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Submission + - Julian Assange to run for Australian Senate (abc.net.au)

bozman8 writes: Announced recently on social networking platform Twitter, Julian Assange has found a way to run for the Upper House of the Australian Senate; despite being detained under house arrest in Britain. Along with Julian's candidacy, Wikileaks has announced that they are going to run a nominee against current Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her local electorate.
Microsoft

Submission + - I Don't Want My M-TV

theodp writes: Microsoft, reports GeekWire, is seeking a patent on monetizing the buttons of your TV remote. In its application for a patent on 'Control-based Content Pricing,' Microsoft explains how one can jack up the cable bill of those who dare fast-forward past a Luvs Heavy Dooty commercial or replay a LeBron highlight. From the patent application: 'If a user initiates a navigation control input to advance past (e.g., skip over) an advertisement, the cost of a requested on-demand movie may be increased. Similarly, if a user initiates a replay of a sporting event, the user may be charged for the replay control input and for each subsequent view control input.' Hey, as George Harrison sang, be thankful they don't take it all!
Businesses

Submission + - Business Cards the Latest Internet Casualty

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Chalk up another looming casualty of the Internet age: business cards. Ubiquitous as pinstripes, the 2-by-3.5-inch pieces of card stock have long been a staple in executive briefcases but Matt Stevens writes that to young and Web-savvy people who are accustomed to connecting digitally, business cards are irrelevant, wasteful — and just plain lame. "When I go into a meeting and there are five bankers across the table, they all hand me business cards and they all end up in a pile, in a shoe box somewhere," says Diego Berdakin, the founder of BeachMint, a fast-growing e-commerce site that has raised $75 million from investors without ever bothering to print a card. "If someone comes in to meet me, we've already been connected through email, so it really doesn't feel like a necessity in my life." Some 77 million smartphone users have downloaded the Bump app, which allows them to bump their phones together and instantly exchange contact information while others carry a personalized quick-response code that smartphones can scan like a hyperlink. At 36, Ralph Barbagallo is near the cutoff for Generation Y but despises business cards all the same. Barbagallo says he goes to three major conferences a year and has to distribute paper cards but lugging and exchanging fistfuls of them is a pain and it's hard to remember who is who. "When they run out this time, I'm not printing any more,"says Barbagallo. "They need to die somehow.""
Biotech

Submission + - South Korean Scientists to Clone Wooly Mammoth (inhabitat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Last year Russian researchers discovered a well-preserved mammoth thigh bone and announced plans to clone a mammoth from the bone marrow within — and they just signed a deal with South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation to bring the project to fruition. The Sooam scientists plan to implant the nucleus of a woolly mammoth cell into an elephant egg in order to to create a mammoth embryo, which would then be placed in an elephant womb. “This will be a really tough job,” Soaam reasearcher Hwang In-Sung said, “but we believe it is possible because our institute is good at cloning animals.”

Comment Yes, this WILL blow you away (Score 3, Insightful) 103

It will cause you to quite literally be blown away by law enforcement when they see you holding what appears to be a grenade.

Joking aside, I fail to see how this is supposed to be comparable to wikileaks. While wikileaks is undeniably intended to help whistleblowers, this is a tool suitable for multiple (not not necessarily ethical) purposes. Mind, I don't see too many corporate espionage agents actually using this as is...

Comment Re:What? (Score 4, Informative) 397

Have you actually tried to find Google as a search provider for IE9? Last I tried it, Google wasn't even present until the list of search providers. Clicking on "see more" resulted in loading a webpage...again, without Google present. Using the search field present on that webpage to look for "Google" yields no results.

If I recall, I finally got Google by searching on Bing for how to set up Google as the search provider for IE9. I ended up downloading an addon from Google which added it to the list of search providers in IE9.

Comment Re:Another problem to solve (Score 2) 143

The basic premises of the Matrix is fundamentally flawed. Why the ^%$^ would you grow humans when you can grow, you know, YEAST, for much more benefit at a fraction of a hassle?

I recall the director being interviewed and mentioning that the original promise was that humans were being harvested not for energy, but for brainpower, to act as biological computers. However, this idea was scrapped as too technical for the general audience to understand.

Comment Re:So true (Score 1) 366

Treat me like a slave or a commodity, and I will leave.

There's lots of room for interpreting in the meaning of "telling a person what to do", but why object to "being told what to do"? There was no mention of slave-like behaviour, just a statement of fact. Seriously, does your boss actually ask you if you want to work? No, he tells you to because he's paid to do so, and you're paid to listen and work.

Mountains out of molehills...

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