Jet packs for sale! Life insurance sold separately –

Filed under: Transportation, Wearables

It looks like those still bemoaning the lack of readily-available jet packs can now finally get a (brief) taste of the 21st century they once envisioned, as Popular Mechanics reports that two different wearable flying contraptions are now available for sale. Coming from Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana and Jetpack International, the jet packs will each give you about 30 seconds of flight time, with Jetpack International’s model boasting a slight advantage in speed, topping out at 70 mph. Somewhat reassuringly, each also come complete with the necessary flight training, although we wouldn’t expect any less given the $250,000 and $155,000 price tags. Those that take the plunge may be suffering from some buyer’s remorse before too long, however, as Jetpack International is reportedly working on a new model that’ll give you a full 19 minutes of flight time.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

[EnGadget]

Microsoft Office Roundtable reviewed –

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

The good people over at TMCnet want to keep you covered with their lengthy review of Redmond’s five-camera foray into the teleconferencing game, which, as part of Microsoft’s Unified Communications Platform, will probably be seeing a lot of action this year. And what are their feelings? Well, they get stoked on its resemblance to the ships in the 1953 version of War of the Worlds, dig the “head-size spatial equalization” (which makes everyone’s head the same size, seriously), and think that maybe $3000 is a fair price. The only thing they weren’t quite as excited about was the inability to use the panoramic features with non-Ballmerware, but even that appears to be a minor complaint. Still not sure you need one for your startup? Maybe you’d better read the whole thing.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

[EnGadget]

Good Ways To Join an Open Source Project? – Tathagata asks: “I’m a student, on my final year in a college in India, and I have been using GNU/Linux for quite sometime now. Though I’m from a Computer Science background, getting into a project that involves serious programming was not possible, as people (read teachers) run away if you utter the word ‘Linux’. They are generally not bothered about mentoring someone on an exciting project, and they would suggest you to get settled with Visual Basic, .NET, — and would prefer a 24 hour solution when it comes to programming. So, my programming endeavors have remained limited to writing few lines of C/C++, or Java. For last few days, I’ve been googling, and trying to read how to join an existing Open Source project.” What suggestions would you pass along to someone who is willing to join his first Open Source effort?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

[Slasdot]

Student suspended after doing nothing more than voicing marijuana opinion – More abuses within the schools. [Dvorak]

Firefighters couldn’t help inhaling – Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test. [Dvorak]

WoW Sparks Family Dispute –

http://view.break.com/315181 – Watch more free videos

If you’re planning on having children some day then I highly suggest you listen to this audio track. I don’t feel the need to explain what’s going on other than the fact that the brat was playing WoW and his parents wanted him to stop. Oh and be sure to turn your mic off or you’ll be ridiculed for the rest of your life and live infamously on the interwebs. Enjoy!

[CrunchGear]

Seagate unveils turmoil-proof EE25.2 hard drive – As if stuffing a quarter terabyte onto a single Barracuda platter and finally matching Hitachi in the 1TB realm weren’t enough to gloat about, Seagate is now unveiling a hard drive aimed squarely at those reading this from the Amazon Rainforest (or a vanilla construction area, but you understand). The second-generation SATA EE25 drive — easily dubbed the EE25.2 — is available in sizes up to 80GB and can handle extreme temperatures, sensational heights, ’round the clock operation, 90-percent humidity, and drops / shocks that would likely put you out of commission before your data. No word yet on pricing nor availability, but don’t expect 80 gigabytes of nearly indestructible storage to come without a premium.

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

[EnGadget]

CE-Oh no he didn't, part XXXV: NBC sez piracy hurts 'corn growers' –

Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Although some may argue that piracy is (at least on some level) beneficial, it looks like NBC has taken that sentiment to the opposing extreme with its latest comments. In a purported filing with the FCC calling for enhanced regulation of the internet in an attempt to stifle evil P2P activity, NBC blurted out a string of text that it surely hoped would be overlooked. Alas, hardly any ridiculous claims go unseen these days, so now we’re faced with this gem: “In the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theaters would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment.” There’s absolutely no need for us to pick apart the aforementioned quote, after all, we’re fairly certain the absurdity shines right through on its own.

[Via TechDirt, image courtesy of Monsanto]

 

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

[EnGadget]

JkDefrag 3.16 – Free (released under the GNU General Public License) disk defragment and optimize utility for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/X64. Completely automatic and very easy to use, fast, low overhead, with two optimization strategies, and can handle floppies and USB disks/sticks. Included are a Windows version, a commandline version (for scheduling by the task scheduler or for use from administrator scripts), a screensaver version, a DLL library (for use from programming languages), and versions for Windows X64. JkDefrag is based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft, a system library that is included in Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista. All defragmenters are based on this API, including commercial defragmenters. JkDefrag is therefore very solid and there is no risk of losing data. You can stop the program at any time, it will finish the current file in the background. If your disks use NTFS then you’re even safe when the computer crashes in the middle of defragging. Nevertheless, it’s still a good idea to backup before defragmenting, just like with other defragmenters, because the heavy use of the harddisk may trigger a hardware fault.

Changes in this version:

- Changed the message in the docs about the screensaver under Vista, it works if User Account Control is turned off.
– Bugfix in “-a 3″ (fast optimize). It would not use Perfect Fit for gaps that were larger than all the data already processed.

Read full story…

[NeoWin-Software]

How to control Firefox using Vim keybindings –

Vim users stick with Vim in no small part because muscle memory is so powerful — once you’ve learned Vim’s keybindings, it’s possible to be extremely productive in Vim without ever taking your hands off the keyboard. If you’d like to imbue Firefox with Vim power, embrace the Vimperator extension. Vimperator turns Firefox into a no-nonsense, modal Web browser.

[Linux.com]