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Biotech

Submission + - Fall Back, Spring Forward, and DIE!!!

Submitted by
docinthemachine
docinthemachine writes: "It's Y2K all over again thanks to the new daylight savings time schedule. A pair of advisories from the FDA warns patients that the new daylight savings time calendar could kill you! The FDA warns "If you have any medical equipment that uses, creates or records time information about your diagnosis or treatment and the manufacturer has not updated it, the equipment may not work properly when the new Daylight Savings Time (DST) starts and ends this year and in future years." Lucky for us the healthcare provider advisory lists the days your equipment is most likely to fail and kill you and how to troubleshoot. Heck, Microsoft is charging for their fix why should your pacemaker work? full details at http://docinthemachine.com/2007/03/07/dstdeath/"
Education

Submission + - Schools across Japan may switch to Linux

Submitted by
Chris Salzberg
Chris Salzberg writes: "Japan's public broadcaster NHK reported late last week that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to introduce the open-source operating system Linux for use within classrooms across the country in the near future. According to an investigation conducted in the spring of last year, there are currently over 400,000 computers at schools in Japan running on either Windows 98 or Windows Me, systems no longer supported by the software manufacturer Microsoft. The prohibitive cost of replacing these machines with newer models, as well as the rising price of proprietary software, prompted school teachers and administrators to propose the possibility of switching to open-source software as an affordable alternative. A conference held in Tokyo on March 2-3, attended by around 2000 government officials, teachers and education board members from across the country, considered the idea of reclaiming these older computers by switching from unsupported and out-of-date versions of Windows to the operating-system Linux, which can be freely downloaded from the Internet. A teacher from a high-school in Fukuoka Prefecture explained: "Having to always install the latest software is costly, and it makes things very difficult for us. From now on, I want to actively move toward the use of free open-source software." (continue reading at gyaku.jp)"
Microsoft

Submission + - Upcoming Microsoft software develpoments

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is revealing some of their software development ideas. Some of these sound pretty kool. However, I wonder if they are original ideas from M$ or are they rip offs. From the article: a video game designed to teach children computer-programming basics. Text-It-Notes, lets people scribble a message on a sticky note. The devices converts it to a text message using handwriting recognition software, then fires it off to one of a few preset phones. a telescope application that lets PC users zoom around the universe and explore galaxies (think Google Earth, but in the stars), by piecing together images collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey with educational content from astronomers at Harvard and other research centers. speakers that send sound to someone standing right in front of them, but are almost silent to someone standing off to the side. One featured program that is available to consumers now is Lincoln, which works on Windows Mobile 5. Mobile phone users can take a photo of a DVD cover when browsing in the video store. The system matches it to a photo on file, then spits back links to Amazon.com reviews. The service is open to the public, so bands, for example, can upload an image of a poster advertising an upcoming show, then give users a link to listen to some sample songs right from their phones
Databases

Submission + - PostgreSQL Stomps MySQL

Submitted by
menion
menion writes: "Cliff Wells has posted a blurb on his blog after reading various threads and performance reviews that indicate something suprising: PostgreSQL now overcomes MySQL in performance terms as well as features and reliability.

FTA: "We see, for instance, that adding a second Woodcrest in MySQL 5.0.20a — costing a good 851 dollars — only yields a 6% performance increase."

Article 1: the Tweakers.net review of PostgreSQL vs. MySQL performance.
Article 2: a thread from the MySQL forums noting a few performance problems."
Censorship

Submission + - Iran bans YouTube, NY Times

Submitted by
amigoro
amigoro writes: "Iran, which has already banned Wikipedia, Amazon and IMDB.com have now added YouTube to the list of websites from which the populace should be protected. The interesting twist to the story is that They also point out that the Iranian government relies upon commercial software developed by for-profit United States companies to carry out the core of its filtering regime"
The Internet

Submission + - The Internet Weighs Less than Two Ounces

Submitted by anaesthetica
anaesthetica writes: A back-of-the-envelope calculation by Russell Seitz indicates that the electrons constituting the flow of information on the internet weigh about 50 grams, or less than two ounces. Of course, this doesn't factor in the weight of the computers and physical networks themselves. From the article:
Forbes publisher and blogger Rich Karlgaard recently lamented his $1,200 monthly home utility bill. That's a lot of PG &E , but the yearly power bill for the global internet is just $3 per capita- a bargain even by third world standards. Yet looking at my ISP bill I'm not too happy - a dollar a day seems a trifle high when you reckon the weight of the penny's worth of electricity my computation consumes. My daily fix of electrons in motion costs me about half a billion dollars a pound.
United States

Submission + - Flatulence Brings Down AA Flight 1053

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "American Airlines Flight 1053 made an emergency landing in Nashville Monday after passengers reported smelling struck matches. The FBI, Transportation Safety Administration and airport authority responded to the emergency, deplaning the passengers and unloading the baggage for another go through security. After bomb-sniffing dogs found spent matches, the FBI questioned a female passenger, who confessed to striking the matches in an attempt to 'conceal body odor.'"

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