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Biotech

First Halophile Potatoes Harvested 117

Razgorov Prikazka writes "A Dutch-based company from Groningen is trying to create a potato race that is able to survive in a saline environment. The first test-batch was just harvested (English translation of Dutch original) on the island Texel and seem to be in good shape. The company states that rising sea-levels will create a demand for halophile crops. I do wonder if one still has to put salt on ones potatoes when they are grown in salt water."
Cellphones

Apple, AT&T Sued Over iPhone 4 Antennas 435

bannable writes "Apple has been accused of violation of the Federal Communications Act, three counts of products liability related to negligence, defect in design and breach of implied warranty, intentional and negligent misrepresentation, fraud by concealment, unfair business practices and more. 'The iPhone 4 manifests design and manufacturing defects that were known to Defendants before it was released which were not disclosed to consumers, namely, a connection problem caused by the iPhone 4's antenna configuration that makes it difficult or impossible to maintain a connection to AT&T's network,' the California complaint reads."

Comment Secrecy is a double edged sword. (Score 3, Interesting) 417

That must have been a really, really, really awkward conversation.

Although to be honest, I wonder if this is Apple's secrecy coming to bite them in the ass. If you are uber careful about how many phones you have out in the field, you're a lot less likely to run into scenarios where your product fails in real world situations.

beta testing, google does it for a reason.

Comment Re:Task Saturation (Score 1) 388

Strangely enough, the only person I know that I would qualify as a "super tasker" is a Captain in the Army.

He could be talking to a General on the phone, drinking his coffee and driving in some of the worst traffic imaginable and it wasn't a problem at all. (traffic and rules of the road in South America make the worst traffic in the US look like a driver's ed training session)

One time a car came out of *no-where* and he reacted to it instantly before anyone else in the vehicle had even realized it was coming, avoided it, accelerated out of the situation and kept going, all the while not spilling a drop of coffee and not interrupting his conversation in the slightest.

I don't think I'd feel safe with *anyone else* I know doing that, but with this guy, he could pull it off.

Earth

Cooling the Planet With a Bubble Bath 219

cremeglace writes "A Harvard University physicist has come up with a new way to cool parts of the planet: pump vast swarms of tiny bubbles into the sea to increase its reflectivity and lower water temperatures. 'Since water covers most of the earth, don't dim the sun,' says the scientist, Russell Seitz, speaking from an international meeting on geoengineering research. 'Brighten the water.' From ScienceNOW: 'Computer simulations show that tiny bubbles could have a profound cooling effect. Using a model that simulates how light, water, and air interact, Seitz found that microbubbles could double the reflectivity of water at a concentration of only one part per million by volume. When Seitz plugged that data into a climate model, he found that the microbubble strategy could cool the planet by up to 3C. He has submitted a paper on the concept he calls “Bright Water" to the journal Climatic Change.'"

Comment Re:Dark stuff? (Score 1) 279

More in-depth quote.

"I’ll note: this has nothing to do with dark matter. As it happens, 90% of the matter in the Universe is in a form that emits no light, but affects other matter through gravity. We know it exists, and you can find out why here. We know it exists locally, in nearby galaxies and clusters of galaxies, too. This new result doesn’t affect that, since the now un-hidden galaxies are very far away, like many billions of light years away. They can’t possibly affect nearby galaxies, so they don’t account for dark matter."

Businesses

75% of Enterprises Have Suffered Cyber Attacks, Costing $2M+ On Average 81

coomaria writes "OK, even allowing for the fact this comes from a newly published study (PDF) from a security company, that's still one heck of a statistic. The fact that it's Symantec, and so has access to perhaps more enterprises than most, makes it a double-heck with knobs on. Or how about this one for size: 'every enterprise, yes, 100 percent, experienced cyber losses in 2009.'"

Comment Just going to annoy legit customers (Score 4, Insightful) 819

I have a machine, purchased by my employer that has to be validated against the key server at the office.

The machine however is at my house. The only way to make it validate is to ensure that I'm connected to the VPN when it attempts to find its key.

Does this mean once a quarter (if I have this update) my machine will downgrade itself, make me hop on the VPN, revalidate etc.?

That's just damn annoying. I'll probably end up cracking my legit install to stop this stupid behavior. When the cracked version of your software is less obnoxious than the legitimate version you have a problem.

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