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Comment Re:Soo ... (Score 1) 450

Innovators innovate. It's what they do.

Yes, the romantic rogue genius, the world-changing entrepreneur - these people will always innovate, no matter who tries to stop them. When people - that is to say, IP-dependent businesses - talk about "hindering innovation", they're saying that they'll invest less. As many people here point out, being a "scientist" is now a career path for most people instead of a "calling". To these businesses, less innovation means hiring fewer sound technicians, pharmacologists, graphic artists. Whether you agree that hiring more workers to solve a problem assembly-line style is actually innovation, or that "innovation" can be attributable to an entire company, is another issue entirely :)

US Government Checking Up On Vista Users? 291

Paris The Pirate writes "This article at Whitedust displays some very interesting logs from Vista showing connections to the DoD Information Networking Center, United Nations Development program and the Halliburton Company; for no reason other than the machine was running Vista. From the article 'After running Vista for only a few days — with a complete love for the new platform the first sign of trouble erupted. I began noticing latency on my home network connection — so I booted my port sniffing software and networking tools to see what was happening. What I found was foundation shaking. The two images below show graphical depictions of what has and IS trying to connect to my computer even in an idle state'."
Music

Submission + - British record companies win £41m in dam

Benjamin Fox writes: "The BBC reports that online retailer CD-Wow has been ordered to pay £41m to the British Phonographic Industry. The London High Court ruled that Hong Kong-based CD-Wow, which imports cheap (but genuine) CDs from Hong Kong and elsewhere to the U.K., is "'in substantial breach' of a 2004 agreement to stop importing CDs." This is a serious blow to proponents of an open, no-barrier music market."

Feed Scientists 'Home In' On New Breast Cancer Genes In Groundbreaking Study (sciencedaily.com)

Researchers have isolated five regions of the genome containing genes which can increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer, reveals a major international study published online in Nature. The Cambridge based scientists led an international team of researchers in the world's first large-scale 'whole genome search' for faulty genes that increase breast cancer risk. They studied the DNA in nearly 50,000 women.

Comment Ummm.. Obvious? (Score 1) 438

Vista restricts playback of *some* media. Media flagged as DRM controlled, in whatever internal fashion that is.

For those businesses or persons wanting to use it as an industry app, it's easy - just use the raw files your obtained from your source. Because in my industry, I get those files all the time, and if you aren't they have some 'splainin' to do.

Looking for Life in Light 140

Gearoid_Murphy writes "Earth-like planets around distant stars may be too far away to be reached by spacecraft but scientists could still investigate whether they harbour life. Telescope technologies are being developed that will probe the very faint light from these objects for tell-tale signs of biology. These are the same "life markers" known to be present in light reflected off the Earth - so-called "earthshine"."

DRM Protest in Hazmat Suits 385

johnsu01 writes "The Free Software Foundation launched a new anti-DRM initiative today with a flash protest at Bill Gates's keynote speech to Microsoft developers in Seattle. They're calling the new campaign 'Defective by Design' and have named Big Media, device manufacturers and proprietary software companies as targets. CivicActions is participating as a coalition partner in the campaign. Protesters donned HazMat suits, apparently to emphasize the hazard Digital Restrictions Management poses to their rights." There are also a few pictures available over at Defectivebydesign.org.

MPAA training Dogs to Sniff Out DVDs 728

LandownEyes writes "The dogs, Lucky and Flo, faced their first test at the FedEx UK hub at Stansted Airport. "FedEx was glad to assist in Lucky and Flo's first live test in a working situation. They were amazingly successful at identifying packages containing DVDs, which were opened and checked by HM Customs' representatives. While all were legitimate shipments on the day, our message to anyone thinking about shipping counterfeit DVDs through the FedEx network is simple: you're going to get caught." Kinda makes me thing twice about shipping anything through FedEX. Seriously, this is like training drug dogs to find plastic bags."

A 4.1 GHz Dual Core at $130? 288

joshmo97 writes "Tom's Hardware has found that the Pentium D 805 runs stable at 4.1 GHz and outperforms Intel and AMD's flagship offerings in many benchmarks. From the article: 'The Pentium D 805 is a budget CPU, but it puts lots of processors from AMD and Intel to shame. Although it is not based on the latest 65 nm core, this CPU remains stable even when operating at amazing 4.1 GHz. The Pentium D 805 ascends to the throne as the new King of overclocking, knocking out the AMD Opteron 144.'"

100 Million Pixels of Virtual Reality 190

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's ironic that Iowa State University (ISU) announced a big upgrade of its C6 virtual reality (VR) room the same day as SGI filed for bankruptcy. Back in 2000, this 10x10x10 foot room was powered by SGI Onyx2 computers. The new version of this six-sided VR room will use 96 graphics processing units from Hewlett-Packard. And with its 24 Sony digital projectors, the researchers at ISU will immerse themselves into images of about 100 million pixels in the most realistic VR room in the world. Of course, this upgrade is not cheap. But with this $4 million addition, this new C6 should lead to new advances in urban planning, genetics, engineering or unmanned aerial vehicles."

CmdrTaco becomes An Old(er) Man 339

So, over the years, Rob, as only true friends do, has managed to cause my inbox to explode over the years. Now, it's payback time. That's right, our very own CmdrTaco is turning 30 today. I highly encourage you to drop him an e-mail at (remove the spam parts) maldaSPAM@SPAMslashdot.org. And of course, birthday presents of single malt scotch can be sent c/o of me. I'll...uh...make sure he gets them.

Chip Power Breakthrough Reported by Startup 174

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that a tiny Silicon Valley firm, Multigig, is proposing a novel way to synchronize the operations of computer chips, addressing power-consumption problems facing the semiconductor industry. From the article: 'John Wood, a British engineer who founded Multigig in 2000, devised an approach that involves sending electrical signals around square loop structures, said Haris Basit, Multigig's chief operating officer. The regular rotation works like the tick of a conventional clock, while most of the electrical power is recycled, he said. The technology can achieve 75% power savings over conventional clocking approaches, the company says.'"

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