Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Sci-Fi

Submission + - First production flying car to be built

Submitted by Tookis
Tookis writes: The first production flying car is being designed to be a vertical take-off and landing vehicle. The flying car, under production for consumer purchase, is called the M200G. Its cost to customers is estimated to be at least $90,000 (in U.S. dollars). The M200G uses eight low-emission Rotapower engines (Wankel rotary engines, produced by Freedom Motors). Its advanced cooling system allows it to be a fairly lightweight vehicle. Its projected cruising speed is about 50 miles per hour at about 10 feet off the ground. A Mark II version under development will have a cruising speed of 300MPH at an altitude of more than 6 miles. http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/13627/1066/
Mozilla

Submission + - Australian Firefox usage hits 22%

Submitted by innocence18
innocence18 writes: According to a recent survey done by Nielsen Net Ratings, more than a fifth of Australian web surfers are using Firefox as their main web browser. This is significantly higher than the worldwide usage rate of 14%. While compatibility issues mean that some users are forced to use multiple browsers, this is still a fantastic in roads in the IE/FF battle.
Mozilla

Submission + - MORE than a fifth of Australians now use Firefox

Submitted by nermaljcat
nermaljcat writes: Australian IT reports that 22% of Australians are now using Firefox. Internet Explorer still claims 81% of the market, but that also includes Firefox users (like myself) that occasionally need to use IE because of compatibility issues with some websites.

"MORE than a fifth of Australians now use the Mozilla Firefox web browser, even though site compatibility issues mean it sometimes must be used in conjunction with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, researcher Nielsen Net Ratings says."
Biotech

Submission + - Scientists Cure Cancer - No One Notices

Submitted by
Messianni
Messianni writes: "A report at New Scientist has an article claiming that scientists have found a cheap, already tested drugs that kills most cancers. From the article:
"It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their "immortality". The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe. It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar. Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis's experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died."
So where is this in the rest of the media? Are the drug companies that powerful?"
Hardware

Navy Gets 8-Megajoule Rail Gun Working 650

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the high-flyers dept.
prototypo writes "The Free Lance-Star newspaper is reporting that the Navy Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia has successfully demonstrated an 8-megajoule electromagnetic rail gun. A 32-megajoule version is due to be tested in June. A 64-megajoule version is anticipated to extend the range of naval gunfire (currently about 15 nautical miles for a 5-inch naval gun) to more than 200 nautical miles by 2020. The projectiles are small, but go so fast that have enough kinetic punch to replace a Tomahawk missile at a fraction of the cost. In the final version, they will apex at 95 miles altitude, well into space. These systems were initially part of Reagan's SDI program ("Star Wars"). An interesting tidbit in the article is that the rail gun is only expected to fire ten times or less per day, presumably because of the amount of electricity needed. I guess we now need a warp core to power them."

Seagate Claims 2.5" SCSI Drive is World's Fastest 218

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the like-a-supersonic-record dept.
theraindog writes "Seagate has announced a 2.5" SCSI hard drive that spins at an astounding 15,000RPM. The Savvio 15K is the first 2.5" hard drive with a 15K-RPM spindle speed, but what's more interesting is that Seagate claims it's the fastest hard drive on the market. Indeed, the drive boasts an impressive 2.9ms seek time, which is more than half a millisecond quicker than that of comparable 3.5" SCSI drives. The Savvio 15K also features perpendicular recording technology and a claimed Mean Time Between Failures of 1.6 million hours."
Security

Submission + - Are cell phone cameras really a security risk?

Submitted by
str4ng3
str4ng3 writes: "I work for a DOD Contractor that does not allow camera phones in the building, however there are no restrictions on mp3 players, USB thumbsticks and PDAs. Are camera phones really that big of a security risk in this day and age? Does anyone else share my pain?"

YouTube Leaves Google Vulnerable? 208

Posted by Zonk from the googtube-is-fun-to-say dept.
PreacherTom writes "Yesterday's big news was Google's $1.65 billion deal to acquire popular video hosting service YouTube. But will it be a good deal? The market thinks so, as Google's stock rose about $10 per share after the purchase. On the other hand, YouTube increases Google's risk of copyright infringement, opening the door for significant liability...if Google cannot solve this issue. Will their planned video 'fingerprinting' be enough, or just a billion dollar mistake?" From the article: "YouTube's policy is to remove copyrighted clips once alerted to their existence. Content providers say the company needs to be even more proactive ... Todd Dagres, general partner at Boston's Spark Capital, says that Google's large market cap of $130 billion makes it much more vulnerable to lawsuits than a private company such as YouTube. 'Once Google starts to apply its monetization machine, there is going to be more money at stake and people are going to go after it,' says Dagres. 'You cannot monetize other people's content without their approval.'"

Want to Experience Zero G? Stay in Bed 132

Posted by CmdrTaco from the done-and-done dept.
mrogers writes "New Scientist Space is reporting that the health effects of microgravity can be reproduced by staying in bed. Inclining the bed at an angle of 6 degrees with the head at the lower end produces bone and muscle loss, decreases in cardiovascular activity, and reduced capacity to exercise similar to those produced by prolonged spaceflight. (Valeri Polyakov was not available for comment at the time of going to press.)"

Aging Japan Looks to Bots For Care 139

Posted by Zonk from the who-doesn't-like-a-nice-bot dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention a Yahoo! news article about robotics in Japan. While many research bots are working on interacting with their environment, some of Japan's commercial robotics are focusing on building bots for elderly care. From the article: "The 100-kilogram (220-pound) robot can also distinguish eight different kinds of smells, can tell which direction a voice is coming from and uses powers of sight to follow a human face. 'In the future, we would like to develop a capacity to detect a human's health condition through his breath,' Mukai said. Japan is bracing for a major increase in needs for elderly care due to a declining birth rate and a population that is among the world's longest living." That sure sounds familiar.

Slashdot Top Deals

Intel CPUs are not defective, they just act that way. -- Henry Spencer

Close