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Robotics

Submission + - Dynamically Balancing Robot

dar writes: If you have kids, you know what a thrill it is to watch them take their first steps. It must have been a similarly great feeling to get Dexter the robot to walk like a human — "It looks fairly smooth when we do it, but it's really a controlled fall. At any given moment you have to think (or at least, your body does) about which direction you're falling, and put your foot down in exactly the right place to push you in the direction you want to go." Anybots seem to have it just about licked.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Quietly Making Untold Millions

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's Internet Explorer automatically and indiscriminately generates results pages filled with profitable pay-per-click ads for a virtually infinite number of non-existent domains. Are they asking for trouble, or is this yet another demonstration of their "evil genius"?

http://www.dailydomainer.com/200784-microsoft-quie tly-making-untold-millions.html

Feed Hacking My Child's Brain (wired.com)

The father of a 6-year-old boy with sensory processing disorder is trying to reprogram his son's brain. By Mark Woodman. Also: Read the latest installment of Hacking My Child's Brain on Bodyhack.


Feed China Fields Cyborg Flying Rats (wired.com)

The People's Daily Online reports Chinese scientists have successfully implanted electrodes in pigeons' brains to control the birds' movements. Reminds us of U.S. attempts to create remote-controlled shark spies. In Danger Room.


Communications

Submission + - New Zealand SPAM and Txt Laws Passed

kitanai writes: The New Zealand Parliament has passed into law a new bill which will see electronic advertisers required to provide accurate information about their identity as well as clear opt-out information. From the release from the Beehive: "The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 aims to prevent New Zealand becoming a haven for spammers.......It applies to all emails, texts and instant messages that market or promote goods, services, and other schemes of a commercial or dishonest nature. ".
Bug

Vanishing Honeybees Will Affect Future Crops 322

daninbusiness writes "Across the US, beekeepers are finding that their bees are disappearing — not returning while searching for nectar and pollen. This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as $14 billion worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination. Reasons for this problem, dubbed 'colony collapse disorder,' are still unknown. Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides."
Education

Submission + - MIT offers its IT/CS courses online for free

JCOTTON writes: "Do you think that you have what it takes to go to MIT? Why don't you take a look at the introductory course in CS? There is no charge for viewing the course. But naturally, there are no academic credits or instructor help available either. You are on your own. But if you are a High School senior thinking about MIT, here is your chance to see what it is like on one of the most advanced technical schools on the planet."
AMD

Submission + - AMD2 Socket Lands on Mini-ITX

An anonymous reader writes: A Taiwanese motherboard maker has unveiled what it is the first mini-ITX motherboard built around AMD's new AM2 processor socket. Mated with a low-power, small-form-factor AMD processor, Albatron's KI690-AM2 could suit a variety of space-constrained consumer and embedded applications that can benefit from 64-bit processing. The board is based on an ATI RS690 chipset and incorporates dual SODIMM slots, supporting up to 2GB of memory. Suggested apps include car PCs, home theater PCs, and retail and industrial systems.
Sony

Sony's Harrison In No Rush to Lower PS3 Price 107

njkid1 passed on a link to a GameDaily interview they conducted at DICE with Phil Harrison, SCE WorldWide Studios President. Harrison stays mostly positive throughout the article, pointing out that the availability of consoles is a sign of a healthy supply chain. He denigrates rumble in controllers as a 'last generation' feature, and specifically discusses the company's decision-making process for lowering prices: "The PS3 technology, as with any of our platforms, starts off life at a high price and then we engineer cost out of it. And that process is an investment that you make to combine chips into a single chip or to reduce components or combine components and redesign things, and that investment is part of our planned R&D effort to reduce cost. At the appropriate time and when we can afford to, the business model of the industry is to pass those savings onto the consumer, but we're a long way away from doing that yet."
Patents

Submission + - MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

nadamsieee writes: "Eliot Van Buskirk has an interesting piece over at Wired about the fall-out from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win.""
GUI

Vista Worse For User Efficiency Than XP 546

erikvlie writes "Pfeiffer Consulting released a report on User Interface Friction, comparing Windows Vista/Aero with Windows XP and Mac OS X. The report concludes that Vista/Aero is worse in terms of desktop operations, menu latency, and mouse precision than XP — which was and still is said to be a lot worse on those measures than Mac OS X. The report was independently financed. The IT-Enquirer editor has read the report and summarized the most important findings."
Security

Submission + - BlackHat RFID hack demo pulled after legal threats

InfoWorldMike writes: "Update to New Controversy over Black Hat Presentation: A planned demo on RFID security by a security researcher has been pulled from this week's Black Hat Federal security conference after security card maker HID claimed the talk violated the company's patent rights and threatened to take legal action against Chris Paget, the researcher, and IOActive, Paget's employer, if the talk went forward, InfoWorld reports. The company decided to cancel the talk after all-night negotiations with HID collapsed, said Josh Pennell, CEO of IOActive. In response, Black Hat organizers were forced to tear materials out of printed show proceedings and will instead present a discussion by a representative of the ACLU on the criticality of RFID security, said Jeff Moss, founder and director of Black Hat."
Education

Submission + - Data-based Study Ranks Top Online Colleges

ftblguy writes: "Online higher education is growing, but a lack of transparency is preventing it from reaching its full potential. So OEDb (The Online Education Database) recently published a study that ranks what they believe to be the top 21 accredited online degree-granting colleges in the United States. "For each college, we gathered data for eight different metrics — acceptance rate, financial aid, graduation rate, peer Web citations, retention rate, scholarly citations, student-faculty ratio, and years accredited.""
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Sony releases a cheaper Blue-ray player

Fozzyuw writes: ITWire.com has a news story about Sony's latest Blu-Ray player, which has a price-point of $599, which is in-line with the premium PS3 system.

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/9993/532/

The article asks, "Will a cheaper Blu-ray player sell more for Sony?". My question would be, would people still be better off getting a PS3 than a stand-alone at the same price? Assuming one could get a PS3, which word-of-mouth on most of Slashdot appear to be easier to find one.

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