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Comment Re:What??? (Score 3, Informative) 377

by fvandrog (#33300608) Attached to: Intel Buys McAfee

Does McAfee offer other products of significant value

They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.
Biotech

How a Key Enzyme Repairs Sun-Damaged DNA 97

Posted by kdawson from the one-proton-and-one-electron dept.
BraveHeart writes "Researchers have long known that mammals, including humans, lack a key enzyme — one possessed by most of the animal kingdom and even plants — that reverses severe sun damage. For the first time, researchers have witnessed how this enzyme works at the atomic level to repair sun-damaged DNA. 'Normal sunscreen lotions convert UV light to heat, or reflect it away from our skin. A sunscreen containing photolyase could potentially heal some of the damage from UV rays that get through.'"
Government

Al Franken's Warning On Net Neutrality 564

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-the-comedians-are-right dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Democratic Sen. Al Franken weighed in on Net Neutrality over the weekend at the Netroots Nation conference of liberal activists in Las Vegas, calling it 'the First Amendment issue of our time,' and warning against Republican plans for less regulation. More from a blog post on CBSNews.com: 'Speculating on what the Internet could morph into under the Republicans' preferred lack of regulation, Franken asked the audience of bloggers how long it would take before the Fox News website loads significantly more quickly than the Daily Kos website. "If you want to protect the free flow of information in this country, you have to help me fight this," he said.'"
PC Games (Games)

JavaScript/HTML 5 Gaming? 201

Posted by Soulskill from the five-by-five dept.
cjcela writes "Lately I've seen some HTML 5/JavaScript games popping up on the web. Most of them lack sound, and are not polished, but little by little this is changing. As an example, check Galactic Plunder. While it is only a single-level proof of concept, it is one of the first arcade non-Flash games that I've found playable. Do you know of other comparable or better pure JavaScript games?"
The Internet

Submission + - ISPs Challenge UK Internet Copyright Laws in Court (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Mark.JUK
Mark.JUK writes: Two United Kingdom Internet Service Providers (ISP), BT Retail and the TalkTalk Group, have called on the country's High Court to mount a Judicial Review of the controversial UK Digital Economy Act (DEA). The DEA was rushed through parliament prior to May's general election and is designed to protect copyright on the internet. Unfortunately the new law also threatens to identify those "suspected" of unlawful copyright P2P file sharing to Rights Holders for further legal action and could lead to the blocking of legitimate websites, service speed restrictions, limits on public Wi-Fi use or even account disconnection from your ISP. The methods used by the act are also unreliable (IP address tracking) and have been known to catch innocent individuals.

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Retail, said: "It is disappointing that we feel the need to take action but we feel we have no choice. We have to do this for our customers who otherwise run the risk of being treated unfairly. We need clarity about whether this legislation is compatible with important EU laws."

Submission + - The Proton Just got smaller (nature.com) 1

Submitted by inflame
inflame writes: A new paper published in Nature has said that the proton may be smaller than we previously thought. The article states 'The difference is so infinitesimal that it might defy belief that anyone, even physicists, would care. But the new measurements could mean that there is a gap in existing theories of quantum mechanics. "It's a very serious discrepancy," says Ingo Sick, a physicist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, who has tried to reconcile the finding with four decades of previous measurements. "There is really something seriously wrong someplace."'

Would this indicate new physics if proven?
Databases

Good IC / Electronic Component Inventory Software? 70

Posted by timothy from the what-have-we-here? dept.
Smerky writes "As I've been getting more and more into hobby electronics I have been finding it difficult to keep track of all the different ICs and other electronics that I have (resistors, capacitors, etc.). What are Slashdotters' recommendations for some inventory software? Certain qualifications that I'd be looking for personally are that it has to run on Linux/OSX well or be web-based (to run well on an Apache2 server)."

Submission + - Merry merry copyright king of the bush is he... (abc.net.au) 2

Submitted by neonsignal
neonsignal writes: Iconic Australian band Men at Work have been ordered to pay royalties for an instrumental riff in their song "Down Under". The notes were sampled from a well-known children's song "Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree", written in 1934 for a Girl Guide's Jamboree. The Justice found the claims of the copyright owner Larrikin to be excessive, but ordered the payment of royalties and a percentage of future profits. Let's hope the primary schools are up to date with their ARIA license fees!
Books

Submission + - Ebooks Slower to Read than Paper

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "PC World reports that a study shows that reading from a printed book—versus an e-book on any of the three tested devices, an iPad, Kindle 2, and PC, was a faster experience to a significant degree. Readers measured on the iPad reported reading speeds, on average, of 6.2 percent slower than their print counterparts while the Kindle 2 clocked in at 10.7 percent slower. Jacob Nielsen had each participant read a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Each participant was timed, then quizzed to determine their comprehension and understanding of what they just read. Nielsen also surveyed users' satisfaction levels after operating each device (or page). For user satisfaction, the iPad, Kindle, and book all scored relatively equally at 5.8, 5.7, and 5.6 on a one-to-seven ranking scale (seven representing the best experience). The PC, however, did not fare so well with its usability score of 3.6. "Most of the users' free-form comments were predictable," writes Nielsen. "For example, they disliked that the iPad was so heavy and that the Kindle featured less-crisp gray-on-gray letters. People also disliked the lack of true pagination and preferred the way the iPad (actually, the iBook app) indicated the amount of text left in a chapter." Neilsen concludes that the study is promising for the future of e-readers and tablet computers. "Even the current generation is almost as good as print in formal performance metrics — and actually scores slightly higher in user satisfaction.""
Science

Submission + - PLANCK paints its first all-sky map of the univers (edgeofphysics.com) 1

Submitted by edgeofphysics
edgeofphysics writes: The European Space Agency unveils the first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background — the radiation leftover from the big bang. Planck took 10 months to gather this data and it contains unprecedented details about the foreground emissions from our galaxy.

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