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IBM

Submission + - IBM Open Client bridges Windows, Linux gap

Jane Walker writes: "IBM today released ,a href="http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/origi nalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1243178,00.html">Open Client, an open standards-based set of productivity tools that runs on Red Hat and Novell Linux desktops, Apple and Windows."
Patents

Submission + - MIT Invention: Dishmaker

Aaron writes: AN MIT student invented a machine that stores dishes as flat circular raw material. You then put the dish in the dishmaker and it can custom make it into a variety of different dishes. The dish can then be reformed to a flat disk and recycled and reused.
OS X

Submission + - The state of virtualizing OS X

seriouslywtf writes: There's been a lot of speculation about whether people will eventually be able to run Mac OS X in a virtual machine, either on the Mac or under Windows. Well, it seems that both Parallels and VMWare have definitively told Ars Technica that until Apple explicitly gives them the thumbs up, they're not going to be enabling users to virtualize OS X even though it may be possible to do so. From the first article, Parallels said:

"We won't enable this kind of functionality until Apple gives their blessing for a few reasons," Rudolph told Ars. "First, we're concerned about our users — we are never going to encourage illegal activity that could open our users up to compromised machines or any sort of legal action. This is the same reason why we always insist on using a fully-licensed, genuine copy of Windows in a virtual machine — it's safer, more stable, fully supported, and completely legal."
And VMWare added:

"We're very interested in running Mac OS X in a virtual machine because it opens up a ton of interesting use cases, but until Apple changes its licensing policy, we prefer to not speculate about running Mac OS X in a virtualized environment," Krishnamurti added.
Space

Space Station Suffers Power Glitch 53

TheSexican writes "As if the MRO's vision problems weren't enough, it seems that NASA has another problem on their hands as of late. " The problem itself has been solved; one of the solar power array went off line, and had to be repaired, but is back up and working.
Biotech

Geo-Engineering to stop Climate Change 551

MattSparkes writes "Following the latest report of the United Nations climate change panel, there has been a flurry of renewed interest in so-called geo-engineering. This is the theory of using technological schemes to stop climate change. These can range from sun-shades orbiting the Earth, to pumping millions of tonnes of sulfur into the atmosphere to the bizarre idea of painting the ground white to reflect more light. Let's reduce our emissions now, before I have to go and paint my roof bright white." Thanks to jamie for pointing out another potential solution of seeding the southern oceans with iron to spur plankton growth.
Biotech

Submission + - Big Pharma's Open Source Biology

An anonymous reader writes: Big pharmaceutical companies used to hoard genetic information to themselves. But this Forbes story says that Novartis and Pfizer are now giving genetic info they found away for free, because it is worth more to them to have lots of researchers working on it than to keep it away from competitors.

http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/02/12/novartis -genes-diabetes-research-biz-cz_mh_0212novartis.ht ml

This represents a big change from a decade ago, when companies bought up genetic databases for hundreds of millions of dollars — then found out that they couldn't really use these to invent new medicines.
Censorship

Submission + - Censorship System Proposed in Norway

Aqwis writes: A web filter system, comparable to the chinese one, has been proposed (link in Norwegian) to the Norwegian Storting. It will, if it goes through, block all web sites and servers that contain hate (racial hate, pro-nazi sites, hate towards the government, etc), most kinds of pornography (not only child pornography), foreign gambling sites or sites that share copyrighted or other material that is illegal to be shared (such as most BitTorrent sites and services such as LimeWire). Reactions have been mixed, however mostly negative.
Software

Submission + - Machine Learning Algorithms Fight Cancer

eldavojohn writes: "Artificial intelligence is being employed to fight cancer using machine learning. A new popular technique for treating cancer, Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), is being employed to treat people with thousands of tiny doses of radiation (as opposed to older crude 'fire hose' doses). The first part of the process is a long and painstaking task of trying to decide where and how much radiation to apply to the patient so that only the cancerous cells are affected and no healthy organs are damaged. Research has now shown that this planning stage can be sped up to a matter of minutes and are working on refining the algorithms to a more robust state so that hospitals can employ them. While I doubt this will replace the human in the loop part of the analysis, it might possibly give them a good start requiring them to make a few modifications."
Movies

Submission + - Lionsgate to Open Catalogue on iTunes

VE3OGG writes: "Well, it would seem that the movie industry is finally starting to warm up to digital distribution in general, and the iTunes music service in particular. Lionsgate announced that they will be offering 150 movies from their catalogue on iTunes. Among the films are "Terminator 2," "Rambo," and "Monster's Ball". They will be debuting at the standard 9.99 price point, but sadly they will be at a mere 640x480 aspect ratio, making them far less appealing than their DVD counterparts."
The Internet

Submission + - MySpace to block pirated videos

Vinit writes: "MySpace has finally decided to block all the pirated copy righted videos on their website. Using audio fingerprints of video clips, the users will be stopped from uploading any copy righted videos. With the help of a technology (which checks audio track of video clips to create a unique audio signature) from California-based Audible Magic, the social networking site will stop users from uploading any pirated videos. Media companies will be able to create audio fingerprints of their movies and television shows using free tools which will then be cross checked against these lists of fingerprints. Initially this process will be tested on Universal Music Group's music videos and then it'll be available to all media companies. http://www.pclaunches.com/industry_buzz/myspace_to _block_pirate_videos_with_audio_fingerprints.php"
AMD/OSTG

Vendor HP touch-screen PC takes on the paper family calendar

HP wants to get a little closer to you and to your home. The new TouchSmart PC has a 19inch widescreen monitor that tilts up and down and touch screen capability that allows consumers to operate the computer with a single hand and while standing up. It competes with the paper family calendar, with instant access, allowing users to leave written or audio notes that can be tied to upcoming events. "Running Window
Security

Submission + - MacScan - Security Protection For OS X

skweek writes: "MacScan, a spyware removal program for the Mac has released version 2.3. Now with blacklisted cookie scanning you can remove tracking cookies. Nobody saves usernames or passwords anymore, right? No more loosing saved data."
Games

Inside Bungie - Living The Spartan Life 58

Straight from the latest issue of Edge, a great feature all about the life inside Bungie studios. The article gets into a good bit of detail on the mindset of this insular part of Microsoft's development network. Interviewed developers discuss what it is like working for Microsoft, and how hard it is not to be hard on themselves. Specifically, the developers have some surprisingly harsh criticism of their own opus - Halo 2. From the article, comments by technical lead Chris Butcher: "One of the things that stuns me when I think about it, and I can't believe this is true - we had [no time to polish] for Halo 2. Take that polish period and completely get rid of it. We miscalculated, we screwed up, we came down to the wire and we just lost all of that. So Halo 2 is far less than it could and should be in many ways because of that. It kills me to think of it. Even the multiplayer experience for Halo 2 is a pale shadow of what it could and should have been if we had gotten the timing of our schedule right. It's astounding to me. I f***ing cannot play Halo 2 multiplayer. I cannot do it. And that's why I know Halo 3 is going to be so much better."
Data Storage

Submission + - OpenSource tape backup sollution?

garo5 writes: "I'm trying to find a good backup software to suit our needs. We have few (less than ten) linux machines in our network and a LTO-1 tape robot. I'm planning to have a single backup server, where the tape robot is connected. The clients, once backup client software is installed, should backup to this server. Adding new clients should be as easy as possible, maintaining the server should also be easy (adding new tapes, rotating and changing them etc). Clients should be able to configure per directory, how many versions of single file is stored in the backups and be able to query easily the versions which are stored in the tapes. The backup server should also be able to use server disks as cache and backing up the metadata should be easy (among recovering from worst-case scenario). Supporting backing up windows machines is a plus, but not a requirement.

What free / open source backup sollutions you suggest?"

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