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Communications

The Effects of the Fibre Outage Throughout the Mediterranean 101

Posted by Zonk from the need-some-unclogging-of-the-tubes dept.
Umar Kalim writes "Analysts have been studying the effects of the fibre outage throughout the Mediterranean in terms of network performance, by examining the changes in packet losses, latencies and throughput. We initially discussed the outage yesterday. 'It is interesting that some countries such as Pakistan were mainly unaffected, despite the impact on neighboring countries such as India. This contrasts dramatically to the situation in June - July 2005, when due to a fibre cut of SEAMEWE3 off Karachi, Pakistan lost all terrestrial Internet connectivity which resulted, in many cases, in a complete 12 day outage of services. This is a tribute to the increased redundancy of international fibre connectivity installed for Pakistan in the last few years.'"
Medicine

Bionic Arm Might Go Into Clinical Trials 107

Posted by Zonk from the nice-to-shake-your-hand dept.
prostoalex writes "The bionic arm project sponsored by DARPA is nearing completion, and might undergo clinical trials. 'The arm has motor control fine enough for test subjects to pluck chocolate-covered coffee beans one by one, pick up a power drill, unlock a door, and shake a hand. Six preconfigured grip settings make this possible, with names like chuck grip, key grip, and power grip. The different grips are shortcuts for the main operations humans perform daily.'"
Biotech

Sperm Made From Female Bone Marrow, Men Obsolete? 459

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the what-some-women-have-been-saying-for-years dept.
Shaitan Apistos writes "British scientists have discovered a way to turn female bone marrow into sperm, allowing women to reproduce without the need of male companionship. All children born of this method would be female, due the lack Y chromosomes, and there is high chance of birth defects. Eggs also can be created from male bone marrow, but men looking to reproduce would still need to find a surrogate mother to handle the gestation period. I'd like to take a moment to welcome our new amazonian overlords and remind them that men are still very good at mowing lawns and fixing cars."
Windows

Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista 347

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the wine-keeps-getting-better-with-age dept.
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant in which he tells the story of being so frustrated with gaming on Windows Vista that he tried comparing gaming on Vista to that on Linux using Wine, with surprising results. "This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't have a huge collection of games to try out, but even still with just a few hours of frustrating work, I have been able to show that not only is Linux a reasonable alternative to Vista for gaming (XP is still king though), but also that Linux handles application failures more gracefully than Vista. Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux."
Space

NASA to Announce New Commercial Space Partner 69

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the only-32-million dept.
NewScientist is reporting that NASA has kicked their previous space partner, Rocketplane Kistler, to the curb and is in search of a new commercial space partner. The new partnership will try to develop a new shuttle to service the International Space Station. "The GAO's decision clears the way for NASA to select a new COTS partner in addition to SpaceX, whose partnership with NASA continues. Only $32 million was paid to Rocketplane Kistler, leaving $175 million for new partnerships."
Microsoft

Submission + - What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft? (blogoscoped.com)

Submitted by
caluml
caluml writes: "There is a humourous look at "What would happen if Microsoft had designed GMail". Gems include: "Another security measurement we'll add is that you won't be able to log-in with just username anymore but are required to enter the full username@gmail.com. Furthermore, we will change the browser URL from http://gmail.microsoft.com/ to the more professional looking http://by114w.bay114.gmail.live.com/mail/mail.aspx?rru=home.""
Security

Submission + - Major QuickTime Vulnerability in Latest Version (beskerming.com)

Submitted by
SkiifGeek
SkiifGeek writes: "Less than a month after news of active OS X fake codec malware, a major vulnerability in the latest version of QuickTime (7.3, only released two weeks ago) has been discovered and has already gone from proof-of-concept exploit code to two readily available exploit samples.

With the ease by which this exploit can be integrated with media streams, it marks a greater threat for end users than a fake codec. At this stage, about the best mitigation recommended is to disable support for RTSP via the File Type / Advanced -> MIME Settings option in QuickTime's Control Panel / PreferencePane. Even though the exploit is only for Windows systems (including Vista — QuickTime apparently doesn't utilise ASLR), OS X users could be at threat from related problems, given historical RTSP vulnerabilities."
Robotics

Submission + - ExoSkeleton Storm Trooper

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From Endgadget comes a review and video clip: "Have you been waiting for a legion of half-man, half-machine storm troopers to descend upon your city and blaze a round of hellfire in all general directions? If you said yes, that's kind of weird. At any rate, you can consider yourself one step closer to cyborg annihilation thanks to a company called Sarcos and its semi-scary exoskeleton — which will make any regular old soldier into a Terminator-like killing machine (as far as we can tell). Sure, they demo the unit lifting heavy equipment and reducing fatigue of the user, but we know what this thing is really for — and it doesn't involve food drops.
Handhelds

Submission + - iPhones-NOT O2-Responsible for NO Reception in UK (techluver.com)

Submitted by
Tech.Luver
Tech.Luver writes: "Another post from "lawbaker2 with pictures, showing almost no reception while undocked and a side by side comparison with Nokia N95: "I have taken some photos to show what happens to the iphone signal when connected to the dock. Apple are looking into it, but for now, connected to the dock and on speakerphone, calls are crystal. I hope this info and photos help those who are struggling to understand why they are unable to use their iphone as intended." User "Ian Stubbs" writes on dock boosting signal: "The cradle boosts the signal without the cable attached. Plugging the cable into the iPhone without the cradle does not affect the signal. Hence the cradle is boosting the signal, not the cable. " ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/25/o2-iphone-having-serious-reception-problems-in-uk-users-complain-on-apple-forum/ )"
Education

Submission + - How the BBC Micro Educated Britain

Submitted by Gammu
Gammu writes: Unlike the North American computer market in the late seventies and early eighties, Britain was largely dominated by domestic companies. Beginning with the early eighties, the BBC selected a computer that schools schools would use for more than a decade, not unlike the Apple II, the BBC Micro. The computer was the BBC Micro and was the subject of a massive computer literacy program in Britain and the Commonwealth.

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