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Earth

Mice, Newts Retrieved After a Month Orbiting Earth At 345 Miles Up 85

Posted by timothy
from the eye-of-space-newt-was-called-for dept.
The Associated Press (as carried by the Washington Post) reports that a living payload of newts and mice has been retrieved after a month orbiting earth in a Russian space capsule at an altitude of 345 miles, far higher than the ISS's orbital distance of 205 miles. Says the story: "Fewer than half of the 53 mice and other rodents who blasted off on April 19 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome survived the flight, Russian news agencies reported, quoting Vladimir Sychov, deputy director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Problems and the lead researcher. Sychov said this was to be expected and the surviving mice were sufficient to complete the study, which was designed to show the effects of weightlessness and other factors of space flight on cell structure. All 15 of the lizards survived, he said. The capsule also carried small crayfish and fish."

Comment: Re:Next Up (Score 3, Interesting) 157

We have two companies admitting failure here, B&N and MSFT.

It's too bad about the Nook, they are nice devices. Nook should have won over Kindle, but B&N didnt have the foresight years ago to get into the everything business the way Amazon did, so they were always going to be muscled out of the market.

Microsoft on the other hand will probably just try to make money off Nook's patent portfolio, given they have failed with their "Surface" (which, near as I can tell, is some kind of break-dancing tutor device.)

Internet Explorer

Microsoft Releases Internet Explorer 10 For Windows 7 321

Posted by timothy
from the double-digits-on-the-prime dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is out. Windows 8 may suck but now you can at least enjoy (most of) that version's Internet Explorer. IE10 for Win7, originally not planned, has seen the light of day after all — four months after it debuted in Windows 8. It is available via Windows Update as an optional update; however, if you've already installed a pre-release version, it will be updated automatically as an 'important' update. IE10 on Win7 requires a platform update to bring some Windows 8 APIs to the more mature Windows, and it will not feature embedded Adobe Flash as the Windows 8 version does (use the plug-in version from Adobe, as usual, instead)."
Businesses

Congress Takes Up Online Sales Tax 297

Posted by samzenpus
from the pay-up dept.
head_dunce writes "A bill introduced Thursday by a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers seeks to make it easier for states to collect sales taxes stemming from online purchases. Amazon is among the e-retailers supporting the proposal, while a lobbying group representing eBay and Overstock.com stands opposed. From the article: '"Small businesses and states alike are suffering from the inability to collect due -- not new -- taxes from purchases made online," said Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., adding the legislation is a "bipartisan, bicameral, common-sense solution that promotes states' rights and levels the playing field for our Main Street businesses."'"

Comment: Re:It's the future... (Score 1) 418

by tripleevenfall (#42896987) Attached to: Surface Pro: 'Virtually Unrepairable'

I'm not talking about trading it in when the next version comes out. I skip many generations of things. But, for example, there are plenty of iPhone 3GSs out there which are still doing fine on the original battery. By the time it totally conks out, I'll probably be able to just replace it with a 6.

Comment: Re:Too much concentrated power (Score 1) 149

by tripleevenfall (#42885067) Attached to: Comcast Buys Out GE's Remaining 49% Stake In NBC

Of course, voting for a non-primary party will in fact be a wasted vote until such time as that party garners enough votes to challenge the primary parties, at which point we'll have three primary parties which are all just as bad as one another, instead of the two we have now which are just as bad as one another.

Piracy

Finnish Anti-Piracy Site Pirates Thepiratebay Content 82

Posted by Unknown Lamer
from the it's-fair-use-when-we-do-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Finnish copyright lobby TTVK Ry (which earlier ordered the artist promotion site The Promo Bay to be censored as 'thepiratebay subpage' before later admitting that it's legal, and also got the police to confiscate a 9-year-old's Winnie-the-Pooh laptop on suspicion of having illegally downloaded a single album) launched an anti-piracy website: http://piraattilahti.fi./. The site closely resembles The Pirate Bay, and if you take a closer look, you'll notice that CSS has been directly copied from thepiratebay.se, complete with the original site name in comments (http://piraattilahti.fi/css/css.css, pastebin mirror). Of course, one interesting question is: how on Earth did they manage to pirate The Pirate Bay content, considering that they managed to get court orders for major ISPs to censor access to The Pirate Bay?"
Earth

Obama Proposes 'Meaningful Progress' On Climate Change 583

Posted by Soulskill
from the climate-change-is-change-we-can-believe-in dept.
astroengine writes "President Barack Obama called for 'meaningful progress' on tackling climate change in his State of the Union speech in Washington, DC on Tuesday night. While acknowledging that 'no single event makes a trend,' the President noted that the United States had been buffeted by extreme weather events that in many cases encapsulated the predictions of climate scientists. 'But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods — all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science — and act before it's too late,' Obama added." Other significant statements from Obama's speech: 34,000 troops coming back from Afghanistan over the next year; new gun regulations "deserve a vote"; rewards for schools that focus on STEM education; increases in tech research; a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9.00/hr and tie it to inflation; and a proposal to use oil and gas revenues to fund a move away from oil and gas,

"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school. -- George Ade

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