobileMe service for music storage and streaming called Locker.

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

The Engadget Show Live! with Jon Rubinstein

Humans, keep your eyes tuned to this post — because at 7:00PM ET, we’ll be starting The Engadget Show live with HP’s Jon Rubinstein, joining us for a evening of frank, eye-opening and all-around awesome conversation. There’ll be mind-blowing devices, crazy giveaways, and much, much more! We’ve even got music from Minusbaby. The stream is available after the break, just click the “read more” button to watch!

Continue reading The Engadget Show Live! with Jon Rubinstein

The Engadget Show Live! with Jon Rubinstein originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Top Stories: Friday, March 25, 2011 [Total Recap]

What’s This Button Do? | Take a peek at the $50,000 F1 steering wheel

More »

Wham-O’s Frisbee Forever iOS app promises to change backyard fun… forever

If there’s one thing the iPhone needs — and we mean exactly one thing — it’s clearly a Frisbee app. Er, Frisbee(R) app. Not a legitimate Gmail app. Not a new notification system. A Frisbee(R) app. As the story goes, Wham-O has linked hands with Kiloo in order to develop the Frisbee Forever app for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, which is said to offer avid iOS gamers “unique challenges and obstacles in a rich complete 3D environment.” What kind of challenges, you say? We’re hearing that you’ll be able to toss a variety of Frisbee models across 100 levels of lush, colorful worlds, but beyond that, most everything else is shrouded in mystery. All will be revealed in May, but till then, we’d encourage you to step outside and actually throw a Frisbee. We hear dogs are super into fetching them, too.

Continue reading Wham-O’s Frisbee Forever iOS app promises to change backyard fun… forever

Wham-O’s Frisbee Forever iOS app promises to change backyard fun… forever originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Timbuk2 Pop-Up case fits both iPad and iPad 2

Timbuk2’s upcoming Pop-Up case has both the iPad 1 and iPad 2 covered.