OK, so it looks like a flying condom.

NASA says that the six minute flight was a success. In fact, they said the vehicle flew better than expected. Good work, my dearest space boffins. Watch the video here.

Images by the AP

The first stage of the Ares I rocket—a five-segment solid engine developed mainly by ATK Space Systems and NASA—was successfully tested today in Utah's desert, scorching the land during two minutes while 650 sensors evaluated its performance. According to Alex Priskos—first stage manager for the Ares Projects at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama—the test was a success:

With this test, we have taken lessons learned from many years of experience in solid rocket motor development and have built on that foundation. Our team collected data from 650 sensors today to evaluate the motor's performance. This test and those that follow are essential to understanding as many aspects of our motor as possible, including strengths and weaknesses, and ultimately delivering the safest and most reliable motor possible.

There is another test planned for summer 2010. Hopefully, as we don't know yet what will really happen to the Ares program. [NASA]

According to our anonymous tipster:

I collected some pictures from a GS Test new Agents take while they are in the process of becoming CompTIA A+ Certified [a industry standard certification for computer support technicians]. The pictures show some funny questions with even funnier answer choices.

Well, yes, they are funny. The wrong kind of funny, completely unchallenging, and plain down dumb. What's the purpose of a test that doesn't test anything? Oh wait, never mind.

Apparently, the job pays as much as $160 a day—which means I could earn an extra $5,000 per month writing for Giz while lying down and peeing into a bedpan. Sounds like a dream come true, but I will not be signing up. You see, these "pillownauts" experience nasty side effects like sore feet, muscle weakness, headaches, toothaches and runny noses/eyes. Plus, I would think that lying on your back for weeks on end like that would drive you to madness.

Still, this is what our astronauts will have to contend with should we make extended trips to the Moon and, eventually, Mars—so it is a necessary evil. But the question remains: could you handle this for a month in the name of science? [PopSci]

Jump to minute 2:00 to get into the test itself:

Yes, the iPhone wins. Even with its software keyboard, it proves more accurate than the netbook's tiny keys. I think I see him doing some finger sliding with the iPhone at one point—which is a good way to get accurate typing under stress conditions—but my guess is that the iPhone word prediction and correction did the rest of the trick.

Some will argue that this test is too extreme and it will not happen in real life. Obviously, those people have never ridden the New York City subway, which sometimes gets pretty close to this experience. Specially in some of the express lines, which feel like a amusement park crazy ride rather than a train. Sure, maybe the subway turns don't generate three times the force of gravity, but to me it feels close enough. [Crave UK]

[Image via Flickr]

The Energizer AA batteries are rated at 2200 mAh and the Duracells at 2000 mAh (that's milliampere-hours, a measurement of energy charge). But the Duracells last a lot longer.

I tested using an ICON LED flashlight, this solid aluminum model with high and low settings—the high setting killing a standard battery in about 3 hours. Through several trials using different cells, the Energizer lasted 2 to 3.5 hours, while the Duracells took anywhere from 5 to 6.5 hours to drain. Not an insignificant discrepancy, and contrary to the respective charge ratings on each.

The Duracell family of rechargeable batteries also come precharged out of the package, so that's very convenient. They've also got USB ports for charging USB gadgets. Both companies offer car and 15 minute chargers. The Duracell Mobile charger is my favorite simply because it has a car adapter and a wall adapter, and can charge 4 AA batteries or any USB device from those sources. (It does not do 15 minute charges, however, but I'd rather buy extras and have them ready to go.) The only real drawback is that it can't charge D cells and 9V batteries like the giant sized Energizer family charger can. Both kinds of batteries are NiMH. Duracell claims their batteries will hold their charge for a year in storage, while Energizer claims only 6 months.

Frills aside, the bottom line here is battery life, and Duracell has a lot more of it than Energizer.

Results from "Was CNNs Hologram Stupid or Cool?"

Stupid: 41%
Cool: 28%
Somewhere in-between: 31%

Here, the initial chutes that position the craft for the main chutes' test (so, not a part of the final system) failed shortly after being dropped from a C-17 cargo plane at 25,000 feet. As you can see, it all goes downhill from there, terminating in "a landing that severely damaged the test mock-up." Well said, NASA—I'm guessing any test dummies inside for pressure measurements had to be scraped off the desert floor with a knife. [NASA - Thanks Travis!]

The primary goal of the mission is to drill a few inches into Martian soil, where scientists think they may find red "water-ice," known on earth as strawberry Slushee, which could provide compelling evidence that life once did (or one day could) exist there. Digging is expected to start soon, but for now there's plenty of terrain pr0n at the Phoenix official website [Phoenix via NY Times] -by John Herrman

When you got to twelve months, you got somewhere between considerable fade and severe fade, which makes the page no longer usable. The lesson here is that if you're printing out movie tickets for tonight, cheap ink is fine. If you're printing out photos from your trip to Japan, go for quality. [Trusted Reviews via Crunchgear]

Once you snap a picture of the code, your phone will bring up the Citysearch's review page, letting you know whether you should go in. Also, a tourism company is shoving these onto some tourist locations, bringing up a 15 to 20-second audio snippet of what you're looking at. If they could stick this on things like busses, taxis, waitresses, drug dealers and prostitutes (all common in SF), we'd gladly use this service. [SFGate via New Launches]

We didn't have the time, resources, or lack of shame to put some of your better ideas to work [See: here, here, and here], but we managed to try all of the choices in the poll. We cheated a bit on the puke, but our mix was pretty gross. The results—lucky for us—were inconclusive. Of the five liquids we put in the Toughbook, none made it explode or even slow down. After flushing the whole keyboard out with water, it wasn't even sticky the next day. So when it comes to the Y7 our answer to that Question of the Day is "none of the above." But please folks, don't try this at home. [Panasonic Toughbook]

[Thanks to Sam Mindel for the video help, and Communication Corporation for their song "Slimey"!!]

You can play files off of a CD/DVD. This feature wasn't listed on the Xbox Team's website as one of the supported locations for playing back content, but this is fantastic for homes that have wireless networks (or no network at all). In fact, reading off a disc is probably the best way to ensure your movie won't cut out in the middle due to network congestion (unlikely) or someone turning off the computer accidentally (fairly likely).

It supports almost all files. It played back all TV shows we threw at it, including My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Battlestar Galactica, and The Venture Bros.. Most of these, and most TV downloaded TV shows, are encoded in XviD format. As for DivX, that's supported back to version 5.0, but it's unlikely that you're going to find any DivX 3 or DivX 4 online, unless you're talking about old files you've saved for a couple years.

AC3 Audio is supported. Nice! AC3 support was added in the Spring Update, but it's nice to see it working with DivX/XviD. Too bad it's not 5.1 though. 5.1 is supported!

It supports Windows Home Server as well. Along with USB drives and WMP11 streaming, you can also stream DivX/XviD from Windows Home Server too. It makes sense to store all your videos on here, since videos are big and WHS has a lot of room. QED.

Video Stretching is kind of weird. The Xbox will try and auto-fit your video to the screen when it starts playing, but it gets confused easily with different video dimensions. You'll want to manually change the playback mode to either letterbox or stretched, depending on what kind of content (widescreen, fullscreen, PAL) you're playing back.

You can skip through a video with the bumpers. RB and LB let you skip forward and back through the movie, but might not be granular enough to get to the place you want to be. You'll have to use the trigger buttons to FF or RW.

It's fast. If your network connection is fast enough (my network is Gigabit Ethernet enabled, which isn't a huge deal since the 360 is only 10/100), the video should play back without a hitch. It's quite nice to be able to play back stuff on your 360, in HD, without having to transcode it into WMV first.

It doesn't work in Windows Media Center Extender. You're going to have to kick out of WMC and back to the dashboard in order to play your videos. Annoying for people who like to switch between live TV and downloaded content.

It's not entirely perfect. It's 90% of the way there, but 5.1 AC3 support, improved handling of different video dimensions, better playback controls and Windows Media Center Extender support will make this the perfect DivX/Xvid implementation.

With a .7 second look, both man and beast are on even ground, but with a 0.4 second or 0.2 second (!!) peek, the college kids got owned, completing it 40% of the time compared to the chimps' 80%. One thing's for sure— taking this test probably didn't help the college kids with their self esteem. While not as funny as a chimp working a typewriter while smoking a cigarette, the video above of brave Ayumu doing his thing is pretty damn amazing. Get that chimp a stylus!

And if you want to be impressed, see the next video, showing the chimps memorizing the digits after the mere peek.

[AP]

Besides the requirement for always having "Good" follow "Can you hear me now"—which coincidentally is the only thing he's allowed to say—the guy should be in his mid-20s to late-30s, and should never be seen doing anything else besides testing the network. That means no interviews by the press (he's just a dude in a jumpsuit) and no appearances without a background of the Verizon Wireless testbed (no ribbon cutting ceremonies for supermarkets).

No "too pretty" guys either, which means that's one other side job we won't be able to take. [Consumerist]

The bomb was tested this week, dropped from a Tupolev Tu-160—the same bombers that have been buzzing around the UK borders in recent months. Footage released afterwards showed multi-story buildings crumpling, so it looks like the test went pretty well. [Telegraph]