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Books

Submission + - The Future of Reading

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "With a seven-page cover story on The Future of Reading, Newsweek confirms all those rumors of Amazon's imminent introduction of the Kindle, a $399 e-book reader that aims to change the way we read. Kindle, which is named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge, has the dimensions of a paperback, weighs 10.3 oz., and uses E Ink technology on a 6-inch screen powered by a battery that gets up to 30 hours from a 2-hour charge. Kindle's real breakthrough is its EVDO-like wireless connectivity, which allows it to work anywhere, not just at Wi-Fi hotspots. More than 88,000 titles will be on sale at the Kindle store at launch, with NYT best sellers priced at $9.99. Subscribe to newspapers, magazines and even blogs, and content will be beamed automatically into your Kindle. Web access, including Wikipedia, Google search and PDF e-mail attachments, will also be available."
Announcements

Submission + - Stem cell cure hope for back pain

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Stem cell cure hope for back pain http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6196644.stm A patient's own stem cells could soon be used to cure chronic back pain, say researchers. The team from the University of Manchester hope their treatment will be available within three years.
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Found -- the apple gene for red

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Researchers have located the gene that controls the red colour of apples — a discovery that may lead to bright new apple varieties. "The red colour in apple skin is the result of anthocyanins, the natural plant compounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits" says the leader of the CSIRO. By identifying master genes that were activated by light, they were able to pinpoint the gene that controls the formation of anthocyanins in apples. "As well as giving apples their rosy red hue, anthocyanins are also antioxidants with healthy attributes, giving us plenty of reasons to study how the biochemical pathway leading to apple colour is regulated", researchers said."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - New Service Allows Gamers to Bet on Deathmatches

Submitted by
ReedyTwill
ReedyTwill writes: "Gamesradar reports that a new service called Skillground will allow gamers to play a few online, budget-quality games for cash. The bets are anywhere from 50 cents to $20, and whoever wins the match scores the pot. To avoid hustlers, a skill system ranks players according to the number of kills they've racked up, and supposedly "cutting-edge" technology is in place to prevent cheating when cash is on the line. Of course, Skillground takes their 15% from every pot.

This is the description of the service from the official site:

"SkillGround is the world's most rewarding online game arena where you can download real video games for free and play in a secure, fair environment for cash prizes or just for fun. People of all skill levels are welcome, and our proprietary skill ranking system ensures you will always find your match. All you need is a PC and a broadband connection to play. You can play for free for as long as you want on SkillGround or upgrade to a cash account and play for real cash prizes. SkillGround is committed to offering great gameplay experiences to our players and will be adding new games, levels and gameplay modes regularly. No matter what type of games you like, or what your level of ability, SkillGround has a game, and a match, for you!""
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - New online political comic strip

Submitted by
Ryan Brown
Ryan Brown writes: "A great new online political comic strip called Fascist America at www.fascistamerica.net Called "This Modern World on steroids" by one journalist. Well worth a peek.. Ryan"
User Journal

Journal Journal: [Z80] Video of the blinkenlights 8

Journal by Alioth

Tonight, I added an I/O device. Well, O device really. It's just a register chip with 8 LEDs attached, so with an OUT instruction, the processor can light up some LEDs. I arbitrarily picked port 0xF8. The output device consists of a couple of logic ICs connected to the address bus and /IORQ line (so when IORQ goes low, and the right address is on the address bus, the register IC's enable pin is activated so it reads whatever value's sitting on the data bus, latching it and l
Security

Submission + - AJAX Insecure? Expert says No Way.

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Jeremiah Grossman (CTO of WhiteHat Security) has published Myth-Busting an article dismissing the hyped-up claims that AJAX is insecure. He says: "The hype surrounding AJAX and security risks is hard to miss. Supposedly, this hot new technology responsible for compelling web-based applications like Gmail and Google Maps harbors a dark secret that opens the door to malicious hackers. Not exactly true." ... "Word on the cyber-street is that AJAX is the harbinger of larger attack surfaces, increased complexity, fake requests, denial of service, deadly cross-site scripting (XSS) , reliance on client-side security, and more. In reality, these issues existed well before AJAX. And, the recommended security best practices remain unchanged.""
United States

Submission + - World's Largest Atom Smasher Nears Completion

Submitted by
evanwired
evanwired writes: "The last magnet was put in place this week at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. When the device is completed about a year from now it will be the world's largest particle accelerator, putting scientists in reach of new data and possible answers to questions dominated by theory over observation for the past two decades. Wired News recently visited the installation — awe-inspiring in its scale — as part of an in-depth, three-part series on the collider exploring the engineering, science and politics of high-end theoretical physics in the 21st century."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - We must escape Earth, warns Hawking

Submitted by
davro
davro writes: "quote from metro.
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_articl e_id=27292&in_page_id=34

Mankind will need to leave planet Earth to ensure the long-term survival of the species, theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking warned today.

Prof Hawking said that space-rockets propelled by the kind of matter/antimatter annihilation technology used in Star Trek would be needed to colonise hospitable planets orbiting other stars.

And he disclosed his own ambition to go into space, and appealed to Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson — who is planning a "space tourism" venture — to make his dream come true."
Programming

Submission + - CSS Cookbook: How to make a printer-friendly page

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: Add a fairly small amount of CSS to a sample webpage to make it printer-friendly. Use a simple external style sheet to change the background and text colors, the font face, the margins, the header styles, to go from links to typed-out URLs, and to get rid of content that isn't wanted on the printed version. The HTML for the page isn't changed because CSS changes the presentation without having to change the HTML. Just include a link tag with the media attribute set to "print".
The Internet

Submission + - Why do websites insist on popups and pagination?

Submitted by
wikinerd
wikinerd writes: "We all know it, and most of us hate it: Commercial websites paginate their articles, forcing you to click Next Page all the time. If they have a print-friendly link, it is usually regarded a 'second-class citizen' and displayed in small font size, if not buried somewhere at the end of the page. On top of that, they serve annoying Flash ads and popups. Why do they do this? Don't they understand that they annoy the base of their popularity, the users?

Pagination is surely not out of kindness to slow connection users; I use cellular connections that aren't as reliable as ADSL or cable and being disconnected between pages sucks. I would very much prefer one big continuous page where I could hit Stop if I didn't want to download more. I argue that their only interest in paginating their Web articles is to serve more ads.

Advertising isn't necessarily a bad thing: As a user I often click on interesting ads, mainly text links, and I learn about new products and services. If the ads are context-sensitive, then I may even regard them as useful, as long as their location is such that I am free to ignore them if I have no interest to research new products. However, in many commercial sites, advertising is done via behemoth animating banners, or even worse, distracting video and Flash ads (and, in case you wonder, hover ads, popups and interstitials that force the ads in your throat are IMHO forms of torture, not advertising).

Studying Marketing as part of my Master's, I understand that forcing one to see an ad can only turn them away, and advertising can only assist already interested customers to find your product, as any kind of campaign has only limited effect on people's desire to buy what you sell. Instead of spending millions on annoying ads, perhaps they should use their obscene advertising budget to lower their prices so that they could better penetrate the market and serve the customer better (a win-win solution).

Some marketroids seem to think that 'since x ads bought us y customers, then 2x ads will bring us 2y customers', but it doesn't work this way because the more ads you serve, the more vague their message is, resulting in people paying no attention. When the marketroids discover that, they say 'let us push the ads to their throats', and then they ask to burn up more budget as their mediaeval methods only result in an apathetic audience.

As an example, a week ago I was in a taxi that had two large TFT screens just centimetres (inches) in front of my face showing video ads; and the company that installed them was so obscene that they even put 'advertisements' explaining that this 'business method' and form of advertising is patented and anyone who copies their idea will have to fight with them in the courts. I ended up looking outside the window during the whole trip, as I felt I was being treated like an animal with a wallet.

The solution is simple and straightforward: Find out what people need, build it, place one or two ads at strategic locations to make sure people can find you, sell your product at good prices, provide great service, and then wait for word of mouth to do the rest (with some luck, of course). As for the websites serving popups and Flash ads, what they have to do is simply to respect the user and accept the fact that nobody likes being served huge banners (especially with connections where you pay per megabyte or hour used). Context-sensitive text ads are minimalist and therefore usually well-received by the users, although some sites abuse even this form of advertising by putting obscene amounts of text ads on pages with little content.

It is only a matter of time before users find and start using community-oriented open-content websites, as commercial sites have long ago lost the track to providing good service and respecting the users's real needs (just compare Wikinews with registration-required online newspapers, and Wikitravel with commercial travel guides with nothing more than full-page useless ads).

What forms and amounts of advertising do you, as a user, find useful or acceptable? What are the worst exploitations of advertising technology that you have come across? How can we get our message across to the advertisers and commercial websites? We often want their products and services, but many times we find their advertising methods annoying and unrespectful."
Businesses

Possible Serious Security Flaw In ATMs 167

Posted by Zonk from the my-money-is-flighty-enough-as-it-is dept.
sfjoe writes "According to a story at MSNBC.com, researchers at Algorithmic Research (ARX) have shown it may be possible for 'someone with access to the ATM network to attack the special computers that transmit bank account numbers and PIN codes, called hardware security modules'. Using these methods, an attacker could trick the security modules into exposing a PIN. It has long been considered impossible to access PINs as they are traveling through the ATM network without the encryption key used by the card-issuing bank. If PINs can be compromised, the almost 8 billion transactions per year they handle may be in danger. Not to mention all the transaction at retail stores."

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