104758
submission
holy_calamity writes:
New Scientist reports on a drag and drop interface that allows you to control up to 80 microscopic objects in 3D using frickin' laser beams. Researchers at Risø National Laboratory, Denmark, want to give laser-manipulation powers to those without laser optics PhDs. It could be particularly useful for cell biologists.
104750
submission
Goffee71 writes:
Richard Joseph the man behind the music to 16-bit classics including Speedball, Chaos Engine, Sensible Soccer, and more recently, Bafta Award Winner for Theme Park World has died after a battle against lung cancer. British gamers in particular will mourn his genius.
104718
submission
darthcamaro writes:
Fedora has crossed the 2 Million installed point! But wait that's not the big news..the big news is that Red Hat is in discussion with Novell for a broader stats projects that could finally see us having an open stats site for Linux.
from the article:
With the new threshold crossing, it is unclear whether Fedora 6 is the No. 1 Linux distribution in use today, but internetnews.com has learned that preliminary discussions are underway that could see Novell's OpenSUSE Linux distribution partner with Red Hat's Fedora to drive open statistics about Linux use.
104698
submission
jeff.ingalls writes:
A computer malfunction has forced Canada's tax agency to shut down all online tax filing as Canadians race to file their personal income tax returns by the April 30 deadline. You can read the full story here or the offical press release here.
103558
submission
aniyo~ writes:
Tired of being turned away at the theater box office when a movie's sold out? Unhappy there's no art-house theater in your neighborhood to cater to your hoity-toity theatrical tastes?Those days could be ending, say representatives of Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment and a company called Digital Cinema Implementation Partners.
103552
submission
Good writes:
When friends check out Aaron Priest's new Acura TL sedan, the oohs and aahs start on the inside.
Forget the powerful 3.5-liter, 286-horsepower engine; they're more enthralled with the car's rearview video camera and the in-dash voice-command system.
"The technology is what gets people the most," said Priest, a 23-year-old lab technician at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego. "They don't really care anymore about what's under the hood. It's all about what's in the car now."
103550
submission
JavaRob writes:
From the WordPress development blog: "If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately."
Fortunately, they got a tipoff, but it's not clear how long the altered download (the cracker altered a couple of files to add in remote execution capabilities) would have stayed up otherwise.
Note: the cracker did not sneak in code by posing as an OSS developer (the common FUD scare scenario...); they just managed to crack one of the site's servers, and altered the download directly.
Apparently, WordPress has taken steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. Personally, I'm wondering about ways browsers and/or operating systems might be improved to automate checksum validation for downloaded executables.
103522
submission
st_johnny writes:
"[The]chips use less than a sixth the energy of an Intel Pentium, and less than a quarter the energy an AMD Athlon uses. In addition to efficiency, VIA has started a program called "carbon-free computing", where they offset the carbon that will be produced by the manufacturing and lifetime energy use of their CPU's. They do these offsets by building renewable power generation in developing countries, restoring forest and wetlands, and doing energy conservation."
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/006239.html
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/processors/c7-d
http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/cleancomputin g/carbon-free_computing.jsp
103510
submission
myside writes:
'The Great Global Warming Swindle', a documentary set to air on BBC on Thursday, claims that man-made global warming is a scam. http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669U &news_headline=global_warming_is_lies_claims_docum entary
103508
submission
Overly Critical Guy writes:
More documents in the Iowa antitrust case have come out. This time, it's revealed that Microsoft considers Mac users its "guinea pigs" for new Office features, and they once considered dropping Mac Office entirely, "as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately." This case has become a treasure trove of internal memos describing Microsoft's internal business practices of the last ten years.
103498
submission
Bryan writes:
This first paragraph from the article pretty much sums it up:
'Data on several sites maintained by the operators of Texxors.com suggests that Google may be manipulating the profits webmasters receive from Google's Adsense program. Our analysis shows statistical evidence that as a website becomes more popular, it receives less earnings per click (EPC) from Google Adsense. Since the EPC is determined by Google's algorithms prior to the ad being served to a page, this suggests that Google may be intentionally or unintentionally manipulating EPC to increase their profit and/or Adsense participation. The method appears to be similar to the "throttling" practices that landed online movie retailer Netflix in legal hot water last year.'
Full article
