Feed news.com: Cubicles that crush the soul (news.com)
Wired News holds a contest for the saddest cubicles, and the winners are damn depressing.
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.'"
Comment Re:Starwars: the series: The Holiday Special! (Score 1) 178
I think the proper phrasing in Yodese (Yodaese? Yodeese?) would be:
Easy being green, it is not
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"
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.'"
First 'Quantum Computer Chips' Demonstrated 171
holy_calamity writes "The first quantum computer chips have been made by two US groups, New Scientist reports. Both NIST and Yale have demonstrated chips where information was transferred between two superconducting qubits using a 'quantum bus'. The bus is made from a cavity that traps a single microwave photon as a standing wave — the NIST group also managed to use the bus to store data from one qubit for a short time. 'After encoding information in one qubit, they transferred it into the cavity for 10 nanoseconds before transferring it to the other qubit. Yale's chip used qubits around 1-micron square built on silicon, while NIST used larger 10-square-micron qubits on top of sapphire. In both prototypes, the bus between the qubits was between five and seven millimeters long.'"
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."
The San Jose Police Department web site has a press release (in the form on a
Feed The Register: Dawn on its way to the asteroid belt (theregister.com)
Lift off, at last
Dawn, NASA's mission to the asteroid belt, has at last launched successfully. At the time of writing, NASA mission managers were still waiting for the Delta II's second and third stages to fire, but so far it is all looking good.
Feed Engadget: Best Buy's secret intranet site to get a disclaimer; customers to get shaft (engadget.com)
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
So after all the uproar and lawsuits over Best Buy's secret in-store intranet, which looked exactly like the external bestbuy.com site but lacked sale prices and other discounts, the company has responded in the lamest way possible: by putting a warning label on the in-store kiosks. The warning will say something like "THIS KIOSK DISPLAYS IN-STORE PRICES - WHICH MAY DIFFER FROM NATIONAL INTERNET PRICES," and advise customers to see a sales associate if they have any questions. It's still unclear why the company won't just do the right thing and match its own listed prices, but we're willing to bet the suits are patting themselves on the back for their innovative, out-of-the-box solution. Martinis for all!Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
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.
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."
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.)
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?
Meet Korea's Gaming Rockstars 64
PC Gamer has up a short piece looking at some of the big names in Korean gaming. The piece describes an event, and discusses the training regimen these console contestants go through. "I visited the A-team house, which is in a residential street in northern Seoul. Fourteen pro gamers live here, together with their team coach. It's half frat house, half sweatshop. Upstairs are the dorms. The team's top two players, Ma Jae Yoon (handle sAviOr) and Seo Ji Hoon (handle XellOs) share a room that's not much bigger than two single beds. The others are crammed into bunks in two other rooms. Ma, aged 21, is currently South Korea's number one Starcraft player and, according to Sean Oh, a millionaire. You wouldn't be able to glean this from looking at his bedroom."
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?"
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"
