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Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."
Space

Submission + - ISS science report released (nasa.gov)

Earthquake Retrofit writes: NASA has released an extensive report on science results from experiments performed on the International Space Station. From the summary:

"One of the most compelling results reported is the confirmation that the ability of common germs to cause disease increases during spaceflight, but that changing the growth environment of the bacteria can control this virulence. The Effect of Spaceflight on Microbial Gene Expression and Virulence experiment identified increased virulence of space-flown Salmonella typhimurium, a leading cause of food poisoning. New research on subsequent station missions will target development of a vaccine for this widespread malady."

I can't tell if this is good news, bad or both.

Also from a quick look at the report (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/389388main_ISS%20Science%20Report_20090030907.pdf), I see that soybeans grow bigger in space with no harmful effect.

Submission + - Legal Code in a version control system? (cnsnews.com)

coldmist writes: Sen. Thomas Carper (D.-Del.) said: "So, legislative language is so arcane, so confusing, refers to other parts of the code--'and after the first syllable insert the word X'--and it's just, it really doesn't make much sense." So, why don't they put it in SVN (or some similar VCS) where people can tkdiff the changes (ie new legislation is in a branch) or output a patchset? If a bill is passed, it's merged into the trunk. It just seems so logical to me, yet I can't find any mention of doing this on the web. What do you think?
Space

UI Customization and Capital Ships In Jumpgate Evolution 41

ZAM got a chance to speak with NetDevil's Scott Brown at the recent LOGIN 2009 conference about various aspects of upcoming space MMO Jumpgate Evolution. He mentioned that massive ships will be limited in scope and role to begin with, but may expand and evolve as they figure out what users like. He also made some interesting comments about UI customization: "We built it with the goal of letting people mod the UI. There's still a little bit more work to do that, so I don't know if it'll be ready at launch, but all of our UI is built in Flash. This is with the idea that anybody can build something with Flash and put it in the game. Now, there are problems, for example, if you do certain things in Flash that might cause the game to perform really slowly. We've still got to figure out how to educate people or how we verify this so that you don't make a mod that I download and my game experience is destroyed. We want it to be easier than that. I think that there will be some work to do, but the goal is that, eventually, people will be able to, using Flash, make their own UI."
Internet Explorer

IE 8.1 Supports Firefox Plugins, Rendering Engine 283

KermodeBear writes in to note that according to Smashing Magazine, the newest version of Internet Explorer, codenamed "Eagle Eyes," supports Firefox plugins, the Gecko and Webkit rendering engines, and has scored a 71 / 100 on the Acid3 test. The article is pretty gee-whiz, and I don't entirely believe the claims that IE's JavaScript performance will trounce the others. (And note that the current Firefox, 3.0.8, scores 71 on Acid3, and Safari 3.1.2 hits 75.) No definitive date from Microsoft, but "sources" say that an IE 8.1 beta will be released in the summer.

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