vipermac writes "Most of the times I have a problem with a Web page loading slow or freezing temporarily, I look down at the status bar and see that it's waiting on an ad server, Google Analytics, or the like. It seems to me that on popular Web sites the bottleneck is overwhelmingly on the ad servers now and not on the servers of the site itself. In my opinion we need a better model for serving ads — or else these services need to add more servers/bandwidth. Are there any studies on the delay that 3rd-party ad servers are introducing, or any new models that are being introduced to serve ads?"

eldavojohn writes "Dust off your fundamental physics books, an aspiring astrophysicist by the name of Alex Ignatiev has published a paper that proposes testing special cases of Newton's Second Law on earth's surface. His goal is sort of ambitious. The time he has to test his theory is only 1/1000th of a second, twice each year, in either Greenland or Antarctica. What would he look for? Spontaneous motion. From his interview with PhysOrg: 'If these experiments were to take place, Ignatiev says that scientists would look for what he calls the SHLEM effect. This acronym stands for static high latitude equinox modified inertia and would be noticed in a condition where the forces of the earth's rotation on its axis, and of the orbital force of the earth as it moves around the sun, would be canceled out ... In the end, if Newton's Second Law could be violated, he would be forcing physicists to reevaluate much of what we understand derived from that law — which is quite a bit.'"

netbuzz passed us a link discussing a survey conducted by major credit firms. Keeping in mind the source (CheckFree, Visa, and WellsFargo), the results indicate identity theft may be on the downswing as consumers wise up to scammers. The number of respondents that reported a fraudulent account created with a stolen identity dropped by a full half percentage point between 2005 and 2006. Overall fraud apparently dropped by some 12% over last year, representing $6.4 billion in fraud reduction. Again, consider the source: identity fraud is still apparently costing some $49.3 billion annually.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers from the computer science department at the University of Washington have released BitTyrant, a new BitTorrent client that is designed to improve download performance via strategic selection of peers and upload rates. Their results call into question the effectiveness of BitTorrent's tit-for-tat reciprocation strategy which was designed to discourage selfish users. Clients are available for Windows, OS X, and Linux."

knowhow writes "Tom Taylor took the risk of dropping out from high school just to play video games. The guy who is just 18 years old, was prompted to take this step; because of the reason that emerged from his love for gaming. After playing for six months on a full time basis the guy signed a contract for a staggering $250,000." From the Article:"Now Tom taylor is known as Tsquared on the gaming circuit. He's earning six figures and has product endorsements and a video game tutoring business. He's one of about 100 professional gamers associated with Major League Gaming, a video gaming league founded in 2002. When they're playing well, pros might bring home a few grand a month."

vandalman writes to tell us that Google is betting on the obsessive compulsive need for many users to see big numbers next to their name with a new beta service called Google Image Labeler. From the description: "You'll be randomly paired with a partner who's online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, you and your partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When your label matches your partner's label, you'll earn some points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, you can explore the images you've seen and the websites where those images were found. And we'll show you the points you've earned throughout the session."

Krishna Dagli writes "This weekend provides one of the year's best opportunities to see some "shooting stars". The annual Perseid meteor display is expected to peak on Friday and Saturday night. Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up, making bright streaks in the sky. It does not take a large object to produce a visible meteor — most are the size of a grain of sand or a small pebble."

Dominic Hargreaves writes "This year GNOME received 181 applications to Google's Summer of Code program, yet none were from women. As a result, they've decided to address this imbalance by launching an outreach program to sponsor three female students to work on GNOME-related projects this summer." Most any science department will tell you that the amount of interest and involvement of women pales next to men of similar age and background. Is this sponsorship a creative way to get women interested in GNOME, or is it merely sexist?

QT writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft is finally trying to do something about PC driver problems. A new crash-report-driven Driver Quality Rating system will be used in Windows Vista to rate drivers. Drivers that rate poorly in real world use by users will lose their logo certification status, which would be bad news for OEMs and the device manufacturers themselves. Maybe now submitting crash reports will feel more useful? This is long overdue."

Billosaur writes "BBC News is reporting that the password to the dreaded Archiveus virus has been discovered and is now available to anyone who needs it. Archiveus is a 'ransomware' virus, which combines files from the My Documents folder on Windows machines and exchanges them for a single, password-protected file, which it will not unlock unless a password is given. The user would normally be required to pay the extortionist money in order to receive the password, but apparently the virus writer made one small, critical error in coding: placing the password in the code. BTW, the 30-digit password locking the files is mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw."

An anonymous reader writes "Australian Federal law will now allow format shifting of media (ie:Ripping CDs to MP3s). Something long allowed under US copyright legislation, but only now coming to the Land Down Under." From the article: "Once the new laws are passed, 'format shifting' of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it. Under the current regime, millions of households a day are breaking the law when they tape a show and watch it at another time."

ianchaos writes "In an article on ScienCentral News, Scientists at the University of Texas are using alcohol to power artificial muscles. From the article: 'Usually the only alcohol-powered muscles are the ones in barroom brawls, but one scientist is adding alcohol to artificial muscles to power robots and more.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Mercury News is reporting that a neural interface for gaming may be in the not-so-distant future thanks to at least two start-ups developing this technology. From the article: 'The goal is to create game console add-ons costing less than $100. Some of the game play features can be conscious -- such as forcing someone to concentrate in order to drive a car faster or toss something at an enemy. Others can be subconscious. The game could slow down, for instance, if the sensors pick up an increase in anxiety, Lee said. The company hasn't set a timetable for the product launches of its customers.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) has been falling apart recently. The biggest blow occurred when 6 major Canadian independent labels quit which was followed by some problems with the Copyright Board. Of course, this is all happening after the whole Sam Bulte incident. The article explains what happened with plenty of links for specific information."