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Medicine

Wirelessly Powered Medical Implant Propels Itself Through the Bloodstream 37

cylonlover writes "With the wait still on for a miniaturization ray to allow some Fantastic Voyage-style medical procedures by doctors in submarines, tiny electronic implants capable of traveling in the bloodstream show much more promise. While the miniaturization of electronic and mechanical components now makes such devices feasible, the lack of a comparable reduction in battery size has held things back. Now engineers at Stanford University have demonstrated a tiny, self-propelled medical device that would be wirelessly powered from outside the body, enabling devices small enough to move through the bloodstream."
Facebook

Moglen: Facebook Is a Man-In-The-Middle Attack 376

jfruh writes "In an email exchange with privacy blogger Dan Tynan, Columbia law professor Eben Moglen referred to Facebook as a 'man in the middle attack' — that is, a service that intercepts communication between two parties and uses it for its own nefarious purposes. He said, 'The point is that by sharing with our actual friends through a web intermediary who can store and mine everything, we harm people by destroying their privacy for them. It's not the sharing that's bad, it's the technological design of giving it all to someone in the middle. That is at once outstandingly stupid and overwhelmingly dangerous.' Tynan is a critic of Facebook, but he thinks Moglen is overstating the case."

Comment Re:Car analogy (Score 1) 403

I think where the judge's analogy falls apart is when he assumes your car would still be "fully functioning" if you avoided the amusement park for cars. If I want to buy (insert some new PS3 game here) and play it without ever connecting to the PSN, I'm going to be forced to install a firmware update just to play the new game, aren't I? I don't see how that would constitute my PS3 being "fully functional" anymore. (and I don't see how that could be worked into this car analogy either)

Not that I own a PS3; I don't. But that's how things are done with my Xbox360.

Comment Re:PC analogy (Score 1) 278

Exactly. Or perhaps a better analogy would be handsfree Bluetooth.

"I bought this car because it has Bluetooth. It's not a feature every owner of this model will use, but it is one of the reasons I chose THIS car over other cars."

And then the manufacturer remotely bricks the Bluetooth because I got my oil changed somewhere other than the dealership.
Microsoft

Microsoft Responds To Linux Concerns Over Windows 8 and UEFI Secure Boot 389

CSHARP123 writes "A few days ago, Red Hat employee Matthew Garrett speculated that OEM machines shipping with copies of Windows 8 may lock out support for Linux installations. Garrett highlighted Microsoft's new Secure Build OEM requirements for Windows 8 systems. Microsoft chose to directly respond to confusion surrounding Windows 8's use of the UEFI Secure Boot feature on Thursday. Tony Mangefeste of Microsoft's Ecosystem team said, 'Microsoft supports OEMs having the flexibility to decide who manages security certificates and how to allow customers to import and manage those certificates, and manage secured boot. We believe it is important to support this flexibility to the OEMs and to allow our customers to decide how they want to manage their systems.'"

Comment unHappy FF user here (Score 4, Informative) 247

The only downside is extensions

I've been loving Firefox for years, but this fast release schedule is driving me nuts. Every time a new "major" version comes out now, at least one or two of my extensions break. The first one to go (on FF4) was Ubiquity, which still isn't fixed, and the stupid thing about that is Ubiquity is a Mozilla Labs extension. It's pretty sad when their own damn extensions can't even keep up, let alone 3rd party stuff.

So, back to your point about extensions being the only downside, honestly, do we use Firefox for any other reason? I could have ditched FF for Chrome or even IE9 (shudder) but it's the extensions that make Firefox so awesome, and that's what's suffering the most with this bullshit release schedule.

Comment Hurry up 'n buy every TLD imaginable while you can (Score 2) 186

As a webmaster, I get a lot of those ones presumably from China and thereabouts that all say pretty much the same thing:

Dear CEO,

We are big important registrar and $FICTICIOUS_COMPANY wants to buy from us this follows:
$YOUR_HOSTNAME.cn
$YOUR_HOSTNAME.tw
$YOUR_HOSTNAME.com.cn
$YOUR_HOSTNAME.com.tw
(et cetera)

Sometimes the poor English can be entertaining.

Comment Re:Yo Dawg, (Score 1) 199

I think that making every app work in a browser is the path of least resistance for companies trying to make a multi-platform product. This might not actually be true in all cases, but a lot of executives with a limited knowledge of technology see it this way.

Comment Re:I'm still waiting for the collection (Score 2) 106

but whenever I hear yet another parrot this exact same asinine statement, I can't help but roll my eyes.

Amen brother. Although the parent didn't really make that specific argument, it sounded like they just wanted to get their Zerg on.

You know, there are some legitimate things one could moan and complain about regarding SC2

I'd like to throw something out there. In SC1 I always wanted the ability to zoom OUT and see more of the battlefield at once. With the ability to select more than 12 units at a time this would have been a great feature for SC2. But what did they do instead? They added the ability to zoom IN. What the fuck is the point of that? I don't need to see how graphically detailed these units are. And with all of the things going on in the game, who has time to admire the scenery?

Japan

Submission + - Miracle Blue Goo Cleans Up Japan Nuclear Waste (singularityhub.com)

kkleiner writes: "It looks like Smurf blood and it may keep Japan safe from nuclear waste. DeconGel is a liquid polymer that can spread easily on almost any surface. As it hardens it traps hazardous materials, including radioactive particles, and then easily peels away for disposal. CBI Polymers, the creators of DeconGel, recently donated ten pallets of the polymer to aid in Japan’s decontamination of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster site. DeconGel’s lightweight and easy to use approach to cleaning up radioactive waste could go a long way to restoring the Fukushima prefecture."

Submission + - Good CS High School Homeschool Curriculum?

dingo_kinznerhook writes: I grew up in a homeschooling family, and was homeschooled through high school. ( I went on to get a B.S. and M.S. in computer science; my mom has programming experience and holds bachelor's degrees in physics and math — she's pretty qualified to teach.) Mom is still homeschooling my younger brother and sister and is looking for a good computer science curriculum that covers word processing, spreadsheets, databases, intro to programming, intro to operating systems, etc. Does the Slashdot readership know of a high school computer science curriculum suitable for homeschooling that covers these topics?

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