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Submission + - Researchers discover music that cats enjoy

Submitted by hattable
hattable writes: Cats may not enjoy your top 25 itunes playlist, but they may enjoy music that has been crafted specifically for them.

Modeling the sounds after the natural vocalizations and ranges seen in kitty conversations, researchers created songs that are more enjoyable to their little furry ears.

Possibly related to the feline affinity towards long "ee" sounds at the end their given name. This is just another way to better the lives of our kitty companions.

Comment check Slide8 for a laugh (Score 1) 282

by real_smiff (#39878397) Attached to: Mozilla Ponders Major Firefox UI Refresh
so they spent the last few years making each version look different ("native"), and now they want to make them all look the same again? great. how about: 1) the crashes and memleaks that are still there. firefox is currently using 2.3GB RAM on my Mint11 system and it's only been running a few hours since it last crashed. 2) the horrendously inefficient database format used for local storage. anyone tried using FF over NFS? it takes twice as long to start as opera, and about 5x as long as Chromium. Now i realise not the same people work on that stuff as on UI design, but that picture of the airflow around sports car? Slide8. hilarious. someone is getting paid to produce this rubbish? depressing.

Comment the reason this is important for xbox users (Score 1) 57

by real_smiff (#36193078) Attached to: XBMC4XBOX 3.0.1 Stable Released
is that since the xbox split, XBMC mainline has changed to a new "Addon" system, meaning all current plugins wouldn't work on the Xbox - that is, if it weren't for this X4X v3 work. the range of plugins available now have made even LAN shares of "aquired" content pretty much obselete.. check out: iPlayer (if in the UK) Icefilms Navi-X and others: http://www.xbmc4xbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1877 prepare to be blown away if you've not used XBMC for a few years.. and the Xbox is still good enough for almost all the plugin content as that's SD Xvid anyway for streaming.

Comment Re:Best comics (Score 3, Interesting) 327

by MoxCamel (#30988442) Attached to: "Calvin and Hobbes" Creator Bill Watterson Looks Back With No Regrets
I too have ranked The Far Side right up there with C&H for years, and then for Christmas somebody bought me a gigantic collection of Far Side strips (don't remember which one), and I've gotta say TFS really hasn't held up all that well. Yes, there are some classic gems that are damn funny still, but on the whole it's pretty meh. Unlike C&H, which is going to be fresh for many decades--perhaps centuries--to come.
Games

New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances 342

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."
Censorship

Sharp Rise In Jailing of Online Journalists; Iran May Just Kill Them 233

Posted by timothy from the your-ethics-may-vary dept.
bckspc writes "The Committee to Protect Journalists has published their annual census of journalists in prison. Of the 136 reporters in prison around the world on December 1, 'At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail.' Print was next with 51 cases. Also, 'Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business.' China, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea, and Burma were the top 5 jailers of journalists." rmdstudio writes, too, with word that after the last few days' protest there, largely organized online, the government of Iran is considering the death penalty for bloggers and webmasters whose reports offend it.
PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."
The Almighty Buck

The Nickel & Dime Generation 358

Posted by Soulskill from the talking-cents dept.
Phaethon360 sends in a piece that looks at how quickly game costs can add up these days, now that DLC, microtransactions and standalone expansions are commonplace, writing, "If you were trying to the think of the most expensive games to play, Rock Band or a monthly-fee MMORPG would come to mind. But Halo 3 is right up there, too." It's reminiscent of a recent post at IncGamers where the author tallied up how much he'd spent on World of Warcraft over the past several years, and was astonished to realize it numbered in the thousands of dollars.
Programming

Web-based IDEs Edge Closer To the Mainstream 244

Posted by timothy from the hope-your-connection-is-reliable dept.
snitch writes "Last week Mozilla released Bespin, their web-based framework for code editing, and only a few days later Boris Bokowski and Simon Kaegi implemented an Eclipse-based Bespin server using headless Eclipse plug-ins. With the presentation of the web-based Eclipse workbench at EclipseCon and the release of products like Heroku, a web-based IDE and hosting environment for RoR apps, it seems that web-based IDEs might soon become mainstream."
Power

Stimulus Could Kickstart US Battery Industry 369

Posted by kdawson from the charging-ahead dept.
Al sends along a Technology Review piece that begins "Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the US for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles and for storing energy from the electrical grid to enable the widespread use of renewable energy. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced battery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for plug-in hybrids and improvements to the electrical grid, which could help create a market for these batteries. Significant advances in battery materials, including the development of new lithium-ion batteries, have been made in the US in the past few years; but advanced battery manufacturing is almost entirely overseas, particularly in Asia."

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