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Prince Says Internet Is Over 450

Posted by samzenpus from the it-was-fun-while-it-lasted dept.
the_arrow writes "According to the artist currently known as Prince, 'The internet's completely over.' At least that what he says in an interview with the British newspaper Mirror. Quoting Prince: 'The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.'"

Feed Medical robot can do organ biopsies during MRI scans (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Robots

The Johns Hopkins Urology Robotics Lab based in Baltimore, Maryland has developed a medical robot called the PneuStep that is capable of carrying out organ biopsies in the process of an MRI scan. The robot features a motor that provides power "without metal or electricity" which means that it can operate within the intense magnetic fields generated by Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines. Instead, it is made of "plastics, ceramics and rubber" and is "driven by light and air": specifically, a series of pistons and gears which are controlled by a computer in the next room. The motor also happens to be far more precise than the bags of meat that we usually trust to remove our tumors. The PneuStep could improve the treatment of prostate cancer, which is apparently in many cases impossible to spot outside of an MRI machine. Previously, surgeons relied on "blind" biopsies in the case of operations on organs like the prostate. We'd imagine then that the addition of this robot to a surgeon's tool box will do wonders for patient morale.

[Via Medgadget]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
PHP

Submission + - Delphi for PHP released

Submitted by Gramie2
Gramie2 writes: Codegear (now a subsidiary of Borland) has just released version 1.0 of Delphi for PHP, a RAD development environment (running on Windows) that produces standard PHP code. It features a large set of built-in components, including ones that use AJAX for database access, and Codegear is encouraging users to develop their own components. The framework, VCL for PHP, is open source, and documentation follows the PHP model.

Initial database connectivity is for MySQL and Interbase (Codegear's commercial database that spawned the open-source Firebird), but more are promised.
Power

Submission + - The Coming Uranium Crisis

Submitted by
tcd004
tcd004 writes: "MIT reports that the world is running out of fuel for our nuclear reactors due to production limitations and an aging infrastructure. Nuclear power has gained popularity as a carbon-free energy source in recent years, but Dr. Thomas Neff, a research affiliate at MIT's Center for International Studies, warned that fuel scarcity could drive up prices and kill the industry before it gets back on its feet. Passport has pulled together some interesting numbers: there are 440 reactors currently in operation and 82 new plants under construction. The demand for fuel has driven the price of uranium up more than 40% in the last few months — 900% over the last decade. You can follow the spot price for a pound of uranium here."
Space

Submission + - Spaceport America Takes Off

Submitted by
SeaDour
SeaDour writes: "Spaceport America, being built north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is finally becoming a reality and is set to become the world's first commercial spaceport. Governor Bill Richardson recently secured 33 million dollars from the state legislature for the final design, and a proposed 0.25% sales tax increase in Dona Ana County, where the facility is to be constructed, is expected to bring an additional 6.5 million dollars per year (if approved by voters next week). Richard Branson, the head of upstart Virgin Galactic, on Monday agreed to lease the facility for 27.5 million dollars over twenty years. If all continues to go as planned, SpaceShipTwo will make its first suborbital joy ride in two to three years."
Data Storage

Submission + - Open Source Highly Available Storage Solutions?

Submitted by Gunfighter
Gunfighter writes: I run a small datacenter for one of my customers, but they're constantly filling up different hard drives on different servers and then shuffling the data back and forth. At their current level of business, they can't afford to invest in a Storage Area Network of any sort, so they want to spread the load of their data storage needs across their existing servers like Google does. The only software packages I've found that do this seamlessly are Lustre and NFS. The problem with Lustre is that it has a single metadata server unless you configure failover, and NFS isn't redundant at all and can be a nightmare to manage. The only thing I've found that even comes close is Starfish. While it looks promising, I'm wondering if anyone else has found a reliable solution that is as easy to set up and manage? Eventually, they would like to be able to scale from their current storage usage levels (~2TB) to several hundred terabytes once the operation goes into full production.
Data Storage

Journal Journal: Hard drive surgery 8

Journal by aridhol
I'm on Halifax now on a 4-month course. Among other things that I packed along, I brought my laptop (of course) and my external hard drive, on which resides my music collection. Unfortunately, I brought the wrong power supply, and managed to drive 12 volts down a 5 volt connection.
Businesses

Siberia - The Next Silicon Valley? 184

Posted by Zonk from the colder-things-have-happened dept.
eldavojohn writes "CNN Money is running a story about Siberia's rising tech industry.The movement towards tech is centered in Akademgorodok (Academy Town), with a 15 percent annual increase in the number of firms. Even though the area industry's worth is still fledgling compared to other areas, the growth cannot be ignored. 'President Vladimir Putin has also taken note, backing the construction of a $650 million technology business district with $100 million in state funding for infrastructure. "We simply mustn't waste this chance," Putin declared in Akademgorodok following a 2005 trip to tech-savvy India, "especially as other countries have achieved success without such a strong starting position." High tech is the sort of thing that the Kremlin, realizing that Russia's natural resources can't last forever, would like to develop.'"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Vista Sucks

Journal by Franciscan
Okay, I have now officially used Vista enough to say IT SUCKS.
Things that Suck Large:
Enlightenment

Journal Journal: "Japan is misinterpreted", do you think so?

Journal by firefrog
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17770834/site/newsweek/ If Americans are not sufficiently aware Japan's anti-humankind, USA must be the 1st/2nd victim of Japan's nuke when they have it quite soon.
User Journal

Journal Journal: What gas companies don't want you to know

Journal by trianglman

There is a known secret all gas sellers know but don't want you to know. When you pay for gas at the pump, you may not be getting the gallon you think you are getting. The problem is this, gasoline, like all liquids responds to temperatures by expanding or contracting. When temperatures are lower, gasoline is more dense, when it is higher its less. The amount of energy gas contains is based on this density. Wholesalers and the government have known this for years, thats why there is a standar
Books

Submission + - The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

Submitted by
Trent Lucier
Trent Lucier writes: "NOTE TO EDITORS: Hello, my name is Trent Lucier. I've reviewed several books for you in the past. This is a review of a new book that would probably be of interest to some of your readers. If you need to reach me, my email is spacerook@gmail.com. Thanks!

Fellow programmers, beware! Graphic designers have been invading our territory. A flood of books have been released aimed at artists who want to learn web development skills. Oh, it starts innocently enough, usually with CSS and XHTML. But soon they are learning JavaScript, PHP, and even SQL! What have we techies fought back with? What material is there for us to boost our artistic right-brain power? Sadly, our motley collection of Gimp tutorials alone will not win this battle. We need something stronger. We need to understand the principles of graphic design. But the shelves have been empty of books that make this topic accessible to tech-minded people. Well, empty until now, that is.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird is aimed at developers who want to learn how to make websites look more attractive. The 5 chapters each cover one of the pillars of graphic design theory: Layout, Color, Texture, Typography, and Imagery. Full-color and packed with lots of great examples, the book contains screenshots from dozens of modern websites to illustrate graphic design principles. A cumulative case-study ends each chapter, where the author shows you how the theories he just explained can be applied to a real site he is developing for a client.

Except for some CSS sprinkled here and there, the book contains no code. Don't look for tips on creating 3-column layouts or other stylesheet wizardry, because you won't find it here. The author assumes that you know how to take an image mock-up and convert it into an HTML/CSS document. This is a strong point of the book, since the focus can remain on graphic design techniques and not unnecessary code listings Additionally, there isn't much discussion of tool usage. A few examples use Photoshop, but the book focuses mostly on theory and case studies, not step-by-step program tutorials.

The book starts with Layout and Composition. If you have ever wondered why some websites just look better organized than others, this chapter will explain why. Beaird discusses the concepts of grid theory, and how using the golden ratio to divide page elements can improve the visual appeal. Plenty of examples are given that illustrate the principles of balance, unity, and emphasis.

The Color chapter contains my favorite example, where Beaird uses different versions of the same drawing to describe monochromatic, analogous, and complementary colors. As with the previous chapter on layout, this part of the book does an excellent job of teaching you how to learn from attractive websites, instead of mindlessly imitating them. Color is a hard topic to understand, but there are some good tips here that teach readers how to create an appealing palette for a website.

Relying solely on solid colors and grid layouts can make a website look flat. The Texture chapter discusses ways to use style and make your designs much more eye catching. This chapter is probably the most "Web 2.0" chapter in the book. Gel buttons, gradients, and backgrounds are all discussed.

To the dismay of typophiles everywhere, font support on the web is very poor. There are very few "web safe" fonts that designers can safely assume are on all computers. The Typography section shows readers how to make the most out of this situation by understanding letter spacing, justification, and font usage. Beaird also discusses the sIFR technique (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement), which uses Flash and Javascript to display fonts that may not be on the user's computer. The sIFR method is accessible and degrades gracefully. While the book does not discuss the specific implementation details of this method, just bringing it to my attention taught me something new.

Imagery is the subject of the final chapter, and the book ends on a disappointing note. Very little of this section is about the graphic design principles behind imagery. Rather, precious pages are dedicated to discussing various license agreements and tips on finding stock photos. This is useful information, but it should have been relegated to a sidebar at the most. The chapter focuses almost entirely on images as content and not as design elements. If you want to know how to make images in a blog post look pretty, there are some ideas here (drop-shadows, borders). But there is no information about how to work images into a page header or navigation menu. How do I determine if an image matches my color scheme? How can images spice up a design without going overboard? These were just some of the questions I had going into this chapter that were left unanswered. The Texture chapter hinted at these ideas with examples, but I wanted to see a deeper explanation of the underlying principles.

The book is a little short at 180 pages, but that's not as bad as it may seem. Those of us accustomed to reading 800-page tomes on programming tend to forget how much content can be packed into a book when the author doesn't have to waste 300 pages listing code, 200 pages on the API, and 150 pages on an index.

The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is a good book to kick start your graphic-design journey. The biggest benefit that I got from this book is the knowledge to learn from great designs as opposed to just admiring them in a state of awe. The book could have been a little longer, and some of the topics could have been discussed in more detail. This book won't teach you everything, but it's a good place to start and it will leave you excited about learning more.

Trent Lucier is a software engineer. He is the creator of ChessUp, a tool for creating chess diagrams online."

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