Slashdot

flwombat writes "Remember that bogus Blackboard eLearning patent and associated lawsuit? Now that the suit has ended with Blackboard victorious, USPTO looks ready to pull the rug out by overturning all 44 patent claims."

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist has video of Nasa's new Chariot lunar rover in action on simulated moon surface in Houston. As the associated story explains, the two-ton "truck" has a top speed of 20km/hour and is currently fitted with a plough, with additional back hoe and drill attachments to come. Sure it's not glamorous — more of a lunar tractor — but sure looks handy for establishing that permanent moon base NASA wants."

Mark Brunelli writes "Sun Microsystems' $1 billion MySQL acquisition could ignite a price war between Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, according to one IT industry analyst. MySQL's free, open source DBMS lacks many of the frills associated with Oracle and other proprietary database technologies, but it's also far less expensive over time, said Noel Yuhanna, a database market analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research Inc. And now that it's backed by datacenter veteran Sun, he said, MySQL's relatively new technology is more likely to be seen as a viable option by large enterprises interested in cheaper alternatives. If MySQL starts to attract big business away from Oracle, IBM and Microsoft, Yuhanna says it's a safe bet that the big three will respond with new pricing options and less expensive database management packages."
http://www.searchoracle.com/

BobGod8 writes "CNN is reporting that the power source behind the Northern Lights has finally been explained (http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/13/northern.lights.ap/index.html). Key matters are the interaction of charged solar ions with the Earth's magnetosphere. The article is a cover of Tuesday's earlier AP story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071211/ap_on_sc/northern_lights). Apparently, it was unclear before now exactly how it all worked. Anyone else completely baffled by this? I could swear I read an entire book on the subject when I was 8, with detailed information regarding the process. Even Wikipedia seems pretty sure about the issue. Is there actual new information, or has the newsmedia botched yet another science discovery?"
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/13/northern.lights.ap/index.html

Mike_K writes "I live in a small condo building, and at our recent meeting we discussed the idea of sharing internet between the codos. The only problem is that we would rather not expose those actually providing the service to harassment from RIAA, MPAA, etc. The best idea I can come up with to solve this is to create a small ISP for our building and give everybody a static IP. I know enough about networking to be able to set this up, but I don't know anything about actually setting up an ISP. Can anybody help me with where to start looking? Would this ever be economical? Is there a better way to go? We are located in a big city with Comcast and Verizon being choices for consumer internet, and close to some big schools with lots of bandwidth, if you think that would help."

An anonymous reader writes "Toshiba have stunned the world with their announcement of what's pretty much the holy grail in Lithium battery technology — the Super Charge ion Battery, which recharges up to 90% of its energy in just five minutes, and has a lifespan of over 10 years. Slow charging has been the key hurdle to public acceptance of battery-electric vehicles as viable distance travelers, so this breakthrough has all sorts of implications for the automotive industry as well as being a very welcome upgrade to a whole host of other portable devices."
http://www.gizmag.com/toshiba-scib-super-charge-lithium-battery/8506/

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have isolated a human blood cell that represents the great-grandparent of all the cells of the blood, a finding that could lead to new treatments for blood cancers and other blood diseases. This cell, called the multipotent progenitor, is the first offspring of the much-studied blood-forming stem cell that resides in the bone marrow and gives rise to all cells of the blood. It's also the cell that's thought to give rise to acute myelogenous leukemia when mutated.

Tech.Luver writes "Igor Skochinsky didn't take too long to crack Amazon Kindle's DRM. On his 'Reversing Everything' blog he details the workaround to read encrypted Mobi books on Kindle, which involves two Python scripts. In his words, "Well, I've discovered the algorithm used to generate the PID and was able to use it on Fictionwise, but there was another catch. AZW files have a flag set in the DRM info which is not present in books bought from other vendors. After fixing that, I could read the book on Kindle." ( http://techluver.com/2007/12/13/amazon-kindle-hacked-to-allow-encrypted-mobi-books/ )"
http://techluver.com/2007/12/13/amazon-kindle-hacked-to-allow-encrypted-mobi-books/

Are you an individual webmaster or a business owning websites? Want to receive notifications regarding your security at the web application level in advance? This article on DarkReading discusses a new free email alert service which lets customers know when an XSS vulnerability is found on their sites. According to security experts, XSSed's early warning mailing list could help researchers as well as website owners. Researcher Rodney "Kyran" Gladue has pointed out that "if the early-warning alert catches on, this could be a great medium for allowing people newer in the security field to test the waters while at the same time [offer] a safer way for the security testers to commit full disclosure if the site owner opts-in to the alerts"

somegeekynick writes "Yet another year is coming to a close, and Phil Plait (the Bad Astronomer) has posted his list on (what he thinks are) the best 10 astronomical images of 2007. Included are crazy comets, holes on other planets, and grand galaxies. Enjoy!"
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/12/13/top-ten-astronomy-pictures-of-2007/#comment-143554

clintonogamy writes "A retired cancer survivor in Florida has invented a machine in his garage that uses RF to kill cancer cells. In brief, nanoparticles of gold or carbon that are coated to stick to cancer cells are injected into the patient, then the RF from his machine heats them, killing only the coated cells. It is now being investigated by a research team at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
From TFA...

"I noticed young kids losing their smiles, losing their hair. And I said to myself, 'Today's chemotherapy is cruel. There's gotta be a better way to cure cancer,'" Kanzius told ABC News. ... Using pie pans, spare parts from ham radios and know-how from his days as a radio engineer, he invented the first generation of what would become a machine that uses radio waves — not radioactivity — to fight cancer.

I wonder if it can run Linux..."

PuNKY^BReWSTeR writes "It is a well known fact that competition and fair prices for decent cellular plans are virtually non-existent in Canada. This one takes the cake however. According to CBC, a Calgary man received an $85,000 cell phone bill from Bell after using us as a modem.

From the article:

"The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like $100 over. Here, I'm $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on." Staniaszek said Bell told him they will adjust his bill to a different plan for people who use their phones for internet purposes. But even after the adjustment, his bill will still be more than $5,000."
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/12/12/cell-phone.html

Anonymous Coward writes "Todd Haselton at LAPTOP Magazine compiled five tips that anyone can execute on the Asus Eee PC. From adding webcam support in Skype, to launching a full desktop, each of the tips is easy and clearly explained."
http://laptopmag.com/Features/5-Asus-Eee-PC-Customization-Tips-Youll-Love.htm

Andy Guess writes "In partnership with the Internet Archive, and with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the George Mason University Center for History and New Media is creating a way for scholars to upload existing data files to be OCR'd and stored in a database available to the public. Since only works in the public domain can be made available in that way, scholars will have to complete an online form with legal assurances."
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/12/zotero

Michael J. Ross writes "For Web developers who appreciate the value of separating Web content from its presentation, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) has proved a godsend, because it allows all of the styling of a Web site to be organized in CSS files separate from the site's semantic content, in HTML files (possibly dynamically generated). Yet to make this styling power possible, CSS must incorporate a long list of syntax elements, including hundreds of selectors, properties, and values. Thus it can be quite handy for the developer to have on hand a concise summary of CSS, such as the CSS Pocket Reference, authored by Eric A. Meyer." Read on for the rest of Michael's review.