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Books

Drupal 6 Attachment Views 35

Trevor James writes "Green's book is without a doubt the definitive practical guide to using the Views 2.x module in Drupal 6, and to creating complex and dynamic page, block, and attachment-based views for your Drupal site. One big plus to this book's structure is that Green uses a real "live" production website project as a guide (he states early on that he was working on the site build for the client while writing the book and that the client approved of using the site build as the book's main example) — all of the chapters and subsequent tutorials are focused on building a site for a company that specializes in hiring out contractors and subcontractors. It's nice to see real-world examples being used in a computer tutorial book, especially one focused on Drupal and Drupal Views. The data Green is accessing is real data and this helps to engage the reader and show the multitude of real situations that a developer will get involved with when developing Drupal Views." Read on for the rest of Trevor's review.

Comment 7/11 (Score 1) 721

The 7/11 mini marts in Los Angeles, California have been doing this for over a decade to repel gangs and homeless persons. The biggest problem is that over time the "undesireables" have beecome desensitized to the classical music and have aquired an immunity to it.

Image

Joomla! 1.5 Development Cookbook 32

Sparky Anduril writes "In Joomla! 1.5 Development Cookbook James Kennard has written an accessible and easy-to-read book to help anyone who is writing (or plans to write) extensions for the popular open source content management system, Joomla! (specifically for version 1.5). It is available as a paperback or PDF eBook." Read on for the rest of Jonathan's review.
Medicine

Sitting Down Too Long Is Bad Even If You Exercise 376

Ant tips the week-old news that sitting down too much is not good for you, even if you are otherwise fit. A blog at the LA Times reports a followup from Swedish exercise experts: they propose "establishing a new way of thinking about sedentary behavior. They suggest abolishing 'sedentary behavior' as a synonym for not exercising. Instead, sedentary time should be defined as 'muscular inactivity' to distinguish it from not doing any exercise at all." These experts warn that the excessively sedentary are running serious health risks, irrespective of how much exercise they get when they're not plonked behind a desk or lying on a sofa.
Software

Drupal's Dries Buytaert On Drupal 7 55

itwbennett writes "The Drupal community has been working on Drupal 7 for two years, and there are 'hundreds of changes' to show for it, says Drupal creator Dries Buytaert in an interview with ITworld's Esther Schindler on the occasion of Drupal 7 going into Alpha test this week. Most notable for end users are 'some massive usability improvements,' says Buytaert, while site builders will see the greatest changes in the Drupal Content Construction Kit (CCK), which has been moved into the Drupal core. But one thing that hasn't changed is the not-so-easy upgrade path. 'The upgrade path for a Drupal site has never been really easy, to be honest,' Buytaert says. 'We do break backwards compatibility. It's a little bit painful because it requires all of the contributed modules — and there's 4,000-5,000 of them — to make changes.' But Buytaert doesn't think that's all bad. 'Innovation is key. Backwards compatibility limits innovation,' Buytaert contends. 'The rule we have is: We'll break the API if it makes a better API, and if it allows good innovation and progress to be made. Also: The second rule is that we'll never break people's data. We'll always provide an upgrade path for the data.'"
Movies

James Cameron On How Avatar Technology Could Keep Actors Young 404

Suki I writes "An article at EW discusses another use for Avatar's sophisticated motion-capture technology: 'Sure, it's terrific for turning human actors into big blue alien Na'vis. But the photorealistic CGI technology James Cameron perfected for Avatar could easily be used for other, even more mind-blowing purposes — like, say, bringing Humphrey Bogart back to life, or making Clint Eastwood look 35 again. "How about another Dirty Harry movie where Clint looks the way he looked in 1975?" Cameron suggests. "Or a James Bond movie where Sean Connery looks the way he did in Doctor No? How cool would that be?"' The article goes on to quote Cameron as saying you would still need actors to play the roles, and that an ethical line needs to be drawn somewhere."
Medicine

Scientists Turn Wood Into Bone 118

Bob the Super Hamster writes "The BBC is reporting that scientists in Italy have developed a method to convert rattan wood into a bone-like substance. The bone replacement is currently being tested in sheep, where, when inserted into the area of a fracture, it joins with the existing bone and eventually fuses. Unlike other bone replacements, this one actually has load-bearing ability and also naturally fuses with the existing bone. Additionally, since it is porous like real bone, nerves and blood vessels can pass through it."
Science

Making a Liquid Invisibility Cloak 93

Researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai, China are proposing a method which could lead to the first soft, tunable metamaterial, the key ingredient in building an invisibility device. "The fluid proposed by Ji-Ping Huang of Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and colleagues, contains magnetite balls 10 nanometers in diameter, coated with a 5-nanometer-thick layer of silver, possibly with polymer chains attached to keep them from clumping. In the absence of a magnetic field, such nanoparticles would simply float around in the water, but if a field were introduced, the particles would self-assemble into chains whose lengths depend on the strength of the field, and which can also attract one another to form thicker columns. The chains and columns would lie along the direction of the magnetic field. If they were oriented vertically in a pool of water, light striking the surface would refract negatively – bent in way that no natural material can manage."

Comment Food is literally cheaper than dirt in the US (Score 1) 86

You can get a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs at Walmart for $2.50. A typical beggar could earn that in less than an hour of begging in front of the store. Here in the US, we have subsidized farms, put entire villages out of business, and monopolized entire agricultural sectors so that food can be extremely cheap. Even the poorest of the poor can afford a meal if they are willing to work or beg a little.

Furthermore, anything small enough to shop-lift is most likely not going to be nutritious.

Linux

Happy Birthday, Linus 376

Glyn Moody writes "Today is the birthday of Linus. Just under 19 years ago, on the first day the shops in Helsinki were open after the holidays, Linus rushed out and spent all his Christmas and birthday money on his first PC: a DX33 80386, with 4 Megs of RAM, no co-processor, and a 40 Megabyte hard disc. Today, the kernel he wrote on that system powers 90% of the fastest supercomputers, and is starting to find its way into more and more smartphones — not to mention everything in between. What would the world look like had he spent his money on something else?"
GNU is Not Unix

GNU Emacs Switches From CVS To Bazaar 198

kfogel writes "GNU Emacs, one of the oldest continuously developed free software projects around, has switched from CVS to Bazaar. Emacs's first recorded version-control commits date from August, 1985. Eight years later, in 1993, it moved to CVS. Sixteen years later, it is switching to Bazaar, its first time in a decentralized version control system. If this pattern holds, GNU Emacs will be in Bazaar for at least thirty-two years ..."

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