If your significant other complains that you play too much World of Warcraft, just show them this article about a user named "Prepared." He plays an amazing 36 World of Warcraft accounts on 11 different computers at the same time. He is his own raid group. "It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule," he writes. "Not bad considering I'm looking at it like it's a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft."

According to NASA scientists, space smells a lot like my uncle's workshop. One can detect hints of fried steak, hot metal, and the welding of a motorbike. They have hired Steven Pearce, a chemist and managing director of fragrance manufacturing company Omega Ingredients, to recreate the smell in a laboratory. NASA will use his research to help train potential astronauts. Steven said, "I did some work for an art exhibition in July, which was based entirely on smell, and one of the things I created was the smell of the inside of the Mir space station. NASA heard about it and contacted me to see if I could help them recreate the smell of space to help their astronauts."

theodp writes "If you're a PC, you may be unfamiliar with The Dock, the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of a Mac and provides easy access to Apple applications. But don't count on it becoming a standard on the PC. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded Apple — and inventor Steve Jobs — a patent for their User Interface for Providing Consolidation and Access, aka 'The Dock,' after a rather lengthy nine-year wait."

netbuzz writes "Dilbert's Scott Adams kicked off the idea in his November 19th blog post, saying there isn't anything wrong with this country that President Bill Gates couldn't cure in less time than it takes to get a new operating system out the door. Today, the idea is moving forward with a brand-new 'Bill Gates for President' Web site. Adams is also back on the campaign trail, flogging the site and Gates' candidacy." A blog post at Network World includes a lot of eye-rolling about this idea, but neither Adams nor the folks at the 'Gates for President' website seem to be taking this lightly.

darryl24 writes "Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia opened up TechEd 2006 in Boston Sunday evening by proclaiming that Windows Vista was the most secure operating system in the industry. But a bold statement can only go so far, and much of this week's conference has been spent reinforcing that point. Microsoft also acknowledges that nothing is infallible when it comes to computer security. In turn, the company has employed black hat hackers for what is called a penetration, or pen, test team."

doce writes "After chunking my seemingly dead iPod off my balcony while reviewing a rubberized case, the darned thing started working again, though not quite perfectly. After taking it apart, I managed to fix it properly just by reseating the hard drive cable. Could this be the cause of all the click-of-death "sad iPod" failures users are seeing?"

Dubpal writes "Apple Macintosh users can now fit their machines with theft protection software that reports back on what a thief is doing with their computer, should it ever be stolen. The software, named "Undercover" allows users to report their Macs as stolen, causing the software to report back with IPs, screenshots and even a picture of the thief and his surroundings. In addition to this, Undercover begins faking hardware faults, displaying messages and even reading them aloud, alerting anyone around that the Mac's been stolen."

SubtleGuest writes "Gary J. Gorbsky, Ph.D., a scientist with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, has found a way to reverse the process of cell division. The discovery could have important implications for the treatment of cancer, birth defects and numerous other diseases and disorders. Gorbsky's findings appear in the April 13 issue of the journal Nature. "No one has gotten the cell cycle to go backwards before now," said Gorbsky. "This shows that certain events in the cell cycle that have long been assumed irreversible may, in fact, be reversible." In the lab, Gorbsky and his OMRF colleagues were able to control the protein responsible for the division process, interrupt and reverse the event, sending duplicate chromosomes back to the center of the original cell, an event once thought impossible. Here is a video of it happening."

ZedNaught writes "The BBC is reporting that 'astronomers have discovered that the planet Uranus has a blue ring - only the second found in the Solar System. Like the blue ring of Saturn, it probably owes its existence to an accompanying small moon.' According to the April issue of Science, the blue ring is one of two new outer rings recently discovered around Uranus using the infrared Keck adaptive optics system. The rings are blue and red like Saturn's E and G rings. The blue ring around Saturn hosts the moon Enceladus while the Uranus ring contains the moon Mab."

An anonymous reader writes "DeviceForge is reporting that researchers at Oregon State University claim to have created the worlds first 'completely transparent' ICs (integrated circuit) from inorganic compounds. From the article: 'The technology can enable extremely inexpensive electronics for use in "throw away" devices, and is expected to be used in automobile windshields, cell phones, TVs, games, and toys, among other applications, OSU said. OSU also believes that the technology might result in more efficient solar cells or improvements and LCD displays (liquid crystal displays), it said.'"

prostoalex writes "Gary Krakow from MSNBC is impressed with Motorola's C116 phone only to find out that that the phone is not available in the US. The reason? 'A very, very basic GSM handset that handles incoming and outgoing calls as well as SMS messages, the C116 is sold all over the world -- except for the United States. It's not sold here because it's too cheap!' The phone is targeted for emerging markets, where people don't like to tie themselves into monthly contracts, and with little value proposition presents little interest to US wireless operators."

dylanduck writes "New simulations show that big asteroid impacts on Earth could have sent about 600 million boulders flying into space. About 100 have reached Jupiter's moon Europa - but they landed at 24 miles/sec. 'This must be rather frustrating if you're a bacterium that survived launch from Earth,' says a researcher. But 30 boulders from each impact reach Titan - and they land gently." From the article: "'I thought the Titan result was really surprising - how many would get there and how slowly they'd land,' Treiman told New Scientist. 'The thing I don't know about is if there are any bugs on Earth that would be happy living on Titan.' Titan's surface temperature is a very cold -179C and its chemistry is very different from Earth's."

gr8_phk writes "An interesting article over at C|Net claims that playing DRMed music can reduce battery life up to 25 percent. Yet another reason to stick with plain old MP3 files." From the article: "Those who belong to subscription services such as Napster or Rhapsody have it worse. Music rented from these services arrive in the WMA DRM 10 format, and it takes extra processing power to ensure that the licenses making the tracks work are still valid and match up to the device itself. Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them."