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Science

Dmitry Itskov Wants To Help You Live Forever Via an Android Avatar 383

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new-body dept.
trendspotter writes in with the latest news about the 2045 Project. "If Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov has his way, the human lifespan will soon no longer depend on the limitations of the human body. Itskov, a Russian tycoon and former media mogul, is the founder of the 2045 Project — a venture that seeks to replace flesh-and-blood bodies with robotic avatars, each one uploaded with the contents of a human brain. The goal: to extend human lives by hundreds or thousands of years, if not indefinitely."
Earth

Oslo Needs Your Garbage 202

Posted by samzenpus from the burning-down-the-pile dept.
lister king of smeg writes in with news that Oslo is running out of garbage which it burns to generate heat and electricity. "Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn. The problem is not unique to Oslo, a city of 1.4 million people. Across Northern Europe, where the practice of burning garbage to generate heat and electricity has exploded in recent decades, demand for trash far outstrips supply." Back in October we told you about a similar garbage shortage facing Sweden.
Android

Video Android-Controlled Battle Robots Go To War (Video) 41

Posted by Roblimo from the using-your-tablet-as-an-instrument-of-destruction dept.
Let's pretend for a moment that your name is Google. You want to have lots of developers working with your stuff. So you hold a Google Input|Output 2012 event. You have Sergey Brin showing off Google Glass, but most of your show consists of talks with titles like Integrate Web Intents into Your Web Application Today and What's New in Android?... which is all great fun, but also a tad boring. Luckily, somebody at Google piped up and said, "I know! We need Android-controlled fighting robots!" And they contacted the Stupid Fun Club, and Lo! There were Android-controlled robots fighting on the show floor, and all was right with the world.
Technology

Video Plantronics Helps Make Remote Workers' Lives Easier (Video) 233

Posted by Roblimo from the whatever-you-just-said-made-no-sense dept.
If you're working at home or from a coffee shop or, really, anyplace outside your company's offices, they need to hear you when you talk, and you need to hear them. The same goes for dealing with clients via VOIP or video, the two communications techologies that seem to be driving POTS into obsolescence faster than we thought possible just a few years ago. In this video, Plantronics PR person Karen Auby -- who works remotely most of the time herself -- explains how Plantronics products help make work easier in a world of "unified communications."
Businesses

Video Blue Gecko is an 11 Year Old Remote Database Administration Startup (Video) 63

Posted by Roblimo from the you-no-longer-need-to-be-in-silicon-valley-to-start-a-tech-company dept.
A company that has been going since 2001 is not exactly a startup, but Blue Gecko co-founder Sarah Novotny says that maintaining a startup mindset has helped her company keep going this long, with no end in sight. If you are thinking about starting an IT business (either now or in the future), especially one you hope will have remote clients and possibly a far-flung workforce, you should listen carefully to what Sarah has to say.
Media

Tapeheads and the Quiet Return of VHS 446

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the what-won't-hipsters-do-next dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Joshua Phillips writes that something was lost when videos went from magnetic tape and plastic, to plastic discs, and now to digital streams as browsing aisles is no more and the once-great video shops slowly board up their windows across the country. Future generations may know little of the days when buying a movie meant you owned it even if the Internet went down and when getting a movie meant you had to scour aisles of boxes in search of one whose cover art called back a story that echoed your interests. Josh Johnson, one of the filmmakers behind the upcoming documentary 'Rewind This!' hopes to tell the story of how and why home video came about, and how it changed our culture giving B movies and films that didn't make the silver screen their own chance to shine. 'Essentially, the rental market expanded, because of voracious consumer demand, into non-blockbuster, off-Hollywood video content which would never have had a theatrical life otherwise,' says Palmer. While researching the documentary Palmer found something interesting: there is a resurgence taking place of people going back to VHS because a massive number of films are 'trapped on VHS' with 30 and 40 percent of films released on VHS never to be seen again on any other format. 'Most of the true VHS fanatics are children of the 1980s,' says Palmer. 'Whether they are motivated by a sense of nostalgia or prefer the format for the grainy aesthetic qualities of magnetic tape or some other reason entirely unknown, each tapehead is unique like a snowflake.'"
Input Devices

Indian Engineers Modify Kinect To Help the Blind Walk With Confidence 59

Posted by Soulskill from the paging-geordi-laforge dept.
New submitter albinobee writes "The Kinect for Xbox 360 isn't only about gaming; it can also be used to help compensate for impaired vision, as a team of Indian engineers is working to prove. A device called viSparsh, still in its nascent stage, is a motion sensing belt that can help alert the blind to obstacles that lie in their path."
Piracy

BTJunkie No More? 328

Posted by samzenpus from the so-long-farewell-aufwiedersehn-goodbye dept.
First time accepted submitter AWESOM-O 4k writes "It seems like the popular file sharing site BTJunkie.org is gone. On btjunkie.org you are greeted with the following: '2005 — 2012 This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down. We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best! '"
Power

Belgium To Give Up Nuclear Power 298

Posted by Soulskill from the sorry-for-the-swear-word-in-the-headline dept.
AmiMoJo writes "Belgium's political parties have reached a conditional agreement to shut down the country's two remaining nuclear power stations. Older reactors will be decommissioned by 2015, with the final closures happening before 2025. The exit is conditional on alternatives being available. 'If it turns out we won't face shortages and prices would not skyrocket, we intend to stick to the nuclear exit law of 2003,' a spokeswoman for Belgium's energy and climate ministry said."
Robotics

Hobby Humanoid Robot KHR3HV Rides Bike At 10k/h 114

Posted by timothy from the not-even-training-wheels dept.
An anonymous reader points out a fun robot project from Japan, writing: "The robot pedals with its feet at variable speed. The steering is done by the robot hands as with a normal bike, and remote controlled by a human. Stability is achieved by relying on the inertial centrifugal effect of the front wheel and on a gyro aided by a PID controller that takes over steering when driving in a straight line. Seems like when the robot steers his arms he also bends the waist leaning a bit into the turn. Braking is achieved by taking the feet off the pedals and pointing them down to the ground using the metal feet as friction breaks."

Comment Naming conventions (Score 2) 722

by Planky (#36494718) Attached to: I Name My Servers After:

At my current job, its domain/sitecode/type/### (e.g DKLWNAVMH200). The three digit number corresponds to what its purpose is - e.g. servers in the 100 range are email servers, 200 = file/print, 300 = citrix, etc. Its nice having a decent convention

Previous places of employments used sitecode/windowsedition/###. It was pain in the ass when they switched to 2k3 and 2k8 but didnt update the naming convention to cope (it was written when 2000 server was king). The windows edition was specified as '2K', which could mean 2000,2003,2008. That coupled with the numbers having no significance other than incrementing with each new server rendered it useless.

Another used planet names (not an issue as long as you dont have many servers).

My own PCs/Servers use stone/mineral names e.g. Obsidian, Amethyst, Malachite, etc

Comment Re:For those wondering why 21st of October (Score 3, Insightful) 585

by Planky (#36176858) Attached to: The world will end ...

The same person made a similar claim in 1998, stating that the Rapture would occur followed by Armageddon. Of course nothing happened. He selectively chooses which verses that supports such claims and ignores ones that point out that no-one bar God knows when it will happen:

  • Matthew 24:36: No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
  • Matthew 24:42: Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.
  • Matthew 25:13: Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
  • Mark 13:32-33: No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.
  • Mark 13:35: Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back–whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.

There are other conditions laid out in the Bible that are to occur before the Rapture, none of which have occured:

  • Where is the rebuilt Temple ?
  • If the temple hasn’t been rebuilt, how can it be desecrated by the Antichrist?
  • Where is the Antichrist?
  • The institution of One World Government, Currency, and Reulgion
  • The battles against Israel by Russia and Iran
  • the return of jews to Israel

How can someone calulng themselves Christian ignore all of that?

Comment For those wondering why 21st of October (Score 3, Informative) 585

by Planky (#36175272) Attached to: The world will end ...

http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/outreach/tracts/may21/

They claim that Judgement Day is happening on May 21 (hey seem to use their own definition for Judgement Day - not the standard, end of the world, all people are judged etc) and then their idea is that 5 months later BOOM.

Either way, i still plan on being here on October 22 - regardless of your beliefs, this is a pretty crack pot mix up of lets read some of the bible, ignore the parts that contradict us, and see if we can create a global panic.
Databases

SQL and NoSQL are Two Sides of the Same Coin 259

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the dualistic-monadic-monsters-from-the-sea dept.
An anonymous reader writes "NoSQL databases have become a hot topic with their promise to solve the problem of distilling valuable information and business insight from big data in a scalable and programmer-friendly way. Microsoft researchers Erik Meijer and Gavin Bierman ... present a mathematical model and standardized query language that could be used to unify SQL and NoSQL data models." Unify is not quite correct; the article shows that relational SQL and key-value NoSQL models are mathematically dual, and provides a monadic query language for what they have coined coSQL.

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