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Cellphones

Submission + - T-Shirt Converts Rock Music Into Electricity (ecouterre.com)

fangmcgee writes: The Sound Charge T-shirt comprises a modified piezoelectric film, which acts as an oversized microphone by absorbing sound pressure waves. A series of interlaced quartz crystals converts the acoustic signals into electricity, which in turn feeds into an internal reservoir battery compatible with most cellphone models.

Submission + - An Entirely New Genre Of Aircraft Arrives (gizmag.com) 1

fergus07 writes: Austrian research company IAT21 has presented a new type of aircraft at the Paris Air Show which has the potential to become aviation's first disruptive technology since the jet engine. Neither fixed wing nor rotor craft, the D-Dalus uses four, mechanically-linked, contra-rotating, cylindrical turbines for its propulsion, and by altering the angle of the blades, it can launch vertically, hover perfectly still, move in any direction, and thrust upwards and hence "glue down" upon landing, which it can easily do on the deck of a ship, or even a moving vehicle. It's also almost silent, has the dynamic stability to enter buildings, handles rough weather with ease, flies very long distances very quickly and can lift very heavy loads. It accordingly holds immense promise as a platform for personal flight, for military usage, search and rescue, and much more.

Submission + - Might iCloud be a Honeypot? (betweenthenumbers.net)

An anonymous reader writes: Between watermarked MP3 files and matching identical files iCloud Music Match might wind up being a giant trap should for finding owners of illegally copied files should the RIAA subpoena the evidence
Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Ships Firefox 5, Meets Rapid-Release Plan (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: "Mozilla delivered on Tuesday the final version of Firefox 5, the first edition under the new faster-release regime it kicked off earlier this year. The company also patched 10 bugs in Firefox 5, including one in the browser's handling of the WebGL 3-D rendering standard that rival Microsoft has called unsafe. Firefox 5 looks identical to its predecessor, Firefox 4, but Mozilla's made changes under the hood. Mozilla has denied copying Google Chrome's upbeat schedule but analysts have noted the similarities and pointed out the need of all browser makers to step up the pace. Because of the shorter development cycle, Mozilla called out relatively few new features in Firefox 5."
Censorship

Submission + - Facebook Takes Down Roger Ebert's Page (itworld.com)

jfruhlinger writes: "Roger Ebert, best known for giving thumb-based film reviews in At The Movie, has reinvented himself for the digital age over the past few years, with an active online presence that includes widely read Twitter and Facebook pages. But his Facebook page was briefly removed after Ebert, responding to the death of Jackass star Ryan Dunn in a car accident, wrote "Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive," prompting complaints. The page is back now, but as blogger Chris Nerney notes, the incident shows that "your" online presence is in many ways not really yours, if it depends on services that can remove it on a whim."
Microsoft

Submission + - SkyDrive drops Silverlight (i-programmer.info) 3

mikejuk writes: Microsoft's SkyDrive, a web service that provides cloud storage for end user files, has just acquired a revamped user interface — and it is HTML5 based. Yes, another Microsoft website has dropped Silverlight. How can Microsoft expect independent developers to base their future on Silverlight when Microsoft itself is abandoning it like a sinking ship? Whatever happened to "eating your own dog food"? It seems that now Microsoft would rather eat dog food made elsewhere....
Microsoft

Submission + - Molyneux on Kinect: 'Has Some Problems' (techtroids.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Peter Molyneux, current Lionhead boss, has admitted that Microsoft’s Kinect has problems. Molyneux told Gaming Union that most of Kinect’s issues revolve around navigating in the game world.
AI

Submission + - Can AI Be Your Guide to the Web? (technologyreview.com)

emilyann writes: Today, a startup called TrapIt launched a beta website that recommends content after learning your tastes via an artificial-intelligence engine spun out of research originally funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company hopes this technological pedigree will set its method apart from other ways of finding information, such as searching or receiving recommendations from social-media sources.

Comment Re:Don't feel bad, dear managers (Score 0) 300

You know, every time a takeover happens some people get fired.

I am delighted to see that for a change it happens to you.

Mangers aren't the same as executives who orchestrate giant sales. Though all executives are supposed to "Manage" their company's welfare, they rarely "manage" employees that make up the disgruntled or gruntled masses; i.e. you.

Managers are not all highly paid and soulless. They have families. You on the other hand seem embittered beyond the point of reason. I pity you more than the Skype people about to start looking for work.

Comment Re:It damn well better...Zork does not = D&D (Score 1) 136

Well, at least I'm not designing it. There'd be at least one grue involved.

Though it definitely paved the way for PC role playing games, Zork has F-All to do with Dungeons & Dragons.

There are probably Priests and a myriad other religious leaders around at the time that would lump any RPG in as tools of the devil, but they were wrong about it all. I'm surprised they are rallying against this proposed monument to Gygax.

AMD

Submission + - AMD makes Fusion CPU and GPU agnostic (eetimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: AMD is turning its Fusion brand, used for CPU-plus-graphics processors, into an open high-level specification for building multicore processors that will be CPU and GPU agnostic. This will open the way for ARM cores to be included alongside x86 cores.
Security

Submission + - Defense Dept. Ramping Up Offensive Cybersecurity (threatpost.com)

Trailrunner7 writes: The Pentagon has said recently that it will soon consider certain types of online attacks as acts of war, but it hasn't been very specific. In an interview, White House cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt said that the Department of Defense takes this mission very seriously and that there are other agencies involved as well.
"The military, like any other large entity, has a tremendous dependency on the Internet and technology just to do its basic mission, and so when they look at their 21st century security challenges and their role and their commitment to defend citizens, allies and interests, that even is more extensible than anything else when it comes to the Internet itself. Now, when you start looking at sort of the full breadth of government activities that might take place, whether it’s diplomatic, whether it’s military, whether it’s economic, whether it’s some other sort of incentive and stuff like that, this is part of an overall view, the way things that take place. So, Department of Defense’s role is only one of the many roles that we have across the government, and not only our government, but other governments as well," Schmidt said.

Bitcoin

Submission + - Bitcoin user gets robbed of his 1/2 million wallet (bitcoin.org)

anomnomnomymous writes: "One user claims that an unknown thief has stolen his virtual wallet with Bitcoins, worth the equivalent of half a million dollars. In a posting on the Bitcoin forum, a user with the nickname Allinvain claims 25,000 Bitcoins have been captured; An amount with a rough value of 467.500 dollar.
So are we going to see more of these robberies in the future? This clearly shows one of the downsides of the semi-anonymous currency, as a recourse or refund (or legal protection) is nearly absent."

Idle

Submission + - Libyan rebels weaponize Power Wheels toy ATV (jalopnik.com)

Danny Rathjens writes: "jalopnik.com reports, "You know the little Power Wheels-style ATV [4-wheeled slow-moving truck] your kid uses to drive across the lawn? It turns out that it makes a great machine gun drone in the hands of Libyan rebel, and structural engineer, Mohammad Bin Saud. Bin Saud is one of a growing legion of rebel Libyans turning anything and everything — including the aforementioned Power Wheels — into weapons." Most of the content is a video clip from Al-Jazeera."

Submission + - Heart With No Beat, A New Hope Of Life (gizmocrazed.com)

Mightee writes: "As the quest for a perfect artificial heart continues, Doctors from the Texas Heart Institute have created an artificial heart that has no pulse or audible heartbeat. As a result, developing a heart that does not wear out, break down or cause clots and infections could be avoided."

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