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Sci-Fi

Submission + - Burj Dubai - The new world's tallest building (sizzledcore.com) 2

MoNSt3r writes: "Now coming back to the topic, Burj Dubai is being constructed in "New Downtown" of Dubai and on Saturday, 21 July 2007, the developers reported it's height as 512.1 metres with 141 completed floors surpassing the Taipei 101 (509.2 m) as the tallest high-rise building in the world. Amazing isn't it? :)"
Microsoft

Submission + - Mac users' Internet experience to remain seamless 2

thefickler writes: Mac users will continue to see the Internet as it was intended, thanks to the renewal of a font licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple. At TypeCon2007 Microsoft and Apple announced they have renewed their font licensing agreement, giving Apple users ongoing use of the latest versions of Microsoft Windows core fonts.

Back in 1996 Microsoft started the "Core fonts for the Web" initiative. The idea of this initiative was to create a a standard pack of fonts that would be present on all or most computers, allowing web pages to be displayed consistently on different computers. While the project was terminated in 2002, some of the fonts defined as core fonts for the web have gone on to become known as "web safe fonts", and are therefore widely used by Internet developers.
Security

Submission + - Point and click Gmail hacking at Black Hat (tgdaily.com)

not5150 writes: "Using Gmail or most other webmail programs over an unsecured access points just got a bit more dangerous. At Black Hat, Robert Graham, CEO of errata security, showed how to capture and clone session cookies. He even hijacked a shocked attendee's Gmail account in the middle of his Black Hat speech."
Biotech

Submission + - Stem Cells Shown to Protect Dying Motor Neurons

Penguinshit writes: "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by rapid loss of muscle control and eventual paralysis due to the death of large motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Growth factors such as glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) are known to protect motor neurons from damage in a range of models. Human cortical neural progenitor cells derived from fetal tissue (ie. stem cells) can be expanded in culture for long periods and survive transplantation into the central nervous system, in some cases making large numbers of GFAP positive astrocytes. They can also be genetically modified to release GDNF and thus act as long-term 'mini pumps' in specific regions of the brain. In this study a team at UW-Madison's Waisman Center genetically modified human neural stem cells to release GDNF and transplanted them into the spinal cord of rats with mutant SOD1. Following unilateral transplantation into the spinal cord of the rats there was robust cellular migration into degenerating areas, efficient delivery of GDNF and remarkable preservation of motor neurons at early and end stages of the disease within chimeric regions.

This work is especially important to me, as I have been living with ALS for almost three years."
Biotech

Submission + - New antibiotics for pathogenic attacks of bacteria (heraldbiz.com)

allengineering writes: "A team of research directed by the pr. KIM Kyung-Gyu of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sungkyunkwan discovered the structure of the protein Rse B playing an essential part in the transmission of the signals of stresses resulting from the pathogenic attacks of bacteria. The article is been published in the edition of May of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the the USA (PNAS). This projection should make it possible to develop new antibiotics."
United States

Submission + - Forensics Expert says Al-Qaeda Images Altered

WerewolfOfVulcan writes: Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some veeeeeery interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images that our government loves to show off.

From the article: "Krawetz was also able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners (IntelCenter is an organization that monitors terrorist activity and As-Sahab is the video production branch of al Qaeda) were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says." Why would Al-Qaeda add an IntelCenter logo to their video? Why would IntelCenter add an Al-Qaeda logo? Methinks we have bigger fish to fry than Gonzo and his fired attorneys... }:-) The article contains links to Krawetz's presentation and the source code he used to analyze the photos.
Software

Submission + - a real telemarketer filter

hate-those-telemarketers writes: I just had one of those telemarketers call me despite being on the do-not-call list. There's still organizations that don't need to adhere to that list. Having googled the caller-id I came accross http://www.whocalled.us/ that seems to be a very comprehensive database of annoying caller-id's calling. What's even better is that in the "about" tab there's a script for asterisk to check all calls against that database. This is like a IP-list for spammers only for real telephony. Fantastic. I've implemented this and now I wish I weren't on the do-not-call list to see telemarketers deal with the very annoying Telemarket torture script that can be found on this site: http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+Telema rketer+Torture woo-hoo!!!
Toys

Submission + - Breaking the transistor miniaturization barriee

krishn_bhakt writes: "http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=742A3381-E7F2-99DF-3D54A13380979044&ref=rss says:
Last week Intel and IBM both announced that they had figured out a way to further shrink the size of transistors, the tiny on-off switches that power computers. The trick, according to Intel, is introducing the metal hafnium into the mix — an addition that marks the first major change in transistor materials in four decades. Hafnium-based computer circuits would likely be denser, faster and consume less power than existing microprocessors.
The article of Osburn on which this is based can be found at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/i el5/55/21142/00981318.pdf and http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/i el5/55/21142/00981318.pdf"
Games

What Writing For Games Is Really Like 73

Gamasutra is running a transcript of a recent podcast, in which host Tom Kim interviewed the well-respected games scriptwriter Susan O'Connor. She talks about what it was like to write for games as diverse as Star Wars Galaxies, Gears of War, and Bioshock. She and Kim go into what the process of writing for games entails, the increasingly interesting Writer's Game Conference at the Austin Games Conference, the interplay between designer and writer, and what it is like to write for and as a woman in a male-dominated industry. O'Connor comments: "You can look at someone like Ang Lee, who makes these incredibly powerful movies in English set definitely in America, and yet he's not from here and English is not his first language. So I think there's something to be said as a female writer writing male characters. It does take a little bit more work to get inside of their heads, but you do have that luxury of being and outsider and being able to see it with fresh eyes."
Biotech

Journal Journal: Synthetic Biology Could Be Used To Turn Sugar Into Diesel 355

ABCTech has an interesting article about an Emeryville-base tech startup, Amyris Biotechnologies , that is planning to use microbes to turn sugar into diesel. Ethanol is made by adding sugar to yeast, but Amyris believes that it can reprogram the microbes to make something closer to gasoline. The company was initially given a $43 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to attempt to research the appl
Intel by OSTG

Vendor Intel to Unveil Mobile Core 2 Extreme in Q3'2007 3

Come Q3 of this year you can expect to see Intel's Mobile Core 2 Extreme . "The upcoming Core 2 Extreme X7800 uses the same Merom core used by the Core 2 Duo mobile family of processors. Intel's Core 2 Extreme X7800 will arrive clocked at 2.6 GHz, operate on an 800 MHz front-side bus and feature 4MB of L2 cache like the rest of the Core 2 Duo family. Intel technologies such as VT, EIST, EM64T and NX bit are supported, though Inte

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