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Combat Pilots May Get Viagra 5

Posted by samzenpus
Israel is considering giving its combat pilots Viagra to improve their performance in the air. A study by Israeli doctors of mountain climbers in Africa found a correlation between erectile dysfunction drugs and improved performance in high altitudes. It looks like this already tough job is about to get a lot harder.
Sci-Fi

Nimoy May Be the Star of the Next Trek Film? 248

Posted by Zonk from the anyone-but-shatner dept.
ajs writes "Moriarty, over on Ain't It Cool News is running a column about the upcoming J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie. In it, he discusses some theories about where the movie is going, but doesn't reveal his sources. He claims that Nimoy's Spock, not the younger versions of the original Trek trio, will be the primary star of the film; and that the movie will make some very substantial changes to the Trek lore in a way that is internally consistent with what went before, but opens up many more options for future franchise films or series. If he's right, there are some pretty substantial spoilers in the column." Obviously, as unverifiable speculation this should be taken with a grain of salt. Live long and prosper.
Microsoft

Lobbying Could Cause Legal Trouble for Microsoft 138

Posted by Zonk from the keep-it-above-board-maybe dept.
Rob Isn't Weird writes "In the wake of the exposure of Microsoft's attempt to buy Sweden's vote on OOXML and Sweden's annulment of that vote due to irregularities, IBM's Rob Weir points out that the fiasco could cause anti-trust worries for Microsoft. He quotes ALLIED TUBE & CONDUIT CORP. v. INDIAN HEAD, INC., 486 U.S. 492 (1988), which says 'What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decision makers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition.'"
AMD

In Tests Opteron Shows Efficiency Edge Over Intel, Again 98

Posted by Zonk from the testy-testy dept.
Ted Samson writes "In their latest round of energy-efficiency tests between AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon, independent testing firm Neal Nelson and Associates find AMD still holds an edge, but it's certainly not cut-and-dried. Nelson put similarly equipped servers through another gauntlet of tests, swapping in different amounts of memory and varying transaction loads. In the end, he found that the more memory he installed on the servers, the better the Opteron performed compared to the Xeon. Additionally, at maximum throughput, the Intel system fared better, power-efficiency-wise, by 5.0 to 5.5 percent for calculation intensive workloads. For disk I/O intensive workloads, AMD delivered better power efficiency by 18.4 to 18.6 percent. And in idle states — that is, when servers were waiting for their next work load — AMD consistently creamed Intel."
Power

New 'Stellarator' Design for Fusion Reactors 171

Posted by Zonk from the less-whoosh-boom-for-your-money dept.
eldavojohn writes "The holy grail of fusion reactors has always seemed 'just a few years off' for many decades. But a recent design enhancement termed a 'Stellarator' may change all that. The point at which a fusion reactor crashes is when particles begin escaping due to disruptions in the plasma. A NYU team has discovered that coiling specific wires to form a magnetic field may contain the plasma. This may be a a viable way to create a plasma body with axial symmetry, and a far better chance of remaining stable. Like other forms of containment this does require energy itself, but could bring us closer to a stable fusion reactor. It may not be cold fusion or 'table top' fusion but it certainly is a step forward. The paper is up for peer review in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
Education

Monkeys and Humans Learn the Same Way 91

Posted by Zonk from the we're-all-ugly-bags-of-mostly-water dept.
Lucas123 writes "A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily. In the study, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to put up to 18 photos on an ATM-like touch screen in a row. 'The monkeys did much better on the first three days when they had the help than when they didn't, but on the test day, it completely reversed. When they studied with the hint, there is no evidence they learned anything about the list. They learned the lists when they didn't get the help.'"
KDE

KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 249

Posted by Zonk from the and-they-are-just-giving-it-away-this-time dept.
dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."

Feed Linux.com: Linux Foundation names new CTO (linux.com)

From feed by lcfeed
The Linux Foundation today announced Markus Rex will become its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and lead its Linux Standard Base (LSB) initiative and other standardization and technical initiatives for the foundation.
Microsoft

Submission + - $500 million dollar piracy ring busted in China

Submitted by Blahbooboo3
Blahbooboo3 writes: Reported by several news organizations, pirated software worth more than $500 million has been seized by authorities in China as part of a joint operation run by Chinese police and the FBI. Microsoft estimates that the software piracy of an international counterfeiting syndicate, over the past six years, cost the company at least $2 billion in lost software revenue. Microsoft said that key information in the investigation came from its Windows Genuine Advantage program, an antipiracy system that can check whether an OS is legit. It's generally accepted that Microsoft has done well out of software piracy: it helps products become widely used, and as the market matures, people start to pay for their software. And this has been a major factor in Windows beating Linux in China, as Bill Gates admits.
Wii

Wii Puts Japanese Television Under Pressure 98

Posted by Zonk from the must-not-see-teevee dept.
Knuckles writes "The Times reports that Japanese consumers have been 'abandoning television' in order to play with Nintendo's Wii. Recent figures from Japan's audience-tracking firms show that 'last week was the first in nearly two decades where no single show on any commercial station attracted more than a 9 per cent audience share ... According to one senior executive of the country's largest commercial television channel, Fuji TV, families who used to tune in to its colourful diet of soap operas, panel games and comedy variety shows may, instead, be drifting away and choosing to spend the same, economically-critical golden hour time playing on their Wii.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Linspire/MS Agreement Useless to Users - Groklaw

Submitted by
Stephen Samuel
Stephen Samuel writes: "Groklaw host PJ has disected the 'patent peace' agreement between Linspire and Microsoft, and has determined that What Linspire Agreed To is next to useless for many users.


"You can't share the software with others, pass it on with the patent promise, modify your own copy, or even use it for an "unauthorized" purpose, whatever that means in a software context. You must pay Linspire for the software, but then the "covenant" says to use Linux, you must also pay Microsoft. That payment doesn't cover upgrades. Linspire said it was absorbing the initial fees, but I don't know about upgrades. New functionality means you lose your coverage or presumably must pay again."
The agreement also doesn't cover various games, 'business software', GPL V3 software, server software and various other types of software (from Linspire or elsewhere), including, "other excluded products". It also allows Microsoft to interrogate you a la their normal Window EULA. ... Oh, and Microsoft can change or drop the agreement any time they want to, so you're really only safe until Microsoft decides that they really want to sue you (at which point you will be unable to get upgrades or new software without exposing yourself to their patent claims).

See the article for full details. I'm going back to my Ubuntu system."

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