Neowin.net

A new anti-assault device for women wards off potential assailants with an 80,000-volt electric shock.

Dubbed "exo-electric armor," the No-Contact Jacket looks like an ordinary fashionable women's coat. But an inner layer of conductive fiber carries a low-amp charge that delivers a nasty but non-lethal shock to anyone who messes with its wearer."It's kind of like sticking your finger in a wall socket," said Adam Whiton, one of its designers. "It hurts. If someone tries to grab you from behind, they get the full, hefty shock out of it. That's really painful."

Designed by Whiton, an industrial designer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Yolita Nugent, head designer at Advanced Research Apparel, the jacket is intended to be an alternative to handguns, pepper sprays and rape whistles. Unlike weapons and sprays, the jacket can't be grabbed from a woman and used against her. And it's not as lethal as a gun.

"We initially thought the idea was a little extreme," said Whiton. "But we got a lot of positive feedback. It defends, it protects and it gives confidence to women. By encasing the whole body in this electric fence, it forms a barrier that people just shouldn't enter into." The jacket is made from Aracon, a conductive fiber developed by DuPont, which is sandwiched between an inner rubber lining which protects the wearer from shocks and an outer layer of waterproof nylon.

Powered by a regular 9-volt battery, which builds a high-voltage but low-amp charge through a series of step-up circuits, the jacket uses technology similar to the circuitry in stun guns and bark-deterring dog collars. While the charge is enough to deliver a jolt, it won't kill anyone, Whiton said.

News source: Wired

Hello everybody,

I have a good and a bad news. The good news: I just installed a beta version of MSN Messenger 6 and let me tell you that it's a great update! The bad news: apparently, Microsoft did some things on purpose to avoid Messenger Plus! to work, which theorically means that this summer, the release of MSN Messenger 6 will sign the death certificate of Messenger Plus!. I'm going to try to work on a sollution to go around the problem but I'm not very optimistic.

I'll keep you informed,
Patchou

Well, Messenger Plus! was one of the very first add-ons done for Messenger so it's not like I was the one who took the ideas of others. And in any case, there's a lot of feature in Plus! you won't be able to find in any other add-on, for different technical reason.

I want to be clear on one point: I'm also 100% sure that Microsoft did that on purpose. It's not just "we updated and oh, too bad, your software can't work anymore".... they did some things especially to avoid Plus! to function.

For those who are interested in technical mambo jambo, here is the problem: the chat windows of Messenger 6 are now constitued of only one child window, a custom class made by Microsoft. It means that Plus! do not see any edit box, button or whatever other control. I don't know how they did it but it's like these control do not exist.

Still working on the problem, I'll keep you informed. What I'll probably do next week is release a small update so that, at least, Plus! disables itself correctly when ran with Messenger 6.

Patchou