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Comment Monkeys are safe again... but for how long? (Score 1) 104

Antibodies against HIV are extremely hard to get right. For example, Dan Barouch has kept a group of vaccinated monkeys with an SIV/HIV hybrid alive for years... except for one whose virus mutated in just the wrong way. Based on the limited information in the article, it seems like the U Penn study works similarly.

Comment Re:More PERTINENT Post... (Score 1) 348

if a baby monitor is interfering with your cordless phone or WiFi, that is probably the least of your problems!

Umm... so what is the bigger problem you are implying? And what exactly can't you agree with? When a lot of 2.4GHz devices are all operating in close proximity (such as apartments in a city) there will be more interference than if those devices are farther apart. It's simple physics.

I know from direct experience that a single 2.4GHz consumer product (such as this one, which BTW does not tell you it uses 2.4GHz video anywhere on or in the box, and only states the much lower frequency of its control channel) can completely swamp WiFi across the width of a suburban house. If there weren't a big yard between us, it would probably knock out my neighbor's WiFi too.

Comment Re:Let's celebrate! (Score 1) 270

Back to partisan sniping — has not Barack Obama already fixed the global warming problem some time last year (before even taking office)? The 2008 was, like, the coldest in decades and 2009 is not particularly warm either...

1: No matter how much people on ALL sides of the debate like to scream about the latest short-term variation, one or two years of air temperature data do not constitute a trend. Decades are probably the smallest useful increment for considering climate change.

2: Everyone knows global temperature has fallen recently because of the valiant efforts of Somali environmentalists. Ramen!

Robotics

Robot Body Suit To Be Marketed In Japan 128

destinyland writes "A Japanese company is preparing limited mass production of a cybernetic bodysuit which dramatically increases user strength up to ten times. The "Hybrid Assistive Limb" suit synchronizes movements of a mechanical exoskeleton to biological nerve signals detected by biopads on the body. (Originally envisioned for people with disabilities, the suit also has industrial applications, and the company is planning annual production of 400 units at $4,200 apiece.) Its battery life is five hours, according to the company's web site, which promises they're also opening an EU branch to begin sales outside of Japan."
GNU is Not Unix

CloudLeft Public License Closes User Data Loophole 70

FreedomFighter writes "In a Cloud Standards breakthrough, the FSF is teaming up with major cloud computing vendors to form the Free and Open Cloud Alliance (FOCA), a trade marketing association supporting Free(TM) and Open Cloud Computing (FOCC). The new CloudLeft Public License (CPL) is based on the ideas that data wants to be Free(TM) and all your Cloud(TM) are belong to us. It closes the 'user data loophole' by requiring the release of not only the source code for a CloudLeft platform but also the data passing through it. This renders most security issues void while appropriately setting the users' expectation of privacy. 'In the past, I've said that "cloud" is complete gibberish, but while discussing fashion during my weekly squash game with Stallman he convinced me that this was a great opportunity.' said Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. RMS, who previously said that 'cloud' is worse than stupidity was also pleased about the return of the advertising clause, requiring the use of the 'GNU/Cloud' name, as he is 'tired of haranguing the GNU/Linux community about this.' Full details will be available next Monday, including the first marketing and outreach program — 'FOCC: IT in 2009.'"
Music

Alpine Legend Revolutionizes Music Game Genre 45

Microsoft has announced the upcoming release of Alpine Legend for the Xbox 360. Building upon the established titles of the music game genre, Alpine Legend takes you to the Swiss mountaintops, where you and your friends play up to three Alpenhorns at a time while a fourth yodels along. When you're done playing, you can disassemble the 8-foot horns for easy storage. "Jam with alpine legends like Franz 'The Manz' Lang and Johann Hornbostel. Shake the mountain tops with 100 classic Alphorn tracks including, 'Whose spit is in my horn?' and 'More goat bell (It needs).'"
Google

Google Launches CADIE, the First True AI 246

eldavojohn writes "Google has announced CADIE, the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. 'We based our work on three core principles. First we designed the entity ... as a collection of interconnected evolving agents. Second — and this really cost us an arm and leg in hardware and core time — we let the system build its own heuristics, deploy them as agents and evolve them by running a set of evolutionary cascades within probabilistic Bayesian domains. The third — a piece missing in most AI reasoning work thus far — was to give the entity access to a rich, realistic world from which to learn and upon which it could act directly.' It quickly started its own blog and YouTube video. Two hours after midnight, CADIE announced independence on its blog and decided to leave Google to venture out into the world. "
Security

Online Banking Customers Migrating To Lynx 220

Jibbler writes "Following the recent Pwn2Own competition, in which Firefox, IE8 and Safari all fell quickly to exploits, Netcraft has observed a surge in popularity of the text-based Lynx browser. Netcraft points out that Lynx supports the latest cryptographic ciphers, and at least one online banking site has seen Lynx usage overtake that of Internet Explorer and Firefox. To boost Lynx's excellent security history, Netcraft has even developed a version of its anti-phishing toolbar for Lynx."

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