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Comment Not surprising. (Score 1) 179

by Techguy666 (#48658281) Attached to: Study: Light-Emitting Screens Before Bedtime Disrupt Sleep
Seems like common sense, biologically. More directed lights and more intense lights hitting an eyeball probably tricks the mind into wakefulness; less directed or less intense lights is more conducive to sleep behaviour. Not all that surprising. Also, this study can't be entirely conclusive with only 12 subjects being tested... I'm just going to go "meh" for now.

Submission + - NATO Set to Equate 'Cyberattacks' with Global Warfare (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: At the upcoming NATO meeting, according to the New York Times, the 28 member States are expected to ratify "a far-reaching change in the organization’s mission of collective defense: For the first time, a cyberattack on any of the 28 NATO nations could be declared an attack on all of them, much like a ground invasion or an airborne bombing.”

A former NATO ambassador describes NATO's technological capability as "pretty basic" and suggests any counter-cyberattacks would likely be lodged by member states (meaning the US and maybe Britain). He opines, "It's a measure of how far we've come on this issue that there's now a consensus that a cyberattack could be as devastating as any other kind of attack, maybe even more so."

Helpfully, the agreement avoids defining what sort of 'cyberattack' would warrant an armed response. The Times describes the agreement as "deliberately unclear."

Comment Re:fear (Score 2) 152

by Techguy666 (#47718579) Attached to: China Pulls Plug On Genetically Modified Rice and Corn

Public skepticism about GMO's has been growing in China and the government there is extremely concerned with anything that can enrage popular discontent.

Just because it's no longer legal to grow genetically modified foods in China doesn't mean that Chinese corporations won't use them. Making GM seeds illegal cuts out a lot of red tape for both the government and the companies, gives China plausible deniability if things go badly in the future, and also gives the government a way to research China's own GMO crops that will somehow be different from the dangerous Western-created GMO products.
Earth

Submission + - NASA's Hansen Calls Out Obama on Climate Change

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Dr James Hansen, director of the Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who first made warnings about climate change in the 1980s, writes in the NY Times that he was troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.” According to Hansen "Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now." Hansen says that instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. "President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course.""
Businesses

Failed Games That Damaged Or Killed Their Companies 397

Posted by Soulskill from the cause-or-symptom dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Develop has an excellent piece up profiling a bunch of average to awful titles that flopped so hard they harmed or sunk their studio or publisher. The list includes Haze, Enter The Matrix, Hellgate: London, Daikatana, Tabula Rasa, and — of course — Duke Nukem Forever. 'Daikatana was finally released in June 2000, over two and a half years late. Gamers weren't convinced the wait was worth it. A buggy game with sidekicks (touted as an innovation) who more often caused you hindrance than helped ... achieved an average rating of 53. By this time, Eidos is believed to have invested over $25 million in the studio. And they called it a day. Eidos closed the Dallas Ion Storm office in 2001.'"
Businesses

Financial Issues May Force Changes On Games Industry 246

Posted by Soulskill from the go-go-gadget-indies dept.
krou writes "According to comments made at the Edinburgh Interactive conference, operating costs of making games are spiraling upwards, and there has been 'significant disruption' to the games industry's business model. Games are getting much bigger and taking longer to develop, the console market is fragmented, and the cost of licensing intellectual property has gone up. All of this, says Edward Williams from BMO Capital Markets, means that 'For Western publishers, profitability hasn't grown at all in the past few years and that's before we take 2009 into account.' Recent figures suggest game sales have fallen 29% over the last 12 months. While westerners still relied on putting games on DVDs and selling them through retail channels, 'Chinese developers focused primarily on the PC market and used direct download, rather than retail stores, to get games to consumers,' and the lack of console users 'meant developers there did not have to pay royalties to console makers.' Peter Moore of EA Sports said that significant changes will come in the future, particularly in electronic purchasing of games."
Security

Submission + - Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by Fantastic Lad
Fantastic Lad writes: This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain. When turned on, Raytheon's 'Silent Guardian' emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation — similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker — that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury. The demo model looks like a small speaker. (Image) With practical application is just around the corner, I wonder if anybody at that trade show was selling Faraday body suits. . ?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Star Wars fan puts himself in Carbonite (thesneeze.com)

Submitted by sneezesteve
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.

KNB Effects in the valley took an algae mold of my entire head, then cut off Han Solo's, and replaced it with mine. They even added the frozen saliva that rushed out when Han got frozen."
Security

Submission + - New Hack Exploits Common Programming Error (techtarget.com)

Submitted by
buzzardsbay
buzzardsbay writes: "TechTarget's security editor, Dennis Fisher is reporting that researchers at Watchfire Inc. have discovered a reliable method for exploiting a common programming error, which until now had been considered simply a quality problem and not a security vulnerability. According to the article, the researchers stumbled upon the method for remotely exploiting dangling pointers by chance while they were running the company's AppScan software against a Web server. The good folks at Watchfire will detail the technique in a presentation at the Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas in August, Fisher writes."
Software

Submission + - What Happens Next on the US Vote on OOXML (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "As you may know, V1, the INCITS Technical Committee that had charge of the US vote on Microsoft's OOXML, failed to reach consensus on either approving or disapproving the specification. As expected, Microsoft has turned to the full INCITS Executive Board in an effort to salvage the situation. Between now and Labor Day, a complicated series of fall-back ballots and meetings has been scheduled to see whether the Executive Board can agree to approve or disapprove OOXML, in either case "with comments." A vote to approve would mean that addressing the comments would not be required for the US vote to stand, while a vote to disapprove would hold the possibility of US approval if the comments are satisfactorily addressed. The process, and the prospects for approval, are described here, based on an extensive interview with a V1 and Executive Board member. The bottom line is that a vote to approve (either in the US or in many other nations around the world) does not appear likely, due to the sheer number of technical issues that have been raised with OOXML, and the expedited schedule upon which Microsoft has insisted throughout the process."
United States

Submission + - Robot aircraft crush worldwide enemies - from Nev. (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The first unmanned attack squadron in aviation history will arrive in Iraq today looking to deliver 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles to the enemy — all from the comfort of a US Air Force base in Nevada. The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper can be controlled via satellite link thousands of miles away from operational areas. The planes are launched locally, in this case Iraq and Afghanistan, but can be controlled by a pilot and sensor operator sitting at computer consoles in a ground station, or they can be "handed off" via satellite signals to pilots and sensor operators in Nevada's Creech Air Force Base or elsewhere. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1756 0"
Microsoft

Submission + - OOXML Denied INCITS V1 Approval (robweir.com)

Submitted by
Xenographic
Xenographic writes: "INCITS V1, the US group responsible for the US vote over whether or not ANSI will grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's OOXML format, failed to reach the 2/3 consensus required to recommend OOXML to ANSI. What makes this vote interesting is the graph in the article, showing all the new Microsoft business partners who joined INCITS just this year to vote for OOXML. They will now deliberate further, until they can come to some agreement on what to recommend to ANSI, but it's pretty clear that Microsoft is pushing OOXML as hard as it can."
Microsoft

Submission + - Is Bill Gates Crushing Linux in China?

Submitted by at_$tephen
at_$tephen writes: Interesting article from Fortune magazine which stresses the Chinese market's importance to Microsoft's long term strategy. In the early days of Microsoft basic, rampant piracy helped establish it as the de facto standard in PCs despite good alternatives. History may be unfolding again here, with the exception that having the Chinese government as an ally has huge additional benefits. Or perhaps Gates has met his match with the Chinese government who probably view Microsoft's past aggressive tactics as child's play. They'll be wined and dined by Microsoft officials, but at the end of the day they'll pat Gates' back and say "Sorry, dude, can't screw around with the OS. Besides, the escort's sent earlier by RedHat are sexier and open to doing almost anything we want."
Robotics

Submission + - Robots Teach Autistic Kids Social Skills (wired.com)

Submitted by
posys
posys writes: "Wired Magazine has an article http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007 /07/autistic_robot?showAllComments=true showing how the eternal patience of Robots lends themselves well to teaching new social skills to Autistic Children.

Of course, since Robots can be designed to exhibit only specific desirable behaviors, and can do them over and over again with infinite patience, Robots are the perfect teachers of new social skills to humans both disabled or not.

In a related story, there is a website promoting improvement of the overall human condition via what is called: "The Age of Recreation via the Emancipation of Humanity from the Machinery of Economy via the TROIKA of Robotic Wageless Economy, AI & Geothermal Energy" "

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