Why why why? We can only assume the guy's got loads of money and didn't care if the camera burst into a million sad little fragments.

But, no matter how crazy the idea seems, it actually came up with a useful fact: according to the perpetrator himself, the solid construction of the D3 meant that it survived with no problems. You can check out the video on YouTube if you don't believe us. Freaky. [YouTube]

Plans are also afoot to include biometric testing on the spectators when the games start, in the Summer of 2012—an estimated nine million people. The Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, John Armitt, claims that the system will be as easy as travelling on public transport (London-based readers will know, to quote esteemed philosophers Duran Duran, it's about as easy as a nuclear war.) "The gates will be like the Jubilee Line," he has been quoted as saying. "Put your hand down and it will open."

The biometric system is not the only hi-tech addition to the games' security. The policeman in charge of the games has gone on record as saying that London will need an additional half a million CCTV cameras to be put in place before the site opens for business. Yet again, the small matter of civil liberties is being brought into question.

While the head of Britain's main construction union, Ucatt, claims that he is fan-goo with the security system, "providing the ODA guarantee that the biometric data will not be passed on to any third parties and will be wiped once the project is complete," the ODA has not guaranteed that it will not pass on any information to government agencies.

How much of a logistical and planning nightmare this will be remains to be seen but, given the UK's success when it comes to building big things—the Millennium Dome, and Wembley for example—there is a strong possibility that we will be seeing the Olympic flame being lit at an opening ceremony some time in 2019. [Times Online]

Multi-Touch Trackpad
After a month of getting used to the Multi-Touch touchpad on the MacBook Air, I have to say that the Pro's touchpad is not quite as good in comparison. Comparatively, the Pro's touchpad is slightly narrower in width and a whole half of an inch shorter in height. (It's identical to the touchpad on the last Gen MBP's pad.) My initial thoughts were that the smaller touchpad would make using Multi-Touch more difficult, but that wasn't exactly the case.

Initially, in iPhoto, Multi-Touch on the smaller pad was more difficult, but after a few minutes we realized we were trying to use fingers in the same fashion as we did on the Air, where we had more room to gesture. For example, on the Air we skipped through photos with our fingers vertically but because of the Pro's size it's not comfortable to do this. So we placed our three fingers horizontally and it worked perfectly.

We came to the same conclusion with the rotate function. Instead of trying to move our rotate finger from the top of the touchpad to the bottom, we realized that by simply doing the rotate movement with more of a flick, iPhoto and Preview correctly rotated our photo to the next layout.

For testing zoom, we did a side-by-side comparison with the Air and found that the Pro's smaller touchpad actually zoomed into the same position as it did using the Air.

Screen
One thing to note though is that the LED matte screen on the version we got was less bright than the glossy screen on the MacBook Air. This might be the matte vs. glossy difference, or it might be that the MacBook Air's screen is just brighter.

Keyboard
The updated keyboard now has the F-key functions, same as the MacBook Air, and we think the additional Dashboard and Expose buttons use the F-keys nicely. We might not actually use buttons for these features but we think it's cool that the buttons are now clearly labeled.

Benchmark
The Penryn MacBook Pro has already been benched and compared to the previous generation MBP, and its clear it's about the same performance, per GHz. With that in mind we tested the new Penryn MBP agaisnt a year old Merom MBP and found a slight increase in speed. Also not surprising.

In a video encoding test, the Penryn MBP exported a 2.5min HD trailer in 11 minutes, where as the older Merom MBP took 13 min. (The basic config on the older machine included a 2.33GHz processor and 2GB of RAM; the Penryn had a 2.6GHz processor and 4GB of RAM, so this test is just a rough guide.) As noted in the temperature section, the Penryn did use much more of its power to accomplish the encoding which produced more heat. If you would like to see the Xbench results and compare it to your own machine you can check them out here.

Temperature
While idling, the Penryn MBP's CPU was running at 127 F—slightly cooler than the Merom MBP which had 133 F. But as for the actual experience, the new Penryn MBP felt much cooler on your lap than the older Merom.

While performing a video encode in iMovie with the new Penryn MBP CPU was operating at a temperature of 170 F; actually warmer than the older Merom MBP at 165 F. The increase in operating temperature during a video encode is likely because the more efficient machine is still doing more work every second at its higher clock rate.

Battery
So why do Apple's battery ratings look the same or lower in comparison to the last generation's Macbook Pro ratings? Simple: They made the tests harder. Again, according to numbers provided by Apple, for this and the last generation's MacBook Pro's battery life, you get about half an hour more due to the Penryn redesign, and half an hour more from the LED backlights. As with the AirBook ratings, your mileage will definitely vary. Downwards. But relative to the older books, these are more miserly.

Conclusion
Overall this MacBook Pro update is nothing amazing. The Multi-Touch touchpad and the Penryn processor are nice upgrades, but not necessarily something that a previous generation MacBook Pro user would feel an urgency to upgrade to. This update is more about efficiency than power gains.

In the first couple of years of an individual's life, the carbon isotope C-14, discovered in the 40s, forms transparent proteins, or lens crystallines, which enable sight. These remain unchanged—rather like dental enamel— for the rest of a person's life. By measuring the level of C-14 in the person's eye, and comparing it to records of levels in the atmosphere, the corpse can be dated.

The team, from the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, thinks that, as well as being a forensic breakthrough, the method will be able to tell us more about the behaviour of cancerous cells.

"We think that carbon dating of proteins and other molecules in the body could be used to study when certain tissues are generated or regenerated," says Associate Professor Niels Lynnerup from the Dept of Forensic Sciences in Denmark. "This could, for example, be applied to cancer tissue and cancer cells. Calculating the amount of C-14 in these tissues could tell us when the cancerous tissue is formed and this could further our understanding of such diseases." [Telegraph]

Then it'll feed just about every test pattern you can imagine into projectors, televisions, CRT displays, LCD and plasma. We're taking this little sucker to CES, and we'll be able to run displays through the DisplayMate obstacle course, as long they're hooked up to a PC. It's excellent, and well worth the $79 for the DisplayMate for Windows on USB. DisplayMate for Windows Video Edition on USB is $99, and DisplayMate Multimedia Edition on USB is $495. [DisplayMate]

When you search for the same keywords again, you'll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you've made.

The system only works within browser...for now...meaning that your opinions will not affect other users. Of course, if such a system were deployed in a widespread fashion, we're guessing Google would aggregate data trends to alter search results over time for better relevance.

And would such a system be better? What do we trust more, man or machine? Or sweatshops full of children adding "Nike.com" to every query result? [google via theregister]

It's been built by Nascar team owner, Gene Haas, in conjunction with Jacobs Engineering, and will be rented out to other teams to cover what I'm sure is the huge price tag. [Jalopnik]

In addition, they went and dropped the phone on carpet, tile and the concrete. The iPhone pulled through with barely any scratches thanks to the keys and just a little bit of scuffing on metal edges thanks to the concrete.

We cringed at all the tests, but this should give you a semi-accurate view of how the iPhone does after a couple months abuse.

iPhone Stress Tests [PCWorld via PCWorld]

The kit comes with everything you need to test your own blood type—just add a few drops of your blood and some water and in a matter of minutes you'll know whether your types are compatible, plus a laminating sheet so you can carry your results around with you—never know that might come in handy. A perfect gift for Valentine's Day because nothing says romance quite like spilling your own blood. –Dana Bushman

DIY Blood Typing Test Kit [Thinkgeek]

Volkswagon just opened a $38 million testing facility on Monday that can simulate the worst weather that green-loving bitch Mother Nature can throw at a car. Temperatures can range between -40 to 302 degrees F in conditions simulating direct sun exposure and humidity up to 95 percent saturation. What, no 100%? It doesn't rain? I can simulate that in my $200 shower! German engineering in the house, for real.

Other innovations include "upstream conditioning boxes", or modular storage units that allow VW to test up to 50 cars, twice a day. The place looks like a really nice storage rental facility. I wonder if they'll test my futon next. Hit the jump for more pictures.

– Mark Wilson

VW Opens New Climate Center [autoblog]

Maybe these other HDMI-toting cards will soon get the stamp of approval from the ATC, too. Meanwhile, all these cards are going to be a welcome sight to those who want to use a computer as a source in their home theaters, running an HDMI cable from PC to receiver or screen. Here's to HDMI: making things easier, carrying both 5.1 audio and 1080p video right where they need to be, all on one cable. – Charlie White

World's First HDMI-Certified Graphics Card [Bios Magazine]

"So, if you like the Slingbox and want to get your hands a bit dirty with us on upcoming beta programs, sign up now. As you'll notice in the application, it is open to virtually anyone regardless of race, creed, sex, or operating system. We will use this as an ongoing program, and will pull people from the pool as needed. So you could hear from us next week, next month, or next year, depending on our needs at the time. For those of you who signed up to the Mac beta program, you might want to consider signing up here as well. There won't be any crossover, but it could get you slotted in for some future stuff."

Sling Expands Beta Program [Zatz Not Funny]

"Sources at equipment makers stated that KYEC has already started testing engineering chipset samples for PS3," writes Digitimes, and this essentially means that they're ramping up for full production.

KYEC said to benefit from ramping PS3 chip testing orders from 2Q06 [DigiTimes via TheInquirer]