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Businesses

Submission + - YouTube founders swoop in and buy Delicious (cio.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Delicious, the social bookmarking service and Web 2.0 pioneer, will live on as part of a new Internet company run by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Delicious, whose future had been in question since Yahoo announced its intention to divest itself of it last year, will become part of Avos, a new company Hurley and Chen have launched."
Science

Submission + - Robot based on cartwheeling caterpillars (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: GoQBot, the 10-centimeter-long robot has a hammer-shaped head and a silicone body embedded with metal coils. The coils contract, musclelike, when pulsed with current, and within 200 milliseconds the crawling bot becomes a wheel and rolls off at impressively high speeds.
Science

Submission + - Small insects paddle through air (physicscentral.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Research shows insects swim through air, using their wings like a kayaker uses paddles in water. Results published yesterday in the APS journal Applied Physics Letters.

Submission + - Voting for the SQL-injection party (alicebobandmallory.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Swedish elections were held recently (the third Sunday of September to be exact) and it seems that a few people tried to interfere with the election by voting for parties which where in effect named to be SQL injection attacks or similar. Clever stuff! Little Bobby Tables in real life.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - FCC white spaces rules favor tech industry (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
holy_calamity
holy_calamity writes: "The FCC has come to a decision on the rules governing devices that make use of the unlicensed wireless spectrum between TV stations, with commissioner Genchowski trumpeting a new era of "super wi-fi". Most crucially the FCC dropped the requirement that devices sense TV and wireless microphone signals, instead they can geolocate and use an online database to learn which white spaces are available in their area. That makes tech firms happy because it provides a software-centric alternative to developing complex new sensing hardware."
Technology

Submission + - NVIDIA diversifying out of GPUs

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: At its annual GPU conference, computer graphics chip maker NVIDIA mapped out a long-term plan which highlighted its diversification into new computing spaces. NVIDIA announced Tegra 3 will soon launch and Tegra 4 is already in development. Another strategy in the mobile space which could benefit NVIDIA is its willingness to work with ARM Holdings. It is also doing supercomuting with the Tesla, and its just announced Maxwell chip, which will be 16x faster.
The Internet

Submission + - Microsoft: IE9 To Require Windows 7 SP1 (computerworld.com) 2

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: First it was no IE9 for Windows XP. Now this: Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) browser will require Windows 7 Service Pack 1, a not-yet-released major update to the operating system, according to a FAQ posted on the company's site. People running Windows Vista must have that operating system's SP2 in place. Microsoft has not divulged the release dates of Windows 7 SP1 or IE9, but both are expected to appear in the first half of 2011. That six-month window covers Microsoft's current plans for Windows 7 SP1, while many experts believe the company will ship the final of IE9 in April 2011 to coincide with its annual MIX conference. The FAQ suggests that the final versions of both two products will ship simultaneously, or nearly so. Microsoft has not divulged the release dates of Windows 7 SP1 or IE9, but both are expected to appear in the first half of 2011. That six-month window covers Microsoft's current plans for Windows 7 SP1, while many experts believe the company will ship the final of IE9 in April 2011 to coincide with its annual MIX conference.
Security

Submission + - Google Warning Gmail users on China Spying Attempt (threatpost.com)

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: Google is using automated warnings to alert users of its GMAIL messaging service about wide spread attempts to access personal mail accounts that may indicate wholesale spying with links back to China. The victims include one leading privacy activist.

Submission + - Java Creator James Gosling: Why I Quit Oracle (eweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an exclusive interview with eWEEK, Java creator James Gosling discusses a series of issues he earlier declined to take public, including why he left Oracle.

Comment Re:Virtual Box (Score 5, Informative) 261

by hausen (#31916682) Attached to: Good, Portable "Virtual" Linux Distro?

I ran across almost the same problem this week: needed to have a live USB, but also the ability to run inside a virtualized machine in the case the physical machine wouldn't boot it. I second the parent's opinion: VirtualBox is the way to go. It even has a "portable edition," so you don't have to ask users to install any software, neither you need to ask the lab administrator to install any software.

I seearched a little bit and found this nice gem: http://www.linuxliveusb.com/ (notice: this is not a slashvertizement; I have no links whatsoever with the development group. Just a really satisfied user.) You just have to:

1) install the live CD iso of the distribution of your choice (I have chosen Ubuntu, since I am familiar with it)
2) download Linux Live USB Creator - Full Pack (w/ Virtualbox)
3) run it, point it to the iso file, mark the persistency option (I have setup 2GB for it) and click the "lighning bolt" icon to create your live USB with a portable VirtualBox
4) profit!

You can either boot it as a USB hard drive, or you can run your virtualized OS under Windows clicking the "Virtualize this Key" executable! That's it! No messing with settings in grub, no modprobe, no nothing! Just use an easy GUI.
Toys

Submission + - Microfluidic Chips made with Shrinky Dinks

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "When she started her job as a new professor at UC Merced, Michelle Khine was stuck without a clean room or semiconductor fabrication equipment, so she went MacGyver and started making Lab-on-a-Chip devices in her kitchen with Shrinky Dinks, a laser printer, and a toaster oven. She would print a negative image of the channels onto the polystyrene sheets and then make them smaller with heat. The miniaturized pattern served as a perfect mould for forming rounded, narrow channels in PDMS — a clear, synthetic rubber."
Communications

Submission + - Skype 2.0 beta for Linux supports video calling (skype.com)

Submitted by hausen
hausen writes: Skype 2.0 beta for Linux, a. k. a. ‘The Great Revolution’, was released on November 7. Now, Linux users are able to place and receive video calls, and the video can be shown in full screen. There are also other improvements and bug-fixes. The developers have released packages for Debian Etch, Ubuntu, Mepis, Xandros, Centos, Fedora 7 and 6, OpenSUSE 10+ and Mandriva, as well as two versions of distro-independent binaries (dynamically or statically linked).
Graphics

Submission + - The first image taken with an ultra low field MRI (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "MRI machines are about to get smaller, much smaller. Most of their bulk is taken up by the huge superconducting magnets required to generate fields of about a Tesla. Now a team at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico has built a machine that can produce images using a field of only a few microTesla. So giant superconducting magnets aren't necessary, a development that has the potential to make MRI machines much smaller, perhaps even suitcase sized. Today, the team has posted sections of the first 3D brain image taken with the device (abstract, pdf)."

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