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Visit the Site of the World's Worst Industrial Disaster

25 years ago a methyl isocyanate gas leak from the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India killed at least 3,787 with some putting the death toll as high as 10,000. Luckily the Indian government has realized that a place this special shouldn't be off limits to tourists so they'd like you to gather the kids and come on down for a visit. The doors have been locked since the disaster out of concerns over contamination and just common decency, but that is about to change for one week only. The man with the worst job title in the history of job titles, gas tragedy minister Babulal Gaur said, "The government hopes that allowing people to visit the site would satisfy their curiosity and remove misconceptions that things at the plant have been kept under wraps. I have visited the site numerous times and handled the waste on several occasions. There's nothing to worry about."

Submission + - Why Ubuntu Is Failing the Trade-Off (opensourcenerd.com)

fsufitch writes: Kevin Maney wrote his new book "Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't", and came to NYU-Poly to lecture the engineering students there of the basics of his book. His theory of the trade-off between convenience and fidelity of a product or idea casts a light on the open source movement, and what kind of innovation Ubuntu in particular needs in order to be known and be popular.

Submission + - OpenMoko inc announces Wikipedia WikiReader (thewikireader.com)

ChristW writes: OpenMoko inc, of FreeRunner fame, proudly presents its new product: The WikiReader. It's a small form factor device that needs no internet connection to show Wikipedia articles. The articles are stored on an internal, removable uSD card. Needs 2 AAA batteries to run. The company claims that it can run up to a year on one set of batteries.

Comment Re:I like Bank of America's approach (Score 1) 140

ATMs have been in place since when? The 70s? But ATMs only give you money. They don't let you pay anything.

You are misinformed. US ATMs accept cash and check deposits, allow transfers between accounts, and sell stamps. Some may even let you pay bills or order cashier's checks.

If you just require banks to come up with tighter security, what will happen? People will see that they have to jump through even more hoops when doing online banking and they will ask why, which the banks will gladly blame on the new directive (whether it's from the EU or the US government...), and shift the blame of the hassle on government and the "nanny state" that tries to patronize us and protect us from reality and yaddayadda. Nobody will explain that these "hardships" are there to protect your money from being stolen.

Which is still a better outcome than that they DON'T tighten security so that they don't have to do any of that pesky explaining.

The market *won't* motivate banks to do it on their own, not for a very, very long time... because people don't actually understand the risks, so they don't see a value in protecting themselves against them. It's that tricky "perfect information" component of Adam Smith's triad.

The Internet

Submission + - BKO: Boot Linux from HTTP (kernel.org)

rvalles writes: "BKO provides a way to boot Linux with a minimal client-side requirements. All that's needed is an Internet connection and a minimal (less than 64KB) client-side tool which can be installed on usb drives, cdrom or floppy disks. It downloads the next stage via HTTP and brings up the whole system from the Internet.

It currently offers a few LiveCDs, distribution installers, and some tools like memtest86."

Submission + - Dell debuts Ubuntu Moblin Remix on Mini 10 (dell.com)

dcherryholmes writes: "Today Dell made available The Ubuntu Moblin Remix on the Dell Mini 10. The release of the Ubuntu Moblin Remix is good news for those of us who liked the speed and UI of Moblin, but found the size of the repos and, perhaps, the rpm package management to be less desirable."
Google

Submission + - Bank sues Google for identity of Gmail user (theregister.co.uk) 1

Warlord88 writes: "A US bank is suing Google for the identity of a Gmail user after a bank employee accidentally sent the user a file that included the names, addresses, tax IDs, and loan info for more than 1,300 of the bank's customers.

After a failed attempt to recall the email, the employee sent a second note to that wrong address, requesting that the confidential email be deleted before it was opened. There was no response, so the bank contacted Google to determine what could be done to ensure that the confidential info remained confidential. According to the court papers, Google would not provide information on the account unless it received a subpoena or "other appropriate legal process." So the bank sued.

In recent weeks, Google has also received court orders to reveal the identities of those behind stories published in an online newspapers based in the Turks and Caicos Islands and of a blogger who castigated a model on a blog entitled "Skanks in NYC." ®"

Submission + - Motorola Launches Android Phone (recombu.com) 1

andylim writes: "Yesterday Motorola launched its first Android phone, the Dext, which focusses on consolidating information via widgets. Recombu.com spoke to Motorola's director of international marketing, Tom Satchwell, who stated that the Dext is the "best and most efficient way of communicating out there... this phone rocks". When asked about Motorola's recent difficulties and lack of presence in the market Satchwell added that "Motorola's period of consolidation is done.. it's no longer about creating one hero phone and it's critical for the Dext and subsequent Motorola handsets to do well.""

Submission + - Motorola unveils Open Source Android phone and Soc (ostatic.com)

ruphus13 writes: "Motorola announced their Android handsets today, along with a 'socially aware' application layer called MotoBlur. The Motorola Cliq is expected in a few weeks. From the post, "Dr. Sanjay K. Jha, Co-CEO of Motorola and CEO of the company's Mobile Devices division, unveiled Motorola's Android platform play. Motorola is going to be placing large bets on the open source operating system over the coming years, but is coming out of the gate with just two Android phones...It will arrive before the holidays. Key to both of the phones, and key to Motorola's overall Android strategy is a new interface and application layer called MotoBlur. It's focused on "a single stream" for social networking features, software updates, messages, syncing, e-mails, videos, photos, and more...The Cliq phone has a 5-megapixel camera, slide-out keyboard, 24 frame-per-second video capabilities, GPS, a headphone jack, an advanced browser from Google, integrated Exchange service, and Google roaming services including Google voice search, access to maps, Google calendar, and more. It also provides one-click access to Android Market and the thousands of Android applications there."

Comment Could this explain memory loss in old age? (Score 1) 184

If brain were indeed made of memoristors and these had finite write cycles, could it be that once we have reached these write cycles, the memoristors stop of being any use. Ofcourse the brain would try to minimise dmage to memoristors by spreading the data around but you will eventually reach a limit and eventually the same memoristors would be overwritten again and again, until eventually you start reaching the write limit for some of these, which might explain why we start losing memory after reaching 30s or so.

I suppose the way to check it, potentially, would be to see if people who have impaired senses (e.g. someone who is deaf or dumb etc.) show better brain functions in older age, as they didn't have that much data to store as someone who was getting data from all the senses.
PlayStation (Games)

Activision CEO Warns Sony That the PS3 Needs a Price Cut 149

Bobby Kotick, President and CEO of Activision, one of the largest game companies in the world, has come out with a none-too-subtle warning to Sony that they need to seriously consider a price drop on the Playstation 3. Rumors have been circulating for months that such a drop was forthcoming, but Sony has staunchly denied that they had any plans to drop prices, Kotick said, "The PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform. It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. ... They have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates [the number of games each console owner buys] are likely to slow. If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony." While it's unlikely that Activision would follow through with such a threat, it definitely adds to the pressure Sony is feeling to lower the PS3's price. Sony issued a brief response which said nothing of consequence.

Comment It seems to be an ebook reader with storage (Score 1) 143

Looking at the picture and having read about it on a few outlets, it seems to be a 10"x5" handheld with a small builtin LCD and a micrcontroller which allows the device to go online (don't know how). User can download more content on the device and presumably use the LCD to view it.
So to me it looks like an ebook reader which can then be used to potentially replace expensive books and possibly offer a richer multimedia learning experience to the kids. From that perspective, it may not be that bad an investment and I would dare say, it may be more useful than OLPC in the Indian context.

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