Armored vehicles are taking paint balling to the next level, all hail the Paintball Tank, otherwise known as ‘Paintball Armored Vehicles’ or PAV. There are a few types of tank available ranging in size from large automobile-based machines to lighter models, some of which are portable by foot but act more like personal armor than a fully fledge tank. But no matter which tank you take to the battlefield you will be sure of one thing, to unleash a barrage of pain.

Check out the video of a light paintball tank in action>>>

Paintball tanks may be armed with either single or multi paintball marker’s, carbon dioxide-powered cannons, grenade launchers and sometimes even rocket launchers. Many different types of projectiles have been used in the past; however Nerf cannons are more commonly replacing the PVC cannons that fire regular paintballs.

The tanks provide impenetrable armor for the user but that’s not to say they can’t be ‘destroyed’ or ‘killed’. Most tanks have kills zones which will sound an alarm or disable the tank when hit.

Rules for using the tanks differ from field to field but they are strictly enforced. Some places will not allow the heavy automated-tanks on the field and most places have speed limits. Some places may also let tanks be invincible where as others require the kill zones to be active.

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A bionic hand that can also help restore the sense of touch to amputees could soon be developed thanks to new research that has enabled two patients to feel sensations.

Both patients Claudia Mitchell, 27, a former U.S. Marine who lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorcycle accident three years ago, and Jesse Sullivan, 60, who lost both arms to electrical burns, were fitted with prosthesis by Dr. Todd Kuiken of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago this past year. These two patients are the first patients to receive this revolutionary new process that is leading the advancements in prosthesis.

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This 360-degree ultra-high-definition military simulator allows you to drive a Humvee and fire real weapons including machine guns and rocket launchers, anywhere you want, with absolute precision.

The 10-projector system achieves a seamless panorama thanks to Mersive’s Sol system; a calibration, warping and sub-pixel image blending technology that may soon be adapted from military sims to your living room gaming.

Watch The Video and check the Halo 3-like scenario

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New high speed digital video camcorders are capturing speed and giving scientist a new perspective in time, speed and motion.

San Francisco Intel and other companies including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments, NEC and NXP Semiconductors, have formed a group to help produce, test and promote the new USB 3.0.

The third-generation Universal Serial Bus interconnect will transfer data at speeds up to 4.8Gbit/s, ten times faster than the previous USB 2.0’s which transfers at just 480MBit/s.

Jeff Ravencraft, Intel’s technology strategist, said,

“The digital era requires high-speed performance and reliable connectivity to move the enormous amounts of digital content now present in everyday life. USB 3.0 will meet this challenge while maintaining (USB 2.0’s) ease-of-use experience.”

USB 3.0 will be optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency. It will also be backwards-compatible with USB 2.0, which is backwards-compatible with the first USB 1.1.

The USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed with both copper and optical cable capabilities; this means even higher speeds will be possible in the future.

Intel also revealed a Wireless USB (WUSB) transfer format that operates at 480Mbits/s, the same speed as USB 2.0. In addition they also said they are working on the 1.1 version of the WUSB which operates at a speed of up to 1Gbits/s.

A working prototype of the USB 3.0 has already been presented, however there is typically a one- to two-year lag between the release of the specification and the availability of the technology, so USB 3.0 might not be available in stores until 2009 or 2010

In late September 2007, Boeing successfully tested a 1kw solid state laser weapon mounted on a converted Avenger anti aircraft vehicle in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. The Avengers laser was able to successfully destroy several unexploded mortar shells and two unmanned aerial vehicles, both of which were on the ground.

Until recently, military lasers were extremely big. Powerful lasers such as Boeing’s Airborne Laser (ABL) developed in order to destroy ballistic missiles in flight from a distance of hundreds of miles were so big they required a fully modified Boeing 747-400F to house the system. Thanks to new developments in solid state laser technology, the Avenger system is more compact than any previous military lasers.

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It has always been a goal to improve our military strength and skill over our soldiers. DARPA has been at the fore-front of technology that is taking this to a new level. A robotic exoskeleton that would let GIs run faster, leap further and carry more is starting to materialize and become reality. A very practical and ambitious idea that is allowing many more options for our military.

According to DARPA, the exoskeletons will be delivered for Army testing in 2008. After 14 companies and universities initially (circa 2001) came up with different designs, they have selected the firm that will build the beast: Sarcos of Salt Lake City in Utah, US.

Sarcos has come up with a system that uses just one engine instead of lots of them. The engine, and a tank containing a 24-hour supply of fuel, will be slung ‘beneath your rear end’ says Main. The engine (a turbine, two-stroke or four stroke - they haven’t decided yet) will then drive hydraulic fluid via high pressure lines to servo valves on each joint, amplifying the force used to move each limb when the wearer’s motion is sensed.

“It makes you feel really, really strong. You get the sensation that you have a lot of strength. I sort of felt like The Hulk and I’m a skinny guy. I wore a 100-pound weight on my back and it felt I was carrying nothing like that amount,”

In 2006, Engineers in Japan were perfecting a wearable power suit that amplifies human strength to help lift hospital patients or heavy objects. It was driven by portable batteries, micro air pumps and small body sensors that pick up even the slightest muscle twitch. Lead by project researcher Hirokazu Noborisaka, the Stand-Alone Wearable Power Assist Suit was designed to help nursing home workers lift patients of up to 180 pounds while cutting the amount of strength required in half.

However, that suit needed to be more flexible for easier movement and protective cover that shrouds the suit’s sensitive or sharp areas.

Humans have a limited capacity to remember those insignificant streams of letters and digits often used as passwords; as a result, many people choose or change their passwords so they are easier to remember.

Memorable passwords, however, can easily be hacked when faced with dictionary attacks or logical guesses. Information based on birth dates, family members or place names are an easy target for most hacking software and the time it takes for these programs to ‘guess’ your password decreases considerably if it is simple and unsecured.

A recent meeting of the Computer and Communications Security interest group of the Association for Computing Machinery saw an improved description of a password security system called ‘Draw a Secret’.

This system is based on the fact the humans excel at image recognition and memory, for this reason passwords should be designed to leverage this ability. The Draw a Secret password method incorporates a touch screen and stylus for the user to sign freeform shapes as their password. This can be anything from pictures to graffiti style tags.

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Remember how when you were a kid you were always told to sit up straight? “Stop slouching, it’s bad for your back!” Well, in a study last year, Scottish radiologists confirmed that a 130-degree angle of recline between torso and thighs reduces pressure on the discs in the lower back.

Office chairs like the Aeron designed by Herman Miller and Humanscale, have been around since 1994, considering recent findings, these chairs were really quite revolutionary. Despite the array of levers and knobs that help adjust the chairs recline tension, lumbar support, seat-pan depth and forward tilt, designers have found that most users only use the height adjustment.

This neglect has manufacturers such looking toward the next frontier: a self-adjusting chair. Humanscale’s Freedom chair includes uses a counterbalance system that automatically adjusts to the sitter’s weight as he or she reclines, eliminating the need for recline controls.

Designers have also brainstormed that the future office chair may not be a chair at all. According to the National Institutes of Health, chairs contribute in part to the high rate of back pain which affects approximately eight out of 10 Americans. Asian traditions of kneeling or squatting on the floor have shown to have great ergonomic benefits, Cameron Campbell a designer for Herman Miller recently said,

“Our notion of a machine for sitting may not make sense in a globalized world.”

Perhaps in the future one worker may sit in front of their workspace on a self adjusting recliner, whilst the next may kneel amongst a pile of cushions.

British defense researchers have invented a means to cloak tanks and make them invisible tank. London’s Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Sun all report on tests conducted by the Ministry of Defence last week in which a tank rolled across a field, completely invisible to observers standing at a certain point.

“This technology is incredible,” an unnamed soldier was quoted by the Daily Mail and Sun. “If I hadn’t been present I wouldn’t have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun.”

Although as you first heard this topic, it is not as mystical as it might seem. The technology relies on heavy use of camera and projectors. Basically, a camera films the background, which is then projected upon a special surface applied to something in the foreground in this case, a tank.

You can see the similar technology in the following video that has gained a lot of popularity on the internet

Sir John Pendry of Imperial College London, one of the world’s leading experts on surface reflectivity and lead author of a widely reported paper last year that said:

“Cloak of invisibility is theoretically possible. The drawback at the moment is the dependence upon cameras and projectors,” the Sun quoted Pendry, who did not confirm an implied connection with the defense project. “The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them which is intricate and complicated, but possible.”

Hackers are getting assistance from a female stripper by the name of Mellisa. She is a digital girl that is helping spammer hack a security measure that has helped slow the spamming community.

To help solve the mystery and security behind Captcha text images, the spammers enlisted the help of Mellisa. By inserting and deciphering the text, users get to see explicit images. Seems like a fair enough trade-off. In the past many viruses have tricked people into opening booby-trapped attachments with the false promise of seeing explicit images, but this was one of the first to actually show people more images if people respond.

This software by Trend Micro and Panda Security that is helping to defeat the anti-spam security check is a Windows game that arrives on machines that are already infected with malicious software. The program comes to life when the Internet Explorer browser is used on infected machines. The Captcha-busting program can run on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003. You win (getting to see the explicit image) by correctly typing the text shown in an accompanying image. This seems like an easy enough game with great rewards. The creators of the game in turn take the deciphered text that stop spam robots from automatically signing up to create accounts that can be put to illegal use. By getting people to type in the text the spammers can are also able to take over the accounts and use them to send junk mail.

This online anti-spam security measure of using a image of text is known as Captchas or “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Typically they feature a disfigured word or one overlaid with static that make it difficult for anyone but a human to decipher.

Since its fist arrival, many spammers and hackers have been vigorously working to defeat the system and regaining acess to net-based resources, such as e-mail accounts or blogging tools, they are designed to protect. Although this game seems like a bunch of fun and gaining popularity, it is likely to increase the annoyance of spam and weaken our hold in the War on Spam.

Ever since I was a little kid, I knew this type of technology would eventually surface if it hadn’t already. Below in the video by General Dynamics you can see Trophy Active Defense System in action. It offers an invisible force field for military vehicles that disables incoming RPG rounds.

The system can simultaneously engage several threats, arriving from different directions, is effective on stationary or moving platforms, and is effective against short and long range threats (such as RPGs and ATGM). Trophy was designed to be effective in open or closed terrain, including urban area and can be operated under all weather conditions

Quickly gaining popularity and taking back the web, Firefox is lighting up the internet with personalize browsing that is safer, faster and more powerful. When Firefox first emerged not many expected much since there were already other browsers, like Netscape, Opera, and Eudora, that had been out for a long time already and were no where near being as popular as Internet Explorer. This has caused Microsoft to start paying attention and listening to the users - but still falling short in keeping users loyal. Microsoft is synonymous with closed-code with only Microsoft add-ons at Microsoft prices.

For those of you who are not familiar with Firefox, prepared to be awaken to the revolution taking place on the web and quickly become converted to a Mozilla Firefox user.

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The digital age is here and has been for some time now. The computer interface we have come to know has become boring and in my opinion out-dated. It no longer gives a sense of high tech or advanced. It is a 2-D mundane layout that has me missing the days of old when my desk was in a chaotic and cryptic mess that only I understood. Well, programmers feel the same and they are taking this boring interface to the next level!

This is a great idea and a fun interface. Some problems with it however is you do not see the file names that distinguish file types from one another and you are not able to see a thumbnail preview of a picture or document like in new Windows environment. I am sure these bugs can be worked out and the program will be much better once it gets to the serious stage.

If you remember the Photosync Technology and Microsoft Surface environment, this interface is quickly adapting and evolving. I am ready for the change now - hopefully it becomes mainstream soon.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are always pushing the boundaries; continuing to develop Defensive Technology, and their latest invention is no exception.

At some point in the not too distant future, a moth implanted with a computer chip will take flight into enemy territories in hope to spy and transmit a video feed as well as other information back to base. The computer chip implanted whilst the creature is still a pupa, in the cocoon, enables the moth’s entire nervous system to be controlled remotely. The moth will thus be capable of landing in the camp without arousing suspicion, all the while transmitting information back to its masters via what its developers refer to as a “reliable tissue-machine interface.” More importantly however, this Cyborg Moth will help bring down terrorist and thwart future terrorism plots.

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