A tousled 28-year-old in a mechanic’s shirt and wire-rimmed glasses, Carven is the inventor of the Greasecar Vegetable Fuel Systems, a $795 kit that is fitted under the hoods of diesel cars and trucks and allows them to run on used vegetable oil. Once a vehicle is transformed into a Greasecar, every McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and neighborhood Chinese restaurant becomes a potential fuel stop. Link.
Resource, links and kits for building your own thing to launch other things. Here is a collection of what plans we’ve been able to collect from around the web. These are compiled from several sources by many people. Some are suitable for physics projects, and some are for more serious hobbyists. You’ll have to figure out which ones are right for you. Link.
Sony is introducing “Sterile Burning” where owners of CDs can only burn one copy, but not copy of copies. Holding the shift key on CD insert or using a non-Windows OS will likely get around all this. The technology Sony is testing, which was developed by a UK anti-piracy firm, First4Internet, allows for copying ripped and burned tracks from a copy-protected disc to a blank CD in WMA format. The DRM on the disc remains intact and prevents the CD from being duplicated. Link.
If you have to pay taxes on virtual property, can you insure your virtual property? Sunday’s New York Times picked up the theme in The Game is Virtual. The Profit is Real (5/29), which discussed the growing market for virtual property used in on-line games like Second Life, The Sims, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft. Players buy and sell virtual property on sites like eBay, Ige, and Gamingopenmarket, with the Times noting annual profits of 25k, 100k or more taxable to the gamers. Some of the sites even allow on-line charitable contributions. Link.
This is an interesting way to cool a PC. There are 70 case fans in total, covering over 95% of the case AND THEY ALL WORK! Looking from the front of the case, air flows in through the left side and out the right side. The front an back blow air into the case and air flows from the top of the case down and out the bottom… theoretically anyway. [via] Link.
Ars Technica has a great guide which demystifies Voice over IP, Asterisk and a lot of the technical jargon associated with using the internet to make phone calls. VoIP, POTS, SIP, h.323 and IAX are covered. If you’re considering a an open source PBX check out the Asterisk info and resources in the article Link.
DIYParts.org is a grassroots effort that enables and ecourages the sharing and trading of computer parts that are still useful, but would otherwise mostl likely end up discarded…one of the goals of the project is to get unused older personal computer systems to parts of the developing world and to people who have thus far been sidelined in the “digital revolution”. The old hardware can be made useful by loading it with open source operating systems like GNU/Linux. [via] Link.
