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Submission + - Finger Bones Point to new Branch of Human Tree (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: A finger bone from Siberia now reveals a previously unknown group of ancient humans once existed there, one neither like us nor Neanderthals. Bizarrely, the DNA from these extinct Siberians seems unusually similar to that of Pacific Islanders from tropical Melanesia. The 30,000-year-old fossil was found in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia in 2008, a bone fragment that likely came from a fingertip of a young girl. It was discovered along with microblades (small stone blades used as tools), body ornaments of polished stone, and a molar shaped very differently from that of Neanderthals and modern humans, resembling that of much older human species, such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus. (The tooth and the finger bone apparently came from different members of the same population.) After an international team of researchers sequenced the DNA from 40 milligrams of bone they removed from the fossil, they found the "Denisovan" (deh-NEESE-so-van) shared a common origin with Neanderthals but was genetically distinct, apparently descending from the same ancestral population of Neanderthals that had separated earlier from the ancestors of modern humans. "It amazed me that we found this other extinct group of humans," evolutionary geneticist Svante Päbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience. "When we got this little finger bone from Siberia, I was totally expecting it to be either Neanderthal or modern human. When it was something else, that was totally surprising and shocking to me."

Submission + - Skype Suffers Massive Outage (dslreports.com) 1

Submitted by tudorl
tudorl writes: Several users have written in to note that Skype appears to be having a major outage at the moment, something confirmed by the significant volume of complaints on Twitter. Skype has yet to comment on the reason for the outage, or precisely how many customers are impacted, though their Twitter account confirms the problem. "Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype," says the company, adding that "we’re investigating, and we’re sorry for the disruption to your conversations."

Submission + - Microsoft Windows for ARM (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by randallman
randallman writes: According to this article an article on Bloomberg.com, Microsoft will be presenting an ARM version of Windows. "The new product will debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Microsoft's plans are confidential. The software would be tailored for battery-powered devices, such as tablet computers and other handhelds, the people said." Will Windows on ARM be able to compete with iOS, Andriod and the other operating systems already in the ARM handlheld market?
Classic Games (Games)

Lost Online Games From the Pre-Web Era 186

Posted by Soulskill from the you-are-no-match-for-my-imperial-starship dept.
harrymcc writes "Long before the Web came along, people were playing online games — on BBSes, on services such as Prodigy and CompuServe, and elsewhere. Gaming historian Benj Edwards has rounded up a dozen RPGs, MUDs, and other fascinating curiosities from the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s — and the cool part is: they're all playable on the Web today." What old games were good enough for you to watch them scroll by on your 300 baud modem?

Comment Re:So Long... Star Team (Score 3, Informative) 351

by Haelyn (#27850421) Attached to: Borland Being Purchased By Micro Focus

Other than frequent crashes, s l o w r e f r e s h e s, a Java client made by saboteurs, a couple hundred millions interface inconsistences(in most screens, pressing enter or escape do nothing), a braindead labeling schema, tectonic-speed checkouts, rude and intrusive dialogs that steal focus from whatever the fuck you're doing, the fucking JVM that eats oodles of RAM, the goddamn interface that suddenly frozes for a minute or ten, the motherfucking MPX, the metric fucktons of annoying as hell bugs that send your goddamn motherfucking productivity down the tubes, the incredibly shitty compare and merge tool and a couple other things that spring readily to mind no, there's nothing bad

Yes, I'm a CM and use Starteam daily for my sins. Why do you ask?

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