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Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 Pro upgrade announced for less than $50 (bit.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has announced that upgrading to Windows 8 Pro will cost $39.99 until January 31 next year, meaning upgrade pricing for new OS will initially be a good deal cheaper than Windows has cost in years past. The $39.99 price will apply if you’re upgrading from Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, according to this post on the Windows blog. The post says the price will apply in 131 countries. There is one catch — when Windows 8 Pro is available, you’ll need to upgrade via the Windows.com site to get it for $39.99. If you want the software on DVD, it will cost $69.99. As this article notes, the price is reasonably less than what Windows users have been charged in years past.
Displays

Submission + - World's Thinnest Screen Created From Soap Bubble (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: For most people, when you think of bubbles you remember the childhood joy of seeing those floating, shimmering spheres you desperately want to pop, but for a group of researchers at the University of Tokyo, they see a new medium for 3rd dimensional displays.

Now this isn't your average soap, it's a special mixture that creates more of a "tough bubble" that can withstand the high frequency vibrations used to form the colloidal display. The initial applications of this technology are imagined as the world's thinnest 3D screen or flexible display.

Submission + - NAVSOP: A robust solution to GPS jamming? (newscientist.com)

Submitted by dangle
dangle writes: BAE Systems has developed a positioning solution that it claims will work even when GPS is unavailable. Its strategy is to use the collection of radio frequency signals from TV, radio and cellphone masts, even WiFi routers, to deduce a position.
BAE's answer is dubbed Navigation via Signals of Opportunity (NAVSOP). It interrogates the airwaves for the ID and signal strength of local digital TV and radio signals, plus air traffic control radars, with finer grained adjustments coming from cellphone masts and WiFi routers. In any given area, the TV, radio, cellphone and radar signals tend to be at constant frequencies and power levels as they are are heavily regulated — so positions could be calculated from them. "The real beauty of NAVSOP is that the infrastructure required to make it work is already in place," says a BAE spokesman — and "software defined radio" microchips that run NAVSOP routines can easily be integrated into existing satnavs. The firm believes the technology could also work in urban concrete canyons where GPS signals cannot currently reach.
Movies

Submission + - The Boy Who Loved Batman

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: As a young boy, Batman producer Michael Uslan — a self-described 'ultimate comic book geek' — was traumatized to see the Caped Crusader being 'murdered' in front of his very eyes by the camp 60's TV series. 'I was horrified,' Uslan told a Harper College audience last week. 'I was horrified because the whole world was laughing at Batman, and that just killed me.' At that point, the 13-year-old vowed to teach the world about the Batman he knew, about the crusader who lurked in the shadows, about a darker, grittier superhero. As told in his memoir The Boy Who Loved Batman, he made good on that vow: Uslan has served as the executive producer of all Batman major motion pictures, from 1989's Batman to the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises .
Intel

Submission + - US-CERT discloses security flaw in Intel chips (csoonline.com)

Submitted by Fnord666
Fnord666 writes: The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has disclosed a flaw in Intel chips that could allow hackers to gain control of Windows and other operating systems, security experts say.

The flaw was disclosed the vulnerability in a security advisory released this week. Hackers could exploit the flaw to execute malicious code with kernel privileges, said a report in the Bitdefender blog.

"Some 64-bit operating systems and virtualization software running on Intel CPU hardware are vulnerable to a local privilege escalation attack," the US-CERT advisory says. "The vulnerability may be exploited for local privilege escalation or a guest-to-host virtual machine escape."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux OS written in pure Python (python-os.info) 6

Submitted by KaZaNtiP2
KaZaNtiP2 writes: Python OS Project (POP) created with idea to make a pure python OS. POP based on linux kernel (currently 2.6.32) and GNU userland utilities.

We think, that OS, written in simple interpreted language, like python, allows us to dominate desktop operating systems market.
Security

Submission + - Sen. Rand Paul Introduces TSA Reform Legislation (senate.gov) 1

Submitted by OverTheGeicoE
OverTheGeicoE writes: Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his intention to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss...
Medicine

Submission + - Skin Cells Turned into Heart Muscle for First Time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: By taking skin cells and turning them into stem cells, a technique that is already well known, researchers were able to generate beating heart cells — a medical first.

"We have shown that it's possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born," Lior Gepstein, study author and professor of medicine at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel.
Government

Submission + - Anonymous releases 1.7GB of hacked DOJ emails (anonnews.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today we are releaseing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now. Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump. We Lulzed as they took the website down after being owned, clearly showing they were scared of what inevitably happened.
Networking

Submission + - Groups launch $200M gigabit-per-second broadband project (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: An Ohio startup company has raised $200 million to fund gigabit-per-second broadband projects in six university communities across the U.S., the company announced Wednesday. Gigabit Squared will work with the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U), a coalition of 30 universities focused on improved broadband, to select six communities in which to build the ultra-fast broadband networks, they said. The two organizations will select winning communities between November and the first quarter of 2013, Mark Ansboury, president of Gigabit Squared, said. The new project comes at an important time, when many commercial broadband providers have stopped deploying next-generation networks, said Blair Levin, executive director of Gig.U and lead author of the FCC's 2010 national broadband plan.
The Military

Submission + - Interview With Bioethicist Jonathan Moreno About Military Neuroscience (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "Who’s driving a lot of neuro research? The military. Much of it is health related, like figuring out how to make prosthetics work more seamlessly and helping diagnose brain injuries. But the military’s involvement highlights the basic ethical quandary of neurological development: When our brains pretty much define who we are, what happens when you start adding tech in there? And what happens when you take it away?

Jonathan Moreno is quite possibly the top bioethicist in the country, and along with Michael Tennison, recently penned a fascinating essay on the role and ethics of using neuroscience for national security. He also recently updated his book Mind Wars, a seminal look into the military’s work with the brain. In this interview he discusses brain implants, drones, and what will happen when military tech hits the civilian world."
Technology

Submission + - Indy 500 Drivers Get Earful of MEMS Accelerometers (eetimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Believe it or not, but this weekend there will be six MEMS accelerometers inside the ears of each Indy 500 driver--three inside each ear. In the event of a crash, a black box between their legs records the G-forces exerted on the drivers head to instantly determine if the driver has a concussion. Drivers used to have to wait around to see if their head hurt after a race before going for medical help, but now concussions can be determined ahead of time so that preventative medicines can be administered to keep their brains from swelling. I knew that some of these drivers had 'big heads' but now their size is actually being measured with accelerometers :)
Cloud

Submission + - Nvidia, Citrix Bringing Graphics Power to the Cloud (wired.com)

Submitted by
MikeatWired
MikeatWired writes: "The chip giant Nvidia has combined forces with Citrix to deliver graphics processing power from the cloud. The companies have teamed up to integrate Nvidia’s new virtual GPU technology with Citrix’s XenDesktop and XenServer hypervisor desktop virtualization offering to '[extend] GPU capability beyond power users like design engineers and radiologists to other workers in the organization who need access to large 3-D models but don’t require the power of a dedicated graphics card.' But the new virtual graphics power is not quite on-demand just yet. The 3-D-capable VGX cloud platform, which holds up to four Kepler GPUs with 16GB, will only be available as joint beta trials that are not expected until the end of the year. 'Scalability of this new technology looks very promising. While GPU sharing has been available for some time with XenApp HDX 3D, it has been limited to DirectX-based applications compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services (RDS), with scalability of no more than 10 or 12 users per high-end graphics card,' Citrix’s Derek Thorslund writes in a blog post. This new offering runs on standard Windows 7 virtual desktops and supports both DirectX- and OpenGL-based applications, he added."
Canada

Submission + - Canada's Internet Surveillance Bill: not dead after all (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Maow
Maow writes: Despite a recent story claiming that Canada's Bill C-30, covering internet surveillance, has died a "lonely" death, the minister responsible claims otherwise.

"Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is denying reports that the Harper government intends to quietly shelve its controversial online surveillance bill, C-30. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, Toews insisted the legislation was moving ahead."

This is the bill that you either support, "or you stand with the child pornographers."

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