XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Thursday 28 November 2013

Drone used to deliver contraband at Georgia prison - 



A southeast Georgia sheriff says four people accused of using a remote-controlled drone to fly contraband into a state prison have been arrested.

Calhoun County Sheriff John Hilton told WSB-TV Wednesday that officials noticed the device hovering over the gates at the Calhoun State Prison in Morgan and later searched a car with Gwinnett County tags.

Hilton says investigators found the drone, between 1 and 2 pounds of tobacco and several cellphones in the car. Hilton says the suspects also used a pair of binoculars to monitor the device as it made its deliveries.

Hilton says the four people who were arrested were from Snellville and Decatur and are now free on bond.

Morgan is about 30 miles west of Albany.

Read more - 

RIP, Comet ISON? Evidence is mounting that Comet ISON did not survive its brush with the sun on Nov. 28th -

RIP, Comet ISON? Evidence is mounting that Comet ISON did not survive its brush with the sun on Nov. 28th - 



COMET ISON, R.I.P.: Evidence is mounting that comet ISON did not survive its brush with the sun earlier today. At 01:45 EST on Nov. 28th, Thanksgiving Day in the USA, the comet was supposed to pass a little more than a million miles above the surface of the sun. As a new movie from SOHO shows, the comet had already disintegrated. Click to set the scene in motion, and pay careful attention to the head of the comet:


http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2013/11/28/sundiver_anim3.gif

Read more - 

Bunny boiler app: Spy software lets you track your partner's movements, listen in on calls -

Bunny boiler app: Spy software lets you track your partner's movements, listen in on calls - 



It’s bad enough checking your partner’s phone when they leave the room, or taking a peek at their Facebook page, yet a new app takes this level of snooping not just a step further, but a giant leap forward.
The mSpy app works on select smartphones including Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone and can be used to gain access to an unprecedented level of personal information.
It records phone calls, tracks a person’s location, lets users remotely read texts, Skype, Facebook and Viber messages, view browsing history and even see how much battery the phone has left.

According to Oregon-based mSpy’s website the app is designed for 'monitoring your children, employees or others on a smartphone or mobile device’. 
However, it adds the person doing the spying must own the device being tracked, or the person being tracked must give their permission. 

To use the app, spies must pay a monthly fee that starts at £24.99 for a limited range of features, up to £44.99 for access to them all. 
Spies can also use the app to view videos and photos stored on a device, see the phone owner's list of applications and software updates, open their calendar, notes and tasks, and even get hold of the phone’s unique IMEI number.
They can additionally remotely lock or wipe a device, block websites and calls from certain contacts as well as record the person’s surroundings.
People wanting to use the app do need to physically install it onto the phone they wish to track, yet once installed mSpy promises the app is 100 per cent undetectable.

This is because the app runs it what the company calls ‘stealth mode’  and doesn’t appear in the phone owner’s apps list.
It works in a similar way to encryption lockers that are designed to be hidden deliberately and can only be found by the installer. These apps, however, are designed to protect information and privacy.
Subscribers can choose to sync the data automatically, only over Wi-Fi, or manually and if automatic sync is selected the data is updated every 30 minutes.
Users can then track this information from anywhere by signing into an online account and viewing it all on a dashboard. 
The dashboard produces charts that show which apps have been used and how often, while the person’s location is plotted on to a map.
‘We do have quite a large portion of our customers who use mSPY specifically to catch a cheating spouse," mSPy’s Tatiana Ameri told ABC 22 news.
But added ‘We do ask our users to make sure they've got their monitored partners consent.’
According to mSpy the app works on Apple, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian, however, it will only work on jailbroken iOS devices and doesn’t work with iOS 7. Android phones, similarly, need to be rooted. 

Read more: - 
Japan Wants To Turn The Moon Into A Giant Power Plant - 

luna_img003

Shimizu Corporation, a Japanese architecture and engineering firm, has a plan to effectively turn the moon into a giant solar power plant, reports Inhabitat.

It proposes building a massive collection of solar panels (a "Luna Ring") 6,800 miles long by 12 miles wide on the moon's surface. That's certainly a heavy-duty construction job for human beings, so Shimizu plans to get the work done with robots, only involving humans in supervisory roles.

Once complete, this hypothetical plant could continuously send energy to "receiving stations" around the globe by way of lasers and microwave transmission. This idea gets around two major hurdles for solar power, as there is no weather or darkness to curb electricity production on the moon. If operating in ship-shape, Shimizu says it could continuously send 13,000 terawatts of power back to Earth. By comparison, it took the United States all of 2011 to generate 4,100 terawatts of power.

It's big thinking that we're skeptical will ever see fruition, but we like where Shimizu's coming from. It believes that "virtually inexhaustible, non-polluting solar energy is the ultimate source of green energy that brings prosperity to nature as well as our lives. Shimizu Corporation proposes the Luna Ring for the infinite coexistence of mankind and the Earth."

Read more -