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Comment I call BS (Score 5, Informative) 240

Your hands are full of very small bones. It's very easy to break your hand by punching something hard and dense (such as a skull or face for instance).

If you want to strike someone in the face, it's smarter to use other parts of the body such as your knee, elbow or to use an open hand strike (such as a palm strike). That way you have the edge of a very long bone delivering the blow.

Comment Smells as a "single unit" (Score 4, Interesting) 82

This is one of the differences between humans and animals, such as dogs, for instance. Dogs smell each component separately.

This is why they make such good detectors for things like explosives or drugs -- they are still capable of pulling the "bomb" smell out of a complex mix of smells or when the smell is deliberately being masked, thanks in part to their highly adapted vomeronasal organ, also called the Jacobson's organ.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/7_11/features/Canine-Sense-of-Smell_15668-1.html

Idle

French Bees Produce Blue and Green Honey 64

jones_supa writes "Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace, France have seen their bees starting to produce honey in an odd blue or green color. Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 km away has been processing waste from a plant producing colorful M&M candies. Subsequently the bees had been carrying the waste to their nests. Agrivalor, the company operating the biogas plant, said it had tried to address the problem after being notified of it by the beekeepers. 'We discovered the problem at the same time they did. We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,' told Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor."

Comment Re:Last mile (Score 3, Interesting) 230

// So Google did get to the front doors of all the people in Kansas City, and Charter and AT&T couldn't stop them, because the city agreed to it. //

As a Kansas City-area resident, I'm afraid this is not the case. I don't know anyone that lives in Kansas City, KS that currently has access to Google Fiber services, or that has seen any trucks or workers in their neighborhood.

Google has been very short on public details with this entire project, and this launch that the article is referring to has to refer to a very limited and localized deployment.

Keep in mind that physical installation did not even begin until this past February: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytjn-5_li-I

'A Google spokeswoman would not say whether the announcement actually means somebody in Kansas City will finally get a light-speed connection next week.

"We're excited to announce more information Google Fiber next week," said Jenna Wandres. "We haven't elaborated on what arriving means."'
http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/18/3711326/google-fiber-to-make-july-26-announcement.html#storylink=misearch

I'll be curious to eventually find out who has access to it, exactly, and how long it'll be before any significant portions of the city are lit up.

Censorship

Submission + - The New York Bill that Would Ban Anonymous Online Speech (time.com)

Kargan writes: Watching faceless online passerby troll bloggers or mock fellow scribblers can be a drag, but what if legislators’ answer to online ne’er-do-wells was to ban anonymous comments from websites entirely? That’s what the state of New York is planning to do in identical bills — S.6779 and A.8688 – proposed by the New York State Assembly that would “amend the civil rights law” in order to “[protect] a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting.”

The bill would require a web administrator to “upon request remove any comments posted on his or her web site by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post and confirms that his or her IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate.” By “web site,” the bill means just what it seems to: Any New York-based website, including “social networks, blogs forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/05/24/the-new-york-bill-that-would-ban-anonymous-online-speech/#ixzz1vol0fxcz

Comment How old is old? (Score 2) 309

I will absolutely sell my most recent graphics cards, they're still worth some dough and it really helps to offset the cost of upgrading all the time. I call it "trading up", and usually I can get away with buying a $200 video card and make $100 back from the old card. (Simple math: new cards only cost me $100 that way!)

But I just gave away my old K6/2 400 Windows 98-era retro-gaming box. It's so old that I couldn't even donate it anywhere, and one of my co-workers wanted one just like it. No more Mechwarrior 2 or Rogue Spear for me.

Yahoo!

Submission + - Yahoogroups succumbs to spammer attack (http)

McGruber writes: After several days of an unrelenting attack from spammers, Yahoogroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/) has completely stopped emailing messages out to mailing list members. Most groups show their last activity was on Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Submission + - NZ Politicians accused of hiding Kimdotcom's donations (nzherald.co.nz)

vik writes: "Kimdotcom well remembers splitting an NZ$50,000 payment into two to help MP John Banks hide the money under the limit for anonymous donations. John Banks claims amnesia, and this is not the first bout of donation-induced memory loss he has suffered from. If convicted, he will lose his seat in NZ's Parliament. But NZ has recently been very flexible in changing its laws to suit big business, so the outcome is far from certain."
Games

Submission + - Max Payne 3 is a 35GB install on PC

An anonymous reader writes: If you’re a fan of the Max Payne games, and intend playing it on PC, be glad that hard drive prices are returning back to normal following the flooding last year. The reason being, Rockstar Games seems to be going for a world record in storage requirements for Max Payne 3.

The system specifications for the third game in the series have been released, and the hard drive requirements certainly stand out. The minimum space required on your disk? 35GB.

What implications does that have? Game will ship on at least 4 DVDs, the digital download version will take forever to complete, and I'm concerned about level load times if this much data is needed for the game...
Games

Submission + - Gaming Clichés That Absolutely Need To Die (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: "The PC and console game industry is in desperate need of an overhaul. With skyrocketing costs to develop games, consumers aren't going to accept $80-$100 game titles, especially not with mobile game prices in the 99 cent — $4.99 range. Not to mention, how games are designed these days needs some serious rethinking. This list of some of the industry's most annoying gaming clichés, from scripted sequences to impossibly incompetent NPCs, and how they might be solved, speaks to a few of the major ailments in modern gameplay with character and plot techniques that are older than dirt."

Submission + - "Board of Imagination" is a motorized skateboard controlled only by your mind (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader writes: We were impressed by Chaotic Moon Labs' Board of Awesomeness, a motorized skateboard that used your hand as a virtual gas pedal, when we took it for a spin at CES. Now the company is back with a follow-up called the Board of Imagination — that's controlled by the power of thought. The rider wears a wireless Emotiv EPOC headset, which picks up signals from their brain.
Image

Airline to Offer In-Flight Adult Movies Screenshot-sm 200

Soon the loud passenger who's had too much to drink on your red-eye flight will be the least of your travel worries. Ryanair Airlines chief Michael O'Leary plans to launch an app that will allow passengers to watch porn on their tablets and smartphones during flight. Mr O'Leary told the Sun: "I'm not talking about having it on screens on the back of seats for everyone to see. It would be on handheld devices. Hotels around the world have it, so why wouldn't we?" Best of all, the app could also be used to gamble or play games in case you got bored during the speaking parts of your in-flight adult movie.

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