Yesterday at the Naval Service Warfare Center, a new type of gun was shown off.  This gun uses no gunpower yet packs athedetonation power equivalent to that of a missle. Unlike a missile however, it's cheap. It's less than a $1000USD a shot.  Sounds like the Holy Grail of weapons.  

The new gun is in fact a railgun.  Apart from having the word gun in its name, a railgun does not share that much in common with convential guns.  A railgun has a barrel, shure, but the method of propulsion is a magnetic field, causing by sending a massive surge of electricity through two rails.  The force created is so great that planned railguns will be able to shoot projectiles at speeds of Mach 7 some 95 miles into the air, giving ships a 200-250 nautical mile range, far surpassing most conventional weapons.  The force of the impact with the Earth is so great that it makes the use of an explosive charge unneccesary. 

This is the gun that the Navy is close to adding to their arsenal.  A 8M joule prototype was shown yesterday.  The company who made it(General Atomics) however hopes to have a 64M joule model when they're done.  The Navy hopes to add it to their ships 2020.

The Fredericksburg 

The infamous HD-DVD cracking wizard, muslix64, is at it again... this time he's working on cracking Blu-ray. With the help of another DRM breaking expert, Janvitos, muslix64 claims he has broken the AACS encryption of Blu-ray. Apparently, they used the exact same plain-text key method to crack the disc format, although they have not yet with BD+ copy-protection. No verification of their breakthrough has been posted yet, though given the fact that muslix took down HD-DVD, I think the scenario is fairly plausible. Doom9 link.

A 25 year old Philadelphia resident, Mickey DeLorenzo, has reported a 9-lb drop in body weight, and a 2% drop in body fat percentage after adding just 30 minutes of Wii Sports playing a day to his daily routine for 6 weeks. He didn't alter his eating habits in any way. All he did was play his Wii for 6 weeks, and it resulted in a visible health increase. According to The American Council on Exercise, this small change in his daily routine took him from the 'average' exercise level to the 'fitness' level.

So which sub-game is best? According to DeLorenzo, boxing has the most effect. He burned an average of 125 kCals in a 15 minute playing period during his boxing bouts. Tennis came in second at 92 kCal/15 minutes and boxing was third at 77 kCal/15 minutes.

There is something to note, however, if it wasn't already obvious. During these playing periods he made a real effort to be active. In other words, he used full body motion: he moved his feet, did his best to mimic real sports motions, etc. If you try to lose weight by playing Wii Sports while lying down on a couch, your efforts will almost certainly be unsuccessful.

So if you're looking to lose some weight and have fun at the same time, you might want to try out Wii Sports with an active playing style. Maybe you'll see some impressive results just as Mickey DeLorenzo did.