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Businesses

Submission + - High-tech culture of SV originally due to Radio (jory.org)

yroJJory writes: "SFGate has a interesting piece on the history of Silicon Valley and its roots in radio. It begins: "When the Traitorous Eight, as they're sometimes called, held their hush-hush meeting in San Francisco, they had reason to fear discovery — but no way to know that by quitting safe jobs for a risky startup, they would earn a place among what Stanford University historian Leslie Berlin calls the "Founding Fathers of Silicon Valley.

Roughly 30 years before Hewlett and Packard started work in their garage, and almost 50 years before the Traitorous Eight created Fairchild, the basic culture of Silicon Valley was forming around radio: engineers who hung out in hobby clubs, brainstormed and borrowed equipment, spun new companies out of old ones, and established a meritocracy ruled by those who made electronic products cheaper, faster and better.

An interesting read with some great photos"

Bug

Submission + - Software Bug Halts F-22 Flight

mgh02114 writes: The new US stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor, was deployed for the first time to Asia earlier this month. The first flight from Hawaii to Japan was forced to turn back when a software glitch crashed the F-22 on-board computers as they crossed the international date line. The delay in arrival in Japan was previously reported here and here, with rumors of problems with the software. CNN television, however, this morning reported that all every fighter completely lost all navigation and communications when they crossed the international date line. They reportedly had to turn around and follow their tankers by visual contact back to Hawaii. According to the CNN story, if they had not been with their tankers, or the weather had been bad, this would have been serious. CNN has not put up anything on their website yet. This follows previous reports that a software bug in the F-16, caught in simulation before the plane ever flew, that would have caused the fighter to flip upside down when flying over the equator.
Biotech

Submission + - Bacteria to protect against quakes

Roland Piquepaille writes: "If you live near the sea, chances are high that your home is built over sandy soil. And if an earthquake strikes, deep and sandy soils can turn to liquid, with some disastrous consequences for the buildings sitting on them. But now, U.S. researchers have found a way to use bacteria to steady buildings against earthquakes by turning these sandy soils into rocks. Today, it is possible to inject chemicals in the ground to reinforce it, but this can have toxic effects on soil and water. On the contrary, this use of common bacteria to 'cement' sands has no harmful effects on the environment. But so far, this method is limited to labs and the researchers are working on scaling their technique. Here are more references and a picture showing how unstable ground can aggravate the consequences of an earthquake."
Television

Submission + - Robert Adler, co-inventor of TV remote, dead at 93

yroJJory writes: "Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote, Robert Adler, has died. Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

In a May 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Adler recalled being among two dozen engineers at Zenith given the mission to find a new way for television viewers to change channels without getting out of their chairs or tripping over a cable.

Adler also was considered a pioneer in SAW technology, or surface acoustic waves, in color television sets and touch screens. The technology has also been used in cellular telephones.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch screen technology, on Feb. 1."
Privacy

Journal Journal: MySpace Not Guilty in Child Assault Case 228

The Washington Post reports that a Texas judge dismissed a $30 million case against MySpace for their role in a child assault case. 19-year old Peter Solis lied about his age on MySpace to gain the confidence the confidence of a 13-year old girl. The judge ruled, "If anyone had a duty to protect Julie Doe, it was her parents, not MySpace."
Privacy

Submission + - Spyware given seal of approval to be installed

smooth wombat writes: Just when you thought headway was being made against spyware, along comes TRUSTe which has certified the first ten applications that have passed the certification process for TRUSTe's Trusted Download Program.

From the press release:

"The companies whose applications have passed the challenging certification process for the Trusted Download whitelist are all demonstrating a commitment to protecting consumer privacy," said Fran Maier, executive director and president of TRUSTe. "By completely informing users about the particulars of the downloads they offer up front, the participating companies are increasing transparency and giving control to users."

Some of the software which has been certified includes Coupon Bar 5.0 from Coupons Inc, Crawler Toolbar 4.5.0 from Crawler LLC and Save/SaveNow from WhenU.com.
Enlightenment

Submission + - Earth's constant hum explained

MattSparkes writes: "It has been known for some time that there is a constant hum that emanates from the Earth, which can be heard near 10 millihertz on a seismometer. The problem was that nobody knew what caused it. It has now been shown that it is caused by waves on the bottom of the sea, and more specifically "by the combination of two waves of the same frequency travelling in opposite directions""
Handhelds

Submission + - Portable Master System/Game Gear Released

Croakyvoice writes: A new Sega licenced handheld has been released named the Playpal Portable, the console comes with 20 classic Sega Master System and Game Gear games preloaded on a 2.4" TFT LCD screen and also has the ability to play those games via a cable on your TV.
Music

Submission + - Study: P2P has no effect on legal music sales

phaedo00 writes: "Ars Technica covers a very interesting paper published in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf that concludes that P2P has an effect on legal music sales that is pretty much statistically 0: "Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," the study reports. "Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.""
Math

Verizon Can't Do Math 639

Blogger George Vaccaro recently had a problem with his Verizon based on an unfortunate miscommunication of currency. The crux of the matter was that he was quoted .002 cents per kilobyte for data during a trip to Canada but was charged .002 dollars. Normally this would have been an easy fix, however several humorous calls later the Verizon reps still were unable to discern between the difference between the two rates. You really have to hear it to believe it. Kudos George, you have the patience of a saint.

How Vista Disappoints 731

MCSEBear writes "Writer Paul Thurrott has given Microsoft a verbal dressing down for what has become of Windows Vista. He details Microsoft's broken promises over the years since Longhorn/Vista was first previewed back in 2003. He demonstrates where current Vista builds fail to live up to Microsoft's current hype of the much reduced feature set. From the article: 'I don't hate Windows Vista, and I certainly don't hate Microsoft for disappointing me and countless other customers with a product that doesn't even come close to meeting its original promises. I'm sure the company learned something from this debacle, and hopefully it will be more open and honest about what it can and cannot do in the future ... It some ways, Windows Vista actually will exceed Mac OS X and Linux, but not to the depth we were promised. Instead, Windows Vista will do what so many other Windows releases have done, and simply offer consumers and business users a few major changes and many subtle or minor updates. That's not horrible. It's just not what was promised.'"

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