The annual
Chaos Communication Congress, will be held 27th to 30th december in
Berlin.

This year there will something very special, since internet live
streaming of events reached its limits last year, the Chaos
Computer Club folks managed to get a license for broadcasting
events in DVB-T. And they broadcast their selfmade DVB stream by
themselves with a selfmade
DVB-T transmitter, and all this for less than 1000 Euros.

To be sure that noone gets disturbed they got a licensed fequency
and are allowed 5 Watts sending power, enough to cover direct eye
contact distance to Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Isn’t that great. I
guess a lot of TV station get pissed when they recalculate their
investment for their DVB equipment.

The agenda is still not final, but a major issue will be trust and
security, especially dedicated to voting machines, RFIDs, DRM,
DataMining, forensics, electronic passports, bluetooth, biometric,
console hacking, VoIP, Web2.0 and the end of traditional TV.

Be curious….

Sudoku became
world famous in the last months, although it exists since 18th
century when swiss mathematician Leonhard
Euler discovered a puzzle game called Latin Square.

The name Sudoku comes from the japanese sentence:
数字は独身に限る,
meaning as much as: limit to unique numbers.
Although published in various newspapers over the years, it reached
world wide fame quite recently.

Meanwhile there are also a lot of more complex sudokus for “the
advanced puzzle fan”.

Sudoku
with 16 sqaures and numbers.

Sudoku
as jigsaw puzzle, non square based:

And for the real freaks, pre-requistiting a computer, and probably
a 3D graphics card:
The ultimate 3-dimensional Sudoku called:
3doku, available for Mac and PC.

If you’re interested in the different mathematical approaches to
solve a sudoku take a look at wikipedia.

Finally Jules Verne’s idea of shooting
a man to the moon will become reality, almost.

The US AirForce is building a 2.4km long magnetic accelerator,
which shall be used to shoot up to 100kg of “baggage” into the
orbit, thus saving the cost of the expensive supportflights with
traditional rockets. Although it will not be possible to transport
human beings or any other lifeform with this “vehicle” into space,
it might work fine for already dead meat or miniature
satellites.

The principle of the “cannon” is quite familiar to the particle accellerator at
CERN, which just finished installing all the superconductor
magnets of its 25km ring.

I can already see the headline: Chinese spy satellite seriously hit
by frozen french fries….