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Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child Screenshot-sm 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

Comment Re:OBD - On-Board Diagnostics (Score 1) 478

by ForestGrump (#29434051) Attached to: "Right To Repair" Bill Advances In Massachusetts

Misfire can be caused by anything. Thankfully the OBD isolated it down to Cyl 4 (or it thinks its cyl 4). I would start with the simple things like put new spark plugs/wires and clean out the intake first. If that failed, then pay real money to have it diagnosed. Atleast you won't be kicking yourself for paying $100 diagnostic for a $25 part.
Music

How $1,500 Headphones Are Made 353

Posted by kdawson from the oiled-by-mother-nature dept.
CNETNate writes "A tour of Sennheiser's Hanover factory reveals for the first time how its audiophile headphones are assembled by hand. The company recently announced its most expensive and innovative headphones to date, the HD 800, which discarded the conventional method of headphone driver design for a new 'donut-shaped' ring driver idea. Only 5,000 of these headphones can be made in a year, and this gallery offers a behind-the-scenes look at the construction process."
Space

Satellites Collide In Orbit 456

Posted by samzenpus from the starpocalypse dept.
DrEnter writes "According to this story on Yahoo, two communications satellites collided in orbit, resulting in two large clouds of debris. The new threat from these debris clouds hasn't been fully determined yet. From the article, 'The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. Each satellite weighed well over 1,000 pounds.' This is the fifth spacecraft/satellite collision to occur in space, but the other four were all fairly minor by comparison."
Security

Online Billpay Provider Loses Control of Domains 232

Posted by timothy from the sell-your-body-to-pay-the-bills dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Several sites are running a story about a domain hijacking at Checkfree, the largest provider of online bill payment services to numerous banks and credit unions. According to Network Solutions, someone logged in to the domain administration page using Checkfree's account, and redirected its domains to a site in the Ukraine configured to serve up malware to unsuspecting users." Things like this make me nervous about switching to otherwise-tempting online bill payment, but checks are dangerous, too.
Google

Google Apps Gets a 99.9% Guarantee 155

Posted by kdawson from the outlook-cloudy-try-again dept.
David Gerard passes along a posting on Google's official blog announcing that they have extended the three-nines SLA for the Premier Edition of Google Apps from Gmail alone to also cover the Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Google Talk services. 99.9% uptime translates to 45 minutes a month of downtime, and the blog post puts this in context with Gmail's historical reliability, which has been between three and four times as good over the last year (10-15 min./mo.). It also claims, based on research by an outside group, that Gmail's historical reliability beats that of in-house hosted solutions such as Groupwise and Exchange, on average. Reader Ian Lamont adds an article in The Standard that digs down into the details of the SLA, revealing for instance that outages of less than 10 minutes aren't counted against the monthly 45 minutes.

Comment Carriers listen up! (Score 1) 386

by ForestGrump (#25144505) Attached to: Mobile Phone Users Struggle With Hardware Adoption

Carriers listen up! What this means is 50-90% of your paying customers don't care about this "free after 2 year contract" camera phonethat does everything from (mobile intarweb, SMS, MMS, musictones, and roadside assistance).

No, these are crap features that I will NEVER be used by 50-90% of your subscriber base because:
1. The general public that is over 31.4 years of age doesn't care about such frivolous crap.
2. You charge way too much for these services.

Just stop it and go back to being the phone company interested in selling me a phone call without all these additional "fees".

Thank you,
Grump
Google

Submission + - Google's Street View meets resistance in France (thestandard.com)

Submitted by
Ian Lamont
Ian Lamont writes: "Google has begun to scan the streets of Paris as part of its Street View service, but the company may be hindered from publishing them unedited. The reason? French privacy laws:

... In France, citizens have a "droit à l'image," the right to their own image: pictures identifying them as they go about their private business may not be published without their permission. That could put the brakes on Google's deployment of Street View in France, unless the camera-cars are accompanied by an army of clipboard-wielding legal assistants asking bystanders to sign release forms as they sip their coffee.
The article says Google may be forced to blur faces or use low-resolution versions of the photographs. The Embassy of France in the U.S. has a page devoted to French privacy laws, that says the laws are needed to "avoid infringing the individual's right to privacy and right to his or her picture (photograph or drawing), both of them rights of personality.""
Space

Submission + - New coms satellite abandoned due to orbital patent (space-travel.com)

Submitted by EreIamJH
EreIamJH writes: AMC-14, a commercial geostationary satellite launched last month, failed to reach its intended orbit. The owner wanted to shunt the satellite into a useful orbit by slingshoting it around the moon, but the plan (and the new satellite) was abandoned when Boeing claimed that it had a patent on that orbital manoeuvre.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - In-home wireless vs. mobile broadband

Submitted by
mklickman
mklickman writes: "I've been hearing more and more about mobile wireless broadband offered by the big wireless phone providers, and for the first time came to ask myself a very interesting question. Since my wife and I both have laptops, and we're out a lot (she's a photographer and I'm a graphic design student) would it be wise and/or worth it to do away with the standard cable-internet-plus-modem-plus-router setup and switch over to mobile-broadband-PC-card-only mode, a la AT&T or Sprint? I've looked into pricing and stuff a bit, and I'm not really concerned about the cost of the PC cards themselves; they're not much more expensive than a decent router. Also, the cost of the wireless service per month is only (roughly) ten dollars more than my current ISP is charging me. Is it a good idea?"

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