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Sci-Fi

Star Wars Fan Puts Himself in Carbonite 204

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the instead-of-dating dept.
sneezesteve writes "How do you secure your nerd-cred for eternity? By acquiring a life-size replica of Han Solo in Carbonite, having Han's face removed, and replacing it with your own. 'It is made from fiberglass, and the short story is that a friend who is a special effects guy owned the piece, which was a direct casting off the original prop. He was moving, (aka getting married and yelled at) and asked me if I wanted it. I screamed a huge lispy "Yes!", and picked it up, but knew I wanted to do something cool with it. So I called my other nerdy special effects pals, and they offered to replace Harrison Ford's face with mine. I was so tired of hearing this offer in my daily life, but decided to finally consider it, so off it went.'"
Networking (Apple)

Submission + - The Woz + Kathy Griffin = Hitched (bestweekever.tv)

Submitted by
gr8gatzby
gr8gatzby writes: "Well we can probably guess their kids names: Clarus for the boy and Lisa for the girl. It appears that Kathy Griffin has a thing for geeks, as her last hubby(infamous for laundering money from her) was as well.

From The Best Week Ever: "...things are looking up for Kath. She's found a new man. A successful man. Sadly, it's not her absolutely adorable assistant Tom (what chemistry those kids have!), rather... a much bigger, richer man. Co-founder of Apple Computers Steve Wozniak to be exact. The two met after Steve saw Kathy perform. Now, we know Steve might not be the handsomest man around, but fans of Kathy know that looks really aren't that important to her. And looks aside... could you really ask for a better catch than the co-founder of Apple F**king Computers? Wethinks not. And, as a side note, from what we've seen on her reality show, Kathy is an Apple girl through and through... which is adorable!"

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2007/08/17/off-the-mark et-kathy-griffin-finds-a-new-man/"
Businesses

Submission + - What Are the Business Benefits of Social Software?

Submitted by jg21
jg21 writes: This article in Social Computing Magazine reminds us that those pondering enterprise social software as a potential new category have been discussing things like enterprise tagging for over a year, which is why perhaps CMP Technology is launching in June a conference devoted entirely to Enterprise 2.0, the phrase most often used to connote the use of freeform social software within companies. Central to the successful adoption of E2.0 tools is a diverse software ecosystem. So if a department or a team wants to do its own thing with a specific wiki or blog tool, for example, then as long as they don't expect full IT support and QoS guarantees then that should be OK. [From the article: "I think enterprise social software consultants and developers need to be able to offer a blended offering that is much more flexible than traditional software integration and support."]
Music

Submission + - Battle Over RIAA Expert Reliability Continues

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The battle over the "reliability" of the RIAA's expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson of Iowa State, continues, with the RIAA defending its expert by arguing that "everyone in his field proceeds the same way he did", to which the defendant responded by reminding the judges of the witness's own testimony that his "method" was invented by himself a year and a half ago, and has never been shared with, much less accepted by, anyone else in the "scientific community".... a prerequisite for admissibility of expert testimony in federal court under the Daubert case."
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Online Gaming Leads to Boise Murder

Submitted by
WED Fan
WED Fan writes: "According the Spokesman Review, a man drove nearly 6000 miles to kill a man he met while gaming on the Internet.

A man charged with killing a 25-year-old Boise State University student met him on Internet gaming sites and then used the Web to track him down, according to court records.
...
Authorities say Delling embarked on a 6,000-mile Western road trip that left two people dead and another seriously injured.


Details of what games and what might have transpired to trigger such an event, have yet to be revealed."
Security

Submission + - A Makeover for Microsoft Patch Tuesday

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft plans to implement a major change to the Patch Tuesday advance notice mechanism to provide more details ahead of the release of security bulletins. Instead of the current bare-bones note with the the affected platform and the highest possible severity rating, the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) will release a summary page (similar to this one) that gives more details on the actual products affected and the potential impact of the vulnerability. The security bulletins are also undergoing a layout/design makeover.
United States

Experts Now Say JFK Bullet Analysis Was Wrong 550

Posted by Zonk from the just-ask-oliver-stone dept.
Spy Handler writes "Researchers analyzing bullet fragments from the 1963 Kennedy assassination using new techniques say that the government's 1976 conclusion that the bullets came from only one gun (Oswald's) is wrong. 'Using new guidelines set forth by the National Academy of Sciences for proper bullet analysis, Tobin and his colleagues at Texas A&M re-analyzed the bullet evidence used by the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded that only one shooter, Oswald, fired the shots that killed Kennedy in Dallas. The committee's finding was based in part on the research of now-deceased University of California at Irvine chemist Vincent P. Guinn. He used bullet lead analysis to conclude that the five bullet fragments recovered from the Kennedy assassination scene came from just two bullets, which were traced to the same batch of bullets Oswald owned.'"
Graphics

Submission + - Open Source Helps Missing Girl

Submitted by Cris
Cris writes: An on line community has gathered around helpfindmaddie.wiki-site.com, a site dedicated to join efforts to help find misseed 4 y.o. Madeleine Mccann.

The aim of this 'wikipedia' like is to propose tasks that eventually would be performed by someone able to do it.

The site administrators encourage the use of open source software to accomplish this. For instance, they propose Gimp for image editing of Maddie pictures and Blender for 3D models creation.

Not to forget, also, that the site infrastructure is provided by the well known MediaWiki framework.

Further developments regarding open source contribution in this field are expected soon.
Censorship

Submission + - YouTube, MySpace banned on DoD computers

Submitted by
vivaoporto
vivaoporto writes: "The U.S. Department of Defense said it will block worldwide access to 13 websites including MySpace and YouTube Today from the unclassified defense Department Internet(NIPRNet), according to media reports.

The ban, which takes place immediately, actually was imposed in February and was not prompted by any event or study, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, a Defense Department spokesman. He confirmed that bandwidth was the issue and said the decision is "not about content."

The new policy takes effect as the military has, ironically, aggressively turned to YouTube as a means of broadcasting what it considers to be the more positive aspects of its work in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way of countering what it considers to be negative news coverage.

The sites blocked by the Defense Department: MySpace, YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, hi5, Photobucket, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and Live365."
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA will release Lost Planet benchmark tomorrow

Submitted by
crazyeyes
crazyeyes writes: "Odd choice for Capcom to have NVIDIA release the Lost Planet benchmark on nZone.com, instead of their own website. Must speak wonders about the power of NVIDIA's TWIMTBP program. According to this editorial, NVIDIA will release the benchmark tomorrow. It will be one of the few DX10 benchmarks. Will be interesting to see how the NVIDIA 8800 cards run. ATI fans will probably want to avoid this benchmark. Apparently, it sucks on ATI cards ."
Privacy

Submission + - National ID: Biometrics Pinned to Social Security

Submitted by
magicsquid
magicsquid writes: "The Social Security card faces its first major upgrade in 70 years under two immigration-reform proposals slated for debate this week that would add biometric information to the card and finally complete its slow metamorphosis into a national ID."
Java

Submission + - James Gosling on Open Sourcing Java

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "James Gosling, the father of Java, gave an interesting interview at JavaOne in which he spoke about a lot of things including JavaFX & the recent events of Java becoming Open Source. What he had to say about the problems they were facing with the open source community(s): "One of the issues we've had with open-sourcing is that often people try to generalize the open-source community as this one big kumbaya happy family, but in fact it's a bunch of warring states. They all have their Great Wall of China and they lob stones back and forth.""
Patents

Submission + - US patents Yoga

Submitted by
SmellTheCoffee
SmellTheCoffee writes: "Members of Parliament (MPs) in India on Tuesday slammed the US patenting authority for granting yoga-related copyrights to American companies, saying yoga is a part of Indian heritage. Terming the whole exercise as preposterous, the MPs said yoga had originated in India. Till date, the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. TOI is reporting on this."

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