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Hardware

The 10 Worst Tech Products of 2010 203

Posted by CmdrTaco from the end-of-the-year-cliche dept.
Barence writes "PC Pro has a count down of the ten worst tech gadgets of the year. Included in its hall of shame are: iPad Made Simple, 'a book containing 704 pages of advice on how to use a device that's universally acknowledged as being ridiculously easy to use'; the Dell Inspiron Duo, 'a tablet that leaves you longing to return to a keyboard and a touchpad'; and the £99 Next Tablet, the highlight of which was the 'eight-page Quick Start Guide.'"

Comment As A Cancer Researcher... (Score 4, Interesting) 106

by 00Sovereign (#31851794) Attached to: DNA Cancer Codes Cracked By International Effort
I've been following this for awhile. Looks like I get to update my "hit list" of gene targets to investigate. And that's what this will ultimately be...a list of interesting genes to look at for further investigation. No cures right away, it will take time to absorb this data into the collective intelligence of the medical research community and years to turn it into new treatments.

Comment Not to be the bad guy but... (Score 5, Insightful) 394

by 00Sovereign (#31417562) Attached to: Doctors Skirt FDA To Heal Patients With Stem Cells
As a biomedical researcher, I'm glad to finally see some of the promises of stem cells. However, this must be tempered by knowing that there exists a fine line between stem cells and cancer cells. Both grow outside of the normal controls that keep excess cell division in check. For stem cells, this is developmentally controlled by the neighboring cells. I wonder how these stem cells will respond when moved to a new environment and what the long term effects will be. I guess that FDA sanctioned or not, we're going to find out.
Science

Israeli Scientists Freeze Water By Warming It 165

Posted by timothy from the you-must-become-the-frozen-water dept.
ccktech writes "As reported by NPR and Chemistry world, the journal Science has a paper by David Ehre, Etay Lavert, Meir Lahav, and Igor Lubomirsky [note: abstract online; payment required to read the full paper] of Israel's Weizmann Institute, who have figured out a way to freeze pure water by warming it up. The trick is that pure water has different freezing points depending on the electrical charge of the surface it resides on. They found out that a negatively charged surface causes water to freeze at a lower temperature than a positively charged surface. By putting water on the pyroelectric material Lithium Tantalate, which has a negative charge when cooler but a positive change when warmer; water would remain a liquid down to -17 degrees C., and then freeze when the substrate and water were warmed up and the charge changed to positive, where water freezes at -7 degrees C."
Games

New WoW Patch Brings Cross-Server Instances 342

Posted by Soulskill from the new-and-shiny dept.
ajs writes "World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion was staggered into 4 phases. The fourth and final phase, patch 3.3, was released on Tuesday. This patch is significant in that it will be the first introduction of one of the most anticipated new features in the game since PvP arenas: the cross-realm random dungeon, as well as the release of new end-game dungeons for 5, 10 and 25-player groups. The patch notes have been posted, and so has a trailer. The ultimate fight against the expansion's antagonist, the Lich King a.k.a. Arthas, will be gated as each of the four wings of the final dungeon are opened in turn — a process that may take several months. The next major patch after 3.3 (presumably 4.0) will be the release of Cataclysm, the next expansion."
Intel

Submission + - Multi-core Gaming Arrives with Supreme Commander

Submitted by
Tomas Lee
Tomas Lee writes: "HardOCP has put together an extensive Supreme Commander article that looks deeply into just how single-core, dual-core, and quad-core Intel Core 2 Duo processors impact the games performance. If you were looking for an excuse to go multi-core, SupCom is a good reason to make the move as it processor core scaling is very well defined. Vista Vs. XP is exposed as well and will give you some good reasons to stick with XP. HardOCP says, "Enthusiasts have been searching for a game to truly show of the power of multi-core gaming and that game is finally here.""
Music

Submission + - Open Sound System v4.0 announced

Submitted by
Dev Mazumdar
Dev Mazumdar writes: "4Front Technologies has finally announced Open Sound System v4.0 — the first major release since OSS v3 was announced back in 1996. The new audio architecture has a new virtual mixer engine that will mix any any audio app — mix DVD 5.1 multichannel with MP3 stereo with full duplex voip with game audio like DoomIII or Quake. The new virtual mixer engine gives each app its own volume control. OSS v4.0 comes with ALSA compatibility and Flash audio support. More information is at http://www.opensound.com/press/2007/OSSv4.txt OSS v4.0 is available for Linux 2.6, Solaris 10, FreeBSD 6 and UnixWare 7. Best regards Dev Mazumdar"
Debian

Submission + - Debian Etch scheduled for an April 2nd release

Submitted by
Hero Zzyzzx
Hero Zzyzzx writes: "This post to the debian-devel-announce list puts forth a schedule for Etch with an April 2nd, 2007 release. I've been using Etch for months now with nary a complaint. Gee — I wonder why they didn't pick April 1st as the release date? I'm excited, at least."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - First Pictures and Specs of Commodore's New PCs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following last week's announcement of the return of Commodore with a new line of gaming PCs comes the first specs and images of the new systems. The models, from entry-level to high-end, are the Commodore Cg, Cgs, Cgx, and Cxx. The initial hardware specifications for the 'extreme level' Cxx are as follows: Intel CoreT2 Extreme quad-core processor, an Asus P5N32-E nForce 680i SLI motherboard, two 150 GB 10,000 RPM SATA drives in RAID 0, with a spare 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA drive, 4GB (2 x 2048) Corsair Dominator memory at 1066 MHz, two nVidia 8800 GTX videocards, a Creatve Labs X-Fi, and Windows Vista Ultimate installed. Hell, it might even run Crysis.
Businesses

Submission + - Top researcher:'Untested' vaccine could harm (HPV)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: According to WorldnetDaily :

"A researcher who worked on a vaccine for the human papillomavirus is warning that it hasn't been tested on young girls, is "silly" for states to mandate the vaccination, and in a worst-case scenario could even increase cervical cancer rates."

...

"And she warned more than 40 cases of Guillian-Barre syndrome — an immune disorder that results in tingling, numbness and even paralysis of the muscles — have been reported in girls who got the HPV vaccine in combination with a meningitis vaccine."

This topic has recently been discussed on slashdot and to my knowledge this is the first information about negative side effects and poor testing methods to be made public.

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