[Plasma Shield]

SYDNEY-A 19 year old man in the suburb of Bella Vista has been charged with interfering with a crew member while in an aircraft(with a laser).

The helicopter was flying at about 6pm at an altitude of about 1600 feet, when a green laser allegedly targeted the crew. The crew members were “momentarily distracted and disoriented by the incident”, according to a New South Wales Police press release, but were uninjured and managed to identify a yard from which the light originated. The officers landed the helicopter nearby, and contacted local police who arrested the teen and confiscated a laser device. He was taken to Castle Hill police station, where he was interviewed and charged, before being released on bail. He is scheduled to face Hornsby Local Court on June 2

Wikinews - News South Wales Government

People seems to think that you can do this with a normal laser. There is no way a normal laser can be strong and coherent enough to hit planes a kilometer or so away. (more…)

For those who haven’t, check out the Engadget LiveBlog and Popular Mechanics LiveBlog of the Keynote from WWDC.

Apple showed many demos of programs that have been developed on the iPhone with the SDK, and they also introduced a service similar to Microsoft-exchange, but geared more towards the consumer than enterprise.

But what everyone was sitting on the edge of their seats for was details on the the new iPhone.

Image from Engadget

An iPhone with 3G and GPS for under $200? GPS makers, PDA makers, Smartphone makers, the Windows Mobile team, portable media player makers must all be shitting themselves. (more…)

Brina Lam from Gizmodo met Michael Dell, founder and CEO of Dell and inquired about the Ultra portable Laptop he was carrying. Dell was gracious enough to let Lam get some photos of the laptop.

bumped into Michael Dell at All Things D after his interview, and he was nice enough to show me this laptop that he was carrying that he said no one’s seen before. It’s a small form factor notebook, just like the Asus Eee and the HP 2133. He wouldn’t tell me what OS it’s running, or the pricing, but that it’s a low-cost notebook meant for developing countries, and I hope here. Maybe it’s Atom-powered. Who knows? But I do see three USB ports, a card reader, VGA out, Ethernet, and that red candy shell.

Gizmodo

The laptop looks pretty cool, hopefully it’s got a similar sized keyboard to the HP Mini Note, and runs on the Intel Atom processor. (more…)

Plastics are polymers formed by hydrocarbons from crude oil. I’m surprised that there are bacteria that feed on that. Given how there are no proteins, or bio-organic matter to decompose.

A high school junior from Waterloo, Ontario conducted an experiment that involved mixing landfill dirt with yeast and tap water, then added ground plastic, and left it in a tissue culture chamber I assume, and tested the decomposition rates against the decomposition rates if plastics without the mixture. It was found that the rates of decomposition was higher for the plastic in the landfill dirt mixture. After changing temperatures and growth variables, the bacteria was isolated and it was found that two were of the bacterial genera Pseudomonas and Sphingomonas.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an bacteria from the Pseudomonas genu.

Wikipedia: Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative, aerobic, rod-shaped bacterium with unipolar motility.An opportunistic human pathogen, P. aeruginosa is also an opportunistic pathogen of plants. P. aeruginosa is the type species of the genus Pseudomonas (Migula 1894).

I have no idea what any of that means, but it has been shown in various studies (more…)

As the Editor-in-Chief, I’d like to welcome a new writer to the staff of PlasmaShield.

Meet, Barley.

Barley will be our environmental columnist, although she won’t be writing about methods of tree hugging all the time. Her interests include, music, environmentalism, playing beach volleyball with dinosaurs and eating instant noodles/ramen of varying degrees of unhealthyness.

Yes, unhealthyness is a word.

What can we expect from Barley? The most up to date methodology concerning coming into bodily contact with trees, the best ways to eat instant noodles, and computer games.

Everybody Loves Ramen

After the death of the Master in the modern series it seems the writer has confirmed the point the Doctor is the last of the Timelord race. Now the writer have pulled a rabbit out of a hat for tonights episode ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ will introduce us to Jenny. In real life Jenny played by Georgia Moffett is the real life daughter of Peter Davidson the fifth Doctor. Making Jenny truly the daughter of the Doctor.

In last week’s teaser the Doctor is lured off course to the planet of of Messaline. A planet which is intwined in a planetary civil war, not the most impressionable place to find a long lost relative. Jenny is potrayed in the series as a tough warrior of prominent power. This could come in handy if Jenny would be implemented into the Doctor’s gang. Now composing of himself, Donna and Martha.

The fact that the writers have pulled a timelord out of the hat now questions how many other timelords will pop in for a visit. Tonight’s episode i believe a turning point of the TV show as Jenny if she survives the first episode will be a usefull character. I however doubt she would be come one of the doctor’s companions. These speculation though will be confirmed in tonights episode which from a TV.com survey many people will be expected to tune in.

Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.

Vodafone

Finally, the rest of the world can get their hands on the iPhone. Since the 3G version will probably be rolling out in the Us some time in June, will it be an international release? Probably not, but one can still hope. What Vodaphone doesn’t mention is whether or not it will sell the iPhone unlocked. It will probably depend on the legislation in the countries it’s releasing it, but considering how Apple can make carriers pay for the privilege of selling the iPhone, and Vodaphone probably did pay for the privilege, it’s unlikely to be sold unlocked in most of the countries, either that or Vodaphone is gonna make it a hassel to unlock it.

Meh, there’s always eEbay.

Edit:

The German arm of mobile services giant Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) donned the crown of concerned corporate citizen and persuaded a Hamburg court to act against competitor Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT) for selling locked versions of the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone. The court granted a temporary injunction against Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile unit and its practice of selling the iPhone in combination with a two-year contract.

The Motley Fool

Hmm, you know I don’t think Vodaphone can sell the iPhone locked without looking reeeally (more…)

A friendly neighborhood AT&T employee forwarded us a purported memo for AT&T retail store employees that could provide a rather telling clue about the next-gen iPhone’s release date this summer if it proves true. A similar memo went out last year around this time requesting that employees not take any vacations between June 15 and July 15, and this year those dates are June 15 and July 12 — which seems suspiciously early, but that’s what the man says. The memo cites “an exciting Summer Promotional Launch,” which we’re guessing doesn’t refer to some new Motorola flip phone. Also telling is the fact that employees might be able to take some vacations later within that window when things die down a bit, which seems to imply that Apple could be aiming for a launch date right around the iPhone’s one year anniversary of June 29th. How romantic.

Engadget >Leaked AT&T memo points to 3G iPhone release in late June?

Hmm, if AT&T asks employees(lol @ the spiderman reference) not to take vacations, it must mean that there will be an event that require all/most of the employees to be executed successfully. That really sounds like an new iPhone launch, and if any telecomm company is going to be chosen to release the new iPhone, it’ll most likely AT&T, given it’s exclusivity deal with the current gen iPhone. It also mentions that employees can take a break afterwards when “thing die down”.

So AT&T expect a flurry of activities after the event? Well, there aren’t any other phones with the ability of attracting a massive explosion of press coverage besides the iPhone. (more…)

In addition to a 3G iPhone release in early June, the 2.5G model could have a “minor casing change” and a price drop to between US$299 and $349, compared to the current $399, wrote Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research, in a research report.

I heard that it’s going to be 3 mm thinner, yay!

The iPhone 2.0 software provides enterprise applications to iPhones, including push e-mail support through the Microsoft Exchange mail server. It also includes an SDK (software developer kit) for developers to write iPhone applications.

Yahoo News

I, for one, would care more if Apple quits being selfish and open up the iPhone for developers, the “iPhone software store” essentially is a iron gauntlet that only lets programs that Apple permits to be installed on the iPhone. I’m not even going to start on the monopoly and privacy issues. People may argue that the “iPhone Software Store” is worth it due to the money Apple has in funding for programs and that it is an easy way for developers to release their software and generate a return. But the thing is, nothing is stopping Apple from having the software store and let third part developers install programs through their own means, and not the software store. Developers can still choose to release their programs through Apple, but you also have the open software delivery through the internet.

Hmm, the thing is. Apple couldn’ve released the iPhone with Edge domestically in the US and another version with 3G internationally. I think Apple just wants Mo’ money, by profiting off the first version from the first version and people who can’t wait, and again with the 3G version. Probably the same reason that the iPods don’t come with FM radio, so that Apple can profit from it later.

That said, I’m still more likely going to buy an iPhone rather than a Windows Mobile 6 PDA.

Anyway, geometric series awaits.