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PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Playstation 3 new firmware upscales DVD/PS2 games!

An anonymous reader writes: Sony's official release of the V1.80 firmware, the PS3 is now capable of upconverting standard-def DVDs, non-HD Blu-ray disc content and all PlayStation games (including those for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2) to 1080p. Will this change your mind after all the much publicized failings of the PS3 into the most versatile optical disc player of all time?
Space

Submission + - Astronomers find potentially habitable planet

Anonymous Coward writes: "For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe." The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun. "It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions.""

Feed Sex Lube Maker Finds Personal Info Quite Slippery (techdirt.com)

As personal data leaks go, this one's more potentially embarrassing than harmful, but the maker of the sexual lubricant Astroglide leaked the name and addresses of more than 250,000 people who asked for free samples over a four-year timespan. They've even got the gall to blame the issue on Google, since it was searches there that turned up the breach, and the search engine's cached copies haven't yet disappeared. Of course, this ignores the fact that the information was kept in a place where it was freely accessible, whether by Google's spiders, or by an individual. This leak really isn't particularly surprising given the regularity with which all kinds of personal info is leaked, lost or stolen these days. It just further illustrates that any information you provide to somebody can no longer be regarded as private. So little care is taken with personal information by so many companies these days, and these continual leaks bring only minor consequences. If companies can't even bother to keep something as innocuous as a name and address private, it's hard to have much faith they won't let other, more important information slide right on out too.
Microsoft

Submission + - MS Ajax library goes Open Source with Mono in mind

Stian Solberg writes: "Gaia Ajax Widgets is now officially released under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.

Gaia Ajax Widgets is a pure "Hijax library" for ASP.NET 2.0 meaning you don't have to write JavaScript or any other form of client code yourself but use it 100% declarative through adding up WebControls in RAD and WYSIWYG onto your webforms from your toolbox in Visual Studio. To see this live, you can visit some of the tutorials or see one of the many samples (also showing source code).

Our next big step on the release plan is to officially support Mono. Gaia Ajax Widgets supports Internet Explorer and FireFox 100% and Opera roughly 95%."
Media

Submission + - BBC takes a look at LucasFilm's Hardware

whyloginwhysubscribe writes: "The BBC has an interesting article of Industrial Light and Magic's data centre, with a 10-gigabit backbone with a 11 trillion bits / second speed network.

ILM provide LucasFilm and LucasArt's visual effects.

What I like about the article (apart from them obviously keeping their comms room clean with a robotic Roomba vacuum cleaner complete with wireless webcam) is the way they use their PC's processing power at night. Does anyone else know any more technical information about their system architecture?"
Biotech

Submission + - When the Earth was purple

Ollabelle writes: It's always been a bit of a mystery why plants absorb red and blue light while reflecting green when the sun emits the most visible light in the green part of the spectrum. Now a theory has come up with one possible answer: that the first chlorophyll-utilizing microbes evolved to exploit the red-and-blue reflected light of older green-absorbing microbes, eventually out-competing them through greater efficiency and the rise of oxygen. http://www.livescience.com/environment/070410_purp le_earth.html [note to editor: I'm baffled how to tag this story to science, and nothing else. All the "topics" seem to be anything except 'off topic'. Thanks for any insight you can give.]
Music

Submission + - Jobs Recommends Ditching DRM

bizard writes: As more and more european companies have piled on the anti-ITunes bandwagon in the past few months, people have been wondering what Apple's strategy would be. Many assumed that Apple was enjoying too much of a benefit from the DRM and that they would never get rid of it. Well, today Steve Jobs said that getting rid of DRM would be the best option for consumers and that if the record labels can do it for CDs then why not downloads.
Power

Submission + - Purdue Univ. Makes Trash to Electicity Generator

musicon writes: "A group of scientists at Purdue University have created a portable refinery that efficiently converts food, paper and plastic trash into electricity. The machine, designed for the U.S. military, would allow soldiers in the field to convert waste into power and could have widespread civilian applications in the future. Researchers tested the first tactical biorefinery prototype in November and found that it produced approximately 90 percent more energy than it consumed"

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