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Microsoft

Submission + - 66% Of All Windows Users Still Use Windows XP (conceivablytech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Almost one year after the introduction of Windows 7 it appears that the hype surrounding the operating has faded. The overall market share of Windows has turned into a slight decline again. Windows 7 is gaining share, but cannot keep pace with the loss of Windows XP and Vista. Especially Windows XP users seem to be happy with what they have and appear to be rather resistant to Microsoft’s pitches that it is time to upgrade to Windows 7.
Education

Submission + - Biggest 10^100 Contest Payday Went to Google Fave

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In announcing its Project 10^100 Contest for world-changing ideas in 2008, Google said 'may the ones who help the most win'. And while the contest was indeed all about its-who-you-help, the outcome also had a certain its-who-you-know element to it. Google's recent announcement that it would award the biggest paycheck — $3 million — to FIRST, the robotics competition organization founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen, might raise a few eyebrows from the contest's 150,000+ participants whose ideas finished out of the money. Not that FIRST isn't a good cause, but Kamen has pretty tight ties to Google, having reportedly attended Larry Page's wedding on Richard Branson's Necker Island, given Sergey Brin's wife's company a gift of two Segways, attended annual Billionaires' Dinners with the Google exec set, served on the X Prize Board of Trustees with Page, hung out at conferences with Page and Brin's wife, and even organized kite-surfing contests with the Google co-founders. And Google has been pretty tight with FIRST — Google and the Brin Foundation provided funding to FIRST over the years, Sergey and Larry keynoted FIRST competition finals in 2006 and 2007, and Page even graced a 2007 FIRST Robotics promotional video (@4:45). What is surprising is that Google searched for two years before finding FIRST prize-worthy — after all, Kamen could literally be found right under Larry Page's arm. Not only that, but when the contest's Final 16 Big Ideas were announced a year ago, Google cited 'sponsor[ing] the FIRST robotics competition' and ensuring 'that youth have access to Legos, robots' as suggestions that inspired the Big Idea of 'Enhancing Science and Engineering Education,' that Google later tapped FIRST to implement. Coincidentally, Kamen recently judged a Google-sponsored Lego Robots contest — finalists received registrations to compete in FIRST Robotics competitions — in the months before Google announced FIRST would receive its $3 million 10^100 award.
Government

'The Laws Are Written By Lobbyists,' Says Google's Schmidt 484

Posted by Soulskill from the bought-and-paid-for dept.
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from The Atlantic: "'The average American doesn't realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists' to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet at the Washington Ideas Forum. 'It's shocking how the system actually works.' In a wide-ranging interview that spanned human nature, the future of machines, and how Google could have helped the stimulus, Schmidt said technology could 'completely change the way government works.' 'Washington is an incumbent protection machine,' Schmidt said. 'Technology is fundamentally disruptive.' Mobile phones and personal technology, for example, could be used to record the bills that members of Congress actually read and then determine what stimulus funds were successfully spent." We discussed a specific example of this from the cable industry back in August.
Piracy

US Copyright Group — Lawsuits, DDoS, and Bomb Threats 365

Posted by Soulskill from the fighting-fire-with-bombs dept.
Andorin writes "The US law firm of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, otherwise known as the US Copyright Group, filed suit at the end of August against another 2,177 individuals for allegedly downloading and sharing the slasher film Cornered! (In total the USCG has now filed suit against over 16,200 individuals.) In retaliation, Operation Payback, the Anonymous-led project responsible for DDoSing websites of the RIAA and MPAA, targeted the US Copyright Group's website with a DDoS, temporarily bringing it down for a few hours. The group behind the attacks say they'll continue 'until they stop being angry.' Additionally, the local police department evacuated the office of Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver after a bomb threat was emailed to the firm. The building was searched, but no bomb was found."
Google

Submission + - Google can't stop Android software piracy (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Android’s growing success as a smartphone operating system is bringing a long-simmering problem to light: A lot of Android applications are being pirated. The openness of the platform has made it easy for people to steal applications without paying for them.

Until very recently, it was easy to strip rudimentary copy protection from applications offered on the Android Market Web site, and then use, offer or even sell the software as your own. The problem isn’t new, and Google has taken much more aggressive steps in 2010 to make it harder to pirate Android apps.

But the growing popularity of the OS with enterprise users and developers is creating greater urgency, as pirated code robs developers of revenue and the incentive to remain committed Android.

One Android developer, with the handle Chimaera, reported his first app was pirated within a month, and the pirates’ download statistics were more impressive than his own. The crowning indignity: Trying to get file servers to remove the pirated software was frustratingly complicated. “They made you feel as [if] you are the offender,” he wrote.
Technology

Submission + - Massive Satellite Could Harvest Space Wind Energy (discovery.com)

Submitted by disco_tracy
disco_tracy writes: A solar sail orbiting the planet could capture enormous streams of charged particles zooming away from the sun at several hundred kilometers per second. Scientists have calculated that such a satellite could generate one billion billion gigawatts of power.

Comment It's all perfectly logical (Score 1) 634

by Knee Socks (#33308160) Attached to: Bicycles As a Gateway To Government Control
I believe the original (perhaps not the first, but the most media-friendly) quote from Maes warned that the bike-sharing program was "converting Denver into a United Nations community." Now, depending on who you talk to, this may not even be such a bad thing; but the most entertaining part is how huge he blows the conspiracy theory, claiming that "this is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms." This leaves Colorado conservatives with a difficult choice: Dan Maes, or ex-Republican Tom Tancredo, who is running for the American Constitution Party and believes that we should repeal the Voting Rights Act. Jim Crow mk II, anyone?

Submission + - Lack of copyright law propelled German economy (spiegel.de)

Submitted by jeffreytran
jeffreytran writes: The Der Speigel has a fascinating story about how lack of enforceable copyright law led to a flourishing of literacy and knowledge. Contrary to popular wisdom, increased protection such as those found in Great Britain at time gave scholars less of an incentive to share their knowledge.
Programming

Submission + - HTML5 vs. Flash: The Case for Flash (infoworld.com) 4

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner offers 7 reasons why Web designers will remain loyal to Flash for rich Web content, despite 'seductive' new capabilities offered by HTML5. Sure, HTML5 aims to duplicate many of the features that were once the sole province of plug-ins (local disk storage, video display, better rendering, algorithmic drawing, and more) and has high-profile backers in Google and Apple, but as Wayner sees it, this fight is more about designers than it is about technocrats and programmers. And from its sub-pixel resolution, to its developer tools, to its 'write once, play everywhere' functionality, Flash has too much going for it to fall by the wayside. 'The real battle is in the hearts and eyes of the artists who are paid to create incredibly beautiful objects in the span of just a few hours. The designers will make the final determination. As long as Flash and its cousins Flex and Shockwave remain the simplest tools for producing drop-dead gorgeous Websites, they'll keep their place on the Internet.'"
Security

Submission + - SMS Blockers: The New Face of Ransomware (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The scareware and rogue anti-virus epidemic that has been earning attackers millions of dollars for the last few years has spawned a devious new offspring: SMS blockers. This class of malware, which demands that users send SMS text messages to premium numbers, has recently taken off in huge numbers in Russia and parts of Asia, experts say. The scam is as simple as it is effective: A victim visits a malicious site, or perhaps a legitimate site that has been compromised and loaded with attack code, and her machine is infected with a piece of malware. The victim will then start seeing dialog boxes with a message demanding payment in order to disinfect the machine. But, in order to disinfect the PC, the victim must send an SMS message from her mobile phone to a premium number controlled by the attacker, typically at a cost of about $10, but sometimes up to $20.
It's funny. Laugh.

Reproducing an Ancient New World Beer 175

Posted by kdawson from the mmm-ancho dept.
The Edible Geography blog has an amusing piece about Patrick McGovern, the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Ales, Wines, and Extreme Beverages," and his role in the production of a 3,400-year-old Mesoamerican beer recreated from a chemical analysis of pottery fragments. "McGovern describes his collaboration with Dogfish Head craft brewers ... to create a beer based on the core ingredients of early New World alcohol: chocolate beans (in nib form, as the cacao pods are too perishable to transport from Honduras to Delaware), honey, corn, ancho chillis, and annatto. ... The result? Cloudy and quite strong (9% A.B.V.), but more refreshing than you would think: the chocolate is savoury rather than sweet, and the chilli is just a very subtle, almost herbal, aftertaste. There is almost no head."
Biotech

MIT Researchers Harness Viruses To Split Water 347

Posted by Soulskill from the but-it's-harmless-trust-us dept.
ByronScott writes "A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy-intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. 'The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules. Over time, however, the virus-wires would clump together and lose their effectiveness, so the researchers added an extra step: encapsulating them in a microgel matrix, so they maintained their uniform arrangement and kept their stability and efficiency.'"
The Military

Scientists Turn T-Shirts Into Body Armor 213

Posted by timothy from the will-stick-with-the-regular-kind-for-now dept.
separsons writes "Scientists at the University of South Carolina recently transformed ordinary T-shirts into bulletproof armor. By splicing cotton with boron, the third hardest material on the planet, scientists created a shirt that was super elastic but also strong enough to deflect bullets. Xiaodong Li, lead researcher on the project, says the same tech may eventually be used to create lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts."
Biotech

Wake Forest Researchers Swap Skin Grafts For Cell Spraying 123

Posted by timothy from the they-probably-getcha-on-the-refills dept.
TigerWolf2 writes with this excerpt from a Reuters story carried by Yahoo: "Inspired by a standard office inkjet printer, US researchers have rigged up a device that can spray skin cells directly onto burn victims, quickly protecting and healing their wounds as an alternative to skin grafts. ... Tests on mice showed the spray system, called bioprinting, could heal wounds quickly and safely, the researchers reported at the Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum."

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