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Medicine

Submission + - A New "Medical Lab on a Chip" For Every Home? (hplusmagazine.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: NWU professor Chad Mirkin discusses his company's new "lab-on-a-chip" technology — the ability to automatically treat a blood sample with chemicals on a microchip, quickly detecting markers for diseases and other anomalies. The quick "bio-barcode" test creates the possibility of a medical diagnostic system in every home, since it offers greater sensitivity than current tests with simpler instruments and at lower costs. "And that means you no longer have to rely on these remote labs with this big bulky instrumentation... People 100 years from now will say, ''These guys were in the Stone Age.'" This is not a futuristic technology; four tests already have received FDA clearances, so "They're here... It's in hospitals around the country. Really, what we are waiting for is just an increasing menu [of tests]... It will scale rapidly."
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Sony PS3 Hack Brings Linux Back (thinq.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Stoobalou
Stoobalou writes: Sony-bating hacker GeoHot reckons he can restore the ability to run Linux on Sony's flagship console, despite the fact that the company has deliberately removed the functionality.
A recent firmware upgrade to version 3.21 killed the 'Install Other OS' option in fat versions of the console's operating system, angering academics and hackers alike.
According to GeoHot (AKA George Hotz — the chap also credited with hacking the iPhone) anyone who didn't take the plunge and update to 3.21 will soon be able to do so without losing the ability to install third-party operating systems.
Piracy

Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down 634

Posted by kdawson from the single-point-of-well-you-know dept.
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."

Comment Allan Brito? (Score 1) 57

by Garabito (#31174708) Attached to: Blender 3D Incredible Machines

Sorry, I couldn't help to laugh and show the story to my co-workers when I read that name .We had to google it to make sure it wasn't made-up

For many spanish-speaking people, 'Allan Brito' is a typical fake name people use to make prank calls and such. (In spanish, 'alambrito' means 'little wire')

I don't mean to insult the guy; but it's funny when you know there is an actual person with a name you always used to laugh at. (Like when Bart calls Moe's and asks for 'Hugh Jass', and there was a person with that name at the bar).
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by Garabito
Garabito writes: Dick Brass, former vice-president at Microsoft, published an op-ed in The New York TImes , where he states that 'Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator' and how 'it has lost share in Web browsers, high-end laptops and smartphones.'

He attributes this situation to the lack of a true system for innovation at Microsoft. Some former employees argue that Microsoft has a system to thwart innovation. He tells how promising and innovative technologies like ClearType and the original TabletPC concept become crippled and sabotaged internally, by groups and divisions that feel threated by them.

Brass states that internal competition at Microsoft has created a dysfunctional corporate culture and questions whether the company has much of a future if it doesn't regain its creative spark.
Cellphones

Submission + - Symbian OS Goes Open-Source

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The foundation overseeing the world's most popular smartphone OS, Symbian, announced that it had made the operating system entirely open source. By putting Symbian fully in the public domain, the Symbian Foundation is pitting it against Google's Android. Symbian is well known across most of the world, but it's mostly a foreign curiosity in the US. AT&T is the only carrier that currently has a symbian phone in its lineup, the Nokia E71x.
Programming

Submission + - Programmers Just Don't Learn To Handle Their Ego (techsociotech.com)

Submitted by Linux Ate My Dog!
Linux Ate My Dog! writes: For better or for worse, the web has transitioned from a system made by software engineers joined by a neglected user interface pro tinkering with page layouts, to one where teams of coders, Interaction Designers, and Graphic Designers work together to create rich interactive experiences. I have transitioned with it, from the software cubicles to the Digital Agency, and working with Graphic Designers I noticed something interesting: they handle critiques of their design much better than programmers do of their code, and I think it is because of what they go through during their training. During crunch time nobody cares what code looks like internally, just that it passes acceptance tests, so we get very ego-invested in how save the world from missing our deadline. While there are strategies to handle ego-investment, and pair-programming does force us to review the internals of code and architecture more these days, is there actual planned systematic review of your code? How do you handle criticism and praise for your lines?
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun boss Schwartz signs off with a strange Tweet (pcpro.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: Jonathan Schwartz, the outgoing boss of Sun Microsystems, has signed off with an unusual update to his Twitter account. Confusion remains over whether he left the company of his own volition or was asked to leave, and Schwartz's final Tweet certainly suggests a hint of bitterness at the manner of his departure. "Today's my last day at Sun," Schwartz tweeted. "I'll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more."

Submission + - Firefox slowly making it's way to Android (webmonkey.com)

Submitted by gimmebeer
gimmebeer writes: While it's not even ready for an Alpha release, it's good to know that someone is working on porting FireFox mobile to Android. Eventually we'll be able to run our favorite add-ons on the go.

Mozilla’s Vladimir Vukicevic is currently working on porting the mobile version of the Firefox browser to Google’s mobile operating system. The first results, seen in the screenshot above, were posted to Vukicevic’s personal blog Tuesday.

This means that, yes, a full, add-on capable version of Firefox will be making its way to Android phones and tablets in the future. Just a few days ago, Mozilla released a version of Firefox for mobiles running Nokia’s Maemo OS.

Vukicevic’s screenshot shows Firefox running in an Android emulator (to make debugging easier, he says) but it works fine on regular Android devices, too. His team has “a ways to go” before the first public alpha release — various input methods like the keyboard and mouse only “sort of work,” to say nothing of a touch screen — but it’s cool to see some progress being made.
Google

Submission + - Mozilla exec urges users ditch Google for Bing (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Garabito
Garabito writes: Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, saw Google CEO Eric Schmidt's recent comments about privacy and quickly posted his thoughts on his blog. His solution is a link to the Bing add-on for Firefox.
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA to exit chipset business (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: Once the darling of the enthusiast chipset market, NVIDIA has apparently decided to quit development of future chipsets for all platforms. This "state of NVIDIA" editorial at PC Perspective first highlighted the fact that the company was backing away from its plans to develop a DMI-based chipset for Intel's Lynnfield processors due to legal pressure from Intel and debates over licensing restrictions. That effectively left NVIDIA out in the cold in terms of high-end chipsets, but even more interesting is the later revelation that NVIDIA has only one remaining chipset product to release, what we know as ION 2, and that it was mainly built for Apple's upcoming products. NVIDIA still plans to sell its current offerings, like MCP61 for AMD platforms and current generation ION for netbooks and nettops, but will focus solely on discrete graphics options after this final release.

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