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Biotech

Former Intel CEO Rips Medical Research 484

Himuanam writes "Former Intel CEO Grove rips on the medical research community, contrasting their lack of progress with the tech industry's juggernaut of breakthroughs over the past half-century or so. 'On Sunday afternoon, Grove is unleashing a scathing critique of the nation's biomedical establishment. In a speech at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, he challenges big pharma companies, many of which haven't had an important new compound approved in ages, and academic researchers who are content with getting NIH grants and publishing research papers with little regard to whether their work leads to something that can alleviate disease, to change their ways.'"
Security

Submission + - Ebay Hacker Posts Credit Card Info of Ebay Users (associatedcontent.com)

vampriter writes: "The info that was published included user id, name, address, email address, feedback score, credit card number, date of registration, and the three digit code contained on the back of your card. Because of this, the potential for fraud is very real, not only for those appearing on the list. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/392758/apparent_ebay_hacker_posts_credit_card.html"
Privacy

Sony Developing Gigapixel Satellite Imaging 101

holy_calamity writes "Sony and the University of Alabama are working on a gigapixel resolution camera for improved satellite surveillance. It can see 10-km-square from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. As well as removing annoying artefacts created by tiling images in Google Earth and similar, it should allow CCTV surveillance of entire cities with one camera. 'The trick is to build an array of light sensitive chips that each record small parts of a larger image and place them at the focal plane of a large multiple-lens system. The camera would have gigapixel resolution, and able to record images at a rate of 4 frames per second. The team suggests that such a camera mounted on an aircraft could provide images of a large city by itself. This would even allow individual vehicles to be monitored without any danger of losing them as they move from one ground level CCTV system to another.'"
United States

Submission + - San Jose Cops Unveil Interactive Crime Map (mercurynews.com)

Degrees writes: "The San Jose police department has unveiled new crime-mapping software on its web site that pinpoints crime data down to the city block. People can see the status of a report, such as whether an arrest was made or if an investigation is continuing or was dropped. And, with more detailed mapping, they also can zero in on an area as small as a one-mile radius of their home or school. CrimeReports.com takes you to the data — providing you register first.

The San Jose Police Department web site has a press release (in the form on a .pdf). It says that future upgrades include SMS alerting, allowing the SJPD to send alerts to specific neighborhoods if specifically requested by the department."

Mozilla

Firefox Working to Fix Memory Leaks 555

Christopher Blanc writes "Many Mozilla community members, including both volunteers and Mozilla Corporation employees, have been helping to reduce Firefox's memory usage and fix memory leak bugs lately. Hopefully, the result of this effort will be that Firefox 3 uses less memory than Firefox 2 did, especially after it has been used for several hours." Here's hoping. Frequent restarts of things on my computer make me furious. I can't imagine why anyone would tolerate such things.
Communications

Submission + - Ashton Kutcher's VOIP Service Has Fatal Flaw (brainhandles.com)

gbulmash writes: "In this article, a tech reviewer describes his experience with the beta of the new VOIP service, Ooma, which names Ashton Kutcher as it's creative director. The service uses the landlines of its subscribers to help it provide last mile connections for long distance calls, and the author points out two potential pitfalls for Ooma (slow adoption, telco lawsuits). But a blogger has pointed out the true fatal flaw in Ooma's plan... a simple TOS change by the telcos could turn your Ooma hub into a $400 paperweight."
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - The Emoticon Turns 25 :-) (cnn.com)

tuxlove writes: CNN reports: "Twenty-five years ago, (Sept 19, 1982) Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message."

Emoticons are now part of daily life for anyone who uses a computer or other text-capable communication device. Just about everyone in the world has at least seen an emoticon. It may perhaps be the most important innovation ever in electronic communications. I know the smiley has saved me many times from horrible email misunderstandings. How many others has it saved? :-) Unfortunately, in recent years others have tried to claim rights to emoticons, most notably the evil folks at Despair.com. In a controversial move, they trademarked the frowny emoticon and banned its use from email without a license. In their defense, the license fee is quite affordable. :-( (Yes, this one is licensed.)

Portables

Which Lost/Stolen Laptop Trackers Do You Like? 572

saudadelinux writes "I was held up at gunpoint in July, and my laptop was stolen. There are companies out there which, for a fee, install tracker software on your laptop. If it's stolen or lost, they track its whereabouts whenever it gets on the 'Net and work with local law enforcement and ISPs to find the machine. I'm wondering: has anyone used one of these services? Does anyone have a recommendation for which company to go with? My new laptop is a a dual-boot Ubuntu/XP machine, and the couple of companies I've looked at do Windows-only. Are there Linux options?"
NASA

Submission + - NASA to detail International Space Station gear (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: "NASA will next week show off a critical new piece of equipment for the International Space Station that will let new labs be attached and more astronauts live in space. The Node-2 module, known as Harmony, is a key utility component that will act as an internal connecting port and passageway for future international science labs and cargo spacecraft. The module is approximately 21 feet long and 14 feet in diameter. Basically the space station will get roomier, growing from the size of a three-bedroom house to the space equivalent of a typical five-bedroom house, once the Japanese Kib and European Columbus laboratories are attached. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19414"
Science

"Lifesaver Bottle" Filters Viruses Out of Water 503

gihan_ripper writes "British inventor Michael Pritchard has developed a small self-contained filter system that instantly cleans water, removing all particles larger than 15nm. He said that he was inspired after seeing the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004; people had to wait for many days to get fresh water and many died from drinking contaminated water. The filter is so effective that it can purify dirty river water and even fecal matter. His bottle will shortly be available for sale from Lifesaver Systems at an expected cost of £190 (approx. $385)."
Music

Submission + - Zeppelin Reunion has Slashdot Effect

cayenne8 writes: Apparently the long rumored Led Zeppelin reunion is going to happen. It will be a one off show with original members Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and Jason Bohnam (John's son) in tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, a co-founder of Atlantic Records who died recently.

The website where you can register for a lottery for tickets has crashed due to demand for the tickets. Apparently, Led Zeppelin, a group long defunct, can still have the power to 'slashdot' a website. Why not? They did recently set records for their DVD released a couple of years ago. Is there any group today that will have that kind of staying power?

To add insult to injury to the crashed site, it is at Ahmettribute.com
Patents

Submission + - Fart Powered Missile Patent

An anonymous reader writes: While digging through the patent office website, I ran across this odd piece of engineering. A fart powered missile launcher. Apparently it's a toy, one you need to eat plenty of beans to play with... At the bottom of the page is a link to a technical drawing of the odd device. I see a new joke forming. You know you have too much time on your hands when...

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