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Comment Re:Here is what I don't get... (Score 2) 140

by Mabbo (#34483300) Attached to: Google Unveils Beta Chrome OS Notebook
There is Google Chrome OS, and there is Chromium OS. These are separate things, just as Chromium Browser and Google Chrome Browser are separate things. The Chromiums are open source, and you are free to put them on any hardware you like, as Hexxeh has done. If you want to boot up Chromium OS on your desktop, by all means, give it a shot, and document it well so I can do it too!

Why do this? Because Google doesn't want to put their name to something they don't guarantee to be awesome. They want the less than 10 second boot-up, SSD harddrives, and complete guarantee of hardware, so that they can better maintain their security models of the devices.

Bias: I was an intern on the Google Chrome team over the summer.

Comment Before everyone says that's idiotic... (Score 3, Interesting) 332

by Mabbo (#34183272) Attached to: Sophos Researcher Suggests Password 'Free' to Spur Wi-Fi Encryption
... just keep in mind that with WPA, the initial password is just used for connecting to the network, after which a session password is shared (right? pretty sure I'm right about that). So, technically, it would prevent someone from stealing your interwebs as long as you were already connected. Now, the guy who got to Starbucks before you and started sniffing before you did, he definitely has your personal information now, and this is a stupid idea.
Image

Inventor Creates Flotation Device Bazooka 144

Posted by samzenpus from the point-shoot-and-save dept.
Australian inventor Sam Adeloju has won the £20,000 ($32,000) James Dyson Award for inventing the coolest piece of life-saving equipment ever. The Longreach is a modified bazooka which can fire an expanding flotation device up to 150m to a person in distress. From the article: "Mr Adeloju told NEWS.com.au that the Longreach was inspired by a grenade-launch training session with the Army Reserves. Weighing just 3.5kg, it shoots the rescue device 150m in a manner similar to the way the army uses a grenade launcher to deliver flares and aerial observation devices. Hitting the water activates an expanding foam unit in the Longreach rescue unit, which also incorporates LED illumination and a vortex air whistle."

Comment SVGs are the future, imho (Score 4, Interesting) 98

by Mabbo (#32864358) Attached to: SVG and the Indexing of Web Standards
We *need* to get full support for SVG going. Not as a replacement for flash, or any of that (though really, they could), but just as a basic image format for non-photographic images in computers. Vector graphics scale beautifully, work well with screen magnifiers for the visually impaired, are lightweight, easy to make and edit by hand (it's xml!).

You could implement whole web-apps as a single SVG file if you so desired. That is, if all browsers had full support of SVGs- and as my job this summer is in part to work on WebKit SVG support, let me assure you, nobody is fully compliant yet. But we're getting there. (Damn you Sub-resource loading!)

Comment Fingerprint != Private (Score 3, Interesting) 355

by Mabbo (#32418756) Attached to: Thumbprints Used To Check Books Out of School Library
Your fingerprint, like most biometrics data, is not what I would call "Private information". You leave it lying around all of the place, all the time. Your face isn't private, in fact it's probably the most public thing about you. Your DNA is very much the same: your drop it everywhere. The only thing that makes it pseudo-private is that it's generally a bit hard to obtain- but not really.

If I were a kid at that school, I'd start signing out a lot of books under a teacher's fingerprint. I'm sure a lot of them have seen the mythbusters episode where they do that sort of thing. It's not difficult.

Comment This supports my theory... (Score 1) 892

by Mabbo (#32379192) Attached to: The "Scientific Impotence" Excuse
This supports my larger theory of "People are idiots". Look, lemme explain this one in great detail for you: We live in a culture that has become so self-absorbed, we are unable to consider the idea that we may actually be wrong. We are unwilling to consider that our own belief may be mistaken. And at the current rate we're going, that's not going to change any time soon.
Biotech

Chemical Cocktail Can Keep a Heart Viable 10 Days, Outside the Body 97

Posted by timothy from the with-very-few-exceptions-not-a-worm dept.
nj_peeps writes "Harvard professor Hemant Thatte has developed a cocktail of 21 chemical compounds that he calls Somah, derived from the Sanskrit for 'ambrosia of rejuvenation.' Using Somah, Thatte and his team have accomplished some amazing feats with pig hearts. They can keep the organ viable for transplant up to 10 days after harvest — far longer than the four-hour limit seen in hospitals today. Not only that, but using low temperatures and Somah, they were able to take a pig heart that was removed post mortem and get it to beat 24 hours later in the lab."

Comment This is news? (Score -1, Offtopic) 553

by Mabbo (#32198008) Attached to: Wikipedia Is Not Amused By Entry For xkcd-Coined Word
There's a still-growing oil leak destroyed the gulf. The UK Government is in a major changeover, the likes of which haven't been seen in decades. There's even Jon Stewart's fight about what kind of tie a CNN reported wears- all things that BBC America could be talking about that would matter more to the world than this story. I love xkcd, but seriously, this is not news.

Comment Mixed feelings (Score 1) 599

by Mabbo (#32176804) Attached to: Ultrasound As a Male Contraceptive
Look, if you're an STD, this is like finding out you get 3 Christmases this year. No more need for condoms, hurray for HIV.

But at the same time, as a man who is paranoid about accidentally reproducing, having extra reassurances like this is a nice benefit, to say the least. Women can reassure themselves by going on birth control, but for men, we have the condom, and trusting that she's actually taking whatever BC she says she is.

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