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Australia

Ancient Cave Art May Depict Giant Bird Extinct For 40,000 Years 137

Posted by Soulskill from the was-its-best-friend-a-wooly-mammoth dept.
grrlscientist writes "Recently studied Australian Aboriginal rock art may depict a giant bird that is thought to have become extinct some 40,000 years ago, thereby making it the oldest rock painting on the island continent. The red ochre drawing was first discovered two years ago, but archaeologists were only able to confirm the finding two weeks ago, when they first visited the remote site on the Arnhem Land plateau in north Australia. 'Genyornis was a giant flightless bird that was taller and heavier than either the ostrich or emu. It had powerful legs and tiny wings, and probably closely resembled ducks and geese, its closest living relatives. ... Interestingly, Genyornis bones have been excavated in association with human artifacts in Cuddie Springs in the Australian state of New South Wales. It is likely that humans lived alongside these birds, and some scientists think that humans may have contributed to their extinction." Jamie recalled that in the essay "A Lesson from the Old Masters," in the volume Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, Stephen Jay Gould thanks our ancestors who drew Irish Elk on cave walls for "providing the only possible evidence for a hump that would otherwise have disappeared into the maw of lost history."

Comment Switched BACK to Firefox Today (Score 1) 646

by Ignatius D'Lusional (#32261392) Attached to: Firefox Is Lagging Behind, Its Co-Founder Says
I'd been using Chrome for a few months, and while I enjoyed it at first I soon realized that it was a memory hog when using dozens of multiple tabs and *consistently* choked to death on Flash content. I've been very happy I switched back, just from using it again today. As long as Chrome suffers these critical flaws and Firefox outperforms it, I will be sticking with Team Mozilla.
Communications

Tweeting From the Front Line 84

Posted by CmdrTaco from the deja-what-now dept.
blackbearnh writes "There's an interesting article up on O'Reilly Radar talking about how the US military is reacting to the increasing use of social media by soldiers in hostile territory. In an interview, Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, talks about the trade-offs between operational security and allowing soldiers and the public to interact, and how social media has changed the way the DoD communicates with the public. 'I think that we need to become much more comfortable with taking risk, much more comfortable with having multiple spokesmen out there, thousands of spokesmen in essence. But, for me, there's nothing more credible than the men and women who are out there on the front lines, fighting the wars that we're in, sending messages back to their family and friends.'"
Democrats

House Proposes Legalizing, Taxing Online Gambling 473

Posted by Soulskill from the twenty-bucks-says-it-gets-shot-down dept.
eldavojohn writes "Passed in 2006, the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is set to go into effect June 1. New efforts by Democrats in the House of Representatives aim not only to stop that but to legalize and tax Internet gambling. Jim McDermott (D-WA), said, 'This is a huge boon to the state governments. If you look across the country you're seeing programs cut. In Arizona, they just cut out a program for children's health for 40,000 kids. Here's a source of money.' Basically, the bill proposes that for each state, a 6% cut would be taken from all wagers and go to the state in which the bet was made online, while federal would get 2%. They estimate in the next decade this would amount to $30 billion for state and tribal governments and $42 billion for the federal government in new taxes. Banks and casinos appear to be very much on board, while the usual crowd (Republicans, Focus on the Family, Think of the Children) gathered in opposition to the move."
Transportation

EyeDriver Lets Drivers Steer Car With Their Eyes 166

Posted by timothy from the would-be-dead-a-thousand-times dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that German researchers have tested a new technology called eyeDriver that tracks a driver's eye movement and, in turn, steers the car in whatever direction they're looking at speeds up to 31 mph. 'The next step will be to get it to drive 60 miles per hour,' says Raul Rojas, an artificial intelligence researcher at Berlin's Free University. A Dodge Caravan fitted with eyeDriver has been tested on the tarmac at an abandoned airport at Tempelhof Airport. However, it remains unclear when — or if — the technology will be commercialized, as questions about safety and practicability abound: What about looking at a cute girl next to the road for a few seconds? Not to mention taking phone calls or typing a text while driving. But the researchers have an answer to distracted drivers: 'The Spirit of Berlin' is also an autonomous car equipped with GPS navigation, scores of cameras, lasers, and scanners that enable it to drive by itself. And should the technology-packed vehicle have a major bug, there's still an old fashioned way of stopping it. Two big external emergency buttons at the rear of the car allow people outside to shut down all systems."
Android

Android Ported To iPhone 280

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-can-you-go-the-other-way dept.
anethema writes "iPhone hacker planetbeing, from the iPhone Dev Team, has successfully ported the Android OS over to the iPhone. He is doing it on a first-generation iPhone, but others may be possible. The port is pretty functional, with data, voice, and many apps working, although it is running a bit sluggish and buggy at the moment. There appears to be much work left."

Comment Re:Missing Option (Score 1) 584

by Ignatius D'Lusional (#31698114) Attached to: How Smart Are You?
An excerpt from the Good Book:

Most people totally misunderstand the term "SubGenius." Look at the word. What does it mean?

It means NOTHING! It's utterly ambiguous. All-purpose. It sure as hell doesn't mean "just below genius level." To "Bob" and his mighty friends in The Council of None, one happy idiot is worth far more than ten A-Bomb inventing geniuses. We throw most so-called "geniuses" OUT. They're too nervous, they take themselves too seriously, they're Snide. They do not truly 'know' Slack.

Praise "Bob," there are as many idiot SubGenii as "smart" ones. Most prevalent, however, are smart-asses. It isn't brains, but an intuitive, anti-Pink, anti-cute Attitude Mutation. The Conspiracy has proved that you can have "high intelligence" but still not be able to Think.
GUI

15 Years of Microsoft Bob 191

Posted by CmdrTaco from the celebrate-good-times-come-on dept.
harrymcc writes "Microsoft Bob — still synonymous in the tech industry with 'embarrassing flop' — shipped fifteen years ago this week, on March 31st, 1995. When the Windows interface featuring animated cartoon helpers was announced, it was hyped to the heavens and briefly accepted as a breakthrough that showed where software was going. Instead, dismal reviews and poor sales killed it after only a year on the market. At Technologizer, we're marking the anniversary with a complete look at how it came to be and why it failed so resoundingly — and how Microsoft tried again with Office's 'Clippy' and other attempts to revive the basic idea."
The Almighty Buck

The Times Erects a Paywall, Plays Double Or Quits 344

Posted by timothy from the testing-what-the-market-will-bear dept.
DCFC writes "News International, owners of The Times and The Sunday Times announced today that from June readers will be required to pay £1 per day or £2 per week to access content. Rupert Murdoch is delivering on his threat to make readers pay, and is trying out this experiment with the most important titles in his portfolio. No one knows if this will work — there is no consensus on whether it is a good or bad thing for the industry, but be very clear that if it succeeds every one of his competitors will follow. Murdoch has the luxury of a deep and wide business, so he can push this harder than any company that has to rely upon one or two titles for revenue."

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