- Hedo Turkoglu pulls out of talks with Portland Trail Blaz... Hedo Turkoglu has broken off negotiations with the Portland Trail Blazers, a source told ESPN's Ric Bucher on Friday night.
- Manny 0 for 3 in return as Dodgers beat Padres Returning from his suspension for violating baseball's drug policy, Los Angeles slugger Manny Ramirez barely hit the ball out of the infield in the Dodgers' 6-3 win over the San Diego Padres on Friday night.
- Roger Federer, Andy Roddick to meet in Wimbledon men's final Five-time champion Roger Federer reached his seventh straight Wimbledon final and will face Andy Roddick for a chance at a record 15th Grand Slam title.
- Rafael Palmeiro continues to deny knowingly using perform... Rafael Palmeiro spent some time reflecting before he was inducted into the College Baseball Hall of Fame on Friday in Lubbock, Texas on Friday.
- Tigers get by Twins after 5-hour, 16-inning epic Placido Polanco hit a pair of extra-inning RBI singles, the second giving the Detroit Tigers the lead for good in an 11-9 victory over the Minnesota Twins in 16 innings Friday night.
- Sources: Detroit Pistons' Joe Dumars to meet with Avery J... Pistons president Joe Dumars is scheduled to have his first face-to-face meeting with ESPN NBA analyst Avery Johnson later this weekend regarding Detroit's coaching vacancy, according to NBA coaching sources.
- Tiger Woods moves into AT&T National lead with 4-... Tiger Woods has moved to the top of the leaderboard midway through the second round of the AT&T National with a 4-under 66.
- Pujols' slam, 3-run ninth lead Cards past Reds Albert Pujols hit his club-record fourth grand slam of the season, and Jarrett Hoffpauir drove in the go-ahead runs in the ninth inning with his first career hit as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-4 on Friday night.
- NHL free agency: Columbus Blue Jackets keep superstar Ric... The Columbus Blue Jackets have signed All-Star sniper Rick Nash to an eight year, $62.4 million extension.
- Sprint Cup: Tony Stewart gets pole after rain washes out ... Points leader Tony Stewart was awarded the pole for Saturday night's race at Daytona International Speedway, getting the top spot when rain washed out Sprint Cup qualifying.
- Palin’s Move Shocks G.O.P. and Leaves Future Unclear Gov. Sarah Palin’s move shocked Republicans and fueled renewed speculation about her presidential ambitions and criticism of her political competence.
- Top Reformers Admitted Plot, Iran Declares The Iranian government has made it a practice to publicize confessions from political prisoners, often subject to sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and torture, rights groups say.
- College Stars Sue Over Likenesses in Video Games Players contend the N.C.A.A. and a video game maker should pay college athletes for using their likenesses in popular electronic games.
- In Public Housing, Talking Up the Recycling Bin In the General Grant Houses in Manhattan, two women are spreading the word about recycling, door by door.
- North Korea Tests Ballistic Missiles The missiles were fired into the sea between North Korea and Japan in a move that sent a message of defiance.
- For Banks, Wads of Cash and Loads of Trouble Once flush with cash, Security Bank in Macon, Ga., built a sprawling new headquarters. As the bank struggles to survive, the office is empty and in need of a tenant.Bulk deposits from brokers fueled growth at smaller banks, but also led some to the brink, and beyond.
- ‘Family Friendly’ White House Is Less So for Aides For White House aides, the demands of working for the president have made work-family balance elusive.
- The Media Equation: A Publisher Stumbles Publicly at the ... Katharine Weymouth decided to sell legitimacy, with her paper’s editorial integrity thrown in as a parting gift.
- Profile: Roger Federer - One of the greatest Roger Federer is, whether or not he overtakes the Grand Slam record held by Pete Sampras at Wimbledon on Sunday, undoubtedly one of the greatest men's tennis players of the modern era -- if not of all time.
- Roddick dumps out Murray in epic semifinal American sixth seed Andy Roddick ended Andy Murray's hopes of winning Wimbledon after beating the British number one in four thrilling sets on Centre Court on Friday.
- Straight sets victory puts Federer in final Five-times champion Roger Federer is through to his seventh successive Wimbledon final after a comfortable straight sets Center Court victory over German veteran Tommy Haas on Friday.
- Yemen airline cancels route after Comoros crash Yemenia Airways is canceling all its flights between Yemen and the Comoros Islands after this week's crash on the same route, the airline said Saturday.
- Fans face long odds for Jackson memorial tickets Fans continued to register by the thousands early Saturday, hoping to be among the 8,750 people who will be randomly picked to attend the memorial service for singer Michael Jackson next week.
- Your views of iconic Lady Liberty The crown of the Statue of Liberty will reopen to tourists on July 4.
- USO: It's not your father's entertainment anymore Among the entertainers who have donated their energies to the USO in recent years are Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Scarlett Johansson, Kid Rock, Queensryche, Toby Keith, Lewis Black and Robin Williams.
- North Korea test-fires more missiles, says Seoul North Korea fired several short-range missiles toward the Sea of Japan on Saturday, an act that the U.S. watched closely and South Korea called provocative.
- Hapless Harrington continues poor run of form Three-time major winner Padraig Harrington admits that his game is in poor shape ahead of his bid for a third successive British Open title this month.
- 6 die in London high-rise fire Six people were killed, including three children, when a fire broke out in a high-rise apartment building in south London on Friday afternoon, officials said.
- Wear patterns as information leakage from security keypads Bruce Schneier points out that keypad wear is a form of "information leakage": "There are 10,000 possible four-digit codes, but you only have to try 24 on these keypads. The first is most likely 1986 or 1968. The second is almost certainly 1234." Information Leakage from Keypads...
- Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died (Der Untergang ... Video. Adolf Hitler is pretty pissed off to learn that Michael Jackson has died and won't be able to perform at his birthday party. Evidences the true marks of a great internet meme: infinite expandability, extremely bad taste in multiple respects, and an unfairly long lifespan. (via @andrewbaron) Previously:EFF chairman makes a Downfall remixThe Downfall of HD-DVD (video) Hitler plans Burning Man Canadian prime minister Harper gets the Hitler/Untergang remix ... Hitler finds out about new Watchmen ending...
- djBC's Muppet mashups djBC, consistently my favorite mashup producer/creator (he's the guy behind the Beasties/Beatles remix "The Beastles"), has released an entire album of remixes of Muppet music! He sez, "In honor of my daughter's first birthday- and one month late- I'm rolling out 'Muppet Mashup.' Ten mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. With the legendary McSleazy (of MTV Mash and GYBO), Dunproofin, ATOM, Martinn, Uncanny Valley and yours truly, dj BC. I'm particularly proud of my 'I'm Happy' track, which is built on Edwinn Starr loops, Muppet Show samples, and a fun, funky playground acapella from some little girls on Sesame Street." I've just listened to this straight through, with the baby, and we were both captivated. Bravo! Mashups, remixes, and covers of music from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street. Coral Cache mirror of the entire album Previously:djBC's album of legit mashups: Strictly Mixed and Mashed - Boing Boing Santastic II: Xmas mashups from djBC and friends - Boing Boing Boing Boing: New album of Beatles/Beasties mashups - drop-dead ... Boing Boing: Best mashups of 2005 Mashup Xmas album - Boing Boing...
- HOWTO build a radio in a POW camp -- the real life King Rat This first-hand account of the construction of a clandestine shortwave radio by British POWs in a Japanese camp in Singapore really reminds me of James Clavell's magnificent novel King Rat, my all-time favorite war-novel, which revolves grippingly around the construction, discovery and consequences of a hidden shortwave in the Changi camp (both Clavell and Ronald "St Trinian's" Searle were interned in this camp). BJ: Can I just ask you - the components for the low voltage battery cells that you produced, where did you get all the components from? RGW: Well, zinc wasn't hard, there was some sheet zinc lying on the aerodrome and we pinched quite a bit of that because that would be eaten away during the use of the cells for the low voltage. I don't know what would have happened if that ran out. I think someone produced two lantern cells which did for a while, but it was mainly on this home-made cell system, which wasn't efficient but nowhere near as inefficient as the rectifier was. We must have been consuming... Ah Ping said he had to turn up a lot of power to keep the lights what they wanted. We were dispersing such an amount of power in this four test tube rectifier for the high tension. A variable capacitor was another component we had to bring in. We couldn't make a variable capacitor, it was impossible. We had to take two plates off the one we had to get a high enough frequency. Yes, I can't remember why we didn't go up a bit in inductance; it was largely a trial and error business really. Except that in a regenerative receiver you had some idea when you were near a station because the receiver was so sensitive as all regenerative receivers are. It had a piece of meat skewer type wood which I had a hole drilled in by a pen-knife, and we glued this in with some of our glue or something, into the capacitor shaft so that we could tune it by holding a little stick across it, fixing it at about six inches because one couldn't get one's hands any closer to the set because it was in a state of very near oscillation where the maximum sensitivity is, just before it bursts into oscillation. With a fairly clear HF band, it wasn't long before we knew roughly, by putting a couple of marks on the stick, where it was. We knew that the Voice of America was due for a transmission and I don't think we ever knew the frequencies because the BBC didn't announce frequencies, they just came on the air and broadcast. Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp (via Make)...
- Landmark buildings of the world as acrylic rings Etsy seller Plastique's got laser-cut acrylic rings boasting pointy world monuments. As knuckledusters, they create the possibility of growling, "Right, mate, you're geography," before you bust your opponent in the chops. world landmarks acrylic ring set (white) (via Neatorama)...
- If woowoos ran the emergency room "Homeopathic A&E," a sketch from the British comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look invites us to imagine an emergency room (A&E is British for Accidents and Emergencies, the UK equivalent of ER), as run by newage woo woos. That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E (via White Coat Underground)...
- Compuserve shuts down After 30 years, Compuserve is finally, totally, mostly dead (the email addresses still work). I was always a local BBS and GEnie guy, but there's no doubting the power and influence of Compuserve in introducing the idea of networked communications to a generation, and proving the business-case for commercial online activity: The original CompuServe service, first offered in 1979, was shut down this past week by its current owner, AOL. The service, which provided its users with addresses such as 73402,3633 and was the first major online service, had seen the number of users dwindle in recent years. At its height, the service boasted about having over half a million users simultaneously on line. Many innovations we now take for granted, from online travel (Eaasy Sabre), online shopping, online stock quotations, and global weather forecasts, just to name a few, were standard fare on CompuServe in the 1980s. CompuServe users will be able to use their existing CompuServe Classic (as the service was renamed) addresses at no charge via a new e-mail system, but the software that the service was built on, along with all the features supported by that software, from forums for virtually every topic and profession known to man to members' Ourworld Web pages, has been shut down. Indeed, the current version of the service's client software, CompuServe for Windows NT 4.0.2, dates back to 1999. CompuServe Requiem (via Beyond the Beyond)...
- Massive bank fraud in massively multiplayer game EVE The chairman of the virtual bank in EVE Online, a space-trading/piracy game, absconded with billions of virtual credits, swapping them for $5,000 in cash to make a house payment. The embezzlement caused a run on the bank and has rocked the economy of EVE. The run on the bank has come to about 600 billion ISK, which has been withdrawn. However, we have a very big group of excellent supporters, who have deposited about 105 billion ISK sitting in Sweep to keep us liquid. We are extremely grateful for this. Currently the run seems to be mostly over with only a slightly higher withdrawal rate still, than deposit rate. That's to be expected, and in-line with EBANK's strategy to shrink to a more managable level. EBANK has always been extremely sound, due to our massive reserves. Our checks and balances have proven themselves to work as a mitigation device and by having the reserves spread out over several directors, the embezzlement was kept to a minimum. However, the run on the bank had the potential to do great damage to EBANK as people frantically made withdrawals to ensure they would not be caught if the bank ran short. We have also had several offers from very large entities, regarding big loans, should we need to cover any insolvency. Frankly, this has yet to be needed. But we are grateful for the support. Billions stolen in online robbery New perspective on EVE Online's latest bank embezzlement (via /.) Previously:Why the EVE Online industrial espionage econopocalypse is "fun ... EVE Online's economist speaks -- economics as an experimental ... Should online-game Ponzi scammer go to prison? - Boing Boing Massively Multiplayer economics -- good discussion thread - Boing ... Charlie Stross's Halting State: Heist novel about an MMORPG ... In-game Ponzi scheme - Boing Boing In-game cash marketplaces and Napster -- the arbitrage of time ......
- Ghost Town: The Bumpy Road To Bodie Stephen Worth says: When I was very small, I had one of those horses on springs. I would jump on it and bounce around furiously while my Dad would urge me on, calling out to me to "Ride that horse down the bumpy road to Bodie!" Before I was born, my family had taken a trip to the High Sierras and my Dad and Mom never forgot the potholes they had to navigate their 56 Chevy station wagon over. It was a memory they spoke of often. When I got a little older, I got a chance to visit Bodie with them, navigating a slightly more modern Chevy station wagon over those same potholes. Bodie became a lasting part of my consciousness as well. On my personal blog, Late Night Coffee Shops, I just posted a documentary on Bodie (and its nine inhabitants) from the mid-1950s. If you love the otherworldly feeling of stillness in places like this as much as I do, this video will make your day and fill your dreams with the beautiful sound of wind blowing through sun bleached boards. Ghost Town: The Bumpy Road To Bodie...
- The Don Martin Dictionary Richard Metzger pointed me to the Don Martin Dictionary. Martin was one of my favorite Mad cartoonists. His sophisticated absurdism was the opposite of Dave Berg's middlebrow sitcom humor (but I liked him, too). The Don Martin Dictionary...
- At 2,000 miles, Road Trip 2009 heads to America's largest... In the days since 1,000 miles, Road Trip 2009 has visited some of the most incredible scenery America has to offer, as well as learned some of the most sobering military realities.
- Blogging live from Spiral Jetty Never say never, but this may be the first blog ever posted live from the monumental earthwork on the edge of the Great Salt Lake called Spiral Jetty.
- Employee shot, wounded at Virginia Apple store The victim, a 26-year-old woman, is in serious but stable condition with a wound to the shoulder. Some media outlets are reporting robbery as the motive, but police say it's too early to tell.
- Seattle fire knocks out service to Bing Travel, other sites At least two dozen sites experience protracted outage following Thursday night electrical fire at Fisher Plaza data center. Verizon's Seattle-area DSL service also gets temporarily disrupted.
- What soccer team would your company be? Martin Veitch at CIO.co.uk riffs on how certain football clubs resemble software companies, to good and painful effect.
- iPhone 3GS jailbreak, 'purplera1n,' hits Web Hacker who originally unlocked the iPhone has let loose a jailbreaking app for the iPhone 3GS ahead of the iPhone dev team. For now, it's Windows-only, but a Mac version is supposedly on the way.
- Apple patents point to haptics, fingerprints, RFID Three just-published patent applications hint at the company's future plans. But it could be a while before we see any of the functionality built into iPhones or other Apple devices.
- Symantec's Ramzan on solving the antivirus puzzle q&a From puzzles and chess to ciphers and antivirus software, Zulfikar Ramzan talks about how he got into the computer security business and where it's headed.
- Defending against chemical and biological weapons At the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Grounds facility in the Utah desert, researchers look for ways to protect soldiers against "bugs" that could easily kill or sideline them.
- Week in review: A speedier new Firefox Mozilla's latest version plays catch-up with the browser competition. Also: the latest in Windows 7 news, and a Yahoo data center in a new shade of green.
- A Well-Fed Tornado On The Wyoming Plains *****
- Battlefield Heroes review: The Great (Cartoon) War The premise is simple: take Battlefield, then make it absolutely free to play, by stripping some elements out and reserving them for paying customers, while supporting the whole thing via front-end advertising. Such a move is like walking a knife's edge.
- In-form Venus faces familiar foe Venus Williams chases her sixth Wimbledon title and her third in a row when she faces sister Serena in Saturday's women's final.
- Portable Super Nintendo (Step-by-Step Gallery) Nintendo released a re-designed, smaller Super Nintendo sometime in the mid-90s. Perfect candidate to chop up.
- 10 humor sites sure to make you LOL Bored with Pearl, the cursing toddler landlord demanding rent money? Not amused by those cutesy pictures of cats with the baby-speak captions?
- Wine 1.1.25 Released - A ton of translation updates. - Support for various Unicode file encodings in Notepad. - Improved memory management, especially for OpenGL. - Desktop menus now cleaned up automatically. - Beginnings of a windowscodecs DLL implementation
- UK Schools bar parents from sports day to keep out pedophile Parents have been banned from attending their children's sports day in an extraordinary measure to protect pupils from child abductors and pedophiles.
- Your Food Is Terrible...It Killed Our Brother. (Nutty PIC) Apparently, they didn't like the food. Over-the-top, but gets the point across... Pretty funny.
- Confirmed: Star Wars Live Action TV Series Starts Shooting Over the last few hours I’ve been following rumors of a Star Wars live action television series which will be shot in Australia — well I’ve just confirmed from a source who has a friend that works at ILM that this rumor is in fact true!
- Michael Jackson & Billy Mays Comparison Chart The wake of this double tragedy has pointed to collations between the two men that we would not have noticed otherwise. Take a look, if you will, at the side-by-side similarities below and let us know whether these are mere coincidence or if Michael Jackson and Billy Mays are intertwined on a cosmic level.
- Apple, Acer and...Arrington? (Claire Cain Miller/Bits) Claire Cain Miller / Bits:
Apple, Acer and...Arrington? — Michael Arrington, founder of the influential tech blog TechCrunch, has been talking for a year about building a touch-screen tablet for Web surfing. Now, it appears that the CrunchPad is about to become a reality. — The San Francisco Business Times reported Friday …
- Firefox 3.5 patch coming soon as Mozilla cranks up downlo... Kelly Fiveash / The Register:
Firefox 3.5 patch coming soon as Mozilla cranks up downloads — Pesky monkey still creating (some) havoc — Join our expert panel in discussing application security — Mozilla Foundation notched up five million downloads in the first 24 hours after it released Firefox 3.5 earlier this week.
- Tech blog titan Michael Arrington's next big thing: Hardw...
Patrick Hoge / bizjournals:
Tech blog titan Michael Arrington's next big thing: Hardware — In four years, Michael Arrington has gone from knowing relatively little about the Internet or journalism to presiding over the hugely popular, influential and profitable Palo Alto-based TechCrunch network of blogs.
- Woman Shot in Apple Store at Clarendon's Market Common (D...
Derek Kravitz / Washington Post:
Woman Shot in Apple Store at Clarendon's Market Common — An employee of an Apple store in Arlington was shot and wounded this morning during an attempted armed robbery in a back storeroom as more than three-dozen shoppers and other employees milled about the showroom.
- Employee Shot at Arlington Apple Store (WJLA-TV)
WJLA-TV:
Employee Shot at Arlington Apple Store — ARLINGTON, Va. - An employee at an Apple store in Arlington's upscale Clarendon section is recovering from a gunshot wound. — Police say the 26-year-old woman was shot in the shoulder by a man who rang a doorbell at the back of the store before it opened Friday morning.
- Authorize.net Goes Down, E-Commerce Vendors Left Hanging ...
Robin Wauters / TechCrunch:
Authorize.net Goes Down, E-Commerce Vendors Left Hanging — Talk about a serious outage. Payment gateway service provider Authorize.net has been down and out for several hours, a number of tipsters inform us. That has big implications: since the service is used by tens of thousands …
- CONFIRMED: Windows 7 RTM To Be Announced July 13th (Paul/...
Paul / GeekSmack:
CONFIRMED: Windows 7 RTM To Be Announced July 13th — UPDATE: ComputerGuy2010 from VinylZine has pointed out to me that Microsoft has issued a press release stating that the RTM code will be given out to partners on “the second half of July” which further backs and pretty much 100% validates the story that we have broke.
- Free Criticism, Science After Data, and Airport Books (An...
Anil Dash:
Free Criticism, Science After Data, and Airport Books — When I saw Malcolm Gladwell doggedly dissecting Chris Anderson's upcoming “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (see Chris' response here) my first reaction was: Brilliant! Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired …
- EXCLUSIVE! SAMSUNG OMNIA 2 i8000 VIDEO REVIEW ITA/ENG by ...
Samsung mobile:
EXCLUSIVE! SAMSUNG OMNIA 2 i8000 VIDEO REVIEW ITA/ENG by Hdblog.it! — Ci siamo! Ve lo abbiamo promesso ed eccolo qua ... ha richiesto tempo e dedizione ed abbiamo cercato di condensare il tutto in 11 minuti... poche parole... ora solo immagini... A voi i giudizi! — VERSIONE ITALIANA:
- Did Techcrunch really kill Blognation? Time - and the co... Paul Carr / Guardian:
Did Techcrunch really kill Blognation? Time - and the courts - will tell — Episode 34: In which I rub my hands with glee - and my head with confusion - over the prospect of Sam Sethi's lawsuit against Techcrunch — Good news, London! Later this week, the “traveling geeks” arrive in the capital.
- The Chemistry of Firework Displays Ponca City, We love you writes "David Ropeik writes at MSNBC that there's a lot more to making a basic firework display than putting a fuel source and an oxidizer together. Pyrotechnic chemists, who are trying to create bedazzlement instead of bang, don't want their work to explode, but to burn for a bit, so it gives a good visual show. To achieve the desired effect, the sizes of the particles of each ingredient have to be just right, and the ingredients have to be blended together just right. To slow down the burning, chemists use big grains of chemicals, in the range of 250 to 300 microns, and they don't blend the ingredients together very well, making it harder for the fuel and oxidizer to combine and burn, thus producing a longer and brighter effect. Surprisingly few emitters are used in pyrotechnics, and there are no commercially useful emitters in blue-green to emerald green in the 490-520 nm region. Energy from the fire in the basic fuel is transferred to the atoms of the colorant chemicals, exciting the electrons in those chemicals into a higher energy state. As they cool down, they move back to a lower state of energy, emitting light. So, you actually see the colors in fireworks as they're cooling down. To get the really tricky shapes, like stars or hearts, the colorant pellets are pasted on a piece of paper in the desired pattern. That paper is put in the middle of the shell with explosive charges above it, and below. When those charges go off, they burn up the paper, and send the ignited colorant pellets out in the same pattern they were in on the sheet of paper, spreading wider apart as they fly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Behind the First Secure Quantum Crypto Network schliz writes "Researchers behind the world's largest quantum encrypted network said the technology could secure business networks inside six years. The prototype Quantum Key Distribution network was built by the Secure Communication Based On Quantum Cryptography (SECOQC) group last year. It is described in a journal paper published by the Institute of Physics this week, which includes details on how it is based on the trusted-repeater paradigm."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Generating Power From Ocean Buoys and Kites cheezitmike writes "Researchers at Oregon State University are testing a new type of wave-energy converter to generate electricity from ocean waves: 'Even when the ocean seems calm, swells are moving water up and down sufficiently to generate electricity. ... For decades the challenge has been to build a device that can withstand monster waves and gale-force winds, not to mention corrosive saltwater, seaweed, floating debris and curious marine mammals. ... In the most recent prototypes, a thick coil of copper wire is inside the first component, which is anchored to the seafloor. The second component is a magnet attached to a float that moves up and down freely with the waves. As the magnet is heaved by the waves, its magnetic field moves along the stationary coil of copper wire. This motion induces a current in the wire — electricity.'" Meanwhile, researchers at Stanford are working to design "turbine kites" that operate at 30,000 feet, where air currents flow much faster than they do close to the ground. Ken Caldeira, a Stanford associate professor, said, "If you tapped into 1% of the power in high-altitude winds, that would be enough to continuously power all civilization."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- UK Police Told To Use Wikipedia When Preparing For Court Half-pint HAL tips news of UK prosecution lawyers who are instructing police to study information on Wikipedia when preparing to give expert testimony in court. "Mike Finn, a weaponry specialist and expert witness in more than 100 cases, told industry magazine Police Review: 'There was one case in a Midlands force where police officers asked me to write a report about a martial art weapon. The material they gave me had been printed out from Wikipedia. The officer in charge told me he was advised by the CPS to use the website to find out about the weapon and he was about to present it in court. I looked at the information and some of it had substance and some of it was completely made up.' Mr. Finn, a former Metropolitan Police and City of London officer and Home Office adviser, added that he has heard of at least three other cases where officers from around the country have been advised by the CPS to look up evidence on Wikipedia."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Hawking Says Humans Have Entered a New Stage of Evolution movesguy sends us to The Daily Galaxy for comments by Stephen Hawking about how humans are evolving in a different way than any species before us. Quoting: "'At first, evolution proceeded by natural selection, from random mutations. This Darwinian phase, lasted about three and a half billion years, and produced us, beings who developed language, to exchange information. I think it is legitimate to take a broader view, and include externally transmitted information, as well as DNA, in the evolution of the human race,' Hawking said. In the last ten thousand years the human species has been in what Hawking calls, 'an external transmission phase,' where the internal record of information, handed down to succeeding generations in DNA, has not changed significantly. 'But the external record, in books, and other long lasting forms of storage,' Hawking says, 'has grown enormously. Some people would use the term evolution only for the internally transmitted genetic material, and would object to it being applied to information handed down externally. But I think that is too narrow a view. We are more than just our genes.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Amazon Wants Patent For Inserting Ads Into Books theodp writes "Three Amazon inventors set out to correct what they felt was a real problem: that 'out-of-print or rare books ... typically do not include advertisements ... the content is fixed and, therefore, has not been adapted to modern marketing.' Their solution is spelled out in newly-disclosed Amazon patent applications for On-Demand Generating E-Book Content with Advertising and Incorporating Advertising in On-Demand Generated Content. From the patent apps, here's what the future of reading may look like: 'For instance, if a restaurant is described on page 12, [then the advertising page], either on page 11 or page 13, may include advertisements about restaurants, wine, food, etc., which are related to restaurants and dining.' So, what would a delightfully-tacky-yet-unrefined Hooters ad do for your Hemingway experience?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Fake Tamiflu "Out-Spams Viagra On Web" cin62 writes "The number of Internet scammers offering fake versions of the anti-swine flu drug Tamiflu has surpassed those selling counterfeit Viagra, reports CNN. Since the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, was declared a global pandemic last month, there has been an increase in the number of Web sites and junk emails offering Tamiflu for sale. 'Every Web site that used to sell Viagra is now selling Tamiflu. We are pretty sure that the same people are making the Tamiflu as are making the Viagra,' said Director of Policy for the UK's Royal Pharmaceutical Society." This news fits in nicely with a report Wired ran a couple weeks ago about the hysteria behind H1N1.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released jadoon88 writes to share a series of old Atari 7800 games that have been unofficially open sourced. "Remember Dig Dug or Centipede or Robotron? They used to be favorites when Atari's 7800 series was still around. Since the era of those consoles is over, and a different world of interactive reality gaming has taken over, Atari has unofficially released source code of over 15 games for the coders and enthusiasts to admire the state-of-the-art (because this is what it was back then). During those times, nobody would have imagined in their wildest dreams the games that Atari's developers floated into the gaming thirsty market and instantly swept across continental boundaries. But things changed soon after that and a company once regarded as one of the most successful gaming console manufacturers and developers faded away in the pages of our technology's hall-of-fame."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- How To Get Your Program Professionally Marketed? one-man orchestra writes "I'm the sole programmer of a small, multi-platform, commercial audio program (a spectrogram editor). After over 6 months on the market, I realized that the program would never just sell itself, and that I need some real marketing done for it. Being a one-man orchestra is becoming increasingly difficult; I only can devote so much time to marketing, my skills in that department are lacking, and I'd much rather spend more time coding. Despite my lackluster part-time marketing effort, I still manage to make a modest living out of the sales. My logical assumption is that with someone competent taking care of that part, revenue could greatly scale up. But what's the right way to go about doing this? What type of people/company do I need to contact? What to expect? What to look out for?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Professor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Sharing Drone Plans ... Hugh Pickens writes "Retired University of Tennessee Professor Dr. John Reece Roth has been sentenced to four years in prison after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In 2004, the company Roth helped found, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, won a US Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals. Despite warnings from his university's Export Control Officer, in 2006, Roth took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China and also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project. 'The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,' says David Kris of the US Department of Justice. 'We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today's sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.' During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract. 'This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university,' said Roth. 'And it has probably not helped this country, either.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
- Peak Oil: Bugatti Makes a Car for the Ages Bugatti's convertible is the pinnacle of internal-combustion car tech -- one that will probably never be surpassed with the auto industry's focus shifting to electric vehicles. Here's what it's like to drive it.
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- Solar Racing Champs Roll Out New Car Delft University is back, ready to take a fifth consecutive title with Nuna 5.
- Judge Overrules Jury, Acquits Lori Drew in MySpace Cyberb... Federal judge throws out Lori Drew's three misdemeanor convictions.
- Lunar Probe Sends First High-Res Images NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has begun producing high-resolution and wide-angle images of the moon's surface.
- We Drive BMW's Electric Mini E Sticking a battery and a motor in the Mini makes it a sweet little EV we could live with if it weren't for the stratospheric price tag.
- Why You Can't Keep Your Foot Out of Your Mouth When your brain is overloaded, it will often get stuck on exactly the thing you are trying to avoid thinking about, leading you to blurt out things you never meant to share.