Magnifico writes "USAToday is reporting on the National Security Agency's goal to create a database of every call ever made inside the USA. Aided by the cooperation of US telecom corporations, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans; the vast majority of whom aren't suspected of any crime. Only Qwest refused to give the NSA information because they were uneasy about giving information to the government without the proper warrants. The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear."

An anonymous reader writes " The House passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel creating the "H-Prize",allowing scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes. The Department of Energy would put together a private foundation to set up guidelines and requirements for the prizes. Anyone can participate, as long as the research is performed in the United States and the person, if employed by the government or a national lab, does the research on his own time. Best political Quote: "If we can reinvent the car, imagine the jobs we can create." said bill sponsor Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C."

celardore writes "BBC News reports about the epic journeys taken by dragonflies searching for warmer climates have been revealed by scientists in the US. The team, led by researchers from Princeton University, found that the insects are capable of flying up to 85 miles (137 km) in a day. Each transmitter weighed about a third of a gram and had enough battery life to track an individual for 10 days; but tagging such small creatures is far from easy. "The challenge is first catching the dragonfly," said Professor Wilcove. Once caught, each transmitter was attached with a couple of drops of superglue and some eye-lash adhesive."

dtjohnson writes "Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have found that women have a remarkable ability to assess a man's testosterone levels and his interest in fathering children by looking at his facial features. Sixty-nine percent of the women were able to correctly judge a man's interest in having children merely by looking at cues on photograph's of his facial features. Saliva samples were also taken from each man in the study and tested for testosterone with a $2,000-a-pop test. The women in the study were able to correctly identify the men with the highest testosterone levels just by looking at their photographs. Of course, the study did not look at what men were able to tell about women by looking at photographs of their female body parts."

simoniker writes "The early history of video game mags doesn't get explored much, but over at GameSetWatch, there's a new column that looks at the dawn of game magazines, from Computer & Video Games' 1981 UK launch to Electronic Games' same-year U.S. launch. The column's writer, Kevin Gifford, who also runs the Magweasel website dedicated to documenting old video games, also claims of the early days: 'Terms like easter egg, scrolling, and screenshot were originally coined by [Electronic Games editor and co-founder Bill] Kunkel.'"

robyn217 writes "At MIT's Media Lab, researchers are developing fashion accessories on which patterns and designs can change according to the wearer's whim, and fashion prints can be shared virally via wireless communication. This technology will be a real boon for fickle New York City baseball fans at the Subway Series in the future (they can simply flip a switch to change from a Mets to a Yankees jersey."

lfescalante writes "TiVo, in an increasingly diversified attempt to offer new content to its subscriber base, today announced a partnership with Internet TV pioneer Brightcove to bring content partner video offerings from this company to Tivo boxes. The first fruits of this relationship should begin appearing within the coming months."

LandownEyes writes "The dogs, Lucky and Flo, faced their first test at the FedEx UK hub at Stansted Airport. "FedEx was glad to assist in Lucky and Flo's first live test in a working situation. They were amazingly successful at identifying packages containing DVDs, which were opened and checked by HM Customs' representatives. While all were legitimate shipments on the day, our message to anyone thinking about shipping counterfeit DVDs through the FedEx network is simple: you're going to get caught." Kinda makes me thing twice about shipping anything through FedEX. Seriously, this is like training drug dogs to find plastic bags."

moto writes "ThinkGaming is reporting from E3, and had a chance to take a look at Will Wright's Spore during the early-hours press access. From the article: 'To start, Will showed an overview of the latest creature editing system. He mentioned that almost all parts of the editing system, from hands to the mouth, control the creature in its entirety - from its personality to the way it sounds, etc. In addition, the color system is a procedural texturing system that lays initially colors, then various textures (scales, etc.) and more all on top of your creature model. It looks like an incredibly intricate system, as has been seen quite a bit so far in previous videos. It looked like it was nearing completion and would allow for endless possibilities.'"

An anonymous reader writes "NASA is reporting that researchers have discovered thunderstorms above Tibet offer a direct path for water vapor and chemicals to move from the lower atmosphere to the stratosphere. From the article: ' Learning how water vapor reaches the stratosphere can help improve climate prediction models. Similarly, understanding the pathways that ozone-depleting chemicals can take to reach the stratosphere is essential for understanding future threats to the ozone layer, which shields Earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays.'"

joshmo97 writes "Tom's Hardware has found that the Pentium D 805 runs stable at 4.1 GHz and outperforms Intel and AMD's flagship offerings in many benchmarks. From the article: 'The Pentium D 805 is a budget CPU, but it puts lots of processors from AMD and Intel to shame. Although it is not based on the latest 65 nm core, this CPU remains stable even when operating at amazing 4.1 GHz. The Pentium D 805 ascends to the throne as the new King of overclocking, knocking out the AMD Opteron 144.'"

An anonymous reader writes "NewScientist reports is reporting that the International Space Station has lost some of its options when it comes to altitude-boosting due to several recent failures. From the article: 'The problems began on 19 April 2006, when the Russian Zvezda service module's main engines failed during a test. The failure may have been due to a sunshade cover that was not completely open, according to a station status report.'"

Gamespot has word that the Metal Gear Solid movie project is a reality. All we really know is that Uwe Boll will not be directing. From the article: "After assuring readers at length that German director Uwe Boll will not have anything to do with the project, as rumored, Kojima talked about the film. 'I have received many offers to adapt Metal Gear Solid, It has taken a long time, but we have finally settled on an arrangement,' said the revered designer. 'False facts aside, a movie project is underway. I have finalized a Class-A contract with a party in Hollywood.' Kojima did not mention the name of the party, a release date, or any potential directors or stars."

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's ironic that Iowa State University (ISU) announced a big upgrade of its C6 virtual reality (VR) room the same day as SGI filed for bankruptcy. Back in 2000, this 10x10x10 foot room was powered by SGI Onyx2 computers. The new version of this six-sided VR room will use 96 graphics processing units from Hewlett-Packard. And with its 24 Sony digital projectors, the researchers at ISU will immerse themselves into images of about 100 million pixels in the most realistic VR room in the world. Of course, this upgrade is not cheap. But with this $4 million addition, this new C6 should lead to new advances in urban planning, genetics, engineering or unmanned aerial vehicles."

All this week, Next Generation is interviewing some of the folks behind the industry's big players. In collaboration with Edge Magazine, they have Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto talking about the future of the gaming industry. From that article: "I think that by the end of the last year, DS was selling very well to all kinds of people - ladies in their 20s, people in their 50s - and for many of them the DS was the very first games console they had ever purchased in their lives. And actually, many people in the industry and in Nintendo thought that maybe these newcomers to the gaming world would be only interested in the games like Brain Training, that maybe they would not be purchasing any more games afterwards. However, the fact of the matter is that they are now buying a lot of the so-called traditional games, including Super Mario 64, so that was a big surprise for us." Additional interviewees below if you Read More.