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Submission + - Flying Cars (aopa.org)

Submitted by JimFive
JimFive writes: For years we've been waiting for the flying car to arrive. The FAA has made an exemption that moves this one step closer to reality. Terrafugia has been granted a weight limit exemption for a "Roadable Airplane". Next up is passing the federal highway safety tests. The press release is here..
User Journal

Journal Journal: Rewriting the book on CPU HSF Testing

Journal by Archer0915

I took HSF testing to the next level:

"To test a heat sink and fan assembly to the limit, a computer is not the best option. With some of the many variables, which can be attributed to the computer alone and completely outside the control of the tester, software and hardware results can be skewed to the point of being outright wrong. Things that can be controlled are often ignored and sometimes forgotten."
Government

Arlington National Cemetery's Many IT Flaws 191

Posted by Soulskill from the may-bobby-tables-rest-in-peace dept.
imac.usr writes "A story in today's Washington Post calls to light the utter failure of the nation's most sacred final resting place to modernize its pen-and-paper record system. According to the story, the cemetery's administrators have spent $5 million without managing to accomplish the seemingly simple task of creating a database record of the site's graves. As Virginia senator Mark Warner points out, 'We are one fire, or one flood, or one spilled Starbucks coffee away from some of those records being lost or spoiled.'"

Feed Ars Technica: Reports: most iPhone 4 line-waiters are iPhone upgraders (arstechnica.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Two analyst reports claim that a large majority of customers waiting in line for yesterday's US iPhone launch were repeat customers. According to Piper Jaffreys Gene Munster, 77 percent of those waiting in line already owned an iPhone, while Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner found a very similar 76 percent of customers in the same boat. According to the Oppenheimer numbers, the average length of time before upgrade was 14.7 months.

Munster, who polled a total of 608 people across San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York City, also found that 16 percent of the line dwellers were making the switch to AT&T from another carrier. A little more than half of iPhone 4 purchasers were there for the phone with the highest storage capacity. That's up from 43 percent in 2009, but it doesn't reach the astronomical mark of 95 percent when the original iPhone launched in 2007.

Reiner estimates that Apple will sell 1.5 million iPhone 4 units during the launch, a number which would trump last years iPhone 3GS opening weekend sales by 500,000. At the same time,Munster claims the launch numbers are largely irrelevant due to the brand loyalty that Apple has assembled over the past three years.

Hepoints out that what's much more important than opening day numbers are the hordes of iPhone users who continue to upgrade as their contracts expire, despite vocal displeasure with AT&T service in some regions.

Read the comments on this post



Medicine

Stem Cells Curing Burn-Induced Blindness 54

Posted by Soulskill from the i-can-see-clearly-now dept.
mcgrew writes "The AP (via Yahoo) is reporting that Italian researchers can now cure blindness caused by chemical burns using the patient's own stem cells. 'The treatment worked completely in 82 of 107 eyes and partially in 14 others, with benefits lasting up to a decade so far. One man whose eyes were severely damaged more than 60 years ago now has near-normal vision.' Previously, this kind of injury needed either a corneal transplant or stem cells from someone else, both of which are plagued by problems with tissue rejection. Unfortunately, this only works for damaged corneas — so far."
Censorship

Pakistan To Scour Google, Yahoo For Blasphemy 371

Posted by Soulskill from the hope-you've-got-a-lot-of-free-time dept.
sv_libertarian sends in this excerpt from an AP report: "Pakistan will start monitoring seven major websites, including Google, Yahoo, and Amazon, for sacrilegious content, while blocking 17 other, lesser-known sites it deems offensive to Muslims, an official said Friday. The moves follow Pakistan's temporary ban imposed on Facebook in May that drew both praise and condemnation in a country that has long struggled to figure out how strict a version of Islam it should follow. ... 'If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website,' [said Pakistan Telecommunication Authority spokesman Khurram Mehran]."
Medicine

Submission + - Warning: 3D Hazardous to Your Health (audioholics.com)

Submitted by SchlimpyChicken
SchlimpyChicken writes: Turns out 3D television can be inherently dangerous to your developing children — and adults as well. There's a malaise in children that can prevent full stereopsis (depth perception) from developing, called strabismus, or lazy-eye. It is an abnormal alignment of the eyes in which the eyes do not focus on the same object — kind of like when you watch a 3D movie. As a result, depth perception is compromised. Acting on a hunch, the guys over at Audioholics contacted Mark Pesce, who worked with Sega on its VR Headset over 15 years ago — you know, the headset that never made it to market. As it turns out, back then Sega uncovered serious health risks involved with children consuming 3D and quickly buried the reports — and the project. Unfortunately, the exact same dangers exist in today's 3D, and the electronics, movie and gaming industries seem to be ignoring this and pushing ahead with a technology. If fully realized, 3D just might affect the vision of millions of children and, according to the latest research, many adults, across the country.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Silly IBM ad 2

Journal by Silly Man

The IBM ad that is showing today, "How are you building a smarter planet?" I replied "Plant brains." I doubt that will make it by the moderators.
Censorship

Submission + - scientology snaps up domains

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In an ongoing effort to intimidate some high level defectors, one of Scientology's corporations, Religious Technology Center, has been grabbing domains with the names of specific critics. Speculation is that searches for critical information about Scientology will be redirected to RTC sites with anti-critic information. The acquisition of domains with private individuals' names also raises legal questions about identity theft and harassment.
Story at:
http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/A_list_of_2,070_Scientology_cult_domain_names_registered_to_domains@scientology.net
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2010/06/25/david-miscavige-wants-to-be-like-mike/
Medicine

Researchers Create Lung On a Chip 45

Posted by Soulskill from the i-bet-the-borg-use-something-like-this dept.
ElectricSteve writes "Utilizing human lung and blood vessel cells, researchers have created a device mounted on a microchip that mimics a living, breathing human lung. About the size of a rubber eraser, the device was developed by a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School, and Children's Hospital Boston. Because it's translucent, researchers can watch the processes taking place inside of it — something that's difficult to do with an actual lung. It will be used for testing the respiratory effects of environmental toxins, aerosolized therapeutics, and new drugs. Using conventional models, such tests can cost more than $2 million."
Medicine

Bionic Cat Gets World's First Implant Paws 225

Posted by kdawson from the ten-lives dept.
Several readers send in the news of Oscar, the first bionic cat, whose hind paws got cut off in a harvester accident. In a world's-first operation, a neurosurgeon has now given him exoprosthetic paws that are implanted directly into his leg bones. The BBC artlcle has a video captured just after the operation, and PopSci has an apparently later one in which Oscar is walking and running almost completely normally.
The Courts

Submission + - Hack to the Chief (skunkpost.com)

Submitted by crimeandpunishment
crimeandpunishment writes: A French hacker was given a suspended prison sentence for infiltrating Twitter and sneaking a peek at President Obama's account. Francois Cousteix, whose online name was "Hacker Croll", could have received up to two years in prison and a 30,000 euro fine. Cousteix maintained he did it to warn Internet users about data security.
Iphone

Submission + - Expert Explains iPhone 4 Antenna Problem (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Reports of call and data signal strength problems in the new iPhone 4 have a basis in fact, a hardware expert said Thursday. Later in the day, Apple acknowledged that holding the iPhone 4 may result in a diminished signal that could make it difficult to make and maintain calls or retain a data connection. 'Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone,' Apple said in a statement issued to several media outlets, including PC Magazine, which had run tests earlier Thursday. 'If you ever experience this on your Phone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.' Scores of new iPhone owners confirmed the reception problem in a string of more than 360 messages posted to a thread on Apple's iPhone 4 support forum. 'Signal drops from 4-5 bars to 'searching for signal...' when I hold it in my palm or cover up the line on the lower left side of the phone,' reported a user identified as 'yoshjosh on the thread. 'This is a real issue.' Aaron Vronko, CEO of Rapid Repair, who regularly takes apart Apple hardware, including the iPhone 4 before it went on sale, said, 'That's certainly possible ...I understand that cell signals may degrade when you cover up the antenna, but I have never seen anything this severe, and I'm not holding the phone differently than I think most people hold their phones.'

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"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell

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