Brad Block, a supervisor for the Chicago Commission on Animal Care and Control says a coyote recently spotted downtown is part of a program designed to monitor the rodent population. "The animal has the run of the Loop to help deal with rats and mice," He said no one has called today to complain. “He’s not a threat. He’s not going to pick up your children,” Block said. “His job is to deal with all of the nuisance problems, like mice, rats and rabbits.”

The Bastard writes "As if the Star Wars Holiday Special and Jar-Jar weren't insulting enough to fans, George Lucas has decided to turn the franchise into an animated sitcom. I have a bad feeling about this." The article says that Seth Green is involved, which either sets off your late April Fool's Day alarm, immeasurable dread, or excitement.

An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

rsk writes "For the last few weeks I've been experiencing terrible streaming video performance from Netflix on both my Xbox 360 and PC. While my Xbox 360 would at least stream at a lower resolution, my PC cannot seem to avoid 2-hr. buffering times before playback even started. I smelled shenanigans and started digging. With some help finding the debug menu for the streaming video player, I set out to figure out why playback was so slow. It seems that Netflix is significantly throttling Watch Instantly users (on the PC) down to an unusable cap — in my case, 48 kbps — on a per-connection basis."

The Dutch city of Leeuwarden has lost the municipal pornography archive and officials fear it may be gone forever. A spokesman for the city said the collection may have been taken home "accidentally" by an employee or visitor. "We're hoping that someone will say 'Hey, I have that in my attic' and bring it back," he said Thursday. "No questions asked." Leeuwarden shouldn't be too upset. I've found it a good practice to get rid of your porn archive and rebuild every 6 months or so.

Brian Northway writes "This funny, stop-motion, photo-animated video shows the process of converting an Apple MacBook to an Axiotron Modbook tablet, in one minute and fifty-nine seconds — viewable in standard quality or high-definition (720p), for exceptional detail. It's the latest installment a series of light-speed technical videos that I've created, wihich include the explorational disassembly of a PSP-3000, a unibody MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air, an iPhone, and many other Apple devices."

Cemu writes with news that Nintendo is teaming up with Panasonic, NEC, and Hitachi to work on the Wii Fit Body Check Channel, which will use data from the Wii Fit to provide users with health advice. Quoting: "Since last December, NEC and NEC mobile began a cell phone version of the 'Wii Fit Body Check Channel.' Starting this April, the NEC Group (NEC and NEC Mobile) will launch a hosted Wii Fit Channel aimed at employees and their families. The company hopes to offer this service outside NEC in the future. ... Also this April, Wii Fit and the Wii Fit Body Check Channel will be introduced by Panasonic Medical Solutions to health care workers with its Plissimo Sigusa health care plan. What's more, Panasonic Medical Solutions is offering the program to the country's health insurance union."

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Logan Harbaugh follows up his '10 IT Power-Saving Myths Debunked' to argue in favor of using DC power in the datacenter. The practice — viewed as a somewhat crackpot means for reducing wasteful conversions in the datacenter just a few short years ago — has gained traction to the point where server vendors such as HP, IBM, and Sun are making DC power supplies available in their server wares. Meanwhile, Panduit and other companies are working to bring down another barrier for DC to the datacenter: a standardized 400-VDC connector and cabling solution. And with GE working to list 600-VDC circuit breakers with the Underwriters Labs, DC's promise of reduced conversion waste could soon be commonly realized."

Death Metal sends in a Scientific American article reporting that 2,000 of 6,000 amphibian species are endangered worldwide. A combination of environmental assaults, including global warming, seems to be responsible. "... national parks and other areas protected from pollution and development are providing no refuge. The frogs and salamanders of Yellowstone National Park have been declining since the 1980s, according to a Stanford University study, as global warming dries out seasonal ponds, leaving dried salamander corpses in their wake. Since the 1970s, nearly 75 percent of the frogs and other amphibians of La Selva Biological Station in Braulio Carrillo National Park in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica have died, perhaps due to global warming. But the really bad news is that amphibians may be just the first sign of other species in trouble. Biologists at the University of California, San Diego, have shown that amphibians are the first to respond to environmental changes, thanks to their sensitivity to both air and water. What goes for amphibians may soon be true of other classes of animal, including mammals."