Comment Nice analysis of the problem (Score 1) 412
There's a great analysis of the problem by the always knowledgeable Danny MacPherson up on his blog at Arbor Networks.
Fossett's Plane Found 356
otter42 writes "Sadly, it looks as if all those crazies claiming Steve Fossett was still alive were wrong after all. The NY Times has the confirmation that wreckage of Fossett's Bellanca Citabria was found. Now it's up to the NTSB to tell us why this happened, although, statistically, dollars to donuts it was engine/fuel-related."
Ultrasound Machine Ages Wine 448
Inventor Casey Jones says his creation uses ultrasound technology to recreate the effects of decades of aging by colliding alcohol molecules inside the bottle. Mr. Jones said, "This machine can take your run-of-the-mill £3.99 bottle of plonk and turn it into a finest bottle of vintage tasting like it costs hundreds. It works on any alcohol that tastes better aged, even a bottle of paintstripper whisky can taste like an 8-year-aged single malt." The Ultrasonic Wine Ager, which looks like a Dr. Who ice bucket, takes 30 minutes to work and has already been given the thumbs up by an English winemaker. I know a certain special lady who is about to have the best bottle of Boone's Farm in the world.
Submission + - Raytheon Develops World's First Polymorphic Comput
tdelama writes: "Raytheon Company has developed the first polymorphic computer named the Morphable Networked Micro-Architecture (MONARCH) for the US Department of Defense.
"'Typically, a chip is optimally designed either for front-end signal processing or back-end control and data processing,' explained Nick Uros, vice president for the Advanced Concepts and Technology group of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. 'The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimize processing on the fly. MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable.'"
MONRACH is also extremely power efficient. "'In laboratory testing MONARCH outperformed the Intel quad-core Xeon chip by a factor of 10,' said Michael Vahey, the principal investigator for the company's MONARCH technology."'"
"'Typically, a chip is optimally designed either for front-end signal processing or back-end control and data processing,' explained Nick Uros, vice president for the Advanced Concepts and Technology group of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. 'The MONARCH micro-architecture is unique in its ability to reconfigure itself to optimize processing on the fly. MONARCH provides exceptional compute capacity and highly flexible data bandwidth capability with beyond state-of-the-art power efficiency, and it's fully programmable.'"
MONRACH is also extremely power efficient. "'In laboratory testing MONARCH outperformed the Intel quad-core Xeon chip by a factor of 10,' said Michael Vahey, the principal investigator for the company's MONARCH technology."'"
Videogame Decency Act in Congress 73
GamePolitics reports on yet another attempt by lawmakers to make the world safe from the dangers of electronic entertainment. Entered by Representative Fred Upton, the bill spells out penalties for game companies that try to 'sneak' something past ESRB raters. Says Upton, "I guess I thought the FTC would have had some more teeth than they apparently have... I'm not at all happy... In essence there are no consequences. None... I would like to have thought that (Take-Two and Rockstar) would have been able to be fined for millions of dollars for the trash they put out across this country. I am going to be looking to write legislation giving the FTC the authority to impose civil penalties."
How to Turn A Music Lover to Piracy 521
dugn writes to tell us The Consumerist is running a story about how a run of the mill (read non-tech-savvy) music lover was pushed to become a pirate. "I've devoted a not-inconsequential chunk of my life to collecting music; to tracking down obscure records, cassettes, 8-Tracks and CD's of all genres and styles. And now apparently that is all but over. Music has somehow evolved from tangible things into amorphous collections of 1's and 0's guarded over by interested parties as if they were gold bullion. How so very sad."
Submission + - AOL: The biggest Wi-Fi privacy invader ever?
PetManimal writes: "Preston Gralla points to a project being carried out by Skyhook Wireless, an AOL business partner, to build a private database of 16 million Wi-Fi routers throughout the U.S. and Canada, including network name and precise location. Skyhook has been gathering the data by driving trucks with Wi-Fi and GPS gear up and down streets in 2,500 cities and towns in North America. The data is apparently being gathered to support the AIM "Near Me" plugin which will show potential instant messaging buddies in your vicinity, but Gralla sees a more sinister side of the Skyhook project:
"... Who's to say that they're only gathering basic information about your router? Will they also gather whether it uses encryption or not? Will they grab other information as well? One thing is very clear: Skyhook Wireless isn't spending all this money just so it can support an AOL plug-in. Its ultimate goal, it says on its Web site, "is to expand the market for Location-Based Services (LBS) by making precise location information accessible to users and application providers." In other words, the data will be made available to the highest bidder.
Submission + - Bankrupt AMD: Means Cheap Chips for Us
bagopa writes: Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE: AMD) may be planning another round of price cuts and may be looking to tap financial markets to offset its negative cash flow, according to one research analyst.
This cant be good for them, but its sure good for the consumer. I'll be picking up my heavily discounted a64 soon.
Perens Rains on Novell's Parade 277
unum15 writes "This week is Novell's Brainshare conference. They are touting the Microsoft covenant not to sue as 'good for consumers'. However, Bruce Perens decided to take this opportunity to 'rain on Novell's parade'. Perens read a statement from RMS affirming the GPLv3 would not allow companies to enter deals like this and continue to offer GPLv3 software. Perens even goes as far as to suggest this move is an exit strategy by Novell. There are also audio and pictures of the event available."
Submission + - Google tries out Pay per Action
conradov writes: "Google announced beta testing of its new Pay per Action AdWords model.
From the announcement:
From the announcement:
It seems Google is shaking the ad market again."Pay-per-action advertising is a new pricing model that allows you to pay only for completed actions that you define, such as a lead, a sale, or a pageview, after a user has clicked on your ad on a publisher's site.
Take Two's Future Looking Shaky 17
In the wake of shareholder interest in replacing the board and CEO, it's little wonder that Take-Two's future is in question. Gamespot is reporting on the possibility of the company being sold to an outside party. Analysts from Wedbush Morgan and Nollenberger Capital offer up opinions on possible interested investors, and the likelihood of the company being sold. "Pachter said a sale was unlikely, noting that a prospective buyer could have picked up the publisher during its stock slump last year for about half what it would have to pay now. In last month's note, Pachter pegged a purchase price of $2 billion (including a premium on the stock price and restructuring costs) on the publisher." Rumours of Microsoft's interest not withstanding, this kind of talk can't be good for the company in general.
Journal Journal: Dr. Grordborts Infallible Aether Oscillators For Sale
Yes! You can actually buy these Rayguns:
Submission + - RIAA Adds More Colleges to Hit List
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA has sent 405 more blackmail letters, adding to its hitlist an additional 23 universities, including Boston University (50 pre-litigation settlement letters), Columbia University (20), Dartmouth College (11), DePaul University (18), Drexel University (20), Ferris State University (17), Ithaca College(20), Purdue University (38), University of California — Berkeley (19), University of California — Los Angeles (21), University of California — Santa Cruz (17), University of Maine system (27), University of Nebraska — Lincoln (25), University of Wisconsin system (66, including the following individual campuses: Eau Claire, Madison, Milwaukee, Parkside, Platteville, Stevens Point, Stout, and Whitewater), Vanderbilt University (20), and Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University (16). This follows on the heels of the offensive it launched last month targeting 400 students at 13 institutions."
Submission + - Microsoft .NET DST Patch Insufficiencies
sainsworth writes: Take a look at this: How the changes to DST in 2007 affect the .NET Framework and ASP.NET. (Summary: in fixing DST for 2007, everything before 2007 is now broken.) How are other developer's handling this sort of flubbed DST fix (and other date/time errors) in the libraries and "platforms" you are dealing with?
Submission + - Small Developer Feels Pinch of Software Patents
Penguinisto writes: A business has so far felt the very real pain of sotware patent enforcement — but this time, it is a large company who extinguished the little guy. Reyes Infografica had recently sent a Cease and Desist notice to a small Poser hobbyist programmer named Phil Cooke for his "Clothing Creator" program, claiming that it violates one of their patents (Phil's own site/support forum contains the copy of Reyes' C&D, Phil's announcement, and relevant discussions.) Clothing Creator has been out for a couple of years now. Basically, it builds quick custom clothing for humanoid 3d figures within the 3d compositing/rendering program called Poser. Recently, E-Frontier, the current owner of Poser, had partnered with Reyes to sell a competing product in E-Frontier's online store, called "Virtual Fashion". To E-Frontier's credit, they recently announced that they would stop selling the Reyes product until the dispute is settled, though at time of writing the product is still available for sale. So is this the "innovation" that software patents were supposed to foster?
