Hasta La Gadget!

You have plenty of options if you’re looking for an external hard drive or some home storage that does more than just keep your files and data backed up, but the new Western Digital My Book Live is a network attached storage (NAS) device that lets you put your files anywhere in the house and access them from any other network-connected device.

The My Book Live adds a 100MBps Ethernet jack on the back of the popular My Book line of external drives, comes in 1TB or 2TB models, and retains its USB 2.0 port in case you want to daisy-chain the device to another hard drive for expanded storage. The My Book Live also functions as a media server and allows you to stream music or movies on the drive to other devices in the house, like your XBox 360, PlayStation 3, PC or Mac running iTunes, or just as an open network share.

Western Digital isn’t the only manufacturer in this game: LaCie’s Wireless Space and Verbatim’s MediaShare are among a number of others vying for position in this market. Still, Western Digital has huge brand recognition, and the New My Book Live has a good price point: $169.99 for the 1TB model and $229.99 for the 2TB model. Both versions are available now.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has hacked the vote. All for a good cause, of course. A team from the organization took part in DC’s pilot program aimed at testing out Internet voting for those overseas and in the military.

It took the team 36 hours to find and exploit a vulnerability in system. Using the exploit, they were able to change votes and look at secret ballots. The vulnerability is related to the way the system processes ballots. The team was able to gain access privileges to the server application, making it possible to change ballots in the database.

The EFF’s J. Alex Halderman has a pretty in-depth post over at the organization’s blog, detailing the exploit and what such a vulnerability ultimately means for the future of Internet voting.

“The specific vulnerability that we exploited is simple to fix, but it will be vastly more difficult to make the system secure,” Halderman explains, adding that the problems his team discovered are just the tip of the voting security iceberg. “None of this will come as a surprise to Internet security experts, who are familiar with the many kinds of attacks that major Websites suffer from on a daily basis. It may someday be possible to build a secure method for submitting ballots over the Internet, but in the meantime, such systems should be presumed to be vulnerable based on the limitations of today’s security technology.”

Still better than dealing with a hanging chad? Arguably.

There are two things we really love here at Gearlog: Star Wars, and ThinkGeek. The two have come together to release two new products for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back. As of today, you can be the proud owner of the Wampa Rug, or the shiny C-3PO Bespin Backpack.

The Star Wars Wampa Rug is made of high-quality synthetic fur, has a plush pillow head, vinyl claws and measures 62-inches long by 30-inches wide. It sells for $99.99. Here’s the ThinkGeek’s description:

As you may recall from Empire, before Luke was preserved inside a dead tauntaun he had a fight with a hideous Wampa snow beast in the mountain caves of Hoth. Now you can catch your own Wampa and take him home to decorate your swank bachelor pad. The Star Wars fangirls will love the high-quality synthetic fur, plush pillow head and fearsome claws.

If you already bought a new backpack for this school year, it’s time to throw that one in the closet and grab the C-3PO Bespin Backpack. The pack is based on the classic scene from Empire Strikes Back when C-3PO was blown apart by stormtroopers. He’s carried around on the wookie’s back before Chewy is able to put him back together. The backpack features light-up flickering eyes, and is made from golden leatherette material. 

But, it’s not just a backpack — it comes with all the appendages to easily assemble a complete 3-foot-tall droid. Luckily, it’s not that large in backpack form; it measures 22-inches high, by 13-inches wide, by 8 inches deep. It sells for $59.99.

If you’re in the market for another space-related product, ThinkGeek recently released the Star Trek pizza cutter.

A 15-year-old Italian boy suffering from Duchenne syndrome, a rare degenerative muscle disease, was fitted with an artificial heart after he had been ruled ineligible for a transplant list. The surgery occurred in Rome’s Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital last week, after the teen was declared to be weeks away from death.

The operation, which took 10 hours, was the first surgery to permantely implant an artificial heart in a minor. According to the doctors, the heart could give the boy another 20-25 years.

The lead surgeon, Dr. Antonio Amodeo, told The Telegraph, “This surgery opens up new horizons as there are many children who need transplants but the number of donors is very small and there are some who like this patient cannot be transplant candidates because of illness.”

The boy will remain in intensive care for another two weeks, barring any complications.

The above, of course, is not the typical outcome of in vitro fertilization. No, it is, in fact, a comedy sketch from Canadian troupe the Kids in the Hall and should not, therefore, be taken as science fact–or even, for that matter, a proper cautionary tale.

No, in vitro fertilization has brought much joy to many parents since the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born on July 25, 1978. Four million babies have been conceived through this method, all thanks to the work of Robert G. Edwards and Patrick Steptoe.

Edwards, a physiologist who worked at Cambridge University for much of his career, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine this year, thanks to his work in the field. His colleague, Steptoe, doed in 1988.

Edwards and Steptoe’s work was the subject of much criticism over the years, particularly from religious institutions. The Nobel committee addressed this concern in its write up of Edwards, “In retrospect, it is amazing that Edwards not only was able to respond to the continued criticism of in vitro fertilization, but that he also remained so persistent and unperturbed in fulfilling his scientific vision”