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Submission + - Shark gives another shark a Caesarian section (nzherald.co.nz) 1

Submitted by nut
nut writes: Visitors to an underwater aquarium in Auckland, New Zealand were stunned to see one shark give another shark an impromptu caesarean section. Staff were initially dubious when visitors came running to tell them there were baby sharks spilling from a wound in a female school shark's stomach — courtesy of a large bite by another shark.
It's not uncommon for sharks to take chunks out of each other, in the wild or in captivity, but in this case the bite probably saved the baby sharks' lives. Staff did not know the mother was pregnant and as sharks are commonly born at night they would most likely have been eaten before they were seen.
Games

Submission + - CoD6: Modern Warfare 2 Under Attack (ign.com)

Submitted by rcolbert
rcolbert writes: The long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is upon us. However, there are some 'features' of the game that PC users are taking exception to. As of this morning, the PC version has achieved an abysmal 1.3 out of 10 user rating on IGN.com. It's clear that this is not a subjective review of the game, but instead a statement of protest. One major example is the requirement of Steam technology to make the game work. I find this ironic, since Half-Life 2 and anything else published by Valve has had a Steam requirement for many years, and yet this is the first game I'm aware of that has fallen victim to this level of online social activism. The question is, should IGN do something to moderate the protest when it's quite obvious that most if not all of the users who scored the game '0.0' don't own and have not played the game, or should they let the angry mob have their voices heard? What do you think about submitting highly negative product reviews as a form of protest? Is it the little guy standing up to the man, or is it intellectually dishonest?

Submission + - Chicago Court Throwing Out LIDAR Speeding Tickets (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by bridgeco
bridgeco writes: Chicago Traffic Court Judges have been throwing out speeding cases in which the driver's speed was measured with a LIDAR. Judges are asking for a special "Frye Hearing" to determine the accuracy of these devices.

            Many motorists nabbed for speeding by a laser gun, instead of radar, are seeing their tickets thrown out at Chicago's traffic court because of a legal issue that the city's law department has been unable to overcome. Within the past year judges in Cook County Traffic Court in Chicago determined that speeds captured by lidar were not admissible because the devices had not been proven scientifically reliable in an Illinois court, said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the law department, which prosecutes most speeding tickets in the city.
Power

Submission + - New NaS battery technology developed in Utah (heraldextra.com)

Submitted by lhouk281
lhouk281 writes: Hyperbole aside, the Utah Daily Herald has an interesting article about a new NaS battery technology. From the article:

In a modest building on the west side of Salt Lake City, a team of specialists in advanced materials and electrochemistry has produced what could be the single most important breakthrough for clean, alternative energy since Socrates first noted solar heating 2,400 years ago.

Inside Ceramatec's wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions — electrically charged particles — back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C. The most energy-dense batteries available today are huge bottles of super-hot molten sodium, swirling around at 600 degrees or so. The essence of Ceramatec's breakthrough is that high energy density (a lot of juice) can be achieved safely at normal temperatures and with solid components, not hot liquid.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft earnings for first time truly stink (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Microsoft revenue dropped in year-over-year comparison for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company as the software giant reported a whopping 6% decline in revenue for its fiscal third quarter coupled with a 32% decline in net income as compared to the same quarter a year ago. A poll of analysts by Thomson Reuters showed expectations for third-quarter revenues of $14.09 billion, down from $14.45 billion in the same quarter last year. The news was bleak across all of Microsoft's business units, with drops in every segment except servers and tools. The server and tools business had been Microsoft's most consistent performing business segment for the past two years. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/042309-microsoft-earnings.html?hpg1=bn"
Security

Submission + - North Carolina - PIs vs. Forensic Professionals (wordpress.com)

Submitted by
Rob Lee
Rob Lee writes: "Digital Forensics Professionals might be required to become Private Investigators via new licensing amendments in North Carolina North Carolina's Proposed Ammendment The North Carolina Private Protective Services Board is attempting to enact legislation that would require digital forensic examiners to become licensed private investigators. Digital forensic examiners are defined as: "Any person who, on a contractual basis, engages in the practice of conducting examinations of digitally stored data to recover, image, analyze, or examine the data by using specialized software to determine responsibility or reconstruct usage of the data." Exemptions include accountants, network security administrators and response teams, persons who use utilities proprietary to the examined device to recover data without the use of additional software, such as cellular telephone call information, any other computer or digital media technician who is not conducting imaging, analysis, or other activities, and law enforcement. There are, as yet, no regulatory requirements to demonstrate competence as a digital forensic examiner under the NC PI licensing laws and regulations. Of concern also is that law enforcement may be hampered in seeking the assistance of private sector digital forensic experts or academia if they do not have PI licenses."
Democrats

Submission + - Obama Trying to Keep Warrantless Wiretapping (rawstory.com) 1

Submitted by
Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed writes: "Apparently the Presidential election was less of "Change" and more of "Out with the old, in with the same old," as President Obama has "invoked 'state secrets' to prevent a court from reviewing the legality of the National Security Agency's warantless wiretapping program, moving late Friday to have a lawsuit that challenged the program dismissed."

Well, crap. So who do we elect next time to actually change things? This is NOT the 'change' I voted for!"
The Military

Submission + - Radical Overhaul for Pentagon¹s High-Tech

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Defense Secretary Robert Gates just proposed the most sweeping overhaul of America's arsenal in decades. Major weapons programs, from aircraft carriers to next-gen bombers to new school fighting vehicles, will be cut back, or eliminated. Billions more will be put into growing the American fighting force, both human and robotic.
IBM

Submission + - SPAM: IBM, Facebook and the mainframe: Growing Big Iron

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Pretty sure I would never have expected to see "mainframe" and "Facebook" in the same sentence but there it was. While the page has been up there a while — the zSeries mainframe page has almost 600 Friends — IBM this week acknowledged it had created the page to further develop the mainframe community and of course attract university students to the world of Big Iron. On the subject of attracting new students to the ways of the mainframe world, IBM says its ZNextGen offering continues to grow. zNextGen, a community that IBM and its large user group Share worked together to launch in 2006. IBM says approximately 550 schools worldwide have now joined IBM to offer coursework to some 42,000 students on the IBM System z mainframe. [spam URL stripped]"
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