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The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Scientists leave out data to produce bogus finding (naturalnews.com)

Submitted by
hessian
hessian writes: "Clinical trials of drugs and other medical therapies are carefully carried out and are the very gold standard of scientific proof, right? According to an in-depth review of this question just published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ,) the answer is no. In fact, the BMJ is sounding the alarm that data reported by scientists is too often not the truth — because the researchers leave out inconvenient evidence. The result of facts-gone-missing could well be harming patients, spiking up healthcare costs by the selling of medical treatments based on bogus findings, and threatening the very integrity of medicine.

These warnings come from multiple papers released by the BMJ. The whistle-blowing authors of these articles examined the extent, causes, consequences of hidden facts, figures, and other data scientists discover as they do human trials. It turns out this is no "once in a while" kind of problem, either. The BMJ claims a "large proportion of evidence from human trials is unreported, and much of what is reported is done so inadequately.""
Chrome

Submission + - Web Browser Grand Prix VIII: Chrome 16, Firefox 9, (tomshardware.com) 1

Submitted by
CortezCarza
CortezCarza writes: "This article, the latest in a recurring browser benchmarking series, is a follow-up to last August's Mac vs. PC browser showdown which tested the top 5 web browsers in Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion on a Core i5 Hackintosh PC. This time they used a genuine Core i7 MacBook Air.
Areas of testing include: JavaScript, DOM, CSS, Flash, Java, Silverlight, HTML5, hardware acceleration, WebGL, memory efficiency, proper page loads, and standards conformance, plus a new differentiation between cold and hot startup times, as well as cached and uncached page loads.
Due to its old school release schedule IE9 finally winds up back where it belongs, at the bottom. Meanwhile Firefox makes a serious comeback, and Safari is only worth a damn on OS X. But the kicker is that the OS X browsers performed significantly better in relation to the Windows browsers on the Hackintosh versus the real deal MacBook."
User Journal

Journal Journal: General Relativity Trumps Quantum Mechanics Twice.

Journal by mburns

The predictions by quantum mechanics of net vacuum energy and of slowing of ultrashort wave radiation by a quantum foam do not work out. This is because general relativity has theorems to the contrary. But why would those theorems win out? General relativity wins within the domain of its axioms, because a lockin theorem applies, namely the Bianchi identities that follow simply from the existence of the metric. It prevents the subject matter, spacetime, from experiencing alternatives to govern
IT

Submission + - IT salaries edge up back to 2008 levels (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
tsamsoniw
tsamsoniw writes: "A soon-to-be released salary survey finds that the average salary for IT professionals in the U.S. is $78,299, putting overall compensation back at January 2008 levels. More heartening: Midsize and large companies are both aiming to hire more IT pros. The midsize are seeking IT executives (such as VPs of information services and technical services), as well as programmers, database specialists, systems analysts, and voice/wireless communication pros. Enterprises are moving IT and data center operations back in-house, which means greater demand for data center managers and supervisors."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Patents "Avoid Ghetto" GPS Feature (ibtimes.com) 2

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Microsoft won a patent for a GPS feature that helps the user avoid bad neighborhoods, weather systems, and dangerous terrain; many are already calling this technology the "avoid ghetto" feature. Created specifically for mobile phones that leverage GPS technology, Microsoft's feature considers weather data, terrain and local crime statistics before offering the user a specific route. According to the patent filing, the GPS feature will retain "pedestrian history from a plurality of pedestrians and addresses of at least one information source that has a history of providing reliable information," and discounts "low quality" sources. Once the device has obtained the information, "an artificial intelligence component makes at least one inference regarding a route based on previous pedestrian behavior." Microsoft also included an "analysis component that determines an importance of the information to the user," so if a user doesn't mind going through an unsafe neighborhood if that route is faster or more direct, the GPS can take that into account. Microsoft's feature works in real-time, so if crime or weather changes, the system can adapt dynamically to provide the user with the safest and most personalized directions at all times."
Government

Submission + - Lawmakers Intent On Approving SOPA, PIPA (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "U.S. Congress appears likely to move forward with SOPA and PIPA, despite widespread opposition, IDGNS reports. The U.S. Senate is expected to begin floor debate on PIPA shortly after senators return to D.C. on Jan. 23, and supporters appear to have the votes to override a threatened filibuster. Some opponents of the bills hold out hope: 'We're optimistic that if members really understood the Internet architecture and cybersecurity measures, they would not support SOPA as written. Instead, members who are really committed to combatting online piracy would look for effective ways to do that without compromising cybersecurity or the open architecture of the Internet,' said a CCIA spokesperson. Others remain doubtful that Congress will come to this understanding."

Submission + - OMG, Dragon's Lair in Flash!! (dragonslairflash.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hi there, I was pretty amazed to see that someone has developed a port of the legendary '80s Arcade game Dragon's Lair for Adobe Flash! This web version is really very close to the original laserdisc game and plays nicely (it has highscores too).
Idle

Submission + - Why US Gas Mileage Advances Don't Help Consumers a (inhabitat.com) 2

Submitted by
greenrainbow
greenrainbow writes: "The average, fuel efficiency for US vehicles actually increased by 60 percent between 1980 and 2006 but at the same time cars in the US got bigger (by 26% on average) and their horsepower increased (by 107 hp on average), which, when factored in, means that the average fuel efficiency of American cars only increased by a mere 15%. Almost all of the new technology went into making cars more efficient per pound of weight so that the cars could get bigger and still fit within average mile per gallon expectations."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Battlefield 3 Performance: 30+ Graphics Cards, Ben (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by wesbascas
wesbascas writes: Have you ever wanted to play a new PC game, but weren't sure where your PC falls between the minimum and recommended system requirements? I don't have a whole lot of time to game these days and with new hardware perpetually coming out and component vendors often tweaking their model numbering schemes, knowing exactly what kind of experience I'm buying for $60 can be difficult. Luckily, somebody benchmarked Battlefield 3's campaign on a wide range of hardware configurations and detail settings. If you've purchased a system in the past few years you should be in luck. The video cards tested start with the AMD Radeon HD 4670 and Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT, and go up to the brand new Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590. I hate it that my aging Radeon HD 4870 isn't going to cut it at 1080p, but am glad that I found out BEFORE buying the game. I suppose it's time for an upgrade anyway, there's no way I'm missing this title.
Media

Submission + - ask slashdot: do some new movie DVDs not work on y 4

Submitted by
fade-in
fade-in writes: "Using RedBox has been really hit-or-miss for me lately, as about half of the movies I rent flat-out don't work on my PC. At first I thought it was a Linux problem, but when I tried the discs on a Windows 7 PC I met the same results.
After doing some research I've found that all of the titles that have failed for me are distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Am I alone in the world, or has anyone else experienced this? Is it a secret plot to drive folks to BitTorrent? Which movie distributors' discs cause the most trouble, and where do I complain to get it fixed?"
Android

Submission + - Dolphin, a 3rd Party Android Browser, relays visit (androidpolice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "As it turns out, Dolphin HD, one of the top browsers the Android platform has to offer, sends pretty much every web page url you visit, including those that start with https, to a remote server en.mywebzines.com, which belongs to the company. In fact, the WebZines feature was introduced only recently back in June with version 6.0, so it's safe to say this tracking started around the same time."

Dolphin's team says a fix is coming shortly.
AMD

Submission + - New AMD FX Chip Doesn't Live Up To Its Namesake (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The FX-8150, AMD's first Bulldozer (Zambezi) chip is here, and the reviews are rolling in. Tom's Hardware just posted an exhaustive look at the new eight-core flagship. Benchmarks for synthetic, gaming, content creation, and productivity workloads are included, as well as per-cycle performance, AVX throughput, memory bandwidth scaling, and power consumption.
The impact of second-gen Turbo Core and a preview of Bulldozer on Windows 8 are small lights of hope for AMD in what is otherwise a dour review. While in multi-threaded applications the FX-8150 is fairly competitive with Intel’s Core i5-2500K and i7-2600K Sandy Bridge chips, it turns out that Zambezi is actually slower than even AMD’s own previous generation Thuban and Deneb procs in less-demanding benchmarks! With the FX is priced right between the two Sandy Bridge chips, they conclude to stick with the ten month old Core i5-2500K. Worthy of the FX name, the 8150 is not.
Education

Submission + - Indian state government revises specs to get MS in (tehelka.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tehelka, a newspaper from India, reports that a state government agency in the state of Tamil Nadu in India has revised the specifications for 7 million notebook computers to be acquired by the state government for distribution to poor students, to include Microsoft proprietory software thereby increasing the cost and edging out free software. The cost of each notebook has risen, as a result. Do you smell corruption here too ? (Some background on India's corruption woes: http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/regime-of-scamsters-protects-the-corrupt). What can the FOSS community in India and their counterparts elsewhere do, to fix such problems ?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft planning public beta of new Xbox 360 das (winbeta.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is working on launching a public beta of the new Xbox 360's dashboard update, which is slated for release sometime around November 25th. Microsoft, which doesn't surprise many, "accidentally" rolled out the beta earlier today, only to remove it claiming it was an accident.

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