An anonymous reader writes "Computers take too long to boot up, and it doesn't make sense to me. Mine takes around 30 seconds; it is double or triple that for some of my friends' computers that I have used. Why can't a computer turn on and off in an instant just like a TV? 99% of boots, my computer is doing the exact same thing. Then I get to Windows XP with maybe 50 to 75 megs of stuff in memory. My computer should be smart enough to just load that junk into memory and go with it. You could put this data right at the very start of the hard drive. Whenever you do something with the computer that actually changes what happens during boot, it could go through the real booting process and save the results. Doing this would also give you instant restarts. You just hit your restart button, the computer reloads the memory image, and you can be working again. Or am I wrong? Why haven't companies made it a priority to have 'instant on' desktops and laptops?"

DECS writes "If anyone is still wondering why Apple does not encourage its internal developers to maintain blogs, Roughly Drafted is carrying an example of how the good intentions behind sharing information can result in unpleasant, unintended consequences." From the article: "As customers, we all want to know what's going to happen in the future, but we will also turn around and beat developers with the very information they share with us. One of the terms we hit them with is, of course, vaporware. The other thing about blogs is that written text fails to capture the full range of rich human communication. It's easy to take more offense than is necessary to the wrong choice of words. Minor and casual criticism can quickly ferment into a difficult stink, and attempts to burry it can often just make it worse. Blog entries are like emails that cc: to the entire world."

LadyDarth writes "During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's new lockdown features are so capable and thorough that he was comfortable with his own seven-year-old son using Vista without antivirus software installed."

Daveydweeb writes, "The accuracy of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, came into question again when a long-standing article on 'NPA personality theory' was confirmed to be a hoax. Not only had the article survived at Wikipedia for the better part of a year, but it had even been listed as a 'Good Article,' supposedly placing it in the top 0.2-0.3% of all Wikipedia articles — despite being almost entirely written by the creator of the theory himself."

Wellington Grey asks: "Often during our heated political discussions on slashdot, several people will mention their desire to leave the country. As an American living in England, which sees much the same problems as the US, I often wonder where these Americans would go. So, I pose two questions for the restless: 1) Where would you live, if not in America and 2) What's stopping you from going?"

PreacherTom writes "Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora penned a note saying that Apple is readying a music phone — and a separate, combination video and music phone. He expects Apple to introduce the devices in January at Macworld, a conference for Mac enthusiasts where the company typically debuts new products. At least one of the phones will offer Wi-Fi connectivity and both will become available in the March quarter of 2007 ... but will anyone care?"

mattnyc99 writes "In its new cover story, 'The Truth About Hydrogen,' Popular Mechanics magazine takes a close look at how close the United States is to powering its homes, cars and economy with hydrogen — including a calculation of where all the hydrogen would come from to meet President Bush's demands. Interesting that they break down the future of hydropower not by its advantages but by its challenges: production, storage, distribution and use."

Alien54 writes "Cornell University researchers are reporting what appears to be a statistically significant relationship between autism rates and television watching by children under the age of 3. The researchers studied autism incidence in California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington state. They found that as cable television became common in California and Pennsylvania beginning around 1980, childhood autism rose more in the counties that had cable than in the counties that did not. They further found that in all the Western states, the more time toddlers spent in front of the television, the more likely they were to exhibit symptoms of autism disorders. The Cornell study represents a potential bombshell in the autism debate."

Luke Hachmeister writes to mention a light piece at GideonTech on some of the truly terrible portrayals of technology in film. From Hackers to AntiTrust, Hollywoood just can't stick to reality. From the article: "Harrison Ford plays a security expert at a bank. He falls prey to a scheme to steal money for a gang that has taken hostage of his family. The film tried very hard to keep it a rollercoaster ride of thrills. From the beginning, you have Harrison Ford typing furiously to stop a hacker by writing new firewall rules. At least this time, these rules didn't float around in a rainbow of colors ala Hackers. What really puts Firewall at the top of the list, is the dumbest and non-believable use of an iPod to date. This is 2006, not 1995, you can't just make stuff up like this anymore. In the middle of the film, Harrison Ford happens to not only be a security expert, but an Apple hardware developer too."

An anonymous reader wrote to mention a TechWorld story about Windows Vista. According to the Gartner Group, Windows Vista is likely to be the last of its kind. "The problem is that the operating system's increasing complexity is making it ever more difficult for enterprises to implement migrations, and impossible for Microsoft to release regular updates. This, in turn, stands in the way of Microsoft's efforts to push companies to subscription licensing. The answer, according to Gartner, is virtualization, which is built into newer chips from Intel and AMD, and has become mainstream for x86 servers through the efforts of VMware." Speaking of Vista, C|Net reports that a new release candidate is on the way. The average tester should expect it by the end of September.

An anonymous reader writes "Flickr and Second Life fans seem to have collided head-on over a little known policy on Flickr that 'delists' an account from public areas, including search, when more than half of your content is non-photographic in nature. Flickr stated that most people searching the site are looking for photographic content so the restriction is in place merely to keep the site focused on its original intent. From the article: 'As a result, many screenshots on Flickr are AWOL — at least as far as the general public is concerned. That's angering and confusing some of the people who carefully stage scenes in the popular virtual world and religiously post the results online.'"

The winner of the contest is Alex Bendiken. He will receive a new laptop as well as bragging rights as the creator of the new look of Slashdot. You can see his winning design in a near complete form now. Feel free to comment on any compatibility issues. We plan to take this live in the next few days. There will undoubtedly be a few minor glitches, but please submit bug reports and we'll sort it out as fast as possible. Also congratulations to Peter Lada, our runner up. He gets $250 credit at ThinkGeek. Thanks to everyone who participated- it was a lot of fun.

Hotwater Mountain writes "eWeek has a story about a gaping security flaw in the latest versions of Symantec's anti-virus software suite that could put millions of users at risk of a debilitating worm attack. According to eEye Digital Security, the company that discovered the flaw, the vulnerability could be exploited by remote hackers to take complete control of the target machine 'without any user action.'"

navalynt writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Energy has filed a patent for hydrogen fuel balls. From the article 'The proposed glass microspheres would each be a few millionths of a metre (microns) wide with a hollow center containing specks of palladium. The walls of each sphere would also have pores just a few ten-billionths of a metre in diameter.' They are supposedly safe and small enough to be pumped into a fuel tank in the same manner as gasoline."

An anonymous reader writes "A recent post on the CERIAS weblogs examines the risks associated with reporting vulnerabilities. In the end, he advises that the risks (in one situation, at least) were almost not worth the trouble, and gives advice on how to stay out of trouble. Is it worth it to report vulnerabilities despite the risks, or is the chilling effect demonstrated here too much?"