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Patents

Submission + - So how long before eating is a patented process?

Submitted by dwarfking
dwarfking writes: The subject line is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but the article about a lawsuite of the IP of a salad recipe is either funny or scary, depending on the outcome.

From the article:

But the legal action, one of the first in which a restaurant owner has gone to court over intellectual property, has opened up a veritable can of lobster tails over when culinary influences stray into imitation.


What seems to have upset Ms Charles in particular is Ed's Caesar, a $7 (£3.50) salad that she alleges in the legal action was taken from her own recipe. But Ms Charles acquired the recipe from her mother, who, in turn, wheedled it out of a chef in Los Angeles.
AMD

Submission + - AMD/ATI Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 Cards Launched (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "When the Radeon HD 2900 XT debuted, AMD disclosed a some details regarding other lower-end GPUs derived from the R600 architecture. Cards based on the Radeon HD 2600 and HD 2400 series GPUs, as they became known, weren't ready in time to launch alongside the high-end Radeon 2900 XT, however. They're ready now though and HotHardware has a trio of AMD's new mainstream graphics cards shown here in a thorough hands-on evaluation. Looks like these cards aren't going to break any benchmark records."
Supercomputing

Submission + - Supercomputer On-chip Prototype Unveiled (umd.edu)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at University of Maryland have developed a prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers. The new technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip and is "capable of computing speeds up to 100 times faster than current desktops." The prototype "uses rich algorithmic theory to address the practical problem of building an easy-to-program multicore computer." Readers can win 500$ in cash and write their names in the history of computer science by naming the new technology.
Biotech

Submission + - Nano-hitchhikers to deliver drugs

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Another research team has found a way to use nanotechnology to deliver drugs. As you may know, polymeric nanoparticles are excellent carriers for delivering drugs. But as they are quickly removed from the blood, they are somewhat ineffective for the task. Now, researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) have found that 'nanoparticles can be forced to remain in the circulation when attached to red blood cells.' In other words, these nanoparticles hitchhike on red blood cells. Apparently, these nanoparticles could stay with their hosts for their life time — about 120 days. So this could lead to new treatments for cancer or heart disease. Read more for additional details and references."
Operating Systems

Submission + - What's using your memory?

Submitted by
gosand
gosand writes: "I have a pretty old system (Duron 1.33 with 768 MB of PC-133 RAM). One of these days I'll upgrade my system and I suspect I'll get more memory. But is there a need? I have Gkrellm running, so I see my memory usage. In the past, with an uptime of 150+ days, I've had several applications running at once (Ktorrent, GIMP, OpenOffice.org, K3b, Firefox) and still the memory usage has never gotten much over the halfway mark. I did recently upgrade from Kubuntu Edgy to Feisty, and it seems to use a little more memory. So what am I missing? Why do people have multiple gigs of memory on their systems? What is your memory usage, and what uses it? Do we all have lots of memory that is just not utilized?"
The Internet

Submission + - For the 20 million surfers TIME Magazine forgot... (ixpats.com)

Submitted by
JJ
JJ writes: "The most popular websites in the Middle East: In response to the recent TIME magazine article, which as usual, with many of its selections focuses on the US and ignores the rest of the world, here is a custom Top 20 sites list for the Dubai, the UAE and the Middle East...that's about 20 million people using the net...and traffic speaks for itself."
Microsoft

Concerns Over Microsoft's Internet User Profiling 144

Posted by CmdrTaco from the like-they-don't-already-know dept.
jcatcw writes "Microsoft research on Internet user profiling could lead to tools that help repressive regimes identify anonymous dissidents, the Reporters Without Borders advocacy group warned last Friday. Microsoft's new algorithms correctly guessed the gender of a Web surfer 80% of the time, and his or her age 60% of the time. "In China, it is conceivable that this type of technology would be used to spot Internet users who regularly access such 'subversive' content as news and information websites critical of the regime," the group said."
Linux Business

Submission + - Bank switches 12000 desktops to Linux (tectonic.co.za)

Submitted by
rpc1980
rpc1980 writes: "Following recent reports of a South African bank eyeing out Linux, Novell South Africa today issued a statement in which it said it had reached an agreement with First National Bank of South Africa to standardise the bank's 12 000 desktops in its 680 retail branches on Novell's Linux product."
Education

Submission + - WomenGamers Summer Camp Scholarship for Girls

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Two girls won a scholarship with WomenGamers.Com to attend a computer game development camp this summer. The top essays are posted on their website.
Television

Submission + - Why HD movie downloads are a big lie (com.com)

Submitted by jpfingst
jpfingst writes: "There's a lot of buzz lately about the delivery of HD TV and Movie content over the Internet with shows like Lost being delivered by ABC.com and other video download services with XBox360 or iTunes....But there's one dirty little secret that people are forgetting or that they don't understand, IT'S NOT HD they're getting over the Internet. Heck it's not even NTSC 480i (720?480 60 fields interlaced) DVD quality when you really look at the amount of video data you're getting!"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Headlight system works with the GPS system

Submitted by
Gary
Gary writes: "Taking road safety to the next level Japanese auto compnonent maker Denso has unveiled the Navi Kyocho AFS a headlight system that works in conjunction with map information stored in a car navigation system. It uses Adaptive Front-lighting System (AFS), which moves headlights to the left or right at a corner in accordance with the steering angle and vehicle angle. AFS is enabled by processing the position information from the car navigation system in addition to the information on vehicle speed and steering angle."
United States

Submission + - No Climate Change Consensus Among Top Scientists (canada.com)

Submitted by
Lawrence Person
Lawrence Person writes: "When Financial Post reporter Lawrence Solomon started interviewing top scientists who dissented from the global warming orthodoxy, he "accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies...Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop — the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series. Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists — the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects — and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.""

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