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Western Digital Announces 1TB Mobile HD 252

Western Digital has announced a couple of new 2.5-inch mobile hard drives weighing in at 750GB and 1TB. The drives feature a 3 GB/s transfer rate and Western Digital's "WhisperDrive" tech along with specialized shock tolerance and head parking to ensure durability. "Both models are shipping now through various channels; the 1TB model is currently available in My Passport Essential SE USB drives. The Scorpio Blue 750GB model has a suggested sticker price of $190 while the Scorpio Blue 1TB is a mere $250. The My Passport Essential SE 1 TB portable drive is $299.99 USD and the 750 GB model is $199.99 USD."
Patents

Touchpad Patent Holder Tsera Sues Just About Everyone 168

eldavojohn writes "Okay, well, maybe not everyone but more than twenty companies (including Apple, Qualcomm, Motorola and Microsoft) are being sued for a generic patent that reads: 'Apparatus and methods for controlling a portable electronic device, such as an MP3 player; portable radio, voice recorder, or portable CD player are disclosed. A touchpad is mounted on the housing of the device, and a user enters commands by tracing patterns with his finger on a surface of the touchpad. No immediate visual feedback is provided as a command pattern is traced, and the user does not need to view the device to enter commands.' Sounds like their may be a few companies using that technology. The suit was filed on July 15th in the favoritest place ever to file patent claim lawsuits: Texas Eastern District Court. It's a pretty classic patent troll; they've been holding this patent since 2003 and they just noticed now that everyone and his dog are using touchpads to control portable electronic devices."
Security

Researcher Discovers ATM Hack, Gets Silenced 229

Al writes "A researcher working for networking company Juniper has been forced to cancel a Black Hat presentation that would have revealed a way to hack into ATMs. The presentation focused on exploiting vulnerabilities in devices running the Windows CE operating system, including some ATMs. The decision to cancel was made to give the vendor concerned time to patch the problem, although the company was notified 8 months ago. The article mentions a growing trend in ATM hacking: In November 2008 thieves stole nearly $9 million from more than 130 cash machines in 49 cities worldwide. And earlier this year, the second biggest maker of ATMs, Diebold, warned customers in an advisory that certain cash machines in Eastern Europe had been loaded with malicious software capable of stealing financial information and the secret PINs from customers performing ATM transactions."
Space

White House Panel Considers New Paths To Space 151

Neil H. writes "The White House's Human Space Flight Plans blue-ribbon panel (the 'Augustine panel') has posted the material from their first public meeting on the future of NASA's spaceflight program, which was held on Wednesday. NASA officials presented their Ares I rocket plans and their belief that they can work around its design flaws, with projected development costs ballooning to $35 billion. The panel also heard several alternative proposals, such as adapting already-existing EELV and SpaceX rockets to carry crew to orbit; these proposals would have better safety margins than the Ares I, be ready sooner, and cost NASA less than $2 billion to complete, but are politically unattractive."
NASA

Atlantis Links Up To Hubble For Repairs 132

An anonymous reader writes "Space Shuttle Atlantis has finally caught up with the Hubble Space Telescope after following it for several hours. The 'link up' between the Space Shuttle and Hubble was a very delicate one as the two were flying through space at 17,200 MPH, 300 miles above the Earth's surface. The robotic arm of the shuttle grappled the telescope at 1:14 PM EDT today. The telescope will be latched to a high-tech Lazy Susan device known as the Flight Support System for the duration of the servicing work."

Comment Master of Orion (Score 1) 271

I'm playing Master of Orion 2, Battle at Anteres, with Dosbox, right now. For some reason, the DOS version works much better under Dosbox than the Windows version does under WINE.

There's a slight sound stutter at times and a slight effects lag, but everything else is perfect. Still one of the best turn-based strategy games.

Comment Re:Official release will be around 2pm PDT today (Score 1) 273

any idea when Firefox will implement the multiple process stuff found in Chrome?

I'm probably in the minority, but I actually prefer MOST of my apps to be single-threaded (or at least sticking to one core). I can only imagine what it would feel like to have Firefox (Javascript or plugins, typically) completely max out ALL my cores the way they are one now.

Comment What's wrong with Halogen Bulbs? (Score 2, Interesting) 182

Halogen light bulbs use tungsten filaments, JUST LIKE ORDINARY BULBS.

Two main differences:

- The filament is run at a much higher temperature, resulting in higher efficiency (around 20%).

- The gas inside the quartz "bulb" (the inner bulb, if you're buying a large bulb as a replacement) is a halogen gas (thus the name). These molecules combine with tungsten evaporated from the filament and effectively redeposits the tungsten on the filament. This results in longer lifetime.

End result: Longer lasting bulb, higher efficiency, roughly same environmental impact as normal bulb during production and disposal, still incandescent light (so no gaps in the output spectrum).

The one downside to halogen bulbs is that they get a lot hotter. Why? They have lower heat output, right? Yes, they do, but the AREA is a lot smaller due to the close proximity of the quartz. An outer bulb, such as typically present in a large-format "normal bulb replacement" (E26 base in the US), reduces this problem to about the same as for an ordinary bulb.

Comment Re:News in english about the trial: (Score 4, Informative) 664

Double Jeopardy works differently in different countries. Originally part of "common law", double jeopardy laws vary throughout Europe, but generally look more like the Canadian version than the US version. In short: Appeals to a higher court are not considered a NEW trial, but rather a continuation of the old trial.

In Europe, the European Convention on Human Rights provides a measure of protection, specifically Protocol 7, article 4:

Article 4 - Right not to be tried or punished twice

      1. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.
      2. The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall not prevent the reopening of the case in accordance with the law and penal procedure of the State concerned, if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case.
      3. No derogation from this Article shall be made under Article 15 of the Convention.

As the article implicitly states, unless you have been FINALLY convicted, you can be tried again.

Networking

How To Keep Rats From Eating My Cables? 1032

An anonymous reader writes "I am curious to know what vermin prevention/eradication methods are used in other locations. I am working at a dealership and we have an exterminator man who puts out glue traps and bait stations, but they still come and eat my cable. The latest was a couple of fiber runs — very expensive. I have threatened my boss with a cat for the server room (my office), going so far as to cruise the local Humane Society's website and eye-balling a nice Ragdoll-Siamese mix. Even if I do feel like dealing with a litter box, cat hair in the equipment and pouncings on my keyboards (and I'm not sure I do), that only covers the server room. We have multiple buildings on the campus which get locked up to prevent theft, but it isn't secure enough to keep out the critters and the latest chew spot was in the ceiling. Any ideas?"

Comment Note from a VIM user... (Score 3, Informative) 106

come on now, it's a great editor for deleting things from files!

Go to the character of interest, hit x. Go to the line of interest and hit dd.

Of course, if you want to do more than delete, you are better off with notepad.

I was very tempted to use my mod points to mod this TROLL, but I try staying far away from anything that even smells like "modding down stuff you disagree with", so I'll Feed the Troll, instead...

How do I search-replace SMARTLY (i.e. with regexp) in Notepad?

Does notepad support syntax highlighting?

Does notepad support "jumping" to the last position when reopening a file?

Does notepad support auto-indentation? Language-dependent auto-indentation?

Does notepad support multiple buffers? (cut-n-paste)

Does notepad support variable tabstops? Using spaces as tabs?

Does notepad support collapsing/folding sections into a single line?

These features are just a tiny fraction of what I use in VIM *every single day*. Notepad does none of these. I used to use emacs, because the insert, command and visual modes confused me. It really didn't take long to get used to, however, and I generally prefer VIM now (although I'm perfectly happy using emacs instead).

I feel I should now come up with a car analogy, comparing VIM and Notepad, but the only word that comes to mind is Yugo. And that would be Notepad, in case you were wondering.

Software

Vim 7.2 Released 106

sanguisdex writes "After fifteen months of work: a brand new Vim release! This is a stable version. There are many bug fixes and updated runtime files. The only new feature worth mentioning is support for floating point. Upgrading from a previous version is highly recommended: a few crashing bugs and several security issues were fixed. For the details see the announcement or go directly to the download page."

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