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Comment Re:Why? (Score 2) 387

Yes but why are they supposed to do that, what value does that give. Knowing how to get the information you need to accurately understand and answer the question is a very important skill to learn. If you use it regularly then you will remember it, if you don't use it regularly then you can't being able to quickly research and understand things is a very important skill.
Classic Games (Games)

Fan-Developed Ultima VI Remake Released 161

An anonymous reader writes "20 years after the original game launched, a fan-developed Ultima 6 remake has finally been released! The Ultima 6 Project was formed in 2001 by Sliding Dragon to develop a remake of Origin's Ultima VI: The False Prophet with newer graphics and a more immersive engine. Soon assembled under the banner Archon, the team members, who hail from all over the globe, have set about recreating the world of Britannia, adding an enhanced storyline to bolster intraseries continuity and building on the Ultima legacy in a way that will please fans new and old."
Biotech

Synthetic Genome Drives Bacterial Cell 174

Dr. Eggman writes "Physorg.com brings us news of a synthetic genome, produced by the J. Craig Venter Institute, being used in an existing bacterial cell for the first time. Using a combination of biological hosts, the technique produces short strings of DNA by machine which are then inserted into yeast to be stitched together via DNA-repair enzymes. The medium sequences are passed into E. coli and back into yeast. After three rounds, a genome of three million base pairs was produced." (More below.)
Science

Submission + - First Synthetic Cell Created (wsj.com)

aoshi73 writes: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the first completely synthetic cell has been created. Here is an excerpt:

"Heralding a new era in biology, scientists for the first time have created a synthetic cell, completely controlled by man-made genetic instructions, which can survive and reproduce itself, researchers at the private J. Craig Venter Institute announced Thursday."

Android

HTC Android Phones Found With Malware Pre-Installed 158

Trailrunner7 writes "Security researchers have found that Vodafone, one of the world's larger wireless providers, is distributing some HTC phones with malware pre-installed on them. The phone, HTC's Magic, runs the Google Android mobile operating system, and is one of the more popular handsets right now. A researcher at Panda Software received one of the handsets recently, and upon attaching it to her PC, found that the phone was pre-loaded with the Mariposa bot client. Mariposa has been in the news of late thanks to some arrests connected to the operation of the botnet."

Comment Depends on your contract... (Score 1) 735

... and the terms you agreed to when you took the job. The usual deal is that being on call is covered by your salary but if you actually get called out you get more paid for it, usually a standard fee per call rather than an hourly rate. There is usually an on call rota as well so you are not on call 24/7.
Transportation

Berkeley Engineers Have Some Bad News About Air Cars 278

cheeks5965 writes "We've argued before over compressed air vehicles, a.k.a. air cars. Air cars are an enchanting idea, providing mobility with zero fuel consumption or environmental impacts. The NYTimes' Green Inc. blog reports that the reality is less rosy. New research from UC Berkeley and ICF International puts a period at the end of the discussion, showing that compressed air is a very poor fuel, storing less than 1% of the energy in gasoline; air cars won't get you far, with a range of just 29 miles in typical city driving; and despite appearing green the vehicles are worse for the environment, with twice the carbon footprint as gasoline vehicles, from producing the electricity used to compress the air. Given these barriers, manufacturer claims should definitely be taken with a grain of salt."

Comment Re:wow, a whole million? (Score 1) 773

Sorry but this is not true, you can be specific about which robots you want to exclude. More importantly google chooses to respect robots.txt and noindex meta tags, if it decided it was in its interest not to respect them - either at all or just for the sites that did the deal - then there is precisely nothing anyone could do about it.

Comment Re:wow, a whole million? (Score 1) 773

The thing is though if the top 1000 sites used robots.txt and the noindex meta tag to remove themselves from google, then google could just ignore robots.txt and the noindex meta tag for the top 1000 sites and index them anyway. Ultimately if the site is publicly accessible then google can index it and there is nothing anybody could do about it.

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