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Submission + - TGV breaks speed record

Submitted by zeux
zeux writes: While testing the new Paris — Strasbourg line, the TGV broke a 17 years old speed record (babelfish translation), travelling at 553 km/h (343 mph). The last record, of 515 km/h (320 mph), was set on May, 18th 1990. According to the French National Railroad Company (SNCF) the testing campaign will continue and speeds up to 570 km/h (354 mph) could be atteigned by June of this year.
Security

Submission + - College claims BitTorrent is a security breach

Submitted by nevesis
nevesis writes: The University of Iowa's Daily Iowan reports on an increase of "web pirating profilerating." But the obnoxious headline isn't the worst of it. The article then claims, "When you register with a bit torrent, it can publicize personal data, allowing hackers and viruses to collect information such as medical and financial records." Is this just poor reporting or intentional FUD spread by the RIAA?
Portables

Submission + - Seagate's DAVE to Work with Symbian Phone

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "First shown two weeks ago at the DEMO conference, DAVE is a credit-card-sized mobile storage device that communicates with a phone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. With a 10-to 20-Gbyte DAVE, which will cost approximately $150 to $170, Symbian smart phone users will be able to store much more music, photos and video than they would on a flash memory card. Right now, phones' support for flash memory cards generally tops out at 2 Gbytes, though some 4-GB cards work with some phones. As a Symbian Platinum program partner, Seagate will make DAVE APIs freely available to developers. DAVE will be compatible with Series 60 Version 3 devices, such as the Nokia E62 and N80, and with UIQ devices such as Sony Ericsson's W950."
Music

Submission + - Yahoo Music, chiefs urge labels to 'ditch DRM'

Submitted by
waired
waired writes: "It seem that a trend has begun in the musics industry after Steve Jobs essay. Now a senior Yahoo chief has spoken out in favor of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' call for major labels to abandon digital rights technology (DRM). It points out that consumers are getting confused and that the Microsoft DRM "doesn't work half the time". http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&newsI D=17184"
The Internet

Submission + - Is Pure Love of Technology What Unites These 150?

Submitted by jg21
jg21 writes: What better day than Valentine's Day to contemplate this list, previously discussed on Slashdot in a shorter, earlier version, of 150 all-time technology heroes. Built out with the help of Slashdotters and numerous others, this is probably as close as it comes to being now a definitive list of the top 150 contributors of all time to the nexus of technologies that first spawned the Internet, and since have helped maintain and expand it. A sense of pure undying love of technology permeates the list, and yet it still doesn't yet include Paul Allen or Seymour Cray, nor Zimmerman (PGP), Tomlinson (@), or Bushnell (Pong).
Programming

Submission + - Deputy: Type and Memory Safety for C Programs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Deputy is a C compiler built by researchers at UC Berkeley that uses simple programmer-supplied annotations to catch type and memory errors such as buffer overflows and misuse of union types. For example, if you write a function that takes a buffer and its length as arguments, you can annotate the buffer's type to indicate that its length is stored in the second argument. Using these annotations, Deputy will either verify accesses to this buffer at compile time or insert the required run-time checks. Deputy has already been used on several Linux device drivers and has a corresponding recovery system for Linux called SafeDrive.
Announcements

Submission + - Merck HIV vaccine trial begins in South Africa

Submitted by Neme$y$
Neme$y$ writes: The BBC reports that "An international team of researchers, led by experts from the US, will oversee the trial of the vaccine, created by the drug company Merck.". According to CBC News : The study is a "test of concept" trial that will help researchers determine if the vaccine prevents HIV infections, results in lower HIV levels in those who become infected after vaccination or both. "South Africa is an excellent location for this trial due to the high levels of infection coupled with the good clinical infrastructure, including internationally recognized immunology laboratories, a well-established national vaccine initiative and experience in running clinical trials," said James Kublin, M.D., M.P.H., one of study's lead investigators, along with Glenda Gray, MBBCH, FCPaeds (SA), of the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, based at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. A more detailed explanation here.
Upgrades

Submission + - First Commercial Quantum Computer Demonstrated

Submitted by
emw2012
emw2012 writes: "As of February 13, D-Wave Systems Inc. of Burnaby, British Columbia has shown a proof of concept of its 16-qubit quantum system, dubbed "Orion". The system was showcased, audaciously enough, at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, where D-Wave displayed Orion's power in a drug molecule matching test, followed by such worthy enterprises as solving a party seating arrangement seeking to pair like-minded guests, and deducing a Sudoku puzzle to completion. While time will tell whether Orion is remembered as merely a curious misadventure or the harbinger of revolution in the processing industry, D-Wave has assured us of the later, promising systems able to model molecular dynamics, complex NP-complete optimization problems, and simulate nanoscale behavior in fractions of second, compared to years (or simply not at all) on BlueGene/L and its digital kin.

dwavesys.com, Press Release"
Google

Submission + - Google News Found Guilty of Copyright Violation

Submitted by
schmiddy
schmiddy writes: "A court in Brussels, Belgium, has just found Google guilty of violating copyright law with its Google News aggregator. According to the ruling, Google News' links and brief summaries of news sources violates copyright law. Google will be forced to be $32,600 for each day it displayed the links of the plaintiffs. Although Google plans to appeal, this ruling could have chilling effects on fair use rights on the web in the rest of Europe as well if other countries follow suit."
Biotech

Submission + - Obesity linked to gut bacterial population

Submitted by
krishn_bhakt
krishn_bhakt writes: "Joel Elmquist (The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA), a Physiology Faculty 1000 Member, comments "This is one of the most provocative papers to be published in the field of obesity research in some time. The evidence provided in this paper demonstrates that obese and non-obese mice have alterations in bacterial populations that apparently affect energy availability and utilization and the body weight of the host."

The nature article is available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/ab s/nature05414.html ."
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA Launches GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB Mid Range

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "(corrected post with correct speeds and feeds)

This week NVIDIA launched a significantly lower cost version of their powerful new GeForce 8800 series graphics cards, dubbed the GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. As the branding suggests, these cards come equipped with only 320MB of on-board frame buffer memory. They're also clocked at 500MHz for the GPU core and 1600MHz DDR on their GDDR3 memory interface, versus the top-of-the-line GeForce 8800 GTX with its 575MHz core and 1800MHz memory respectively. All told, for a $299- $329 price range, these new cards offer up excellent performance in current games, at high resolutions, with all eye candy turned on and at a more attractive cost with future DX10 capabilities to boot."
Announcements

Submission + - The next multi million dollar website?

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I found this website called Talk2Me4Free.com, basically it has the features of YouTube.com and Myspace.com as well as one major new feature, it allows users to call one another for free even if they are on two completely parts of the world. All users have to do is sign up and then they are given a free Talk2Me4Free.com telephone number and then they are able to call other users free of charge. All accounts are also given free voicemail as well so if a user misses a call all they have to do is check their voicemail messages.

The website also allows users to upload videos, music, create blogs, sign user's guestbooks, vote on other user's profiles and photos and heaps more. See here for a full list of features.

I must give it a 10/10 and I think it just may be the next website to be worth millions.
Spam

Submission + - Teacher Convicted of Exposing Students to Popups

Submitted by
Bulldozer2003
Bulldozer2003 writes: "A Connecticut teacher has been convicted and faces up to 40 years in prison after children in the classroom saw pornographic popups on a computer. Her defense, backed up by a computer consultant, says that malware from a hair-styling site brought up the popups. Possibly caused by the school's expired firewall/antivirus license. The prosecution argued she went to offending sites herself. From the article:
"Amero says that before her class started, a teacher allowed her to e-mail her husband. She says she used the computer and went to the bathroom, returning to find the permanent teacher gone and two students viewing a Web site on hair styles.
Amero says she chased the students away and started class. But later, she says, pornographic images started popping up on the computer screen by themselves. She says she tried to click the images off, but they kept returning, and she was under strict orders not to shut the computer off.
...
"What is extraordinary is the prosecution admitted there was no search made for spyware — an incredible blunder akin to not checking for fingerprints at a crime scene," Alex Eckelberry, president of a Florida software company, wrote recently in the local newspaper. "When a pop-up occurs on a computer, it will get shown as a visited Web site, and no 'physical click' is necessary.""

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