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Comments: 2 +-   Amazon Scores Gift-Delivery Patent on Monday November 23, @10:08AM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 23, @10:08AM
from the only-can-deliver-coal dept.
patents
theodp writes "In May, the USPTO rejected Amazon.com's patent claims (pdf) for its Method and System for Placing a Purchase Order Via a Communications Network (a 1-Click spin-off). At the time, a USPTO Examiner cited Bilski, explaining that elements of CEO Jeff Bezos' gift delivery invention 'may be performed largely within the human mind,' coming to essentially the same conclusion a NY Post reporter arrived at in 2002. But Amazon's attorneys have worked their legal wordsmithing magic (pdf), convincing the USPTO that 'obtaining delivery information for a gift from one or more information sources other than the gift giver and recipient' is indeed novel and patentable. A Notice of Allowance for the patent was mailed to Amazon on November 17th, just in time for Holiday Season injunction-giving!"
Read More... 2 comments story

Comments: 35 +-   William Gibson's Neuromancer Staged With Porn Star on Monday November 23, @09:27AM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 23, @09:27AM
from the are-you-familiar-with-her-work dept.
scifi
destinyland writes "Sunday night saw a reading of the William Gibson's classic cyberpunk novel featuring porn star Sasha Grey at a New York art museum, along with sculpture-props simulating virtual reality. Artist Brody Condon promised to combine "Gibson's 1980s dystopian techno-fetishism with early twentieth-century abstraction," but the editor of H+ magazine challenges that description. "In a 1993 interview, Gibson himself told me:'I think my world looks dystopian if you're a middle class white guy doing reasonably well in 1993... There are so many places in the world today that are so much crappier than anything I'm writing about.'" And earlier this month William Gibson shared his response to a blog post about the event. "Gol' dang! It's news to me!""
Read More... 35 comments story

Comments: 79 +-   Opera Closes China Loophole; Reinstates Censorship on Monday November 23, @08:47AM

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday November 23, @08:47AM
from the because-they-can dept.
censorship
ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Coming hot on the heels of Microsoft's censoring of Chinese search results, browser-maker Opera has become the latest company to joyfully contribute to prosperous growth of the Great Firewall of China. For speed and convenience, the mobile phone-based 'Opera Mini' browser receives formatted web pages via Opera's own line of proxy servers. These unfiltered proxies gave Opera's Chinese users rare unfettered access to the wider web. However, this loophole has now been closed, with Chinese users now being directed to 'upgrade' to 'Opera Mini China,' which closes this loophole, returning them to the bosom of party censorship, and Opera to the favor of the Chinese Government. Truly; 'To Get Rich Is Glorious.'"
Read More... 79 comments story

Comments: 229 +-   Murdoch-Microsoft Deal In the Works on Monday November 23, @07:53AM

Posted by timothy on Monday November 23, @07:53AM
from the exploding-cuban-cigar dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is in discussions to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, to 'de-index' its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry. Microsoft is desperate to catch Google in search, and, after five years and hundreds of millions of dollars of losses, Bing, launched in June, marks its most ambitious attempt yet. Microsoft's interest is being interpreted as a direct assault on Google because it puts pressure on the search engine to start paying for content. 'This is all about Microsoft hurting Google's margins,' said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan. 'It's easy to believe that [Microsoft] may spew senseless riches into publishers' pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google,' writes Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing. 'Murdoch could be wringing cash out of a market he knows is doomed to implosion or assimilation. And he doesn't even have to be an evil genius, either; he just has to be smarter than Steve Ballmer.'"
Read More... 229 comments story

Comments: 59 +-   Australia's CSIRO To Launch CPU-GPU Supercomputer on Monday November 23, @04:40AM

Posted by timothy on Monday November 23, @04:40AM
from the ready-for-duke-nuken-forever dept.
supercomputing
bennyboy64 contributes this excerpt from CRN Australia: "The CSIRO will this week launch a new supercomputer which uses a cluster of GPUs [pictures] to gain a processing capacity that competes with supercomputers over twice its size. The supercomputer is one of the world's first to combine traditional CPUs with the more powerful GPUs. It features 100 Intel Xeon CPU chips and 50 Tesla GPU chips, connected to an 80 Terabyte Hitachi Data Systems network attached storage unit. CSIRO science applications have already seen 10-100x speedups on NVIDIA GPUs."
Read More... 59 comments story

Comments: 58 +-   Modded UX490 UMPC Shows Off Years of Community Development on Monday November 23, @01:27AM

Posted by timothy on Monday November 23, @01:27AM
from the soldered-on-a-new-warranty-too dept.
handheld
An anonymous reader writes "The community at www.MicroPCTalk.com have spent the last few years devising all sorts of mods and tweaks for the Sony VAIO UX-series UMPC. Now they've thrown nearly all of their major breakthroughs into one machine. Using the latest UX model (UX490) as the base, the original SSD has been swapped for a speedy 128GB SSD, the CPU has been unsoldered from the mobo and replaced with a Core 2 Duo U7700 (making this probably the smallest computer to use said CPU). The original EDGE module has been removed, and carefully put in its place is an E169 Huawei terminal which provides up to 7.2mbps 3G (HSDPA), voice and texting. On top of this, the unit quad-boots Mac OS X, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP (and the Huawei terminal works under Mac OS X as well)."
Read More... 58 comments story

Comments: 182 +-   After 35 Years, Another Message Sent From Arecibo on Sunday November 22, @10:11PM

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 22, @10:11PM
from the but-that's-an-aphone dept.
communications
0xdeadbeef writes "Two weeks ago, MIT artist-in-residence Joe Davis used the Arecibo radio telescope to send a message to three stars in honor of the 35th anniversary of the famous Drake-Sagan transmission to M13 in 1974. It was apparently allowed but not endorsed by the director of the facility, and used a jury-rigged signal source on what will now be known as the 'coolest iPhone in the world.' The message encoded a DNA sequence, but no word yet on whether it disabled any alien shields. You can get the low-down on Centauri Dreams: Part 1, Part 2."
Read More... 182 comments story

Comments: 454 +-   Is That Sushi Hazardous To Your Health? on Sunday November 22, @07:18PM

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 22, @07:18PM
from the these-tiny-worms-sure-look-healthy dept.
earth
pdclarry writes "A recent study by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University found that a piece of tuna sushi may not be tuna at all: 'A piece of tuna sushi has the potential to be an endangered species, a fraud or a health hazard,' wrote the authors. 'All three of these cases were uncovered in this study.' The study, published in PLoS ONE examined 68 samples of tuna sushi purchased from 31 restaurants in Manhattan (New York City) and Denver, Colorado. Some of these were from endangered species, others were not as labeled, and some were not tuna at all. Of these last, five samples labeled as 'white tuna' were from a toxic fish, Escolar, which is a gempylid species banned for sale in Italy and Japan due to health concerns. 'It can cause gastrointestinal symptoms ranging from mild and rapid passage of oily yellow or orange droplets, to severe diarrhea with nausea and vomiting. The milder symptoms have been referred to as keriorrhea [i.e. flow of wax in Greek].' Fraud in sushi is not new; Slashdot also reported study on mislabeling in 2008. This new study shows that some sushi can actually make you sick. The study was also covered by Wired."
Read More... 454 comments story

Comments: 59 +-   Light Resonators Used To Move Nano-Sized Objects on Sunday November 22, @06:03PM

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 22, @06:03PM
from the tiny-stuff dept.
science
ElectricSteve writes "Scientists at Cornell University report they can now use a light beam carrying a single milliwatt of power to move objects and even change the optical properties of silicon from opaque to transparent at the nanometric scale." As the article says, such an advancement "could prove very useful for the future of micro-electromechanical (MEMS) and micro-optomechanical (MOMS) systems."
Read More... 59 comments story

Comments: 396 +-   Simple, Free Web Remote PC Control? on Sunday November 22, @04:42PM

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 22, @04:42PM
from the remote-viewing-the-cia-way dept.
gui
MeatballCB writes "Hey folks. Being the 'technical' guy of the family, I often get calls from friends and family members when they're having PC issues. Most of these folks are not technical, so trying to troubleshoot problems over the phone can often be a challenge. Anyone know of a simple-to-use and (preferably) free service that would allow for remote viewing/control of their PCs? I know there's WebEx and GoToMyPC, but I hate to pay for something I'd use once every two months. I also know about VNC, but trying to walk someone through opening up ports on their router that thinks their Internet is broken when their homepage gets changed is not realistic. Anyone know of anything that would be easy to set up and use?"
Read More... 396 comments story
The Laptop Steering Wheel Desk
Tech Workers Go Nude For Charity Calendar
Naughty Elf Ends Santa Mail Program
Parents Fight Legal Battle For Less Homework
Poll Firefox's Awesome Bar...
Lives Up To Its Name
Is Sometimes Useful
Gets In the Way More Than Helps
Is Turned Off
Conflicts With My Porn Habit
Facilitates My Porn Habit
I Never Use Firefox
Once Saved Me From Harming Myself Or Others
[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:219 | Votes:15047

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