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-Neko- (67564)

-Neko-
  (email not shown publicly)
http://www.genesi-usa.com/
Developer Relations Manager for Genesi USA, Inc. We make the Pegasos [genesippc.com], EFIKA 5K2 [genesippc.com], and other Power Architecture based solutions, with support at Power Developer [powerdeveloper.org].

-Neko- (67564)

  News: Thirst For Coltan Fueling African Conflict 2008-07-25 15:34

Posted by timothy on Friday July 25, @03:34PM
from the thirst-for-coltan-would-be-a-great-movie-title dept.
MetaPhyzx writes "According to an article put forth by the Toward Freedom website, the metallic ore known as columbite-tantalite or coltan for short is fueling conflict in central Africa. The relevance to us who read news for geeks: Coltan is in quite a few consumer electronics; the article references the Sony Playstation series." As reader fahrvergnugen points out in the comments below, there's reason to more than doubt the currency of the claims in the above-linked article, as outlined in a post at Joystiq.
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 [+] story, news, earth, games, hardware, playstation, bloodconsole

  Technology: OOXML Rumored to be Approved, Announcement Wednesday 2008-04-01 09:18

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 01, @09:18AM
from the long-hard-slog dept.
dominux writes "Rumors are already circulating that Microsoft's OOXML has been voted in by the standards board. The Open Sourcerer claims to have results of the ballot on dis29500. According to the site Microsoft managed to flip enough countries to make it stick. 75% of the P members who didn't abstain voted for Microsoft (That is 58% of all the P members). 14% of all the P and O members voted to disapprove it, this includes all the new O members that joined just in time to cast their vote. Norway has asked that their vote be suspended due to voting irregularities, but it would take more than that to make a difference to the result. ZDNet is still playing it cautious, noting that an announcement either way is set to be made on Wednesday."
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 [+] story, tech, microsoft, software, fmgwac, corruption, noo

  Science: Two Totally Unique Star Systems Discovered 2008-04-01 05:22

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 01, @05:22AM
from the two-of-a-kind-beats-ace-high dept.
esocid writes "Astronomers have spied a faraway star system that is so unusual, it was one of a kind — until its discovery helped them pinpoint a second one that was much closer to home. In a paper published in a recent issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues suggest that these star systems are the progenitors of a rare type of supernova. In research funded by the National Science Foundation, they found a star system that is unusual, because it's what the astronomers have called a 'yellow supergiant eclipsing binary' — it contains two very bright, massive yellow stars that are very closely orbiting each other. In fact, the stars are so close together that a large amount of stellar material is shared between them, so that the shape of the system resembles a peanut."
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 [+] story, science, space, !unique, mrpeanut, planters

  Science: U of MI Produces Strongest Laser Ever 2008-02-17 05:32

Posted by Zonk on Sunday February 17, @05:32AM
from the now-we-just-need-a-really-big-shark-and-we're-set dept.
eldavojohn writes "Weighing in at a mere 20 billion trillion watts per square centimeter and containing a measly 300 terawatts of power, the University of Michigan has broken a record with a 1.3-micron speck wide laser. It's about two orders of magnitude higher than any other laser in the world and can perform for 30 femtoseconds once every ten seconds — some of the researchers speculate it is the most powerful laser in the universe. 'If you could hold a giant magnifying glass in space and focus all the sunlight shining toward Earth onto one grain of sand, that concentrated ray would approach the intensity of a new laser beam made in a University of Michigan laboratory ... To achieve this beam, the research team added another amplifier to the HERCULES laser system, which previously operated at 50 terawatts. HERCULES is a titanium-sapphire laser that takes up several rooms at U-M's Center for Ultrafast Optical Science. Light fed into it bounces like a pinball off a series of mirrors and other optical elements. It gets stretched, energized, squeezed and focused along the way.'" And ... cue the evil chortling.
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 [+] story, science, power, sharks, technology, uofm

  IT: TSA Changes Screening Based on Blog Suggestion 2008-02-08 06:19

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 08, @06:19AM
from the hey-they-actually-listened dept.
hhavensteincw writes "Less than a week after it launched a new blog aimed at gathering suggestions from air travelers to improve airport security processes, the Transportation Security Administration changed a practice where some screeners were requiring passengers to remove all electronics, including Blackberries, iPods, and cords from carry-on luggage. Seems the TSA didn't know this was going on, and after the question was raised on its blog, it clamped down on the practice. The TSA also provided a detailed description of their reasoning behind the liquids policy. We discussed the opening of the blog last week."

  Science: 'Safe Ebola' Created for Research 2008-01-22 11:02

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday January 22 2008, @11:02AM
from the makes-me-so-happy-to-be-living-in-the-same-city dept.
Nephrite writes "By removing a gene from the virus Ebola, UW-Madison scientists have managed to stop the deadly pathogen from replicating. This first step may be a start down the path to a vaccine or drug screening. 'The scientists still want the virus to replicate in order to study it, so they developed monkey kidney cells which contained the protein needed. Because the cell was providing the protein, and not the virus itself, it could only replicate within those cells, and even if transferred into a human, would be harmless.'"
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 [+] story, science, biotech, whatcouldpossiblygowrong, ebola, iamlegend,

  Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back 2008-01-13 02:23

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 13 2008, @02:23AM
from the what-goes-around-comes-ariynd dept.
theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."

  UPS Using Software To Eliminate Left Turns 2007-12-12 11:20

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 12 2007, @11:20AM
from the you-can't-get-there-from-here dept.
cybermage writes "The NY Times has a story about UPS using software to dramatically reduce the number of left turns their drivers take. With a fleet of vehicles their size, the time and money saved by pre-planning routes that try to eliminate left turns means big savings." Some CS major probably figured this out instead of traveling salesman.
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 [+] story, transportation, humor, oldnews, zoolander, !ambiturner

  Postal Service Surcharge Could Slash Netflix Profit 2007-12-06 12:58

Posted by kdawson on Thursday December 06 2007, @12:58PM
from the troublesome-red-envelopes dept.
mikesd81 writes "Boston.com reports that Netflix Inc., the largest US mail-order movie-rental service, may suffer a cut in profits if the US Postal Service starts charging extra to manually sort the envelopes that carry its DVDs. An audit prepared by the Postal Service's Inspector General last month recommended charging one unidentified company 17 cents per envelope for labor costs. Citigroup analyst Tony Wible, who said in a note to investors Tuesday that the company is Netflix, estimated the charge might reduce profit per subscriber to $0.35 from $1.05. Wible advises investors to buy Blockbusters shares because their DVD envelopes don't have the problem (floppy edges that jam the USPS's automated sorting machinery). Netflix says the whole thing is no big deal and they will change their envelopes if necessary."
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 [+] story, movies, netflix, business, fud, nobigdeal

  Games: Striking Writers May Work on Games 2007-11-27 13:34

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday November 27 2007, @01:34PM
from the fewer-hackneyed-cliches-sounds-like-a-good-thing dept.
The ongoing Writer's Guild strike may soon impact even the games industry. While most of the copy writers working on games are not a part of the guild, via Eurogamer comes a Variety article about a possible Hollywood writer's migration to other media. "While the WGA has made no secret that it would like to eventually cover vidgame writing, it hasn't pushed the issue yet and is allowing members to work on games during the strike. 'It has been an interesting shift," says one tenpercenter who focuses on vidgames. "The literary agents are now saying, 'Why don't we get our clients over there during the strike?' even though in the past they thought the money wasn't good enough or the work is too demanding.'"
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 [+] story, games, unionssuck

  Hardware: AMD Ships First DTX Form Factor Prototypes 2007-10-22 17:00

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 22 2007, @05:00PM
from the size-matters dept.
MojoKid writes "When AMD first revealed their plans for the DTX open industry standard, the intent of that early briefing was to explain AMD's vision for interoperable small form factor systems. Today AMD provided more details and a specific design example of the DTX small form-factor standard. This HotHardware article showcases a prototype system built on a low power AMD Athlon 64 BE-2350 processor and 690G chipset motherboard with integrated graphics. Maybe the HTPC just took a small step toward platform standardization?"
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 [+] story, hardware, amd, dtx, mobo, motherboards

  What's Really Broken with Windows Update - Trust 2007-10-15 10:57

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 15 2007, @10:57AM
from the yer-kidding-me dept.
Be Cool writes "According to ZDNet, Microsoft has steered itself into a real trust tarpit with Windows Update: 'See, here's the problem. To feel comfortable with having an open channel that allows your OS to be updated at the whim of a third party (even/especially* Microsoft ... * delete as applicable) requires that the user trusts the third party not to screw around with the system in question. This means no fiddling on the sly, being clear about what the updates do and trying not to release updates that hose systems. While any and all updates have the potential to hose a system, there's no excuse for hiding the true nature of updates and absolutely no excuse for pushing sneaky updates down the tubes. Over the months vigilant Windows users have caught Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism.'"
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 [+] story, microsoft, windowsupdate, deleteasapplicable, !news, yawn

  Google Goes After Open Source Licensing Cruft 2007-09-27 18:56

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday September 27 2007, @06:56PM
from the wheel-reinvention dept.
pacopico writes "Google has secret plans to put out its own open source software license, according to this story in The Register. Apparently, Google's efforts will center around developing a simplified open source license that makes it easier for developers to stay "within the spirit" of the license in addition to the law. Chris DiBona at Google was asked about the plans but won't budge with details yet. Still, The Register claims that Google's efforts could improve the license proliferation issues facing the OSI."
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 [+] story, google, itsaboutnothing, gnoogle, gnu, software

  Your Rights Online: Cory Doctorow's Fiction About An Evil Google 2007-09-21 00:23

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday September 21 2007, @12:23AM
from the government-search-engines dept.
ahem writes "I saw a link on Valleywag to a story written by Cory Doctorow about what would happen if Google got in bed with the Dept. of Homeland Security. Chilling, well written, but the ending was a bit anti-climactic for my tastes."

  Walmart Rejects Firefox and Safari 2007-02-11 10:28

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday February 11 2007, @10:28AM
from the also-dalmations-have-spots dept.
babooo404 writes "Last week, Walmart launched their online video download service. Immediately there were posts that the service did not work with the Firefox or Safari browsers. There was a collective, "WTF" when this happened as this is 2007, not 1997. Now it appears that reports are out that Walmart has completely turned off the ability to get into the application at all by Firefox, Safari or any other browser it does not like."
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 [+] story, internet, walmart, firefox, sucky, safari

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