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Television

What Has Fox Got Against Its Own Sci-Fi Shows? 753

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the i-still-miss-you-firefly dept.
brumgrunt writes "Dollhouse. The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Fringe. Three science fiction shows that Fox commissioned, put on the air, and — in the case of at least one of them — has won rave reviews. But why does it seem that Fox is trying to kill some of its own shows with crazy scheduling decisions? How can Fringe survive after being pulled for two months, and what hope is there for Sarah Connor and Dollhouse on a Friday night?"
AMD

45nm Phenom II matches Core 2 Quad, trails Core i7->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "AMD is debuting its 45nm Phenom II processors today, and The Tech Report has already run them through a complete suite of benchmarks to see how they perform compared to Intel's latest and greatest. The result? The new 2.8GHz and 3GHz Phenom IIs are in a dead heat with like-priced Core 2 Quads, but they generally fall well behind Intel's new Core i7 chips. TR concludes that AMD's future doesn't look as bleak as some say, and future Phenom IIs could compete favorably with more affordable Core i7 derivatives."
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Software

OpenOffice Getting A Facelift->

Submitted by
Sean0michael
Sean0michael writes "OpenOffice is looking for a facelift, so they have launched their own Renaissance project to get things rolling. The project is just beginning, so now is a good chance to get in on the ground floor and make your opinions heard. Bruce Byfield at Datamation draws attention to the complexity of the process and the different directions this project might take. While the revamped UI is still a few years away, you can get involved now by taking a quick survey to help the project get its bearings."
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Idle

More Brains Needed

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that more people need to donate their brains to medical research if cures for diseases like dementia are to be found and are urging healthy people as well as those with brain disorders to become donors. "For autism, we only have maybe 15 or 20 brains that have been donated that we can do our research on. That is drastically awful," said Dr Payam Rezaie of the Neuropathology Research Laboratory at the Open University. "We would need at least 100 cases to get meaningful data. A lot of research is being hindered by this restriction." Part of the problem, according to Professor Margaret Esiri at the University of Oxford, may be that people are reluctant to donate their brains because they see the organ as the basis of their identity. "It used to be other parts of the body that we thought were important," says Esin. "But now people realize that their brain is the crucial thing that gives them their mind and their self." Dr Kieran Breen, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, said over 90% of the brains in their bank at Imperial College London were from patients, with the remaining 10% of "healthy" brains donated by friends or relatives of patients. "Some people are under the impression that if they sign up for a donor card that will include donating their brain for research. But it won't," says Breen. "Donor cards are about donating organs for transplant, not for medical science.""
Wireless Networking

SPAM: Researchers apply P2P principles to car traffic

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes "University of California, Irvine researchers are applying lessons learned from music and video peer-to-peer file transfer networks to a system for reducing traffic jams on the roads. Their Autonet plan would center around ad hoc networks of vehicles and roadside monitoring posts supported by 802.11 technology (the prototype uses 11b). The vehicles would essentially be the "clients" in such a system and feature graphical user interfaces to pass along information to drivers. They're building the system to be able to handle data on thousands of traffic incidents and road conditions."
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Medicine

Is love just a chemical cocktail? ->

Submitted by Hapless Hero
Hapless Hero writes "A professor of neuroscience at Emory University theorizes that romantic love, despite the myriad ways poets have been describing the most written-about emotion for centuries, is nothing more profound than a series of chemical reactions. From the BBC.co.uk article:

Professor Young argues that love can be explained by a series of neurochemical events that are happening in specific brain areas. If that is true then, he says, one would no longer have to rely on oysters or chocolates to create a loving mood. Instead, it will be possible for scientists to develop aphrodisiacs — chemicals that would make people fall in love with the first person they see. And for those who have fallen in love with someone they shouldn't have fallen in love with, an antidote to unrequited love. There is even the prospect of a genetic "love test" to assess whether two potential love birds are predisposed to a happy married life.

Are we headed towards our very own real-life love potions? Or is there something deeper going on in true love?"
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Social Networks

Researcher: Social networks link terrorists->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "At the International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 in New York, Evan Kohlmann, a senior investigator and private consultant for Global Terror Alert, claimed that a new breed of terrorists are using online forums to recruit people who align themselves with the mission of Al Qaeda, creating global networks of would-be terrorists."
Link to Original Source
Space

Trip to Mars proposed using NASA Space Shuttle->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "There's a Web article entitled: "Mars on a Shoestring: A novel method to transport humans to Mars based on a pair of tethered Space Shuttle orbiters" http://www.remarkable.com/marsonashoestring.html It's a new twist on a concept proposed by futurist Robert Zubrin in the mid 90s. The article proposes using existing hardware (primarily Space Shuttle orbiters) and the new "Earth Departure Stage" being developed by NASA for a trip to Mars. A very large parachute system would allow each Space Shuttle to independently land on the surface of the planet. The article discusses other propulsion options, generating "artificial gravity" by spinning the pair of orbiters, a "near-closed-loop biosphere" using "bioregenerative life-support systems", and how the living space could be quadrupled using payload-bay modules that already exist for the Space Shuttle."
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Programming

Neurobiology and the end of software->

Submitted by
donberryman
donberryman writes "An interesting article at DDJ about how software may change as systems are designed to learn for themselves. It predicts the end of the software industry. Neurobiology Will Become "No-Brainer" Substitute for Software: "Despite the grim prospects for the software industry, shed no tears for its eventual demise. No other industry could provide a product with such a plethora of bugs, errors and malfunctions and still be considered a viable market. (Most people working in science use Linux systems because of their higher degree of reliability.)""
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Math

SPAM: NSF wants hot visual and data analysis algorithms

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "The National Science Foundation is furthering its search for highly interpretive technology to help all manner of government and private researchers evaluate the massive amounts of data generated in health care, computational biology, security and other fields. In a nutshell, the NSF said it is seeking mathematical and computational algorithms and techniques that will fundamentally improve law enforcement and the intelligence communities' ability to transform large, often streaming data sets, e-mails, images, numbers and sounds into a form that better supports visualization and analytic reasoning, NSF stated. [spam URL stripped]"
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Security

Twitter Hacker identified - Claimed Easy Hack

Submitted by Dieppe
Dieppe writes "According to an article on Wired.com: An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's, and the official feed for Fox News.

The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter's administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user's account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter's support staff, who'd chosen the weak password "happiness.""
Quickies

Earth may have not one but two inner cores-> 2

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes "A new theory is proposing the seemingly impossible: Earth has not one but two inner cores.

The idea stems from an ancient, cataclysmic collision that scientists believe occurred when a Mars-sized object hit Earth about 4.45 billion years ago. The young Earth was still so hot that it was mostly molten, and debris flung from the impact is thought to have formed the moon.

Haluk Cetin and Fugen Ozkirim of Murray State University think the core of the Mars-sized object may have been left behind inside Earth, and that it sank down near the original inner core. There the two may still remain, either separate or as conjoined twins, locked in a tight orbit."
Link to Original Source
Bug

Nvidia recommends not buying its defective chips->

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes "Nvidia apparently has a solution to the problems faced by many in their notebooks powered by GeForce 8M series, that is, to encourage the OEM/ODMs to buy their new problem free chips. Of course, this doesn't solve the issues faced by current users and there won't be any replacement for them.

Here's a note from Nvidia to their partners :

        NVIDIA is committed to providing our customers with quality products that push the edge of technology and also continuously improve product quality and reliability. To help improve the product quality and ensure smooth and uninterrupted product supply during the current "end stage" of life cycle, NVIDIA strongly recommends that customers transition to this latest revision of the NB8E-SET GPUs as soon as possible. These latest revision units utilize "Hitachi" underfill packaging material that improves product quality and enhances operating life by improved thermal cycling reliability."
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Today, THREE WINOS from DETROIT sold me a framed photo of TAB HUNTER before his MAKEOVER!