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Estonia, Google Help Cyberlocked Georgia

Georgia's news and government websites are under "permanent attack." They're turning to their Estonian neighbors -- and to Google's Blogspot service -- for help.

11.08.2008 16:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Apple Sells 60 Million iPhone Apps, Jobs Confirms Kill Switch

Steve Jobs tell the Wall Street Journal that there were 60 million downloads from the iPhone app store in the first month for a total of $30 million. Jobs also confirmed the remote kill switch. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."

11.08.2008 12:10:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Chrysler, Near Death, Readies for a Savior

The struggling automaker insists it isn't for sale, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

11.08.2008 11:55:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Hackers Vie to Win DefCon's Mystery Challenge

One of DefCon's most difficult contests is the Mystery Challenge. Teams compete to solve a series of riddles and cryptographic conundrums in order to win a black badge that grants them DefCon admission for life.

11.08.2008 11:17:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Card-Counting Whiz Challenges Yahoo With Facebook Football Fantasy

Jeff Ma, the MIT grad whose card-counting exploits were celebrated in a best-selling book and the recent movie "21," is launching a Facebook app for fantasy football. It's a crowded field dominated by Yahoo, but Ma reasons that fantasy sports are ideally suited for online social networks because they are typically formed by groups of friends.

11.08.2008 09:01:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Review: Fujitsu Notebook Blends Bland Styling, Bitchin' Performance

Fujitsu's Lifebook line is short on aesthetics, long on functionality. The latest addition to the family, the Lifebook A6120, follows this trend with lightweight, fleet-footed performance, and a hideous design not even a mother could love.

11.08.2008 06:30:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Top 10 Wired.com Reader City Photos, Decided by You

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This week's city photo contest was perhaps our most far-reaching contest yet, with entries from all over the world. These are the 10 top-rated submissions and they definitely put the urban back in urbane. Giant Ginkgo takes the gold with a voyeuristic view of a dense office building. Ginkgo will be receiving a subscription to Wired magazine and a digital picture frame.

Since there were so many great photos that we thought should've received more votes, we've also compiled a Wired.com Editor's Choice City Photo Gallery.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest is parties. We want you to prove that Wired.com readers know how to throw down on the dance floor. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

Cubicles
Submitted by Giant Ginkgo

Photographer's comment:

"Another evening at work, in Chicago's loop. If you take a close look, you might even see a superhero or two."

:

Beyoğlu Backstreets
Submitted by Elyse Franko

Photographer's comment:

"Four floors down from Istanbul's trendy (and expensive!) Leb-i Derya restaurant, the streets of the Beyoğlu district seem untouched by modernity."

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Crazy Sky Over Manhattan
Submitted by Patrick Bennett

Photographer's comment:

"Lower Manhattan under an ominous sky."

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The North End
Submitted by Jenny Pegg

Photographer's comment:

"Little Italy, Boston."

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Apartment Block
Submitted by Mark Wallace

Photographer's comment:

"A shot of an apartment block with an eerie sky. Taken in Newcastle Upon Tyne, U.K. Camera: Rolleiflex F."

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Doomsday L.A.
Submitted by Tyler Andersen

Photographer's comment:

"Nikon D80. 18-200mm Nikkor."

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Edinburgh
Submitted by C Ray Dancer

Photographer's comment:

"Edinburgh skyline from Calton Hill."

:

Jersey Noir
Submitted by Dana Underwood

Photographer's comment:

"Lower Manhattan on a rainy night, as viewed from across the Hudson in Jersey City."

:

Seattle, 3rd Avenue, 2004
Submitted by mooargyle

Photographer's comment:

"Taken with Nikkormat FT2 (film)."

:

Space Needle IR
Submitted by Derek Rak

Photographer's comment:

"Infrared picture of Space Needle in Seattle. Nikon D80, Hoya R72 @ f/8 30s."

11.08.2008 06:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Aug. 11, 1942: Actress + Piano Player = New Torpedo

1942: Hedy Lamarr, once described by German actor-director Max Reinhardt as "the most beautiful woman in Europe," receives a U.S. patent for a frequency-hopping device designed to guide radio-controlled torpedoes while making them more difficult to detect in the water. Holding the patent with her is George Antheil.

It's the incongruity of the patent holders with their invention, as much as the invention itself, that is remarkable. Lamarr, a Viennese-born movie actress, would eventually be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Antheil, an American avant-garde composer of orchestral music and opera, lived in Paris during the '20s and counted Ernest Hemingway and Igor Stravinsky among his friends.

Not exactly the kind of folks you picture tinkering with cutting-edge weapons of war. In fact, their device was way ahead of its time. Although it was patented at the height of World War II, frequency hopping relied on electronics technology that didn't exist yet. An updated version of the Lamarr-Antheil device finally appeared on U.S. Navy ships in 1962 (three years after their patent expired), and was first used during the Cuban missile crisis.

In 1942, though, Navy brass were unimpressed, dismissing the invention as too bulky to fit inside a torpedo. Antheil's arguments to the contrary were ignored, and he said later that comparing parts of the invention to the fundamental mechanism of a player piano in front of a bunch of naval officers had probably been a mistake.

"'My god,' I can see them saying, 'we shall put a player piano in a torpedo.'"

Lamarr and Antheil dropped the idea and turned to other things. In the end, their device was resurrected by engineers at Sylvania and proved to be one of the forerunners of spread-spectrum communications, which has applications in satellite systems and cellphone technology.

Lamarr was the quintessential beauty with brains. (She was contemptuous of many of her fellow actresses: "Any girl can be glamorous," she said. "All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.") She was mathematically gifted and became acquainted with the intricacies of modern weaponry while married to her first husband, an Austrian munitions manufacturer.

Having established herself acting in German films, Lamarr came in 1937 to the United States, where she signed with Louis B. Mayer and MGM. It was Mayer who got her to change her name, from Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler to Hedy Lamarr. She enjoyed a solid career in Hollywood, although other leading ladies of the day, such as Ingrid Bergman, eclipsed her as a box-office draw.

Then there was George Antheil.

Aside from his provocative compositions and eccentric skills as a pianist -- his jarring technique frequently agitated his audiences, to the point where he would lay a pistol on the piano as a warning to keep quiet -- Antheil was very much a Renaissance man. He wrote widely on a variety of subjects, penning a syndicated advice column to the lovelorn and writing about endocrinology for Esquire magazine. He also published a book on the subject, Every Man His Own Detective: A Study of Glandular Endocrinology.

During World War II -- which he had accurately predicted would start in Europe with the German invasion of Poland -- Antheil served as a war correspondent.

It was Antheil's knowledge of endocrinology, in fact, that began the Lamarr-Antheil collaboration. Aware of his work in the field, Lamarr approached him at a Hollywood dinner party to talk about the possibility of increasing the size of her breasts. The next thing you know -- bang! -- a revolutionary torpedo-guidance system. We'll just leave it there.

Source: Various

11.08.2008 06:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Wired.com Photo Contest: Parties

This week's photo contest shows how much trust we have in our readers. We want you to show us your best party photo -- no, not the Dungeons and Dragons kind. We know you're not going to give us some pointy-hat, wax-candled, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-caked snapshots. That's right, you're going to show us that -- counter to all expectation -- Wired.com readers know how to throw down.

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best city photo and vote for your favorite among the other submissions. The 10 highest-ranked photos will appear in a gallery on the Wired.com homepage. So go crash a white wedding, find a foam-filled dance floor or join a psychedelic parade. Just make it your best non-obscene answer to the question: What does a party look like?

The photo must be your own, and by submitting it you are giving us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit images that are relatively large, the ideal size being 800 to 1200 pixels or larger on the longest side. Please include a description of your photo, which may include exposure information, equipment used, etc.

We don't host the photos, so you'll have to upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, please provide a link to the image directly and not just to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Check it and make sure it ends with the image file name (XXXXXX.jpg).

Please bookmark this page and check back periodically over the next two weeks to vote on new submissions!

Also, check out the winner's galleries from our previous contests: Holga, Red, Self-Portrait, Night, Macro, Transportation and Black and White.

Vote on party photos submitted by other readers.

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your party photo.

Submit your party photo.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

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11.08.2008 03:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories

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Top 10 Wired.com City Photos, Decided by Us

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Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our city photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.

Our next twice-monthly photo contest is parties. We want you to prove that Wired.com readers know how to throw down on the dance floor. Check out the contest page for more information.

Left:

In The Medina -- Tunis
Submitted by quejaytee

Photographer's comment:

"In the Medina during Ramadan 2007.”

:

Southbound Red Line, Chicago
Submitted by Piper Kruse

Photographer's comment:

"I almost forgot to take the picture."

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Bangkok Trains Run Late
Submitted by Iggy

Photographer's comment:

"Bangkok train station."

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Bern from the Munster
Submitted by T Tourangeau

Photographer's comment:

"A Photograph of Bern, Switzerland from the top of the Munster Cathedral."

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The Singapore Flyer
Submitted by Joan Leong

Photographer's comment:

"The view of Singapore City from The Singapore Flyer, on the night the latter opened."

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Bike Parking at the Train Station, Haarlem, Amsterdam
Submitted by Eduardo Alomar

Photographer's comment:

"I spent some time in the Netherlands, mostly on a bike, the station in Amsterdam is even more packed."

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Worries Left Behind
Submitted by getinet

Photographer's comment:

"this is my city. this is my san francisco"

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Walking back home
Submitted by Sarasara

Photographer's comment:

"Took this one a while ago but I still love it. Still shows the craziness that is Tokyo."

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Vienna
Submitted by quejaytee

Photographer's comment:

None

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China Town off the Manhattan Bridge
Submitted by Andrew

Photographer's comment:

"China Town taken off the Manhattan bridge during a blizzard."

11.08.2008 03:00:00 - Wired: Top Stories