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Music

Sony Raises Price of Whitney Houston's Music 30 Minutes After Death 507

Posted by samzenpus
from the it's-not-right-but-it's-okay dept.
First time accepted submitter M.Nunez writes "Just 30 minutes after Whitney Houston died, Sony Music raised the price of Houston's greatest hits album, 'Ultimate Collection,' on iTunes and Amazon. Many technologists, including chairman of the NY Tech Meetup Andrew Rasiej, suggests that Sony should be boycotted for the move. In a tweet, Rasiej wrote, 'Geez Sony raised price on Whitney Houston's music 30 min after death was announced. #FAIL...We should boycott Sony.'"

Comment: Re:Seems to me (Score 1) 409

Isn't water vapor attributed to solar energy orders of magnitude more mass than water vapor output by combustion of fossil fuel?

The state of Florida is pretty damn humid, and I don't think it's from all the golf carts.

I don't dispute that water vapor is indeed a greenhouse gas which holds a lot of heat, but it seems like it's mostly created by the sun, or perhaps a city full of air conditioners (which act as condensers).

Mars

Virtual Reality Helmet Designed For Deep Space Surgery 83

Posted by samzenpus
from the wearing-the-doctor-hat dept.
pigrabbitbear writes in with a link about a virtual reality helmet designed to help people deal with medical emergencies in space. "Humans are pretty fragile. A bad break in your hip can mean surgery and months of rehab. That's pretty bad, but what if you fall and break your hip on the Moon, or even Mars? You'd be hundreds of thousands or millions of miles from a fully stocked hospital and a surgeon with steady hands. There's the option of doctor-assisted surgery from Earth — a fellow astronaut performing the surgery with remote assistance from a doctor via video link. But the lengthy communications delay make this a poor option anywhere further than the Moon. Luckily for our Mars-bound descendants, the European Space Agency has a solution: an information-loaded assisted reality helmet that will let anyone identify and perform minor surgery to repair injuries."
Biotech

Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed Into Ethanol 226

Posted by samzenpus
from the sick-power dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Seaweed may well be an ideal plant to turn into biofuel. It grows in much of the two thirds of the planet that is underwater, so it wouldn't crowd out food crops the way corn for ethanol does. Because it draws its own nutrients and water from the sea, it requires no fertilizer or irrigation. Most importantly for would-be biofuel-makers, it contains no lignin—a strong strand of complex sugars that stiffens plant stalks and poses a big obstacle to turning land-based plants such as switchgrass into biofuel. Researchers at Bio Architecture Lab, Inc., (BAL) and the University of Washington in Seattle have now taken the first step to exploit the natural advantages of seaweed. They have built a microbe capable of digesting it and converting it into ethanol or other chemicals. Synthetic biologist Yasuo Yoshikuni, a co-founder of BAL, and his colleagues took Escherichia coli, a gut bacterium most famous as a food contaminant, and made some genetic modifications that give it the ability to turn the sugars in an edible kelp called kombu into fuel."

Comment: Re:Please no... (Score 4, Insightful) 264

by psyclone (#38356496) Attached to: Internet Explorer Users Have Low Risk Intelligence

If she is using NoScript in a "medium" security manner -- meaning temporarily trust the parent domain of the site, but only whitelist external scripts (which means a fair amount of clicking "Temp allow akami / googleapis / disqus / some-image-service / etc") then that is MUCH better than Chome. Even NoScript in a "low" security method that temp-allows all scripts on a page but still blocks XSS, ClearClick, and anything else you choose like Java applets and iframes is still better than allowing all javascript and all plugins.

On the privacy front, try BetterPrivacy (never touch it after first time config) to flush all local Flash storage on browser start+stop. (You can of course whitelist LSOs from your bank or whatever.) Additionally, try CookieMonster in whitelist-only mode. It's just like NoScript, but for cookies so you can permanently allow all the sites she logs into, and temp allow any random page with a form.

Even just trying some extra plugins or stronger security settings will help everyone think more about security as they're learning more about security.

Android

App Enables Surfing Over SMS/MMS Through T-Mobile 149

Posted by Soulskill
from the wonder-how-long-this'll-last dept.
MrSeb writes "An ingenious browsing hack has emerged: if you have an Android smartphone and a T-Mobile (US) unlimited messaging plan, you can now use an app called Smozzy to surf the web... for free. Smozzy is just a wrapper around the standard Android browser, but instead of requiring a data connection, everything is funneled through SMS and MMS. Whenever you click a link, instead of firing off a packet to a remote web server, a web request is instead sent to Smozzy's intermediate server via SMS. Smozzy forwards the request, downloads the web page you're trying to visit, and then sends it along to your phone as MMS messages — and both SMS and MMS are completely free with T-Mobile's unlimited messaging plan."
Mozilla

Mozilla Issues Do-Not-Track Guide For Advertisers 74

Posted by samzenpus
from the stop-following-me dept.
angry tapir writes "Mozilla has issued a do not track field guide to encourage advertisers and publishers to implement do-not-track (DNT) functionality. The guide contains tutorials, case studies and sample code to illustrate how companies use the DNT technology. Mozilla aims to inspire developers, publishers and advertisers to adopt DNT and wants to put the control over Internet tracking into the hands of users. The browser maker wants to put a stop to behavioral targeting and pervasive tracking on the Web. The guide can be found here (PDF)."
Patents

Patent Reform Bill Passes Senate 368

Posted by samzenpus
from the first-to-file dept.
First time accepted submitter nephorm writes "The Senate passed the first major overhaul of the nation's patent law in more than a half century by passing the America Invents Act. The legislation won overwhelming approval in an 89-9 vote. From the article: 'The America Invents Act switches the U.S. patent system from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file nation. It also sets up a new regime to review patents and gives the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office more flexibility to set and spend fees paid for by inventors to get patents and businesses to register trademarks.'"

Comment: AnonymousCoward.XXX ? Don't count on it. (Score 1) 140

by psyclone (#37332530) Attached to: .XXX Domain Registrations Begins

These are the current requirements for getting a working .xxx domain in either Sunrise or Landrush. (No mention of open registration once landrush is over, but the requirements will probably be the same.

Sponsored Community Validation Process:

      1. Person/company submits an application for a name in Sunrise A or Landrush with their registrar of choice — they pay their registrar directly for that.
      2. ICM sends the person/company an introduction email that includes a validation link — to the Registrant Contact email address provided with their application.
      3. The person/company clicks on the validation link in the ICM email and is directed to the ICM Membership Application.
      4. The person/company fills out the ICM Membership Application — free of charge. (Takes about 5 minutes to complete — only have to do this one time per email account, not per domain.)
      5. As a part of ICM's Membership Application, the person has to provide the following:
                  1. Address
                  2. Phone Number
      6. As a part of ICM's Membership Application, the person has to attest to the following:
                  1. Provide correct birth date information
                  2. Agree to ICM's Registry-Registrant Agreement
                  3. Attest to being a member of the Sponsored Community
      7. ICM will call the phone number provided during the Membership Application.
      8. In that phone call, ICM will provide the person with a PIN # (real time) and the applicant will input the PIN# in the designated area in the Membership Application process.
      9. Once the person completes the Membership Application, ICM provides the registrar a Membership Token thus allowing all of the .xxx domain names associated with that email account to resolve.

Nobody knows what goes between his cold toes and his warm ears. -- Roy Harper

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