Submission + - Robert Anton Wilson, dead just shy of 75
Thyrsus writes: Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of the Iluminatus! trilogy, Cosmic Trigger, and many other sources of wisdom, died Thursday. http://reason.com/blog/show/117838.html
Submission + - Solid state disks - 64GB from PQI, 32GB from SanDi
CravingForPerformance writes: Taiwanese firm PQI announced a 64GB solid state disk with a Serial ATA connector. This is the industry's first 64GB SSD with a SATA connector. The company also says the first 128GB drives will arrive sometime this year. Also new is a 32 GB SSD for notebooks from SanDisk. The price of this SSD is unavailable but it's expected that it will add a $600 premium to the price of a notebook. The 32GB SSD from SanDisk is roughly twice as fast as a regular notebook HDD.
Submission + - PVR on appleTV
MartinB writes: "The guys at elgato are completely confident that eyeTV will support appleTV. Turns out the key thing is exporting to iTunes in H.264 or MPEG-4. Now, can we please have a MythDVD-like DVD ripper that can do the same, so I can watch all my (legal) video content on the thing?"
Submission + - Senate bill S.256 aims to restrict internet radio
JAFSlashdotter writes: If you enjoy MP3 or OGG streams of internet radio, it's time to pay attention. This week US Senators Lamar Alexander, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Lindsey Graham in their collective wisdom have decided to reintroduce the "Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act". This ARS Technica article explains that PERFORM would restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use "technology to prevent music theft". That means goodbye to your favorite streaming audio formats, hello DRM. The EFF said pretty much the same when this bill last reared its ugly head in April of 2006. It's too soon to get the text of this year's version (S.256) online, but it likely to resemble last year's S.2644, which is available through Thomas. Last year's bill died in committee, but if at first you don't succeed...
Feed Language Fluency and Alzheimers (wired.com)
Submission + - Protien in HIV functions as resistor
TwilightXaos writes: "Leor Weinberger and Thomas Shenk, two researchers at Princeton, have discovered a new model for how the HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) enters and exits dormancy. They claim it functions as a resistor, this is in contrast to other types of regulation models found in other viruses and animals.
From the abstract:
The research could lead to an effective treatment of the HIV virus, and has the possibility of increasing understanding of other viruses like herpes.
Additionally hindu.com has a article on the findings."
Here we show that a dissipative feedback resistor, composed of enzymatic interconversion of the transactivator, converts transactivation circuits into excitable systems that generate transient pulses of expression, which decay to zero. We use HIV-1 as a model system and analyze single-cell expression kinetics to explore whether the HIV-1 transactivator of transcription (Tat) uses a resistor to shut off transactivation. The Tat feedback circuit was found to lack bi-stability and Tat self-cooperativity but exhibited a pulse of activity upon transactivation, all in agreement with the feedback resistor model.
The research could lead to an effective treatment of the HIV virus, and has the possibility of increasing understanding of other viruses like herpes.
Additionally hindu.com has a article on the findings."
Submission + - Undersea cable repair via 19th century technology
An anonymous reader writes: Workers are relying on 19th century technology to fix a very 21st century problem — disruption of the Internet traffic that tech-savvy Asia relies on.
"No electronics involved," said John Walters, general manager of Global Marine, one of the firms engaged in the repairs. "It's an old and traditional technique.
After arriving at the scene they survey the ocean bottom to assess whether the contour has changed, and the degree of sediment movement.
Then the traditional tools are brought out. A rope with a grapnel on the end is played out, down into the depths, and towed over the sea floor until tension registers on a graph on the ship, indicating contact has been made with the cable.
Today's fibre optic cables are just 21 millimetres in diameter.
The grapnel is a metal tool about 18 by 24 inches (46 by 61 centimetres) which includes a cutter, like a fine razor blade, and a grabbing tool.
As tension increases and the cable is slowly pulled up, it is cut, grabbed, and half of it is hoisted to the surface.
Dropping the grapnel, dragging the sea bed and recovering the cable can take about 16 hours, Walters said.
"It is a tried and tested method."
Once the severed half of the cable is on board the boat, debris is cleared from the damaged end, it is tested, sealed and the end boiled off. Then it is attached to a buoy on the water surface while the process is repeated for the second half of the cable before both halves are spliced together and dropped back to the ocean floor.
Even before the Boxing Day earthquake, Global Marine had faced a busy year, with about 20 repairs after damage from fishermen or anchors. All those ruptures were fixed using the old grapnel method, he said.
Submission + - Need a non-MS HR database (soon!)
bbrecht writes: My UK-based employers were on the verge of buying a .NET-based HR "solution" which would have locked us into IE and MS SQL Server. I've managed to get it delayed for a week or so while I come up with some Open alternative(s). Something that works with MySQL and Firefox, maybe? I've found some names (Orange HRM, Snowdrop, Intellect, ...) but haven't much time to sort wheat from chaff.
Who out there has had good / bad experiences with less-proprietary HR databases and front-ends?
Journal Journal: "Scientists prepare to move Doomsday Clock forward"
Reuters reports that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says conditions are closer to doomsday than the used to be:
When it was created by the magazine's staff in 1947, it was initially set at seven minutes to midnight and has moved 17 times since then.
Submission + - PS3 piling up in retail stores
An anonymous reader writes: Seems like Playstation are piling up at retail stores around the US. I just called a few Best Buys around the Bay Area and sure enough, they are available, which is shocking given that it is Silicon Valley, plus the Bay Area is richer than most and could probably afford the $600 price tag. Meanwhile Wiis are sold out everywhere. Is Sony's strategy completely failing? Will they have to drop the price soon in order to remain competitive?
Submission + - Death of Robert Anton Wilson...Fnord!
obiquity writes: The great cult writer Robert Anton Wilson, author of the Illuminatus! Series and Cosmid
Trigger, passed away yesterday. Wonkette noted that not a single wire service has noted
the passing of this great author. This
is obviously some kind of conspiracy...
Submission + - Picodore 64 -- A Tiny Commodore Laptop
Hans Scharler writes: "Growing up in the 80's has made me nostalgic about certain things. If I find another person from that era, we can talk about the Snorks, Rubik's cubes, and of course Commodore computers. I found on HACK A DAY and Petscii a story about a tiny Commodore 64 laptop made from a DTV gaming system, a PSONE screen, a keyboard from a Jornada PDA, and an Atari joystick. The hacks that impressed me were the keyboard integration and the SD slot. The palmtop Commodore looks impressive with a "pico-sized" case made of wood that looks like aluminum, all complete with a "C64 Inside" sticker.
If I owned this Commodore, it would be on my coffee table to start up many reminiscent conversations with my friends while we listen to the Cutting Crew and play Pac-Man."
Submission + - Clones, Zombies, Freaks
John H. Doe writes: "Article on Daily Mail talking about "farmyard freaks," like pigs who have been created like zombies so as not to mind cramped, boring conditions (genetically lobotomized, it would seem). The possibility exists so that, and I quote, "it might become technically possible to produce "animal vegetables" — beasts which are "highly prolific and oblivious to their physical and mental status"." Is this playing God? Or just a natural progression in the technology?"
Submission + - The thing that cannot be Googled
tetsuo29 writes: So, I'm dissecting a Perl script that a co-worker wrote and not being very familiar with Perl, I have no idea yet what the line "$| = 1;" means. In trying to google for it, I've discovered that "$|" cannot be searched for by Google. Try it. It doesn't even return the standard page that says:
Your search — "[search terms]" — did not match any documents
Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.
The results page is the equivalent of Google nothingness. Now, I think that "$|" is somehow related to CGI.pm and therefore probably CGI in general, but still shouldn't the brilliant coders at Google be able to code for this and index this as a search term so that clueless dolts like me can google for it to find out what it means?
So, I ask you Slashdotters:
* What does '$| = 1;' mean in Perl?
* Is there a way to google for that term?
* Has anyone else found any text that Google will return 'Google nothingness' as I've described it?
Your search — "[search terms]" — did not match any documents
Suggestions:
* Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
* Try different keywords.
* Try more general keywords.
The results page is the equivalent of Google nothingness. Now, I think that "$|" is somehow related to CGI.pm and therefore probably CGI in general, but still shouldn't the brilliant coders at Google be able to code for this and index this as a search term so that clueless dolts like me can google for it to find out what it means?
So, I ask you Slashdotters:
* What does '$| = 1;' mean in Perl?
* Is there a way to google for that term?
* Has anyone else found any text that Google will return 'Google nothingness' as I've described it?
AMD Aims At New Standard for Motherboards 156
alexwcovington writes "CBC reports that AMD is launching DTX, a new motherboard layout about the size of micro-ATX. Their goal is to provide a small, energy efficient board that's compatible with as much hardware as possible. In the DTX, they're hoping to produce a new standard for desktops, and somewhat reverse the decline in consumer interest. From the article: 'Most desktops still have motherboards that operate using a standard laid out in 1995 by Intel called ATX, which stands for Advanced Technology Extended. ATX was designed to allow everything from memory cards to mouse ports to have a standardized spot alongside the central processing unit on a typical desktop motherboard. While there have been other standards since, ATX remains the most common standard for desktops, though its design is not suited for smaller, more energy-efficient desktops, AMD said.' Ars Technica has further details on the board."
