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Comment Makes sense, but then what wouldn't? (Score 2) 114

by Ptolemarch (#37341682) Attached to: Google Acquires Zagat

The acquisition makes sense, in that they obviously want ratings of restaurants (and other places) on Maps, and they've already changed tactics there once or twice. This'll pretty much take care of that problem.

I start to wonder, though, whether any acquisition by Google wouldn't "make sense". Their purchase of Motorola Mobility makes sense, too (though not to everyone). When you buy a consumer electronics company and a restaurant guide in consecutive months, what won't you buy? What acquisitions won't "make sense"?

Google buys Pacific Gas and Electric for $20B. Makes sense...

Submission + - Wicked Lasers Sells One-Watt Green Laser (wickedlasers.com)

Submitted by
cogent
cogent writes: "Wicked Lasers, famous for last year's 1000mW handheld blue laser, and infamous for its handling of six-month-long backorders, is now selling a green version. There are three power levels, each priced at $1/mW. Since the eye is far more sensitive to green than to blue, this is pretty much the state of the art in putting-dots-on-stuff technology. Wicked Lasers sent out an email, promising to handle backorders much better this time."
Amiga

Submission + - Blargh (davidhand.com)

Submitted by
cogent
cogent writes: "This is an announcement of the impending release of Blargh 0.35. You've been warned."
Firefox

Mozilla's Nightingale: Why Firefox Still Matters 260

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the greenspun's-tenth-browser dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla could be heading into an open confrontation with its rivals Google, Apple and Microsoft as browsers evolve into platforms. Mozilla's director of Firefox engineering John Nightingale gave some insight on the past, present, and future of Mozilla and outlined why Firefox still matters. While Mozilla is accused of copying features from other browsers, the company says the opposite is the case. Nightingale says that a future Firefox will give a user much more control over what he does on the Internet and that Mozilla plans on competing with the ideal of an open web against siloed environments." Chrome may have a nice interface and be a bit faster than Firefox's rendering engine, but if Firefox failed as a project I'd miss its Emacs-like extensibility (something all other browsers lack).
Patents

Patented Gestures Detailed 87

Posted by CmdrTaco from the all-hail-the-listicle dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Annalee Newitz wrote a fresh/interesting/informative piece on the io9 site about 10 Gestures that are already patented; unsurprisingly by the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Nintendo. But it's the other patent holders on the list that seem more interesting to me: Xerox, Lucent, Palm and lesser known Gesturetek have very broad patents for this tech."
Power

Submission + - New Life for Waste Heat from Crematoriums

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Justin Nobel writes that waste heat from a local crematory will soon heat water that will be piped to a nearby recreation center to heat the pool and the rest of the facility, saving about $23,000 a year in heating costs but some are asking if the process honors the dead or exploits them. “People are dying anyway, and many choose to be cremated," says Ceridwen John, the climate change manager in Redditch, England where the system is being installed. "Our options are to expel the waste heat into the atmosphere or to do something useful with it.” Redditch is acting in response to recent European Union legislation that requires crematories to reduce mercury emissions by 50 percent by 2013. Extracting the harmful mercury from dental fillings requires cooling flue gas from 800 degrees Centigrade to 150 degrees so the waste heat is pumped through a heat exchanger where it can be used to generate power. Will crematory heat ever become popular in the US? "Some grieving families like the idea of their loved ones 'giving back something'," says Tim Morris, chief executive of the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management. "I see that becoming predominant, and this research as an opportunity to do something innovative and respectful to the funeral mourning process.""
Open Source

Submission + - DOD Releases Open Source Development Guide (pcworld.com)

Submitted by
BrandiCook
BrandiCook writes: "The Department of Defense (DoD) has weighed in with its own support for open source. The DoD provides a nice analogy: “Imagine if only the manufacturer of a rifle were allowed to clean, fix, modify or upgrade that rifle. The military often finds itself in this position wit taxpayer funded, contractor developed software: one contractor with a monopoly on the knowledge of a military software system and control of the software source code.” Open technology offers increased agility and flexibility, fast delivery, increased innovation, reduced risk, lower cost and information assurance and security, the DoD asserts."

Submission + - Towel Day is upon us! (towelday.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Douglas Adams died about ten years ago and fans have not forgotten about the beloved humorous science fiction author. On Towel Day (May 25th), they carry their best towel and organize events all over the planet.
Examples: a gladiator towel fight (France), concerts (Denmark & Russia), a march against Vogon Violence (Brazil), a talk on science in the Hitchhiker’s Guide (UK), guided tours (Germany & UK), etc. People are gathering in parks and bars, and there’s a lot of drinking, movie viewing, flashmobbing, hitchiking and creative work going on.

A Canadian group recently ran a contest to select an Intergalactic Towel Day Ambassador for Earth. The winner was Ms Deena Roth of Tennessee, USA.
Education

Submission + - A time for a change in the PhD system (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "According to a series of articles published in Nature, the world has too many PhDs and not enough academic jobs to sustain them. Researchers point out that it is either time to make changes in the system or eliminate it altogether."

Submission + - Iran says it has detected second cyber attack (reuters.com)

Submitted by
fysdt
fysdt writes: "Iran has been targeted by a second computer virus in a "cyber war" waged by its enemies, its commander of civil defense said on Monday.

Gholamreza Jalali told the semi-official Mehr news agency that the new virus, called "Stars," was being investigated by experts."

Submission + - Obama is sung to about WikiLeaks (sfgate.com)

Submitted by xkr
xkr writes: Willie Brown, who was mayor of San Francisco and Speaker of the California State Assembly for 30 years, reports in today’s San Francisco Chronicle that Naomi Pitcairn got by the secret service in a private fundraiser to serenade President Obama, along with some other surprise protesters, with a long song protesting the imprisonment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the man accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks. The president signaled the secret service to let them finish singing, then asked Nancy Pelosi, “Is this your gift to me?”

Submission + - Is Anti-Matter Gravitationally Repulsive? (physorg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new paper attempts to show how CPT symmetry (charge, parity, and time) and Einstein's General Theory implies that matter and anti-matter should be gravitationally repulsive. The author (who unfortunately plugs his book in the article) believes that this could eliminate the need to postulate dark energy and possibly even dark matter.
Data Storage

Submission + - Self-Wiping Hard Drives From Toshiba (net-security.org)

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes: Toshiba announces a family of self-encrypting hard disk drives engineered to automatically invalidate protected data when connected to an unknown host. Data invalidation attributes can be set for multiple data ranges, enabling targeted data in the drive to be rendered indecipherable by command, on power cycle, or on host authentication error.

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