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ThinSkin writes "DirectX architect Alex St. John swims against the current and predicts the demise not of PC gaming, but of game consoles, in an exclusive two-part interview at ExtremeTech. In part one, Alex blasts Intel for pushing its inferior onboard graphics technology to OEMs, insists that fighting piracy is the main reason for the existence of gaming consoles, and explains how the convergence of the GPU and the CPU is the next big thing in gaming. Alex continues in part two with more thoughts on retail and 3D games, and discusses in detail why he feels 'Vista blows' and what's to become of DirectX 10."

coondoggie writes "NASA will this week demonstrate its lunar robot rover equipped with a drill designed to find water and oxygen-rich soil on the moon. NASA said the engineering challenge of building such as drilling system was daunting because a robot rover designed for prospecting within lunar craters has to operate in continual darkness at extremely cold temperatures with little power. The moon has one-sixth the gravity of Earth, so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable.The project is just one demonstration of the collaboration NASA is utilizing to bring together its next moon shot. For example, Carnegie Mellon was responsible for the robot's design and testing, and the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology built the drilling system. NASA's Glenn Research Center contributed the rover's power management system. NASA's Ames Research Center built a system that navigates the rover in the dark. The Canadian Space Agency funded a Neptec camera that builds three-dimensional images of terrain using laser light, NASA said."

The Washington Post reports mice cured of sickle cell anemia using stem cells from ordinary skin.

Using a recently developed technique for turning skin cells into stem cells, scientists have cured mice of sickle cell anemia -- the first direct proof that the easily obtained cells can reverse an inherited, potentially fatal disease.

the technique depends on the use of gene-altered viruses that have the potential to trigger tumor growth. "The big issue is how to replace these viruses," said Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass., who led the new work with co-worker Jacob Hanna and Tim M. Townes of the University of Alabama Schools of Medicine and Dentistry in Birmingham.

Congratulations to the successful team.

We all know by now that you can't trust magazine covers and advertisements for skin-care products. The power of Photoshop is startling when you see it in action, and realize how much the representations of reality we see all around us are distorted and "improved" according to whatever the current standards of blemish-free beauty are. While we learn how to detect the tell-tale smudges, spots of flat color, inconsistencies in lighting, and pixilated artifacts left behind by digital manipulation, Dr. Ariel Shamir has developed a technique called Seam Carving that will make detection of Photoshopping much more difficult in the near future. As shown in this video, it's astonishing and almost disturbing how easy and fast it is to distort distances or remove objects entirely with this new tool.

Dedtired writes "Not satisfied with blocking Canadian traffic, the CRIA has gone to Demonoid's hosting company and demanded that it be pulled.

From the site:
The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding."

cmeans writes "Ever since myjabber.org started redirecting to google.com (early November), I wondered if this was a hint that Google was finally going to start supporting other transports via it's Jabber / XMPP based IM service. AIM is now an option under GMail's Settings/Chat. I've not yet been able to log into my AIM account, but this is at least a start. Hopefully, MSN and Yahoo! transports won't be far behind."

coondoggie writes to tell us that NASA is building a new system to protect people and equipment on the shuttle launchpad from lightning strikes. "The new structure called a catenary wire system, will be the largest on the space compound and will feature large cables strung between three 594-foot-tall steel and fiberglass towers. Each tower is topped with a fiberglass mast and a series of catenary wires and down conductors designed to divert lightning away from the rocket and service structure. This configuration helps keep the vehicle isolated from dangerous lightning currents, NASA said."

A bank robbery in Salt Lake City was foiled Friday when an unidentified man, believed to be Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, threw a chair from a second-story balcony, striking the would-be bandit.

The unidentified person grabbed a chair and hurled it off the balcony, striking the suspect in the back and knocking him to the ground, while yelling "I'll f****g kill bank robbers. I've done it before and I'll do it again!".

'Wikipedians' are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over all over the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing. The Register have this fantastic write up — read it here first.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/

Jimmy Wales made a very exciting announcement (video & transcript) yesterday night at a Wikipedia party in San Francisco : Creative Commons, Wikimedia and the FSF just agreed to make the current Wikipedia license (the GFDL) compatible with Creative Commons (CC BY-SA). As Jimbo puts it, "This is the party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia".

Coders working on Wine for Mac have found that the Mac loader has gained its own undocumented ability to load and understand Windows Portable Executable (PE) files

They found PE loading capabilities in Leopard that weren't there in Tiger. Further dissection showed that Apple is masking references to *Win* and *PE* in the dll, which means it's not an accidental inclusion.

Is Apple planning native PE execution within OSX? The ability to use existing Windows software on OSX machines would dramatically lower the barrier to switching, and there's no doubt that there's considerable interest in alternative operating systems since Vista's less than inspiring debut.

There's unlikely to be a better time for Apple to make a grab for the OS market. Maybe 2008 will be the year of OSX on the desktop.

Long-time users of Perl for their public websites, and having successfully used Ruby on Rails for internal websites, the BBC have fused the two by creating a 'Perl on Rails' that has the advantages of rapid development that Rails brings, while performing well enough to be used for the Beeb's high-traffic public websites. This is already powering one of their websites, and is set to be used in the controversial iPlayer project as well.

Wired's got a piece on building a better robotic hand at Standford. The current robot is called "Stair 1.0." If you reach and grab at something, you need to understand if you've succeeded. If not, try again. If still unsuccessful, trying a new approach. "The trick is to build robots that act more like children than machines." Wonder how you build in "giving up"?
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-12/mf_robothand

Tech.Luver writes "Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies. Under the changes outlined late Thursday, Facebook's 55 million users will be given greater control over whether they want to participate in a three-week-old program that circulates potentially sensitive information about their online purchases and other activities. Facebook provided two different opportunities to block the details from being shared, but many users said they never saw the "opt-out" notices before they disappeared from the screen. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/29/facebook-revamps-new-advertising-system-beacon/ )"
http://techluver.com/2007/11/29/facebook-revamps-new-advertising-system-beacon/

An anonymous reader writes "Apple Inc. will release a 3G version of the iPhone sometime next year that connects to the Internet at much faster speeds than the current model, AT&T Inc.'s CEO said yesterday, according to reports by Bloomberg.com. At a meeting of the Churchill Club in Santa Clara, Calif., on Wednesday, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said, "You'll have it next year," when asked when a 3G iPhone would appear. AT&T is the exclusive mobile carrier for the iPhone in the U.S."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=mobile_and_wireless&articleId=9049959&taxonomyId=15&intsrc=kc_top