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Iphone

Submission + - iPhone 5 To Put Antenna Woes To Bed? (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "New model rumoured to have done away with troublesome exterior rim

Apple put iPad 2 rumours to rest by unveiling the next-generation tablet last week, clearing the way for media and bloggers to obsess about another company product reportedly in the pipeline: the iPhone 5.

Summer launch expected
If Apple follows its pattern from past years, this summer will see the release of its next iPhone. And according to a report in Taiwan’s Economic Daily News, as repeated 7 March on blogs such as Apple Insider, Apple’s upcoming smartphone will emphasise aluminum over the iPhone 4’s glass casing, and possibly eliminate the exterior antenna rim that has caused the company no end of headaches.

The iPhone 5 will also reportedly include Apple’s A5 processor, just unveiled in conjunction with the iPad 2. Backing the smartphone with aluminium instead of glass, in theory, will help prevent the scratches that cause a certain subset of iPhone users to burst into tears of unimaginable grief.

The elimination of the current iPhone’s exterior antenna rim could slam the final coffin-nail into an issue that’s plagued Apple since last summer, when iPhone 4 owners reported that gripping the smartphone in a certain way, with their bare hand, resulted in radical signal dampening. Those “death grip” reports sprung back to life with this year’s release of the Verizon iPhone. A bumper or slipcase around the iPhone 4’s antenna rim will solve the issue, at the cost of the device’s minimalist aesthetics.

Rumours have also been flying around for months about possible additions to the iPhone 5, with pundits freely conjecturing about everything from more powerful cameras and upgraded hardware to 3G-enabled FaceTime video-conferencing."
Politics

Submission + - Republicans Want To Keep Students Out Of Voting (washingtonpost.com) 2

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: New Hampshire's new Republican state House speaker is pretty clear about what he thinks of college kids and how they vote. They're "foolish," Speaker William O'Brien said in a recent speech to a tea party group.
"Voting as a liberal. That's what kids do," he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack "life experience," and "they just vote their feelings."
Government

Submission + - Utah to Teach USA is a Republic, not a Democracy (sltrib.com) 1

Submitted by 0ryan0
0ryan0 writes: The Salt Lake Tribune reports here that Utah lawmakers passed a bill today to force public school teachers to teach that the USA is a republic, not a democracy.

. . . because a Democracy would have Democrats in it.
Censorship

Submission + - Egyptian 'Net Killed By Intimidation, Not A Switch (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruhlinger
jfruhlinger writes: "In the wake of the Egyptian revolution of the past weeks, much tech buzz has focused on the "kill switch" that Mubarak's government used to try to stop Internet-based networking. The New York Times gives the details; as blogger Kevin Fogarty points out, the process involved less high-tech derring do and more intimidation of tech workers by regime thugs."
Google

Submission + - Naughty Dog used Google SketchUp for Uncharted 2 (geek.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "When SketchUp was first released by @Last Software in 2000, it was billed as a 3D content creation tool for everyone. While modelers were paying thousands of dollars for complicated packages such as 3DS Max and AutoCad, here’s was a new tool that cost significantly less and was extremely easy to pick up and create with.

Google noticed this fluid design tool and decided to buy @Last Software in 2006. End users were the real winners in that deal as rather than having to pay to use SketchUp, we got it for free.

What no one knew until now, not even Google, was that Naughty Dog use the 3D tool for concept 3D designs. More specifically, Robh Ruppel, art director at the game developer, used it for his initial 3D design work on Uncharted 2.

The thing to remember here is that Naughty Dog is a studio that will have site licenses for powerful modeling packages like Maya and Max, yet Ruppel chose to use SketchUp because “it’s so fast” and allowed him to make design choices that translated over to the game as he was actually creating the environments as he went.

While budding 3D modelers can turn to the open source Blender software to learn the skills they need, don’t forget that SketchUp is also a serious modeling tool and one that may eventually help you get your foot in the door at a developer like Naughty Dog."
Science

Submission + - Ancient Britons Used Skulls as Cups (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A team analyzing bones from a cave in southern England has found what it claims to be the earliest evidence of people using human skulls as cups, dating the practice back to the ice age nearly 15,000 years ago. It's unclear what the function of these cups were, but the team suspects they may have been used to serve the brains of enemies.
Censorship

Submission + - The French government can now censor the internet (google.com)

Submitted by Psychophrenes
Psychophrenes writes: A new episode in french internet legislation.
French ministers have passed a bill (original in french) allowing the government to add any website to a black list, which access providers will have to enforce. This black list will be defined by the government only, without requiring the intervention of the legal system.
Although originally intended against pedo-pornographic websites, this bill is already outdated, as was hadopi in its time, and instead paves the way for a global censorship of the "french internet".
Patents

Submission + - Appeal wins ThumbDrive maker a trademark (networkworld.com)

Submitted by netbuzz
netbuzz writes: The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has ruled that “thumb drive” is not a generic term and therefore ThumbDrive is worthy of trademark protection. Says the law firm that represented the maker of ThumbDrive, Trek 2000 International: “Fearing that its highly-valuable ThumbDrive trademark would go the way of other unique and famous marks that became generic and lost all their value – such as aspirin, e-mail, zipper and escalator – Trek engaged in a lengthy legal battle to avoid this fate.” And they won, despite multiple previous denials by the patent and trademark office.

Submission + - BMW temporarily burns logo into viewers' retinas (wired.com)

Submitted by
GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH writes: "BMW, in a video advertisement for their S1000R sportbike playing in German movie theaters, temporarily burned their logo into viewer's retinas as part of the ad, by projecting a bright flash of light through a cutout onto the back of the theater screen. The article includes a video showcasing the use of the effect, the ad itself, and viewers' reactions.

How long will it be before you'll have to wear sunglasses inside the mall to keep special offers from being burned into your retinas?"

Submission + - Britain, not Sweden, wants to jail Assange (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by horza
horza writes: The Swedish government has denied it appealed against Assange being released on bail, and the British government confirmed they are the ones that are asking the court to have Assange jailed indefinitely pending extradition hearings. Assange's lawyers are shocked, claiming this directly contradicts what they were told by the British prosecution.
Facebook

Submission + - Google Will Kill Chrome OS Next Year (businessinsider.com)

Submitted by Pigskin-Referee
Pigskin-Referee writes: Gmail creator Paul Buchheit is putting Google's new Chrome OS on a deathwatch.

He writes on FriendFeed: "Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or "merged" with Android)." His reasoning for why Chrome is toast: "Because ChromeOS has no purpose that isn't better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display)"

While it sounds like a bold statement, he also adds, "I was thinking, 'is this too obvious to even state?', but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason."

He's 100% correct about Chrome. We've been thinking about this too. What problem does Chrome solve? We're stumped.

Buchheit left Google years ago to start FriendFeed, which was a Twitter rival. Twitter won out and Facebook bought FriendFeed. He spent a few years at Facebook and is now with Y Combinator.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/gmail-creator-paul-buchheit-predicts-google-kills-chrome-os-next-year-2010-12#ixzz18HeZrKlb
Science

Pumpkin Pie increases Male Sex Drive 173

Posted by samzenpus from the we're-going-to-need-more-whipped-cream dept.
Dr. Alan Hirsch, Director of Chicago's Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Center, says the key to a man's heart, and other parts, is pumpkin pie. Out of the 40 odors tested in Hirsch's study, a mixture of lavender and pumpkin pie got the biggest rise out of men ages 18 to 64. That particular fragrance was found to increase penile blood flow by an average of 40%. "Maybe the odors acted to reduce anxiety. By reducing anxiety, it acted to remove inhibitions," said Hirsch.
Books

Submission + - Bibliophiles Arbitrage Used Books with a PDA

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "In a good example of how the internet and informationally efficient markets can create new niche opportunities for the self employed, Michael Savitz writes at Salon how he makes a living armed with an a laser bar-code scanner fitted to a Dell PDA. Savitz haunts thrift stores and library book sales to scan hundreds of used books a day and instantly identify those that will get a good price on Amazon Marketplace. "My PDA shows the range of prices that other Amazon sellers are asking for the book in question," writes Savitz. "Those listings offer me guidance on what price to set when I post the book myself and how much I'm likely to earn when the sale goes through." Savitz writes that on average, only one book in 30 will have a resale value that makes it a "BUY" but that he goes through enough books to average about 30 books sold per day and earn about $1,000 a week in profit. "If I can tell from a book's Amazon sales rank that I'll be able to sell it in one day, I might accept a projected profit of as little as a dollar. The more difficult a book will be to sell, the more money the sale needs to promise." Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. "If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?" concludes Savitz. "The bibliophile bookseller, and the various other species of pickers and flippers of secondhand merchandise, would never be reproached like this and could never be made to feel bad in this way.""

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