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Feed Science Daily: Fingerprinting Fake Coffee (sciencedaily.com)

With prices of gourmet coffee approaching sticker-shock levels, scientists in Illinois are reporting development of a method to "fingerprint" coffee to detect when corn has been mixed in to short-change customers. Researchers point out that such adulteration of Brazilian coffee is among the most serious problems affecting coffee quality -- with cereal grains, coffee twigs, and brown sugar sometimes mixed into the genuine article. Their research focuses on detecting corn, probably the most widely used adulterant.

Feed Science Daily: Memory Enhancement Drugs Show Promise But Face Growing Scrutiny (sciencedaily.com)

In our aging society, with an increased urgency to develop new compounds that target serious illnesses like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, memory enhancement drugs are becoming a big business. But these same drugs are also creating a growing ethical controversy over their potential off-label uses, such as taking these drugs as "performance enhancers" to gain a competitive advantage in the workplace. These issues, along with the biochemistry of memory, are explored in a recent article.
Programming

Submission + - Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths (itwire.com.au)

Coryoth writes: "A new book is trying to claim that computer science is better off without maths. The author claims that early computing pioneers such as Von Neumann and Alan Turing imposed their pure mathematics background on the field, and that this has hobbled computer science ever since. He rejects the idea of algorithms as a good way to think about software. Can you really do computer science well without mathematics? And would you want to?"
United States

Submission + - NYT Sunday Editorial Calls for Withdrawl from Iraq (nytimes.com) 1

mdsolar writes: "In it's main Sunday editorial called "The Road Home" The NYT has called for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Saying that the situation cannot be worse than it is now they argue that six months is needed to withdraw troops, perhaps through Turkey. They call for bases in Kuwait or Kurdish territory to continue to stage raids on terrorists who have gained a foothold in Iraq as a result of the war. They call on Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to host refugees with the US and EU to foot the bill but those Iraqis who have worked for us to be offered permanent resettlement in the US. They now call the war unnecessary and reiterate that it's management has been incompetent. They say that Bush is just trying to pass the disaster on to the next President and he must be prevented from doing this.

The (subscription) column by Frank Rich goes on at length calling Bush a coward.

With republican Senators defecting, can the Times have put it's finger in the wind or has it left the real stuff of its reputation bleaching behind it in the sun?"

It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Boston Man Sues State Bar Over Gay Test Question (connexion.org)

caol.kailash writes:
A man who flunked Massachusetts' bar exam is claiming in federal court that he failed test because he refused to answer a question related to gay marriage.
The reason he didn't answer? It was "morally repugnant" to him to have a "contemporary issue" question, especially one regarding gay marriage, on the bar exam and he refused to answer. Isn't that a lawyer's job? To know all laws regardless of their "repugnance" or not?

The Internet

Submission + - Building a Linux P2P MMOG (cmpnet.com) 1

prostoalex writes: "Researchers from Thailand and China are building a Linux-based peer-to-peer massively multiplayer online game and have published a paper on the problems they encountered: "Building real-time interactive P2P game playing applications in Linux posses many challenges and opens a wide area of research. There have been many implementations of remote interactive servers for game playing in some universities or companies providing collaborative access to the remote services. Most current systems that provide a collaborative remote game environment either use the (multi) Unicast technique or the Multicast technique to transmit data packets to the participants of the experiment group in the network. Both of these schemes have disadvantages and advantages. In this paper we implement architecture under Linux for real-time multiplayer game application based on XCAST especially for the cases where there exist numerous small collaborative groups. We had provided extension to the Linux kernel and XCAST and show that formation of numerous simultaneous groups, where each group would collaborate for a separate game, is possible. The system proposed is robust in consistently providing group formation and collaboration activities in real time, back-up route or priority queuing, and on time packet delivery with minimum delay in network in the presence of continuous node arrival and departure in the entire game playing procedure. We also show that for data packets of low size, the use of XCAST in the network layer decreases the stress at the sender in each group whereas due to the increased header size of the XCAST packets. Our implementation has shown significant improvements to meet the demands of some real-time game applications.""
Slashback

Submission + - blatent plagerism by anonymous coward (slashdot.org)

jdc writes: I realize this is totally the wrong place to post this... BUT i couldn't find anywhere else to put it Comments are owned by posters, but what about anonymous cowards? See the link. Copywrited text is copied and pasted into this article. Looks like someone paid $39 for this article and posted the text on /. Sorry again for posting this here
Microsoft

Submission + - A new type of computer

johnaobrien writes: "I was perusing the web and found an article that might be enjoyable to every one who likes computing. The article talks about how a new type of computer will be used to add pictures etc. right from the camera. After they are added by putting the wireless devise onto the desk top the pictures will automatically be added. The article is at http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=93374293 0&channel=212469179 and talks about millan. Very interesting."
The Internet

Submission + - MediaDefenders caught violating copyright law?

uglydog writes: MediaDefenders is hosting a pdf of a Wall Street Journal article on its site in a manner that appears to violate section 6. b. of the WSJ subscriber agreement (read the disclaimer at the end of the pdf). The link to the pdf is off of MediaDefenders marketing page (mouse over "News" on the left navbar and check out link for the 2nd item on the page). This happens right after an incident where MediaDefenders was allegedly entrapping p2p users.

Feed Engadget: Sony files patent for liquid airbag designed to protect electronics (engadget.com)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We know how much you love it when companies come up with completely contradictory names for their new technologies, so the "liquid airbag" from Sony should really make you squirm with glee -- nevermind the fact that it has nothing to do with car safety. Sony's patent filing for the technology details a liquid filled bag that could protect components from drop damage: the technology could work on laptops, smartphones, and hard drives. While others have tried using liquid bags to protect gadgets before, none have been particularly successful. Sony's patent application would result in a bag that would keep the device central, therefore protecting the entire surface of the device from damage after a drop. Now all we've got to do is wait an unknown length of time until either Sony starts creating devices with this technology, or someone else does first and Sony sues them for it.

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