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Hellacious mailbox: 100GB!

Wow! Hellacious Riders offer 100GB of mailbox storage with a reasonable :-) 500MB attachment limit. Not only that; be the first one to fill it up with mail and you get 1TB of space on a dedicated server….

The cost? It's free!

You have to suffer through the usual adds on the web site and the monthly "newsletter" though. Hotmail starts charging for downloading mails to Outlook Express but Hellacious Riders gives free POP3 access. Cool Or What? Not that I plan to use POP3. The hard disk on my laptop is too small and the whole point with an online mailbox is that I can access my mail from any place with any client.

From tom's hardware guide interview with Hellacious Riders:

So we decided to offer a 3 GByte email account to users. But it is easy for others to increase that to 5 GByte. We wanted to do something 'hellacious' and came up with the idea to offer 100 GByte and allow users to send attachments in sizes up to 500 MByte."
…
For the coming week he plans to launch a fee based email service with capacities ranging from one Gigabyte to one TByte. An ad-free 100 GByte email account will be priced at $150 per year.

Screenshots and review of the beast coming as soon as my mailbox is active (it takes up to 72 hours to activate it after registration).

Via tom's hardware guide

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SpaceShipOne; one down, one to go

For those who didn't watch it live; SpaceShipOne successfully completed the first of two flights to100km within two weeks. The streaming video service worked like a charm. It was exiting to watch when it started to spin (aparently) out of control on the way up, and a great relief when Melvill got it under control on the way down again.

More info:

• Recorded SpaceShipOne video on xprice.org


• CNN on the the SpaceShipOne first price attempt


• MSN: First X-price attempt

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SpaceShipOne, VirginGalactic and other space adventures

SpaceShipOne should launch their first, of two, scheduled flights to win the x-price today. Hope they do as well as they did on their first test run. Virgin believes in them as well and just and announced VirginGalactic:

Over five years Virgin expects to create around 3000 astronauts and the price per seat on each flight, which will include at least three days of pre-flight training, are expected to start at around £115,000 ($190,000). Virgin will reinvest the proceeds in developing a new generation of vehicles for further space ventures. To date the cheapest space tourism experiences in government built and taxpayer funded spaceships cost over $15,000,000 per seat.

Another alternative would be Incredible Adventures which offers trips to the edge of space with a MIG-25 and other space adventures. A trip to space; Cool Or What?

More info on the VirginGalactic and SpaceShipOne deal:

• Wired on VirginGalactic
  
• Guardian on VirginGalactic
  
• BoingBoing on VirginGalactic
  

Update: Watch SpaceShipOne Live

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Some red wine with the fish?

I know that a bit of red wine is good for you but not that it had such drastic effects:

''We found that men who consumed four or more glasses of red wine per week reduced their risk of prostate cancer by 50 percent,'' Stanford said. ''Among men who consumed four or more 4-ounce glasses of red wine per week, we saw about a 60 percent lower incidence of the more aggressive types of prostate cancer,'' said Stanford, senior author of the study. ''The more clinically aggressive prostate cancer is where the strongest reduction in risk was observed.''

The list of "benefits" continues:

• As an antioxidant, it helps sweep dangerous, cancer-causing free radicals from the body.
  
• As a potent anti-inflammatory agent, it blocks certain enzymes that promote tumor development.
  
• The compound also reduces cell proliferation, curtailing the number of cell divisions that could lead to cancer or the continued growth of cancer cells.
  
• It also enhances apoptosis, or programmed cell death, which helps rid the body of cancerous cells.
  
• It may act as an estrogen, reducing levels of circulating male hormones such as testosterone that fuel the growth of prostate cancer.

Although I'm not sure if what effects a lowered testosterone level will have. I guess I should be comforted by the fact that Italians drink plenty of red wine and there seems to be nothing wrong with their testosterone level..

White wine and beer doesn't seem to have any effect which is a shame as red wine doesn't really go well with Salmon and other healthy fish.

Via SienceBlog

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Vacation time!

Ah, time for a well deserved(?), short, vacation.

Enjoy some ASCII Art while I'm gone or keep an eye on the The Incredible Hulk's blog:

Hulk thinks stupid big party can stop now and go home. Hulk saw part of it on TV box and SAW GOVERNOR CONAN BUT HE "SOLD OUT" AND CUT HIS HAIR! Hulk very upset at this because if HULK can go green and stay green SO CAN GOVERNOR CONAN! He didn't even have a sword or anything.

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Ferrari, IT at >300km/h

There are a some companies I would really love to IT for; Ferrari, JPL and Valentino Rossi's Moto GP team. What can I say; I'm a speed loving space nut!

The interview with Dieter Gundel, the head of racetrack electronics at Ferrari on news.com is interesting. Some of the stuff I already assumed; the core stuff is written in c/assembler. It is great that they agree with my coding philosophy: choose the tool/language for developmed in the language that makes most sense depending on the probleml C++, Delphi, VB, … (as well as C#, Java, Perl, if you ask me)

It's scary that a Ferrari F1 can "crash" even though it is temporarily.

As the function of the car fully depends on software, this software can go wrong. A crash will be only temporarily because as usual in embedded software, there are plenty of watchdogs in the control software that will reboot the controller after a short period of inactivity

Accomplishing high security over WiFi: don't use it

We are not using wireless networking at the circuit and at the factory yet because we are not satisfied with the security. All our laptops that leave the factory with critical data have encrypted hard disks. Our telemetry traffic from the car to the garage is encrypted as well.

Lessons I have learned the "hard way" way as well.

The keyword for us is redundancy and fallback solutions. We practice a fallback of our operation down to the level of data transport between machines using USB sticks, just to be prepared for the worst. The other point is one of the main principles of (Formula 1) operation: Never make the same mistake twice. We therefore respond to all problems with a fix, either by improving components or the structure or by stepping back to a less performance-focused but safe scenario.

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Stay smart longer; eat more Omega-3 rich food

Science Blog covers the recent discovery by UCLA neuroscientists that a diet high in the omega-3 fatty acid DHA helps protect the brain against the memory loss and cell damage caused by Alzheimer's disease

UCLA neuroscientists have shown for the first time that a diet high in the Omega-3 fatty acid DHA helps protect the brain against the memory loss and cell damage caused by Alzheimer's disease. The new research suggests that a DHA-rich diet may lower one's risk of Alzheimer's disease and help slow progression of the disorder in its later stages. '

I don't have relatives with Alzheimer's but this section really caught my eye:

The human brain absorbs DHA rapidly, making a constant supply critical for proper cognitive function, eye development and mental tasks. DHA helps keep the brain membrane fluid, moves proteins and helps to convert signals from other parts of the body into action.

Guess it's time to start eating more fat fish. Anybody know any good recipes for Norwegian Salmon?

More:

• Norwegian Salmon Association
  
• Buy Norwegian Salmon on Amazon.com
  
• Buy Omega-3 supplements on Amazon.com

Update: The Sun reports that having kids makes you stupid! I better go find a Sushi bar and get some fish ASAP before I forget who my kids are...
[via The Register]

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Belkin iPAQ kit

I just bought a HP iPAQ kit from Belkin ~25 euro at the local IT shop, Media World. The guys must have made a mistake in their pricing:

• The Belkin iPAQ flip case by itself costs ~20 euro


• The 20 Belkin iPAQ screen protectors cost worth another 15 euro


• 4 pack stylus  costs ~8


• USB Synch Charger (charges via USB and car lighter, synchronizes) costs ~15

The pack only mentions the h1900, h5450 and h5550 but all the accessories (haven't tried the styli yet) works like a charm on the 4150.

Cool Or What?

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Systems Engineers on the road with WiFi

WiFi can be a real savior at certain times. Especially at 5a m when you're in front of the office, have to make an important change to a production system, and the security guard decided it was better to stay in bed than to go to work.

The pictures shows how one of my colleagues saved the morning  day by connecting to the 3rd floor WiFi from the street below the office. Way to go SLL!

I guess this could be a new way to save money in the US. Who needs cubicles anymore? Any -real- American car has air conditioning, a huge cup holder and enough room for supplies for a few days of work. Employees can buy food at drive-ins on the way to work or order take away food tvia inernet hat fits through the car window. Place a Porta-Potty or two in the parking lot and you're OK. The office spaces can be left clean and tidy, available for client tours and marketing department parties.

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Bittorrent search engine

Dagfinn Bakken has developed SearchTorrent. It is a simple Google like interface that allows you to search for Bittorrent files.

The legal stuff regarding P2P is always a pain so he is adding filters to prevent searches for Microsoft software etc.

I hope the Norwegians have the same open mind regarding Bittorrent searches as they had in the DVD Jon DVD decrypting cases.

Via [Digi.no]