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Teenager Invents Cheap Solar Panel From Human Hair 366

Posted by samzenpus from the 50-watt-shampoo dept.
Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world's energy needs. A solar panel made from human hair. The hair replaces silicon, a pricey component typically used in solar panels, and means the panels can be produced at a low cost for those with no access to power. The solar panel, which produces 9 volts (18 watts) of energy, costs around $38 US (£23) to make from raw materials. Gentlemen, start your beards. The future of hair farming is here!
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Geeks Prefer Competence To Niceness 300

Posted by samzenpus from the catching-more-geeks-with-vinegar dept.
Death Metal writes "While everyone would like to work for a nice person who is always right, IT pros will prefer a jerk who is always right over a nice person who is always wrong. Wrong creates unnecessary work, impossible situations and major failures. Wrong is evil, and it must be defeated. Capacity for technical reasoning trumps all other professional factors, period."
Announcements

Submission + - Jack Thompson Attacks Wendy's for Wii Promotion

Submitted by
Riley Munoz
Riley Munoz writes: "Hey Slashdot, Our balmy friend, Jack Thompson, continues his "heroic" crusade against violent video games by attacking Wendy's upcoming kids meal promotion for the Nintendo Wii version of Manhunt 2. Game Almighty received a copy of the letter today written by Thompson to the CEO of Wendy's pleading for the promotion to be cancelled. Sample paragraph: "A dear friend of mine worked for Wendy's and with Dave Thomas closely for years. From that I know that Dave Thomas never would have tolerated the use of Wendy's good name to promote Nintendo's Wii, not with this game available on the Wii platform. " http://www.gamealmighty.com/story-individual/story /Jack_Thompson_Targets_Wendys_Due_to_Wii_Promotion / Thanks for any links! Riley Munoz -Community Manager riley@gamealmighty.com www.GameAlmighty.com"
Censorship

Submission + - Own Your Own 128-Bit Integer Today!

Submitted by
Byte Swapper
Byte Swapper writes: "After all the fuss over the AACS LA's trying to censor a certain 128-bit number that still has something like two million hits on Google, the Freedom to Tinker folks would like to point out that you too can own your own integer. They've set up a script that will generate a random number, encrypt a copyrighted haiku, and then deed the number back to you. You won't get a copyright on the number or the haiku, but you can turn almost any number you want into an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA, such that anyone subject to US law caught distributing it can be punished under the DMCA's anti-trafficking section, for which the DMCA's Safe Harbor provisions do not apply. So F9090211749D5BE341D8C5565663C088 is truly mine now, and you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands!"
Communications

Submission + - Isn't standard email outdated?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Telnet was replaced by SSH for obvious reasons. Why hasn't standard email been replaced? There are more problems associated with standard email than there were with using services like Telnet, yet we managed to sweepingly switch out Telnet for SSH. Why not dump standard email for a better messaging implementation? We could cure SPAM and privacy issues in one fell swoop.
Nintendo

Submission + - Does Mathematical Tuning Make Games Better?

Submitted by simoniker
simoniker writes: What do game designers need to know about statistics? Age Of Empires DS designer Tyler Sigman focuses on "a few select statistical topics that I believe should be understood by game designers" in a new article, discussing: "In the game I just finished, we recorded data from play sessions and then set challenge levels in the game based upon the mean and standard deviation values from those recorded data. We set Medium difficulty to be equal to the mean values, Easy difficulty to be equal to the mean minus a certain amount of standard deviations, and then Hard difficulty equal to the mean plus a certain amount of standard deviations." Would all games be better if they were tuned mathematically?
User Journal

Journal Journal: Today's Trojan: The January Microsoft Security Patch

Journal by kcarlin
John Pallato is steamed about the January security update for Windows, finding IE 7 slipped in to the autoupdate-channeled patch. IE 7 broke his Internet access due to compatibility issues as deftly as any malware. In his own words:
Enlightenment

Submission + - University Tuition Being Auctioned on Ebay

Submitted by scvff
scvff writes: Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Oklahoma is auctioning off one years tuition on Ebay. Seriously. Starting February 4, 2007 OWU is opening an Auction on Ebay for tuition, room and board for an academic year at OWU. The winner receives tuition, room, board and applicable fees for next fall and spring at OWU. The winner may take up to 17 credit hours each semester. The person who will attend OWU must meet all admissions standards and apply for all available grants and scholarships. This auction is for tuition, room, and board in the traditional undergraduate program. University Webpage: http://www.okwu.edu/ More Information about the auction: http://community.gospelcom.net/Brix?pageID=20676
Google

Submission + - Google exec cites lack of innovation in corp. IT

Submitted by
bednarz
bednarz writes: "Google's general manager of enterprise business Tuesday said a "crisis" in IT is preventing enterprises from pursuing the type of innovations that allow businesses to grow. From the article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/012307-googl e-apps.html "The way Google built what is on the order of a $10 billion business in eight years was through some pretty amazing innovation," said Girouard, who is also a vice president at Google. "CIOs in particular are really in a difficult situation, and innovation isn't something they can spend the majority of their waking hours talking about. The information technology business as it pertains to large businesses has become a lot of maintenance.""
Intel

Submission + - Intel and Sun partner up.

Submitted by
sudden.zero
sudden.zero writes: "After spending years apart, Sun Microsystems and Intel have agreed to team up. In an announcement just a day before it's due to release it latest quarterly results, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz told an audience in San Francisco on Jan. 22 that his company would produce new Xeon-based x86 servers and workstation by later in 2007. In turn, Intel announced that it would now support Sun's Solaris operating system and would encourage ISVs (independent software providers) to support Solaris on Xeon platforms, thus giving Sun access to a much broader audience. The agreement also means that Intel will also support open-source communities from Sun, including OpenSolaris, open Java and NetBeans. While the benefits to a collaborative effort between Sun and Intel are obvious, the agreement is also seen as a blow to Advanced Micro Devices, which had been an exclusive provider of x86 server processors — Opteron — to Sun for the past several years. The agreement now also places Sun on the same playing field as other top x86 server providers such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell, which offer both AMD and Intel processors in their respective server products. This makes the deal between Intel and Sun a win-win deal for both companies, said Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata, in Nashua, N.H. see the full story here"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Favorite Fictional Company?

Submitted by m0rphin3
m0rphin3 writes: -Cyberdyne Systems
-InGen
-Tyrell Corporation
-Maas Biotek
-Umbrella Corporation
-Weyland-Yutani
-CHOAM
-Omni Consumer Products
-Central Services
-BiffCo

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