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Music

Submission + - Digital music players unsafe in storms (monstersandcritics.com)

Submitted by
Raver32
Raver32 writes: "Following a recent study suggesting the Apple iPod could adversely affect the performance of pacemakers, a new report in the New England Journal of Medicine has warned that portable digital music players can be extremely dangerous if carried in a storm. "Most people hit by lightning get away with minor burns," outlined the report's lead author, Dr. Eric J. Heffernan of Vancouver General Hospital, before explaining that human skin is highly resistant and prevents electricity from entering the body. "It's called the flashover effect," he added in a Xinhua article, "although it can stop your heart and kill you.""
Windows

Submission + - As a Windows user, where is the WOW factor?

Submitted by
LM741N
LM741N writes: "OK, I've had Vista on my new Sony ViAO for a couple of months, but i'm mystified. Where is the WOW factor? I bought a copy of Vista Ultimate and expected all sorts of innovations and eye candy. Where is it? As far as I can tell Vista is just an incremental upgrade from XP with some extras thrown in. I have tried to go into the screen personalization section and didn't find much there. The icons look pretty much like XP icons. The only thing I noticed is the edges of windows being transparent. What am I missing here? Please tell me how to satisfy myself after spending all that money."
Businesses

Are Marketers Abandoning Second Life? 252

Posted by kdawson from the peaked-too-soon dept.
Vary writes "The LA Times is running a story today saying that marketers are pulling out of Second Life, primarily because — surprise, surprise — the 'more than 8 million residents' figure on the game's Web site is grossly inflated. Also, as it turns out, the virtual world's regular visitors — at most 40,000 of them online at any time — are not only disinterested in in-world marketing, but actively hostile to it, staging attacks on corporate presences such as the Reebok and American Apparel stores. The companies aren't giving up on virtual worlds altogether, though, but moving on to games like There, Gaia Online and Entropia Universe. The article also contains some commentary from a marketing executive who conducted an informal survey of the game and discovered that 'One of the most frequently purchased items in Second Life is genitalia.' What company wouldn't want to be in on that action?"
Media

BBC Trust to Meet With OSC Over iPlayer 125

Posted by CowboyNeal from the open-to-suggestions dept.
Virgil Tibbs writes "With the Launch of the BBC's iPlayer imminent, the BBC trust has agreed to hear the Open Source Consortium's concerns regarding the BBC iPlayer's tie in with Microsoft's software. The move by the BBC to use Windows Media DRM & their apparent lack of commitment towards other platforms has caused outrage in many circles and prompted several online petitions."

Microsoft .NET Patch May Make PCs Go "Haywire" 212

Posted by Zonk from the danger-will-robinson-danger dept.
yuna49 writes "Various people are reporting that the MS07-040 patch for .NET released on Tuesday can cause a variety of seemingly unrelated problems. According to the SANS Internet Storm Center 'the reports we got so far seem not to lead to any specific thing that happens in many cases, just various things going haywire.' Some commentators on The Register's report of this story indicate that the patch failed to install at all, while others report things like the mouse suddenly failing to work or long periods of hard drive thrashing. In some cases a hard reboot seems to fix the problem, but other reports suggest that a reinstallation of the .NET framework itself is required. The problems may be related to the MSCORSVW.EXE process which recompiles all the .NET assemblies when the patch is downloaded. While the recompilations are supposed to run as a background task, in some instances the recompilation will drive the processor to 100% usage."
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle Introduces Btrfs Filesystem for Linux (techsww.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oracle recently introduced a new Checksumming Copy on Write Filesystem named Btrfs. According to Brtfs's home page,

"Linux has a wealth of filesystems to choose from, but we are facing a number of challenges with scaling to the large storage subsystems that are becoming common in today's data centers. Filesystems need to scale in their ability to address and manage large storage, and also in their ability to detect, repair and tolerate errors in the data stored on disk."

Btrfs is released under a GPL license and is currently under heavy development. Btrfs is not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review but this is certainly something we should look forward to in the future.
Space

Submission + - Shuttle's Name Misspelled On NASA Sign (local6.com)

Submitted by Rio
Rio writes: The first NASA sign at launch pad 39A encouraging the next launch of space shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center was misspelled and noticed by someone looking at the craft. One item was missing from the sign: the "u" in Endeavour. NASA has scrambled someone out to pad 39A with a new sign.
Biotech

Submission + - Butterflies quickly evolve and avoid extinction (reuters.com)

Submitted by PenguinX
PenguinX writes: This link to Reuters brings back the age old question? is it, A) Fate? B) Luck? C) Will power? D) The omni one? or E) some other multiple choice answer? Because i'm a romantic i'm going for C. Yes butterflies do have wills. But on a more sobering thought, what if these butterflies genetic coding's were locked away behind some patent or copyright. No more butterfly i guess. So if creation itself uses an open source system, why is their so many closed sourced systems being used? Its the devils work i say, God damm it! i should of picked D.
Space

Submission + - The Galaxy Zoo Needs You to Classify Galaxies (cnn.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Researchers have a problem, they have a lot of images of galaxies but they lack the ability to pore over them all day to classify them. So they decided to turn to internet users (that's us) for help. It's an easy task, you simply visit GalaxyZoo and after you register, you will read a simple three part classification tutorial. (ok, so it's more like seven parts but this is for science!) I've heard of using statistics and users to correctly label images but it is quite interesting to see it applied to this domain and definitely causes one to appreciate the number of galaxies out there. In related astronomy news, the Spanish-led Great Canary Telescope (GTC) will begin operations today marking another addition to the growing collection of massive surface telescopes."
Space

Submission + - Uranus Has No Diamonds

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It looks like Uranus will not be exporting diamonds anytime soon. Scientists had hypothesised that high pressure inside Uranus would compress carbon into diamonds. But Uranus is only 1 to 2% carbon. Planets need to be at least 15% carbon for diamonds to form.
Handhelds

Submission + - One-in-three Americans want iPhone

Submitted by
Sander de Jong
Sander de Jong writes: "Apple's iPhone could emerge as the most succesful product introduction of the 21st century, new research suggests: http://macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?n ewsid=18539

Apparently 32% of 39,000 interviewed Americans really want an iPhone, if not now, then soon. Provided Lightspeed is not owned by Apple, this should send Apple stock to a new high. Try to imagine the reaction of folks at competing companies."
The Courts

Submission + - Judge puts brakes on RIAA John Doe lawsuit (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Moondoggie
Moondoggie writes: A federal judge in New Mexico has denied the RIAA's ex parte application for discovery in a John Doe lawsuit targeting 16 University of New Mexico students. The judge noted that 'there is "no reasonable way" to ensure that prospective defendants are made aware of the lawsuits and requests for disclosure — which is exactly how the RIAA wants it. He wants to ensure that the John Does are notified and "are given a reasonable opportunity to intervene in order to stop the disclosure of sensitive information." Accordingly, the judge has ordered the record labels and the University of New Mexico to work out an "appropriate process" to ensure that individual Does will be informed that a subpoena has been issued. More importantly, those targeted will be able to respond to such requests to protect their own interests.' Similar rulings in other cases could make the discovery process much more expensive and tedious for the RIAA.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - 10 years in prison for overcharging a customer...

Submitted by DementedChihuahua
DementedChihuahua writes: CNN was running this story. Two inmates escaped from prison in Montana. One of them had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for overcharging David Letterman for a painting job done at Mr. Letterman's ranch. In a CNN staff writer's words: "Frank was sentenced to 10 years in prison for overcharging the talk show host." He had also been implicated in a kidnap plot but still pretty stiff punishment for the crime he was convicted of unless the job cost several million or so! Goes to show you that being rich is the best defense.
Censorship

Submission + - Church of England demands game withdrawl

Submitted by innocent_white_lamb
innocent_white_lamb writes: The Church of England is demanding that Sony withdraw "Resistance: Fall of Man", as it depicts a violent shoot-out in Manchester Cathedral. Church officials say Sony used the church without permission, call the game "sick" and "sacrilegious", and are threatening legal action unless the game is withdrawn. Sony says that the game uses neither video or photography from the actual church. Details here.

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