“Acoustic lenses can be made to focus sound much as the lens in a microscope focuses light. But physicists’ ability to work with both types of waves is limited by scattering effects called diffraction. Using conventional lenses, it’s not possible to focus light waves or sound waves to a spot size smaller than half the wavelength of the light. To get around these limitations, a lens must refract, or literally bend light backward. No naturally occurring materials have a negative index of refraction, but some materials carefully designed in the lab, called metamaterials, do. The same tools used to make materials that can focus light or sound waves beyond the diffraction limit, enabling high-resolution imaging, can also be used to make materials that accomplish the opposite, cloaking an object by directing light or sound around it.”

Here’s what the resonant plate looks like:

Fascinating, isn’t it!

This is a theoretical mock-up of the optical waveguide that Purdue is developing

Check out TryPhone.

(BTW, this is my first post using the new WordPress feature “PressThis”.  Very nice!)

There’s just a ton of fun stuff on that site.  Merry Christmas!

Here’s an excellent post by Mr Scheiner from March ’08.

Bruce really needs to run the Department of Homeland Security.

1) OK guys, we need an ultra high margin accessory to compliment our standard line of ultra high margin products. What haven’t we charged an arm and a leg for yet? How about this thing – what’s this? An ethernet cable? A what? Well, I don’t know what the heck that is so there’s a good chance that 99% of our customers won’t either since the size of my paycheck means that I’m one of the smartest people in the universe. Perfect. Oh, and if I ever hear you call it an “ethernet” cable again, you’re fired. Are there any more chocolate donuts?

2) Hey Guys! We’ve done it! We’ve finally done it! After years of failure, disappointment, and millions and millions of R&D dollars, we’ve finally made an ethernet cable that can make digital music being transported over our our proprietary IP stack* sound significantly better than with just a regular ethernet cable. You’ve got to hear this! Check it out!

(* I’m guessing here, but they probably changed some bits in the IP header to something weird and can now call it proprietary since it’s not part of the standard. My point with this particular tangent is that nobody makes completely proprietary communication interfaces these days, especially not people that make home theater components.)

Personally, I’m guessing that it went down more like Option #1.

So if you happen to have any friends in the upper left quadrant of the above-mentioned category, please let them know that it’s not necessary to buy a $500 ethernet cable to connect their reciever to their cd player. A $3 one will work just as well.

Just to break this down a little further, let’s take a look at the product photo on the page:

Here’s the product sell sheet if you want an even closer look.

Based upon this image alone, I submit:
1) The connector appears to have the same dimensions as a standard RJ-45 ethernet connector. there is no side keying that makes it look any different than a regular RJ-45.
2) The wires that are terminated in the connector are laid out in the following order: white/orange, orange, white/green, blue, white/blue, green, white/brown, brown. You don’t have to be BICSI certified to know that this is a TIA/EIA-568-B connection… known to many as “the ethernet cable”.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, chances are it’s at least a bird.

If there’s one thing that should worry you in that story, it’s this line:

“many biometric systems don’t encrypt biometric data during the authentication process”

Simply amazing/scary that this is gaining traction in the market and more people aren’t questioning it.

1) The bot navigates around, collects some data, and avoids obstacles, until it
2) Finds something “worth playing on” (a single isolated object or a wide flat surface that it can find an angle onto)
3) Snakes into place
4) Plays some beats on what it have found, and samples this, checking it has a “good sound”
5) Based on data collected in the area, and sample just made, then compose a little rhythm, and plays this along with the sample

Now, if you don’t think that’s cool – even just a little bit – then there’s absolutely nothing I can do for you. Walk away from the computer now.

My only gripe is that the video clips on the above link only are playable if you use IE to view the URL. GRRR… Another wonderful Internet experience marred by IE bias. Still not nearly enough for me to ever consider switching from Opera!

Meet the Toshiba Micro Reactor.

I find it mildly ironic that it’s coded in java, which only until early this year was subject to it’s own EULA issues that resulted from it not being fully licensed under the GPL. Well, for that matter it’s still not 100% open source afaik.

Hit the “Dialectize!” button and enjoy the dawgoned science!

Anyone care to take a shot at explaining how the interaction of water and a DC electric field can create a water bridge?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. We don’t know squat.