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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 10 declined, 2 accepted (12 total, 16.67% accepted)

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Submission + - Enormous Debris Field Headed for West Coast of U.S (wordpress.com) 1

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: A vast field of debris from Japan earthquake and tsunami is floating towards U.S. West Coast.

"... more grizzly are the predictions of U.S. oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who is expecting human feet, still in their shoes, to wash up on the West Coast within three years.

âIâ(TM)m expecting parts of houses, whole boats and feet in sneakers to wash up,â(TM) Mr Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer who has spent decades tracking flotsam, told MailOnline.

Several thousand bodies were washed out to sea following the disaster and while most of the limbs will come apart and break down in the water, feet encased in shoes will float, Mr Ebbesmeyer said.

âIâ(TM)m expecting the unexpected,â(TM) he added."

Submission + - Displax film can turn any surface into touchscreen (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: Displax is revealing a new plastic film with multitouch sensing. It can be placed over any display or even non-display surfaces, making them into interactive devices.

Portugal-based Displax calls this a “multitouch skin” which can be thinner than paper. The company has been working on it for the past decade and plans to launch commercial products in July.

Submission + - Climate Change Scientists Email Leaked 1

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: According to The Examiner: The prestigious U.K. Hadley Climate Research Unit was attacked by Russian computer hackers two days ago. Officials at Hadley, a leading global-warming research center, have confirmed that some 3,000 sensitive documents including decades-old emails from climate scientists are genuine.

However, other sources like news.com.au indicate that the work may have been an inside job.

Whoever did it, the emails and data are out on the 'net, even to the point that there are searchable databases where you can sift through the now-freed emails at your leisure.

Submission + - MMCC/GW - A scandal too big for these words

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: It’s in fact a conspiracy of many of the world’s leading global warming scientists that involves massaging data, dodging scrutiny, hounding out sceptical editors, fudging figures, the possibly criminal destruction of data under FOI request, tax avoidance, gloating over a sceptic’s death, character assassination of sceptics. admissions of using “tricks” to “hide” inconvenient trends, farming grants, private admissions of grave doubts in their own public warming warnings, close collusion with green groups, the joint concocting of the most alarmist announcements and much more. 'Hackers' (some are proposing whistle-blowers) leak emails from leading MMCC/GW scientists which seem to show massive collusion to defraud and disinform about the 'data' behind man-made climate change/global warming...
Linux Business

Submission + - Red Hat @SCO Bankruptcy - Tells SCO "Not so fa 1

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: Red Hat Linux takes aggressive action against sue-happy SCO in their bankruptcy proceedings. Over at Groklaw, PJ writes:

"Red Hat is letting the court know that it cares about its litigation, it intends to vigorously pursue it as soon as the bankruptcy stay is lifted, and its claim should not be thrown off a cliff without giving Red Hat notice and an opportunity to be heard."

It seems that SCO wants what has been (for them) a very favorable judge to just take care of the matter of that pesky Red Hat litigation they began oh-so long ago...

Medicine

Submission + - Face transplant patient: 'I'm not a monster'

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: From MSNBC, witness the results of a 22 hour operation back on Dec. 10:

"When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation's first face transplant recipient, she's stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she looks like now.

Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. Her face is bloated and squarish. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles."

The before and after pictures show what an incredible job the surgeons have done so far.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - If McD's = MS of food, then "Chinese food" (ted.com)

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: From the "Submissions Which Aren't Top 10 Lists" department:

Who among geekdom hasn't resorted to snarfing down some take-out Chinese food when in a late night coding frenzy? Over at TED, "Reporter Jennifer 8. Lee talks about her hunt for the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes — exploring the hidden spots where these two cultures have (so tastily) combined to form a new cuisine."

 Late in her talk she makes the point that Chinese food is arguably a form of worldwide Open Source cuisine. Maybe we can have our GNU, and eat it to...

(And while you're there at TED, for more geeky goodness, check out Richard Prestons amazing discussion of the giant trees of the PNW.)
Announcements

Submission + - Rocket-powered Race Plane League

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: Wired has the story: "The Rocket Racing League on Monday detailed plans to move from a sci-fi fantasy to a full-fledged commercial enterprise — including "vertical drag races" using rockets.

At a press conference at the Yale Club in New York, Rocket Racing League CEO Granger Whitelaw said rocket-powered planes will fly their first exhibition race in August at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with at least three more races to follow in 2008.
Operating Systems

Submission + - 2008: Year of Linux on the... Laptop!?!

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in his column for eWeek titled "Cheap Laptops Bad for Vista, Good for Linux": "The good news for everyone is that you can get a good, solid laptop for under a grand these days. The bad news for Vista users is that many of those laptops, even though they're sold with Vista, have nothing like enough resources to run Vista decently."

And that is exactly my own experience with a $398 (retail) Vista Home Basic laptop. My impression of the first Windows OS I've 'owned' in over 6 years is that it is rudimentary, slow, and, to my eye-candy chagrin, has no capability of *ever* running Aero. OTOH, Linux installed on the same laptop (w/100% hardware compatibility, no less) is current, complete, very fast, stable, and even runs Beryl.

"The Year of Linux on the Desktop" has been a standing /. joke of years, but given the turbulent economy and lackluster performance and uptake of Vista, might the low price point of these cheap laptops combined with the (increasing visibility and popularity) of a better, free operating system create significant gains in the numbers of Linux users? Perhaps Microsoft should not have 'pushed' Vista onto platforms not really suited to running it?
The Internet

Submission + - Worst datacenter migration ever? (webhostingtalk.com)

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: What do you do, what *can* you do, when your webhosting company has serious problems that result in downtimes of 70+ hours? Sue them? This is what some customers of Alabanza hosting are threatening.

Alabanza was acquired in August by now-parent company Navisite, and this datacenter migration was to have happened over a month ago. Despite several promises to the contrary, servers are still not up, and the complaints are still coming in.

If you were affected by this, if you'd lost paying customers due to the webhosts foul-up, what could the company offer you that would keep you out of the lawsuit? Free hosting for a time would not seem to be much of an incentive. Monetary compensation would be nice, but how would you prove your value lost, with factors like customers trust in your sites reliability not being easily factored?
The Internet

Submission + - Anti-scammers become Storm Victims

Submitted by capnkr
capnkr writes: It looks like the efforts of the anti-scammers at sites like 419eater, Scamwarners, Artists Against 419, and possibly others have become the target of the Storm botnet.

Spamnation has a post about it, and as of this writing none of the above listed sites are responding. Spamnation reports that CastleCops and other anti-spam forums are being DDOSed as well. Sounds like a massive, concerted effort against the folks who are fighting the good fight...
Although I hate it for the owners and admins of the above sites, I think it shows without a doubt that their efforts to 'get back' at the scammers are working, if the scammers have had to 'rent' Storm in an effort to try and knock them out.

I wonder if this had anything to do with the fake bank site I busted on Tuesday? ;)

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