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Patents

Sharp Rise Seen in Chinese Patents 110

Posted by Zonk from the everyone-is-doing-it-so-why-can't-we dept.
ianare writes "According to a report by the UN's intellectual property agency, the number of requests for patents in China grew by 33% in 2005 compared with the previous year. That gives it the world's third highest number behind Japan and the United States, the agency said. China's leaders have been urging companies to become more creative, and put more of their money into developing new technology. 'Made by China' rather than simply 'Made in China' will mean that the country's economic miracle stands a far better chance of lasting longer."
The Courts

Judge Permits eBay's "Buy It Now" Feature 139

Posted by kdawson from the there's-still-that-25-mil dept.
stalebread points to a Reuters story reporting that a federal judge refused to issue an injunction against eBay's "Buy It Now" feature. Quoting: "Judge Jerome B. Friedman of Federal District Court denied a motion by the Virginia company, MercExchange, for a permanent injunction to stop eBay from using the feature. The Supreme Court ruled last year that, although eBay infringed upon MercExchange's patent for the service, it was up to the lower court to decide whether eBay had to stop using it. 'MercExchange has utilized its patents as a sword to extract money rather than as a shield to protect its right to exclude or its market share, reputation, good will, or name recognition, as MercExchange appears to possess none of these,' he wrote."
The Almighty Buck

Underfunded NSA Suffers Brownouts 198

Posted by Zonk from the war-on-terror-doesn't-include-juice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Almost ten years after the an internal report, and a year after a Baltimore sun story warned that the electrical system at the fort Meade NSA HQ couldn't keep up with the growing electricity demand ... the problem has got worse. The 'NSA has had to resort to partial, rolling brownouts at its computer farms and scheduled power outages and some offices are experiencing significant power disruptions'. NSA director Alexander testified to congress about this problem. It is suggested he wanted to add more than $800 million to the 07 budget. A recent public powerpoint presentation suggested 70% of of all intelligence spending goes to contractors. It also included a graph, without numbers, of this spending. It suggests that US intelligence spending is around $60 billion. An internal survey that showed NSA employees have problems trusting each other."
Education

Submission + - MIT Dean Uses Fake Resume For 28 Years

Submitted by
Nick_Allain
Nick_Allain writes: "Boston.com reports that MIT's Marilee Jones resigned "after acknowledging that she fabricated her academic credentials. Jones's fall from grace is full of irony. She made it her life's mission, speaking at schools and conferences around the country, to combat the rising admissions frenzy, telling high school students and their parents that it is more important to be happy than to get into the most famous college or to have the perfect resume". Her resume was a near complete fabrication: "Massachusetts Institute of Technology officials said yesterday, Jones said she had degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Union College, and Albany Medical College, all in New York State. She does not have a degree from any of them"."
GUI

Multiple Desktop Users on a Single Machine? 106

Posted by Cliff from the multiple-heads-why-not-multiple-consoles dept.
_Sharp'r_ asks: "I'm trying to design the least expensive way to make OpenOffice, email, and a web browser available to students in a new charter elementary school. In my past experience working with charitable computer donations, I can usually get three to four working computers out of five donated 'broken' computer systems, usually with plenty of monitors, keyboards and mice left over. I'd like to use one computer for multiple students by attaching multiple monitors, USB keyboards and mice. What drivers/OS versions support multiple local input devices and monitors that can be attached to a specific login session? Will this require virtualization? Is there a config I haven't found that you can use to assign these devices to specific ttys? Have you done this before?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Review: Ubuntu Linux Versus Vista

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: InformationWeek pits Ubuntu Linux versus Windows Vista in a detailed comparison. The results are unusual for this type of review because it straddles the fence. The verdict is: "a tie, but only because both platforms fall short in some ways. Vista's roster of backup features aren't available in every SKU of the product; Ubuntu doesn't have anything like Vista's shadow copy system and its user-friendly backup tools are pretty rudimentary." Do you agree?
Software

Submission + - New Pidgin pixmaps

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Well, these days the Pidgin (former Gaim) team has come up with some new images to represent the IM app we all know and love. My anonymous opinion is that they suck... badly. What does the slashdot crowd think? Is it to late to help the Pidgin developers with some cool and web twooish ideas?

Keeping Cool May Be the Key To Longevity 224

Posted by Zonk from the everybody-be-cool-you-be-cool dept.
merryprankster writes "New Scientist reports that Scripps Research Institute scientists have found that lowering the body temperature of mice by just 0.5C extends their lifespan by around 15%. Until now the only proven way of increasing longevity has been calorie restriction — but as this also causes a lowering of body temperature the researchers speculate that this cooling may be the underlying mechanism retarding aging. In this study mice with a defect in their lateral hypothalamus, which has the side effect of cooling body temperature, not only lived longer but also ate normal amounts."

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