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Biotech

Journal Journal: Corn Can't Solve Our Problems- Other biofuels more efficient 1

Journal by zipz0p
According to this Washington Post article, the nation's craze with ethanol and corn-based bio-fuels is not based on a good analysis. It has recently been shown by a team at the University of Minnesota that prairie grasses would be a more efficient and sustainable source of bio-fuels. It appears that growers and politicians alike have jumped the gun by jumping on corn as a bio-fuel.
Biotech

Submission + - The mystery of vitamin B12 finally solved

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "You probably think that scientists know everything about the common and essential vitamin B12, the only vitamin synthesized by soil microbes. In fact, one part of this biosynthesis has puzzled researchers for at least 50 years. But now, MIT and Harvard biologists have solved this vitamin puzzle by discovering that a single enzyme known as BluB synthesizes the vitamin. So what is the next challenge for the researchers? It's to discover why the soil microorganisms synthesize the vitamin B12 at all, because neither them — nor the plants they're attached to — need it to live. Read more for additional references and a picture of BluB."
Programming

Submission + - Learning Ajax Anti-Patterns prevents design flaws

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: You can learn a lot about how to do things correctly by understanding how things are done incorrectly. Certainly, there's a right way and a wrong way to write Ajax applications. Understanding how and why design flaws happen is important and can save you valuable coding time. This article discusses some common coding practices you will want to avoid.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - The Best Video Capture Device?

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "I have been trying to find the best solution to transfer my VHS tapes to a digital format using Linux and Free Software only, preferably using USB to be portable. I would like to lose as little as possible in the conversion, sampling optimally and minimizing noise, and being in control of every step of the process.

However, after reading dozens of reviews of video capture devices, I'm still unable to pick one. Most try to bloat the device adding functions like TV/compression/edition instead of focusing on the quality of the raw A/D conversion and leaving digital manipulation for proven software like mencoder, vlc etc. Besides, they use obscure chipsets with unknown A/D parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio, dynamic range, bits of sampling resolution, linearity, etc, rendering them incomparable, and few are explicitly compatible with Video4Linux.

Storage is not a problem. I'm expecting to use around 5GB+ for each hour of raw captured footage.

Which chipsets/products should I look for? Is there actually any difference for a home VHS owner if he uses a professional device or a somewhat cheap solution(<$100)? Which setup should I use, S-Video x Composite, NTSC x PAL, USB/PCI/Firewire, sampling rate/supersampling, etc? Programs in Linux? Does anyone have interesting stories of success and failures to share?"
Windows

Windows Genuine Advantage Gets More Lenient 228

Posted by kdawson from the you-may-already-be-a-pirate dept.
Troglodyte writes in with word that Microsoft is revamping its Windows Genuine Advantage program so that it labels fewer users pirates. WGA now has a third category besides "genuine and "not genuine," called "not sure." Quoting: "[I]t's quite obvious what is going on here: Microsoft has added 'not sure' as a way of cutting down on the number of false positives associated with WGA. As many as one in five PCs were failing WGA checks, but this new setting should both reduce this and give Microsoft the chance to investigate further the kinds of things that are landing folks in the 'not sure' category."
Portables

Laptops with Big RAM? 172

Posted by Cliff from the beyond-the-2Gb-barrier dept.
Fubari wonders: "Anybody know when laptops over 4gb might be coming out? Some of the dev-tools I want to run are just obscene RAM-pigs. On the desktop I'm using now (Win2003), it sucks up 1.6gb just to boot. By the time I log in and start doing work, it is stretching 2Gb. Move that to Vista, add a VM-Ware session or two, and I'm worried I'll be pushing 4Gb. I'm torn between buying a 4Bb-max laptop now, or some mini-desktop that can fit in a set of luggage wheels. A friend of mine suggested something like this, but my first choice would be something designed to be portable. Any suggestions?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Quietly Making Untold Millions

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's Internet Explorer automatically and indiscriminately generates results pages filled with profitable pay-per-click ads for a virtually infinite number of non-existent domains. Are they asking for trouble, or is this yet another demonstration of their "evil genius"?

http://www.dailydomainer.com/200784-microsoft-quie tly-making-untold-millions.html
Bug

Vanishing Honeybees Will Affect Future Crops 322

Posted by kdawson from the bee-gone dept.
daninbusiness writes "Across the US, beekeepers are finding that their bees are disappearing — not returning while searching for nectar and pollen. This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as $14 billion worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination. Reasons for this problem, dubbed 'colony collapse disorder,' are still unknown. Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides."
Sony

Sony's Harrison In No Rush to Lower PS3 Price 107

Posted by Zonk from the out-of-reach dept.
njkid1 passed on a link to a GameDaily interview they conducted at DICE with Phil Harrison, SCE WorldWide Studios President. Harrison stays mostly positive throughout the article, pointing out that the availability of consoles is a sign of a healthy supply chain. He denigrates rumble in controllers as a 'last generation' feature, and specifically discusses the company's decision-making process for lowering prices: "The PS3 technology, as with any of our platforms, starts off life at a high price and then we engineer cost out of it. And that process is an investment that you make to combine chips into a single chip or to reduce components or combine components and redesign things, and that investment is part of our planned R&D effort to reduce cost. At the appropriate time and when we can afford to, the business model of the industry is to pass those savings onto the consumer, but we're a long way away from doing that yet."
GUI

Vista Worse For User Efficiency Than XP 546

Posted by kdawson from the two-steps-back dept.
erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."
Windows

Submission + - Vista Deactivated by Installing / Running Programs

Submitted by
growse
growse writes: "It seems that even the most every day tasks can cause Vista to deactivate itself and require reactivation. Ed Bott has written about his experiences with such issues and includes a screenshot gallery of what the user experiences when Vista decides to deactivate itself. Microsoft has a support document about the issues here.

Is this an indication of more anti-piracy screwups to come? It seems that we're past the point of anti-piracy measures being only inconvenient for pirates, so now that legitimate users are being affected will they start to look for other OS options?"
Patents

British Government Comes Out Against 'Pure' Software Patents 91

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-software-out-from-under-lock-and-key dept.
uglyduckling writes "The British Government has issued a response to a recent petition calling for 'the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible'. The answer is reassuring but perhaps doesn't go far enough, and gives no specific promises to bring into line a patent office that grants software patents (according to the petition) 'against the letter and the spirit of the law'. The Gowers Review that it references gives detailed insight into the current British position on this debate, most interestingly recommending a policy of 'not extending patent rights beyond their present limits within the areas of software, business methods and genes.'"
Security

Reverse Hacker Awarded $4.3 Million 171

Posted by Zonk from the now-i-want-to-be-a-reverse-hacker dept.
jcatcw writes "Shawn Carpenter was awarded a $4.3 million award — more than twice the amount he sought and money he thinks he'll never see. Carpenter worked for Sandia National Labs as an intrusion detection analyst. He anayzed. He detected. He reported. He was fired — in Janurary 2005 after sharing his results with the FBI and the U.S. Army. Computerworld asked him what he hoped to achieve in that investigation. Answer: 'In late May of 2004, one of my investigations turned up a large cache of stolen sensitive documents hidden on a server in South Korea. In addition to U.S. military information, there were hundreds of pages of detailed schematics and project information marked 'Lockheed Martin Proprietary Information — Export Controlled' that were associated with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. ... It was a case of putting the interests of the corporation over those of the country.' Ira Winkler, author of Spies Among Us , said the verdict was 'incredibly justified. Frankly, I think people [at Sandia] should go to jail' for ignoring some of the security issues that Carpenter was trying to highlight with his investigation."
NASA

Submission + - NASA Scientist: Stop Building Coal Power Plants

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Yesterday speaking as a private citizen & without authority from the U.S. space agency, James Hansen from NASA told Washington to stop building coal plants. From the article, "In his briefing to leaders of the press corps, entitled "Global Warming: Connecting the Dots from Causes to Solutions", Hansen said that evidence in the international scientific community shows global warming is occurring at a much faster pace than earlier forecasts predicted and that the burning of coal is a leading cause of elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which traps heat via the so-called greenhouse effect. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, coal-fueled power plants produce about half of the electricity consumed in America. Plans currently call for the construction of some 160 new coal-based facilities to meet future energy needs over the next decade." Hansen is a controversial but high ranking scientist at NASA who is a well known outspoken opponent of the Bush administration's handling & policies of environmental issues."
IBM

IBM Refuses To Certify Oracle Linux 124

Posted by kdawson from the doesn't-look-red-to-me dept.
Andrew writes "IBM has thrown a spanner in the Oracle Linux works by refusing to certify that IBM's software portfolio will run and be supported on Oracle Unbreakable Linux. If IBM applications turn out to be incompatible with Oracle Linux, then it will be up to Oracle to resolve any issues. This conservative stance of IBM's is unlikely to help Oracle sell Linux subscriptions to businesses that use any of IBM's large software portfolio."

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