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Submission + - Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

Submitted by

Andru Edwards

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:22PM

Andru Edwards writes: "Bluetooth SIG just announced the new spec for Bluetooth, that being Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Gear Live has a video demo with Mike Foley, Executive Director of Bluetooth SIG, where he shows off all the new Bluetooth 2.1 features. Take a look at what is improved in the new spec, like the ultra-cool near field communication technology, and five times better battery life."

Submission + - Travel Back in Time Not Possible

Submitted by anthemaniac on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:18PM

anthemaniac writes: Time travel has long been one of those "theoretically possible" things that makes Sci-Fi thrive. But while going forward in time is still perhaps possible, going back has been all but ruled out, according to an article (and accompanying videos) at LiveScience. Chiming in are four scientists who think about this a lot: Brian Greene, Charles Liu, Michio Kaku and J. Richard Gott. Liu flatly states: "It is not possible for you and me to travel backward in time."

Submission + - Automatic Beer Launching Fridge

Submitted by

gondarlinux

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:14PM

gondarlinux writes: "From this site:
Have you ever gotten up off the couch to get a beer for the umpteenth time and thought, "What if instead of ME going to get the BEER, the BEER came to ME???" Well, that was how I first conceived of the beer launching fridge. About 3 months and several hundred dollars later I have a fully automated, remote controlled, catapulting, man-pit approved, beer launching mini-fridge. It holds 10 beers in its magazine with 14 more in reserve to store a full case. It is controlled by a keyless entry system. Pressing unlock will start the catapult rotating and when it is aiming at your target, pressing unlock again will stop it. Then the lock button can be pressed to launch a beer in the selected direction." Here's the video:"

Submission + - MIT Media Lab Turns Game Players Into Designers

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:13PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The MIT Media Lab is taking a novel approach to game development, and it needs your help. The Restaurant Game is a research project that will algorithmically combine the gameplay experiences of thousands of players to create a new game. In a few months, researchers will apply machine learning algorithms to data collected through the multiplayer Restaurant Game, and produce a new single-player game that will be entered into the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Everyone who plays The Restaurant Game will be credited as a Game Designer. 1,074 games have been played to date, and the researchers are aiming for 10,000. Download for PC or OSX here: http://theRestaurantGame.net"

Submission + - Underpants thief blames Shadowrun

Submitted by Hittite Creosote on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:40AM

Hittite Creosote writes: The BBC reports that a man charged with stealing underwear from a shop at knifepoint has claimed that he believed he was a female elf at the time, having confused Shadowrun and real life.

Perhaps it would have been more believable if he'd claimed he thought he was a gnome?

Submission + - Worms hits Xbox Live Arcade

Submitted by ObiWanStevobi on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:39AM

ObiWanStevobi writes: Worms hits the Xbox Live Arcade today I have yet to try it out (later tonight), but the Xbox ad says it has alot of the features you would expect in the PC versions, configurable teams, game options, etc. Looking through the gamespot reviews, it would appear they have those, but they are rather limited. It seems to have trimmed the weapon and theme selection down a bit. But, they do still have the banana bomb. Worms hits Xbox live at a suprisingly-high-for-a-live-arcade-title 800 MS points ($10 US).

Submission + - Anti-Matter's Potential in Treating Cancer

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @11:39AM

eldavojohn writes: "The BBC is taking a look at how atomic physicists are developing cancer treatments. A step past radiotherapy, the CERN institute is publishing interesting results: "Cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, causing intense biological damage leading to cell death." The press release from last year is finally sparking interest in the medical community."

$100k For Kenobi's Cloak 140

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @09:59AM from the gonk-still-in-dumpster dept.

dws90 writes "The cloak worn by Sir Alec Guinness when he played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars original trilogy has been sold at a TV and Cinema auction. The cloak sold for £54,000, which is about $103,923 according to Google calculator. According to the article, the cloak was missing for nearly 30 years, during which it was rented out to a number of other films, including the Mummy. It was found two years ago, and has been part of a film memorabilia exhibition in London since then. The cloak sold for more than any of the other movie costumes the article listed, beating out Sean Connery's dinner jacket from Thunderball and a helmet worn by Terry Jones in Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

FAA May Ditch Vista For Linux 359

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @09:07AM from the hello-Google dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Another straw in the wind: following last week's news that the US Department of Transportation is putting a halt on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7, today comes word that the Federal Aviation Administration may ditch Vista and Office in favor of Google's new online business applications running on Linux-based hardware. (The FAA is part of the DOT.) The FAA's CIO David Bowen told InformationWeek he's taking a close look at the Premier Edition of Google Apps as he mulls replacements for the agency's Windows XP-based desktop computers. Bowen cited several reasons why he finds Google Apps attractive. 'From a security and management standpoint that would have some advantages,' he said."

Submission + - Give me an EOS and I'll give you my photos

Submitted by

Give me an EOS

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @09:01AM

Give me an EOS writes: "Amsterdam, March 7th 2007 The Million Dollar Homepage, Let me Stay for a Day and One Red Paperclip were trendsetters: if people write about a site, everything is possible. Even the exchange of a paperclip for a house, earning a million dollars on pixel sales, or making a free trip around the globe. Ridiculous? Not if the initiator comes up with a fair trade. That's what inspired the maker of givemeaneos.com. Longing for the newest Digital Camera by Canon, an EOS 400D, but unable to afford one, this person came up with a fair business proposition: Donate a camera, and you'll receive all the photos taken with it for a full year. Interested businesses or individuals wondering what is expected of them can find all relevant info on the freshly launched website Givemeaneos.com. In total, the camera and necessary accessories represent an estimated value of a 1000 euros ($1295). In exchange, the generous donator will receive all photos made with the camera within a year. On top of that de photographer-to-be will be available to register an event. Which one is to be decided upon by both parties, but one can think of a wedding, a product launch or other parties and presentations. On the website which is available in both Dutch and English, interested viewers can also find a portfolio of previous work and a short introduction to the desired camera and its possibilities. The initiator of this campaign is in no way related to the Canon Company, or any other commercial business. It is a solo project by an individual, who is responsible for both format, design and execution of this proposition. This 25-year old Digital Project Manager works in the Media end Entertainment business and lives in Amsterdam. If you would like to know more please contact givemeaneos@gmail.com www.givemeaneos.nl www.givemeaneos.com givemeaneos@gmail.com"

Submission + - Google's terabyte transfer system

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @08:03AM

An anonymous reader writes: Google has a system for shipping terabytes of information around the world. This system was brought about by following on the work started by by Microsoft researcher Jim Grey, who delivered copies of the Terraserver mapping data to people around the world. Google's open source team is working on ways to physically transfer huge data sets up to 120 terabytes in size. From the BBC article: "We have started collecting these data sets and shipping them out to other scientists who want them," said Google's Chris DiBona. The program is currently informal and not open to the general public. Google either approaches bodies that it knows has large data sets or is contacted by scientists themselves. One of the largest data sets copied and distributed was data from the Hubble telescope — 120 terabytes of data. "We have a number of machines about the size of brick blocks, filled with hard drives. "We send them out to people who copy the data on them and ship them back to us. We dump them on to one of our data systems and ship it out to people." Google keeps a copy and the data is always in an open format, or in the public domain or perhaps covered by a creative commons license.

Submission + - Apple's Quicktime Vulnerabilities Fixed

Submitted by

Aditi.Tuteja

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @07:26AM

Aditi.Tuteja writes: "Media files have increasingly become a vector for attacks, Commonly used Apple's Quicktime also had vulnerabilities, Five of the flaws were found by researchers at McAfee's antivirus labs. Three issues appear to have been independently reported by two or more researchers. The security vulnerabilities existed on this program that handles a variety of different media formats, including movie files, 3GPP files and more, the company stated this in an advisory.

Apple reportedly has released an update this week for QuickTime that patches eight flaws in the Windows version of the program, including seven flaws that also affect QuickTime for the Mac OS X."

Submission + - National Caffeine Awareness Month

Submitted by

mk

on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @07:11AM

mk writes: "In 2006 the governors of 5 states along with the mayors of 21 cities have all signed proclamations declaring March as National Caffeine Awareness Month to call attention to the dangers of caffeine dependency and intoxication. They all agree that prolonged caffeine consumption can pose a significant hazard to health and longevity. With as little as 200 mg of caffeine, you can experience typical addictive symptoms such as irritability, restlessness, tension, insomnia, excitement, and gastrointestinal disturbance. If you boost that level to more than 1 gram (1000 mg), you can get irregular heartbeats, panic and anxiety disorders, muscle twitching, incoherent speech, excessive urination, flushed skin, and depression. And, believe it or not, when you take over 5 grams of caffeine, the results can be fatal. This is one addiction you want to kick quickly! Marina Kushner strives to educate through her book, "The Truth About Caffeine — How Companies That Promote It Deceive Us and What We Can Do About It." The book has been described by critics as a "wake-up call" about caffeine and reveals "frightening evidence" of the damage caffeine can cause. The book reveals many serious physical and psychological effects of caffeine and the damaging effects on the public. To learn more about Kushner's book, or National Caffeine Awareness Month, you can visit http://www.caffeineawareness.org/"

How MP3 Was Born 108

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @07:00AM from the race-to-encode dept.

Actual Reality points us to an interview in BusinessWeek.com with the man most often cited as the inventor of the MP3 format — though Karlheinz Brandenburg credits many for the development, including in particular Suzanne Vega.

Xbox Live Cracks 6 Million, Windows Cost Revealed 117

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @06:47AM from the lots-of-uno-played-every-day dept.

Kotaku offers up a Microsoft press release on the unexpectedly early arrival of 6,000,000 players to the Xbox Live service. Along with some rather odd statistics to pass on (over 2,300,000,000 hours in-game time spent on the network already), there are some very interesting numerical tidbits passed on. An astonishing 70% of Live users have purchased a title from the Xbox Live arcade. Nearly half of all users hit the Marketplace at least once a session. This all has to add up to good news, financially, for Microsoft; but are they overreaching? GameInformer reports on pricing for Live on Windows Vista. Gold-level service is exactly the same as on the Xbox ($19.99 for three months), while Silver is free. Encouragingly, if you're already a Gold member on the 360 the same will be true on your PC. Just the same, the company is now charging for services normally taken for granted as a freebie on the PC platform.

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