Activist investor group urges companies to track their use of energy and resources as closely as it does its hiring and cash flow.
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The U.K. Statistics Authority's Richard Alldritt is an expert in how governments fudge the numbers. He and his math-police squad are rooting out the truth, whether it's to reveal the real gender pay gap or the actual rate of knife crime.

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A Connecticut telephone company starts the first local, public packet-switching network. It paves the way for the always-on internet access we know today.

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Food Inc. didn’t win Best Documentary this year, but its message is clear: farming in America is not what it used to be. Thankfully, the passion for farming for a living, and doing it right, still motivates some, like the Nolan family. A feature documentary called From Grass to Cheese is underway to show the [...]
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Sony unveils their first motion controller for the Playstation 3.
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Game AI, when done right, means it's closer to acting and reacting like humans. Find out what some developers are doing to shake things up.
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angry tapir writes "A Transportation Security Administration analyst has been indicted with tampering with databases used by the TSA to identify possible terrorists who may be trying to fly in the US. If convicted, he faces 10 years in prison."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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When former in-house defense attorney Dimitrios Biller resigned from his top post at Toyota, he walked out with something potentially more valuable than his nearly $4 million severance package.
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After feedback from its Twitter followers, the tax-preparation software company decides to remove its advertising from the show hosted by Fox's most entertaining presenter.
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"Bring cops... a lot of them!... And soldiers too."—Carlos, a brave 7 year old boy from Norwalk, California, calling 911 after armed attackers broke into his home and threatened to kill his family. (Audio of the call)...


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AP - The sudden takedown of an Internet provider thought to be helping spread one of the most promiscuous pieces of malicious software out there appears to have cut off criminals from potentially millions of personal computers under their control.
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Ben Greenman invents the 3*TYPE 3*TYPE process, saves text-based media from ignominious death death....


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Eric Spiegelman of "Old Jews Telling Jokes" explains this episode: "My cousin Michael recommended that we get Charlotte Bornstein on camera to tell some jokes. He also advised that we 'just keep the camera running.' You'll see why." Many more new episodes of this stripped-down, oldschool comedy at oldjewstellingjokes.com. (Technical note: If you have trouble viewing the embedded Flash videos hosted on Blip.tv, as I did, you may have better luck downloading the videos as iTunes podcast episodes.) Previously:Old Jews Telling Jokes (video) Old Jews Telling Jokes is Back Old Jews Telling Jokes: Ed Koch...


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"You buy it, you like it!" Bargain Barn was a public access cable show in Shawnee, Oklahoma in the mid-1990s—a sort of QVC for hillbillies, a televised flea market where one might pick up stray drill bits, chickens, or stained and ripped pillows. As WFMU notes, it's a damn crime YouTube shows only one upload of this gem. The host/barker, whose face we seldom see, is selling nothing but absolute crap. He himself admits most of the junk is "broked," "tore up," or "needs to be warshed a few times." I think my favorite moment in the clip above is 8:35, when we get to the Style Studs ("It don't have no Style Studs in it! I'd call that a pig in a poke, m'self.") I could watch this for hours. (Thanks, Mikael Jorgensen!)...


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My friend Eric Hoberman helped develop a new game show that will premiere on NBC on Sunday March 14 from 7-9 p.m. ET/PT. It's called Minute To Win It, and the object is to win a series of 10 easy-to-understand but increasingly-hard-to-win challenges. As the title suggests, the players must successfully complete each of the games in a minute. The award structure is like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire -- the cash amount increases with each game up to a million dollars, you can walk away with what you've won at any point, and you can lose it all if you blow a challenge. Eric gave me a box of props so I could try out the games myself. The show's contestants are also given props and rules for the games before they come on the show so they can practice. The props are household items -- golf balls, cookies, a deck of cards. Here are a few of the challenges contestants will have 60 seconds to complete: • Move two Oreo cookies from your forehead to your mouth using your facial muscles only. (I failed!) • Stack three golf balls vertically. (I failed!) • Balance a deck of playing cards on a soda bottle and blow all the cards off but the bottom one, the joker. (I failed!) • A dollar bill is sandwiched between two bottles, one upright, the other inverted and placed on top of the upright bottle. You have four tries to remove the bill without touching or toppling the bottles. (Success!) I'm interested to know if anyone can successfully complete the tasks I failed at. If you make a YouTube of it, please provide the link so we can watch it! Minute to Win it site on NBC...


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Antec first turned heads with its Skeleton open-air case, which exposed DIYers components but helped with air cooling and reduced dust bunnies found in a closed chassis. Now premium case builder Lian-Li is going further out with its new PC-T1R, which not only leaves your system's parts out in the open, but also has four "legs" that let you have a mechanical spider (well, semi-spider) sitting on your desk. Of course, you're not building a tricked-out PC with this thing. The PC-T1R can only handle a microATX (mATX) motherboard, and a few other components, along with the power supply. You also get an on/off switch, but unfortunately it only powers your computer, not its legs. Lian-Li says that it will...
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AFP - A vague threat apparently posted by an Australian on two social networking sites led to the lockdown on Wednesday of all schools in the busy midwestern US city of Minneapolis, officials said.

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• Sony shows its new motion controller.
• Google maps for biking released. Bikers take heed.
• Best Buy should have 3D-TV at a store near you soon.
• IPCC report folks are leaving the errors in the report.
• MSFT Bing creeps up another inch on Google.
• MySpace being overhauled.
• Looks like the .xxx TLD is back in play.
• Facebook and Twitter introducing location-based feature.
• ARM Ltd. says 50 iPad clones to hit market this year.
• Too many Final Fantasies?

Show presented by e-Harmony. Get a date.
Go to www.eharmony.com
and use the code EHTECH for a great discount.

click ► to listen:

 

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Lady Gaga, a "trash mosaic portrait" by San Francisco-based artist Jason Mecier, who has shows coming up in LA and SF. Richard Metzger has more at Dangerous Minds....


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An anonymous reader writes "We all know about the Mythical Man-Month, the argument that adding more programmers to a software project just makes it later and later. A Linux startup out of MIT claims to have busted the myth, using an MIT holiday month to hire 20 college student interns to get all their work done and quadrupling its productivity."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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"We are fixated on technology and technological success, and we have no sustained or systematic approach to field-based social understanding of our adversaries' motivation, intent, will, and the dreams that drive their strategic vision, however strange those dreams and vision may seem to us."—Anthropologist Scott Atran, who believes the quest to end violent political extremism needs more science. (edge.org)...


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Neat little clipping and saving service works on Web and iPhone.
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A global seed vault dug out of an arctic mountainside has just reached its half-million mark of seed varieties.
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Street Fighter gets bendy. Ms. Pac-Man hops a tandem bike. And plenty of other classic characters get similarly strange treatments in Giant Robot's videogame-inspired exhibit.

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Yup....


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Notorious as a malware ghetto, LimeWire takes its first steps to integrate authoritative threat protection by signing on AVG to provide premium users with download scanning and blocking.
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But Microsoft is telling game developers to concentrate on the phones.
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The Pentagon is training people to hack into its own computer networks.
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The PlayStation maker gives those gathered at a press conference during the Game Developers Conference a sneak peek at its motion-sensitive controller.
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roundup This week's Game Developers Conference brings together designers, programmers, publishers, and others for the latest from the world of video play.
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ICM Registry is again urging ICANN to allow adult sites to add .xxx to their names, creating what some have called a red-light district in cyberspace.
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Microsoft's Bing is now the source of 11.5 percent of all U.S. searches, up from 11.3 percent in January, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile's marketshare continued to plummet, according to comScore, and is now at 15.7 percent among U.S. smartphone subscribers.
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In our next interview for CNET Conversations, we'll ask FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski about everything from free broadband to exclusive wireless agreements to the NBC-Comcast deal. What's your question?
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Google CEO expects a resolution on censorship in China soon, WhitePages.com drops its malware-tainted ad network, and a real-life jetpack for commuters.
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PC World - Last week FBI Director Robert Mueller called the fight against hackers "the cyber equivalent of cat-and-mouse." On Wednesday security experts trying to take down the Zeus botnet got a taste of what he meant.
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Despite the easy-peasy development nature of the iPhone, there are some big legal strings attached to getting an app out into the wild, especially for those trying to take their app out of the U.S.
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itwbennett writes "Niney of the 249 Zeus command-and-control servers were knocked offline overnight when two ISPs, named Troyak and Group 3, were taken offline. Whoever was behind the takedown 'just decided to knock out a large area of cybercrime, and this was probably one of the easiest ways to do it,' said Kevin Stevens, a researcher with SecureWorks. As with the McColo takedown of just over a year ago, Troyak's upstream providers seem to have knocked it off the Internet, Cisco said in a statement. 'The ISP was "De-peered,"' Cisco said. 'Troyak's upstream network providers effectively pulled the plug on Troyak's router, refusing to transmit its traffic.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AFP - MySpace on Wednesday began courting videogame developers as it moved to capitalize on the booming popularity of playing games online at social networks.

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Snip from Wall Street Journal article on the last collection of Alexander McQueen. Twice in the weeks leading up to his Feb. 11 death, Mr. McQueen messaged on Twitter, 'Hells angels [sic] and prolific demons.' What seemed a non sequitur now appears to be a reference to the collection he was working on, imprinted with the angels of Sandro Botticelli and the demons of Hieronymus Bosch. He had finished some 16 looks, about half of what the collection would typically include, at the time of his death. His Twitter account has been taken offline, but a Google Cache exists. The final tweet: "De sade, Marie A- god rest there souls." [sic] (thanks, Kelly Sparks) Previously:Alexander McQueen's final collection Alexander McQueen on Charlie Rose, 1997 Alexander McQueen has died...


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Intel showed off some interesting research projects at an open house event...
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Secret negotiations over a once-obscure draft treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement prompted an unusual rebuke from the European Parliament.
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House Democrats said Wednesday that they will ban earmarks directed to for-profit companies.
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The FTC is asking Google competitors to weigh in on its proposed $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob, according to a report.
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Microsoft officials were vague last year about the company's plans for Windows Azure AppFabric -- a set of services for building composite applications, and complement to Windows AppFabric.But on March 9, Microsoft's AzureAppFabric team announced that the final version of Azure AppFabric will be out by April 9.
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Lifelock has agreed to a $12 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
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AFP - Microsoft's new Internet search engine Bing slightly increased its share of the US search market in February, the ninth straight month of modest gains, online tracking firm comScore said Wednesday.

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Angry users sue Classmates.com after it decides to make previously private data public, just as Facebook did in December. Will its defense be, "I learned it from watching you, Zuck?"

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Look at Todbot's BristleBots go! He held a workshop at Crash Space in Culver City, CA last night and showed people how to make them. (I'm sorry I didn't announce it in advance!) BristleBots and LED throwie art at Crash Space...


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Using obvious clues from a McAfee blog post, an Israeli hacker was able to pinpoint the latest Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability and create working exploit code
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At campfire-themed developer meet-up, Google introduces its Google App Marketplace, where users can buy third-party applications to run atop the Google Apps suite.
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"America is not a democracy. It's a Chuck-tatorship. (...) We'd go down the line and he'd say, 'He's honest. He's honest. He's corrupted.' And I'd walk up to him and I'd say, 'You're fired." If he didn't move immediately, I would choke him unconscious and lay him over to the side there."— Mr. Chuck Norris, who, as Rachel Maddow reminds us, turns 70 today....


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adeelarshad82 writes "After eight years of development, remote gaming service OnLive is scheduled to roll out on June 17 for Windows and Mac. The company also announced its service pricing: users will need to pay $14.95 per month, which will allow them access to the service. However, the company did not disclose the price to rent or purchase games. 'It is partnering in this launch with publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, 2K Games, THQ and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. The games will also include new releases like Mass Effect 2, Borderlands, Assassin’s Creed II, as well as a bunch of other titles. Perlman anticipates anywhere from a dozen to 25 titles to be available at launch time, and more after that, depending on how negotiations with other publishers proceed.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A woman appeals to the highest court in Germany to get the Large Hadron Collider stopped. The court decides she has no proof of any impending doom.
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The FTC could have some concerns about Google's $750 million acquisition of AdMob, according to a Reuters report.
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PC World - Microsoft's Bing search engine may still be a bit player in the lucrative online search business dominated by Google, but it's slowly and steadily gaining users. And it appears that Bing's share is coming at the expense of both Google and Yahoo, the latter of which recently teamed up with Microsoft to be more competitive in online search.
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Target claims it's the first major retail chain to launch mobile coupons nationwide for eager bargain hunters.
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With its heady mix of heavy themes and technology, The Dark Side of the Moon remains the best concept album ever, even 37 years after its release. Plus: 10 more concept albums in Dark Side's shadow that deserve a slice of the spotlight.

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Shells of unusual snails could lead to development of new types of protective materials.
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I, too, am very, very anxious for the day to come when I can purchase a Fascination car with an EV Gray fuelless engine. The Fascination Car was the brain child of Paul M. Lewis, of the Highway Aircraft Corporation. It was developed with a standard engine, but he wanted to power it with ANYTHING that didn't burn gasoline. He was in negotiations with Ed Gray for a while to use the EMA Engine, but that fell through. He then approached Josef Papp for his plasma engine. Ultimately, neither the engines or the car were ever produced. EV Gray and the Fascination Car (Via PCL Link Dump)...


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AP - THE SERVICE: OnLive will let you "stream" popular high-end games over the Internet, using a mechanism similar to watching TV shows or listening to music online.
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snydeq writes "Google has launched the Google Apps Marketplace, providing a venue for third-party, cloud-based applications to supplement Google's own online applications. The program enables integrations with such applications as Google Gmail, Documents, Sites, and Calendar. All told, the effort begins with 50 vendors participating, including Atlassian, NetSuite, Skytap, and Zoho. Participation in Google Apps Marketplace is open to customers of the Premier, Standard, and Education editions of Google Apps. Applications are linked to the marketplace via REST Web services and APIs including OpenID and OAuth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AP - THE PROPOSAL: A ".xxx" Internet suffix where porn sites can voluntarily set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers.
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Myanmar's ruling junta has announced a new election law that disqualifies pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from participating in upcoming national elections.
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Children and teens are being cyberbullied through the Internet in chat rooms, on social networking websites, via email and even through cell phones.
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Apple's new iPad will contain it's own iBooks store for e-book and subscription content. How many hurdles will third parties face to sell their content?
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A YouTube artist whips up a precise, shot-for-shot re-creation of Spike Jonze's amazing music video using clips from the late, great Battlestar Galactica.

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I think a lot about which companies that I've been covering for zillions of years will be around 10 years from now, as the Internet moves into its next phase of innovation around things like machine to machine communications, which is sort of personified in the smart grid. If you think Microsoft and IBM and Hewlett-Packard are invincible, pause a moment to memorialize Digital Equipment Corp. Clearly, many of the legacy IT companies -- IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, to name a few -- are all over the whole intelligent utility market like a bad suit. But what about that other kingpin of the personal computing movement, Intel, the company of the famous "Inside" motto. Clearly, the company hopes to be...
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NewsFactor - With its mind in the clouds and an eye on rival Microsoft, Google on Tuesday launched an online application store for third-party programs that can be integrated with its online Google Apps office suite, with a single log-in and Google's universal navigation. The programs can sync with Gmail and Google's calendar, and use document-sharing features.
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Colleen LaRose, the U.S. woman indicted for allegedly conspiring to support terrorists and kill a person in a foreign country, attempted suicide in 2005, police said.
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Malicious hackers have pounced on a newly patched Adobe PDF Reader vulnerability to plant Trojan downloaders on tardy Windows users.
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[via Global Post via TokyoMango]...


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The software maker says it is ready with a version of its Outlook Social Connector that links the e-mail program with the youth-oriented social network.
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Reuters - Internet retailer Amazon.com has smashed up against Canadian pride in its efforts to open a distribution center in Canada, as booksellers grumble that it can't understand the role of Canadian culture.

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alobar72 writes "I have quite a few old maps (several hundreds; 100+ years old, some are already damaged – so time is not on my side). What I want to do is to digitize them and to apply geo-coordinates to them so I can use them as overlays for openstreetmap data or such. Obviously I cannot put those maps onto my €80 scanner and go. Some of them are really large (1.5m x 1.5m roughly, I believe) and they need to be treated with great care because the paper is partly damaged. So firstly I need a method or service provider that can do the digitizing without damaging them. Secondly I need a hint what the best method is to apply geo coordinates to those maps then. The maps are old and landscape and places have changed, it maybe difficult to identify exact spots. So: are there any experiences or tips I could use?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Here’s another top excuse for not considering document management for you.
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AP - Online advertising company Eyeblaster Inc. is planning an initial public offering, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday, though it did not disclose an expected size or price range.
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ral writes "The human tongue can taste more than sweet, sour, salty, bitter and protein. Researchers have added fat to that list. Dr. Russell Keast, an exercise and nutrition sciences professor at Deakin University in Melbourne, told Slashfood, 'This makes logical sense. We have sweet to identify carbohydrate/sugars, and umami to identify protein/amino acids, so we could expect a taste to identify the other macronutrient: fat.' In the Deakin study, which appears in the latest issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, Dr. Keast and his team gave a group of 33 people fatty acids found in common foods, mixed in with nonfat milk to disguise the telltale fat texture. All 33 could detect the fatty acids to at least a small degree."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Latest problems linked to Toyota show the auto industry needs to fix the way it tests software, says company that specializes in software integrity.
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PC World - Twitter is finally being proactive about the large number of phishing scams that have plagued the micro-blogging service in the past year.
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An anonymous reader writes "'Alien' and 'Star Wars' art director Roger Christian was given £25,000 by George Lucas in 1979 to make a 25-minute medieval B-feature called 'Black Angel.' This spiritual tale of a knight on a strange quest was inspired by Christian's near-fatal fever when he fell ill in Mexico making 'Lucky Lady.' 'Black Angel' made a huge impression, not least because it shared the dark tone of 'Empire Strikes Back.' John Boorman showed it to the crew of 'Excalibur' as a template for how he wanted his film to look, and 'Black Angel' went on to influence films such as 'Dragonslayer' and 'Legend' throughout the 1980s and beyond. But it has not been seen by anyone since 'Empire' finished its theatrical run. Two weeks ago Roger Christian unearthed a print of a film that was thought lost forever, and in this interview he talks about 'Black Angel,' and provides the only picture from the film that has ever hit the Internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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European Parliament is coming out in opposition to a U.S.-backed intellectual property treaty accord, and is demanding the treaty's secret text become public.

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PC World - Internet service providers linked to the notorious Zeus botnet have been taken down, knocking out a third of the command-and-control servers that run the network of hacked machines.
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PC World - The Chinese government is likely behind recent cyberattacks on U.S. government Web sites and on U.S. companies in an apparent effort to quash criticism of the government there, an expert on U.S. and Chinese relations said Wednesday.
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HipToday writes "As posted on the OpenBSD Journal, OpenSSH 5.4 has been released: 'Some highlights of this release are the disabling of protocol 1 by default, certificate authentication, a new "netcat mode," many changes on the sftp front (both client and server) and a collection of assorted bugfixes. The new release can already be found on a large number of mirrors and of course on www.openssh.com.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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App stores aren't just for mobile phones anymore. Google has launched a store that lets Google Apps customers add third-party browser-based apps to their existing stack of Google's productivity tools.

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A man was stabbed with a meat thermometer in a movie theater in LA after complaining to a woman about talking on her cell phone during a Saturday night screening of Shutter Island....


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AP - In an industry first, a new gaming service will start allowing people to "stream" popular high-end games such as "Assassin's Creed II" over the Internet in June, using a mechanism similar to watching TV shows or listening to music online.
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The formidable triumvirate of Amazon, Dell, and Google is apparently poised to give iTunes the first serious run for its money just as the iPad is about to take Apple’s downloadable media megastore where no computer has gone before.

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Zordak writes "Amazon's infamous '1-click' patent has been in reexamination at the USPTO for almost four years. Patently-O now reports that 'the USPTO confirmed the patentability of original claims 6-10 and amended claims 1-5 and 11-26. The approved-of amendment adds the seeming trivial limitation that the one-click system operates as part of a 'shopping cart model.' Thus, to infringe the new version of the patent, an eCommerce retailer must use a shopping cart model (presumably non-1-click) alongside of the 1-click version. Because most retail eCommerce sites still use the shopping cart model, the added limitation appears to have no practical impact on the patent scope.'" Also covered at TechFlash.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google is actively negotiating with China over web censorship according to CEO Eric Schmidt.

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Author Seth Grahame-Smith launched a phenomenon with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, his clever twist on the Jane Austen classic. (Grahame-Smith's follow-up, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, was released this month.)

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AFP - A top Google executive told US lawmakers Wednesday that the Internet giant is prepared to leave China if Beijing says it must censor Web searches or quit the world's most populous online market.

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AP - A court in Azerbaijan has rejected the appeal of two bloggers who were sentenced to prison last year in a case that supporters say was politically motivated.
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In this weird video, a French comedienne transforms herself into Michael Jackson with just some mascara, lipstick, and scotch tape....


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AP - A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a ".xxx" domain name as an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers.

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AFP - An Azerbaijani court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by two bloggers jailed after satirizing the government with an Internet video that showed a donkey giving a press conference, their lawyer said.

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Even though people might be dying to get off the government's no-fly list, it includes names of the dead on purpose. Following the "Underwear Bomber" incident Christmas day the list has ballooned.

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People in seven European countries have expressed willingness to try "NoMix" toilets that keep crap and urine separate, allowing for more efficient waste processing and less seepage of urine-born pharmaceuticals into the water supply. The study was conducted with 2700 people in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, with 80 percent supporting the toilets. Even higher numbers were willing to use urine as fertilizer. The article doesn't discuss infrastructural issues, though: would you need a second black-water sewer for the yellow gold? NoMix toilets get thumbs-up in 7 European countries Previously:World's most flushingest toilet Trompe l'oeil ski-toilet mural Rampaging toilet terrorizes children Woman sat on toilet for two years Weed growing inside toilet pipe Airplane toilet gobbles a whole roll of TP Tiny still-lifes in toilet-paper tubes Toilet snake bites man's penis...


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Simmering tension spilled into public this week when Chief Justice John Roberts labeled the political atmosphere at the State of the Union address "very troubling."
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Barence writes "A debate that crops up time and again is whether it's better to have a dedicated keyboard on your smartphone or whether an on-screen keyboard with text correction is adequate. Some phones with screen-based keyboards have started to provide tactile feedback, either using an ultra-quick spin of their vibration alert or, like the BlackBerry Storm2, using clever piezo-electric technology to simulate the feel of a button press. But which system works best? PC Pro's Paul Ockendon gathered six of the most popular handsets around and put them through a timed typing test to see which proved quickest and most typo-free."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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In 1934, electrician and hobbyist Frank Skroback built the first airplane that could be driven on a road. Or the first car that could be flown. It has six wings and an overall width of seven feet, so it can fit inside a lane. The plane will be auctioned at Red Baron’s [...]
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Hear a track from Dark Night of the Soul, a collaboration between the late Sparklehorse leader, David Lynch and Danger Mouse. Also on the podcast: more music from The Ferocious Few, Flying Lotus and Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings.

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Moving away from high-budget blockbusters to scaled-down treasures built by small teams proves enticing to veteran videogame developers. Part of the appeal: A nostalgic remembrance of the early days of game development.

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Doctors told Belinda Waite of Bampton, UK that she had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. After she went into labor and three hours before her daughter was born, Waite was informed that she was instead pregnant: Miss Waite was staying with her partner Wyane Boyles, 28, when she unexpectedly went into labour. Their baby daughter Louise Boyles was [...]
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A new polymer can "remember" up to four different shapes, and revert to each one at different temperatures.
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Like UK studio Introversion's indie-rallying clarion call at the 2006 Independent Games Festival, the announcement of an indie-led investment strategy -- simply called the Indie Fund -- could be the next watershed moment for the future of independent gaming. Organized by a consortium of indie devs that've seen breakout success (like World of Goo creators 2D Boy and Braid developer Jon Blow), the fund aims to maintain control of the funding cycle -- keeping it out of the hands of publishers and traditional investors alike -- and keep indies in charge of their own destiny. Opening the 2010 Independent Games Summit, 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel took to the stage to explain why the fund was needed, with Braid artist David Hellman illustrating the strange over-complex steamwork behemoth of traditional business models that no longer serve the indies best: the full hi-res gallery continues below....


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52-year-old Anthony Digati was arrested for trying to extort $200,000 from an insurance firm by threatening to spam them with six million emails unless they paid up. Digati said he would use a spam service and his amazing talents as a "huge social networker" to drag the company "through the muddiest waters imaginable" and presumably unfriend everyone. He added that the price would increase to $3 million if they failed to pay up by Monday, according to federal authorities.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A massive effort to understand Gulf War Syndrome finds physiological differences in the brains of healthy veterans and those suffering from Gulf War Syndrome.

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(YouTube Link) The comedy duo BriTaNick created this trailer for a hypothetical movie that would be guaranteed to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. All of the dialogue is replaced with common movie tropes. via Urlesque | Official Website
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In the 1990s Bill Geerhart was an unemployed, not-so aspiring screenwriter in his 30s. To pass the time, he channeled his inner child, 10-year-old Billy, and started writing letters to famous and infamous people and institutions. These letters, written in pencil on elementary school ruled paper, asked funny but relevant questions to politicians, serial killers, movie stars, lobbyists, CEOs, and celebrity lawyers. Geerhart saved copies of his letters and the replies he got back. This week, Harper Collins published them in a book called Little Billy's Letters: An Incorrigible Inner Child's Correspondence with the Famous, Infamous, and Just Plain Bewildered. The publisher gave us permission to run some of our favorites. Enjoy! Buy Little Billy's Letters on Amazon | Visit Harper Collins site for Little Billy's Letters The National Hobo Association believes that "unlike tramps or bums, the hoboes are usually very resourceful, self reliant and appreciative people."...


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PC World - Google's new Apps Marketplace could give a significant boost to Web-based communication and collaboration software for businesses by creating a wide-ranging yet integrated virtual suite of heterogeneous cloud applications.
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The Inverse Graphing Calculator takes words and converts them into equations that would express them graphically: The Inverse Graphing Calculator (version beta-1) is like a backwards graphing calculator. Normally, you enter an equation into your calculator and then get a graph of the curve. The way the IGC works is, you type something you’d like as [...]
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Sex cells in chickens make some individuals look half male and half female.
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Funky chickens that are half male and half female reveal a different biological system for gender determination.

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Artist Chris Domino made this cuckoo clock inspired by the horror movie The Shining. Every hour on the hour, Jack Nicholson’s head pokes through the door and says “Here’s Johnny!” Then the Shelly Duval figure screams. Link via Nerdcore
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kang327 writes "As Java developers we are used to the familiar file-based user interface that is used by all of the major IDEs. A team at Brown University has developed an IDE for Java called Code Bubbles that makes a fairly radical departure from current IDEs — it is based on fragments instead of files. The idea is that you can see many different pieces of code at once. Fragments can form groups, have automatic layout assistance, wrap long lines based on syntax, and exist in a virtual workspace that you can pan. A video shows reading and editing code, opening different kinds of info such as Javadocs, bug reports and notes, annotating and sharing workspaces, and debugging with bubbles. They report on several user studies that show the system increases performance for the tasks studied, and also that professional developers were enthusiastic about using it. There is also a Beta that you can sign up for."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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As part of Converse's "Music Collection," they've issued a variety of Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers themed around The Clash, Blondie, Metallica, and Kurt Cobain. To be fair, they really should have made Cobain-branded Converse One Stars as those were the shoes he was wearing at his death. Now, I do dig The Clash sneakers seen here. But I am aware that Nike selling sneakers co-branded with the name/art of an iconic punk band is... problematic. That said, somebody from The Clash's camp (and Cobain's) had to approve these. Converse Music Collection...


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New York state's top police official announced Wednesday he was quitting, the second acting superintendent to step down in as many weeks.
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Cool looking and inexpensive, the Remix earbud from VMODA doesn't quite deliver solid sound quality.

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Art of the Title Sequence celebrates the world's greatest film/TV title sequences, those oft-experimental opening moments of a movie or TV show that really set the mood of what's to come. I've always been intrigued by this art form and it's fun to watch examples from around the globe. The site also features interviews with more than a dozen masters of the media. Art of the Title was mentioned in a New York Times article today about the South by Southwest Film Awards new Title Design Competition. Winners will be announced at the festival next week. According to the NYT, "The modern approach to film titles crystallized, more or less, in 1955 with “The Man With the Golden Arm.” It opened with a kind of jazz ballet in which dancing white lines, over music by Elmer Bernstein, eventually tightened into the contorted arm of a drug addict. From the NYT: The sequence was designed by Saul Bass, who tossed aside a more mechanical approach that had largely prevailed in Hollywood to create story-telling openings for films like “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and, later, “Goodfellas” and “The Age of Innocence.” (Among the entries at South by Southwest, “Cigarette Girl,” an independent film about a world in which smoking restrictions have murderous consequences, is one that recalls the Bass oeuvre: guns, cigarettes and people flicker between the real and the abstract, over a cool-toned soundtrack.) Before his death in 1996, Bass had been nominated for Oscars three times, winning once, for his short films. But his work on the titles fell through the cracks of a film industry awards system that has given far more recognition to directors "New Honor for the Designs That Get Movies Moving" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)...


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The band OK Go, blogged many a time here for their wonderful music videos and savvy take on the state of the music biz, is launching its own record label. From okgo.com: The band has left the EMI family of corporations to form their own enterprise, a homemade upstart called Paracadute."...


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Microprocessor company ARM says there will be more than 50 new tablets launching worldwide to compete with the iPad.

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SkinnyGuy writes "The only thing more remarkable than NewEgg shipping fake Core i7 CPUs to customers is getting your hands on one and checking it out. Apparently there are only a couple hundred of these things in existence and Gearlog somehow managed to get and unbox one. The images are fascinating."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Strange name. Sexy bike. And it's headed for the racetrack.

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As much as 16 percent of the U.S. population between the ages of 14 and 49 has genital herpes, according to a government study released Tuesday.
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andylim writes "Separate teams at Oxford university and Zentium, a South Korean company, are working on next-gen augmented reality solutions, which make it possible to fuse real and 3D computer-generated visuals on the fly using mobile phones. The team at Oxford university has named its solution Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) and it has licensed its technology to QderoPateo LLC, which has ambitious plans to grow the mobile augmented reality market and create an augmented reality search and gaming engine running for its 'Ouidoo' smart phone. Zentium's solution is called D-Track and is being used to develop the first markerless mobile augmented reality pet, called iKat. D-Track's mapping technology is very similar to PTAM and allows your phone to recognise the space in front of the camera and create an appropriate space for an augmented reality object or pet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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We’re going to be running a FUN contest over on our Facebook page this coming Friday! You won’t find it here on the blog, just on the Facebook page. So if you haven’t yet, please become a Neatoramanaut Fan now: www.Facebook.com/neatoramanauts. The contest will have something to do with our pals, nerdfighters John and Hank [...]
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"Bicycle" is now an option for mode of transport in Google maps. Ostensibly, the directions given will help you avoid particularly nasty car traffic and particularly disheartening elevation changes, though Treehugger found some kinks in that when they tried to plot a route across San Francisco. There's not enough uphill slogs in Minneapolis (and I don't know St. Paul well enough) to get you a real solid second opinion from the Twin Cities. But it was smart enough to not send theoretical me biking straight up the feels-like-45-degree incline of 14th street when asked for directions to the University of Kansas journalism school (see above). It also shows dedicated bike trails and bike lanes, to help plan the trip. How's this work for your hometown?...


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Drudge Website Accused of Hosting Malware
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A Texas man who became enraged when a flight attendant refused to serve him alcohol and spent part of a flight locked in the lavatory has pleaded guilty to interfering with an airline flight crew.
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The UK Metro is reporting on a wedding ceremony held for a 28-year old Korean man and his full-sized body pillow girlfriend. The pillow cover supposedly has an image of a character named Fate Testarossa from the anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. The story is reminiscent of a New York Times Magazine piece I wrote last year; the Metro article also mentions a story we originally posted on Boing Boing in November about a guy who married a character in his Nintendo DS dating sim. Previously:Love in 2D Man to marry his video game girlfriend this Sunday Video: man in Japan weds anime game character Woman dines with cardboard cutout man in San Francisco My weekend with a cardboard version of my boyfriend...


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"A $6,000 insulin pump with an on-board computer chip is not alluring. Neither is the white mesh adhesive patch on my naked abdomen or the length of nylon tubing that connects the patch to the pump. There is only illness, and there is no way to make that sexy. After several years as a medical device wearer, I know." Those are the opening sentences of "Tethered to the Body," an essay the writer and teacher Jane Kokernak wrote about her adjustment to wearing an insulin pump and its affect on her sense of sexual self. It connects disability and sexuality in novel and moving ways (it also introduced me to the term "disability erotica"). The essay, which originally appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, has been reprinted in A Sweet Life, a site for the "healthy diabetic." The story is close to me for many reasons. I'm diabetic, too, although I am not insulin-dependent, and, more important, Jane is my wife, so the sex she's talking about in the essay is with, well, me. You may wish to consider my recommendation with that in mind, but I guarantee you that this will be the only piece you ever read in which the two tags are "Insulin Pump" and "Sex."...


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Michelle Bese of Salida, Colorado was sitting at the table with her five-year-old while her other child slept in another room. One her five dogs came in through the dog door and was followed by a cougar! Bese grabbed her son and hid in the bedroom where the two-year-old was and called 911. Sheriff’s deputies [...]
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In the opening sequence of the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker, a soldier wears an explosive ordnance disposal (OED) suit pretty close to the spot where a bomb goes off. Can a soldier survive such an incident? Dvice contacted the manufacturer of the suit to get the lowdown on how it protects a soldier [...]
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This spring, the Air Force was preparing for a groundbreaking test of the X-51 WaveRider, a hypersonic cruise missile that would reach speeds of up to Mach 6. But it looks like the WaveRider’s debut flight will have to wait while some technical issues are addressed.

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At each reader meetup we like to offer an exclusive "Pop Candy cocktail," or a beverage that celebrates the spirit of the blog.

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The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) were volunteers who learned to fly during World War II to supplement the US military, which was suffering from a shortage of pilots. A few more than 1,100 young women, all civilian volunteers, flew almost every type of military aircraft — including the B-26 and B-29 bombers — as part [...]
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God is involved in our everyday lives, most Americans believe.
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Chuck Norris' real name? Carlos Ray Norris. He was born in Ryan Oklahoma.

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After last week's disastrous news that two LibDem Lords had introduced a web-censorship amendment to the Labour Digital Economy Bill, a group of LibDems have pulled together a pro-net-freedom emergency motion that's being taken to this weekend's party conference in Birmingham. If you're a LibDem or know LibDems headed to the conference this weekend, please urge support for this motion: help the LibDems get on the right side of the net-freedom debate! We condemn a) web-blocking and disconnecting internet connections b) the threat to the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals and businesses from the monitoring of their internet activity, the potential blocking of their websites and the potential termination of their internet connections. c) the Digital Economy Bill for focusing on illegal filesharing rather than on nurturing creativity and innovative business models. We support a) the principle of net neutrality, through which the freedom of connection with any application to any party is guaranteed, except to address security threats or due to unexpected network congestion. b) the rights of creators and performers to be rewarded for their work in a way that is fair, proportionate and appropriate to the medium. Conference therefore opposes excessive regulatory attempts to monitor, control and limit internet access or internet publication, whether at local, national, European or global level. LibDems Save the Net (Thanks, Obhi!) Previously:LibDem Lords seek to ban web-lockers (YouSendIt, etc) in the UK ... Brits: tell the LibDem Peers not to bring web-censorship to ... Guardian column on LibDem proposal to block web-lockers LibDem candidates come out against anti-web-locker proposal ... Last week's web-censorship proposal shows that supporters of every ......


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The European Parliament resoundingly voted against the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), in a resounding 663 to 13 tally. The parliamentarians defied the EU executive and threatened to take the issue to the European Court of Justice if the EU doesn't reject ACTA's provisions on disconnection for infringement and other enforcement provisions. A strong majority of MEPs (663 against and 13 in favour) today voted against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online. In addition, the Parliament's decision today states that MEPs will go to the Court of Justice if the EU does not reject ACTA rules, including cutting off users from the Internet "gradually" if caught stealing content. Though MEPs cannot participate in the ACTA talks, without the consent of the European Parliament, EU negotiators will have to go back to the drawing board and come up with a compromise. Parliament threatens court action on anti-piracy treaty Previously:EU Data Protection czar comes out against ACTA; EU analysis of ... Ask your MEPs to support anti-ACTA motion ACTA leak: Now we know who is against transparency - USA, Korea ... Europeans: finally a chance to ask your reps to oppose ACTA ... Biggest-ever ACTA leak: secret copyright treaty dirty laundry ... Danish activists demand to know why their governments block ACTA ... Europeans: finally a chance to ask your reps to oppose ACTA ... Leaked secret EU-Canada copyright agreement - EU screws Canada ......


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The sign on the left is familiar to Americans, but other countries think it is a horrible design, preferring the green running man on the right or a variation of it. Julia Turner of Slate has an in-depth article on the 25-year international fight over exit signs. It's one of a terrific six-part series about sign history and design. Fans of Ota's running man point to two key advantages: It's a pictogram, and it's green. The sign's wordlessness means it can be understood even by people who don't speak the local language. And the green color, they argue, just makes sense. Green is the color of safety, a color that means go the world over. Red, on the other hand, most often means danger, alert, halt, please don't touch. Why confuse panicked evacuees with a sign that means right this way in a color that means stop? International designers tend to think our system is illogical and consider our rejection of the running man to be as dumb as our refusal to adopt that other sensible international norm, the metric system. Are the running-man advocates right? This battle over the exit sign has been brewing for 25 years now, and the little green guy is slowly making inroads in the States. But to understand whether he should triumph, we must first understand America's skepticism toward pictograms and symbols, which have long been more popular in the rest of the world than they are here. The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man: The international war over exit signs...


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Why, really, did the 3D movie trend start? Does anybody remember, before the trend began, thinking 'You know the problem with movies? They’re too two-dimensional?' Anyway, some work, and some don't and some would be bad ideas. Here are 10 that should never be attempted.

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LA Times health blog: Only 32% of medication studies compare the drug in question to already available treatments, rather than just placebo. And only 11% compared the drugs to non-pharma based treatments, like surgery or lifestyle changes. For evidence-based medicine (let alone cheaper healthcare) to work, stuff like this has gotta get fixed. (Via Steve Silberman)...


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Corey Haim, star of "The Lost Boys," is dead at 38. [AP]...


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Young workers called GenMe are more likely than their elders to value leisure over work and to place a premium on rewards such as higher salaries and status.
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(YouTube link) Teddy bears attempt to cross a busy street. Another gem from the incomprehensible but fertile mind of Cyriak. Link to artist’s website. -via Arbroath
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Someone has taken scenes from the Battlestar Galactica science fiction series and used these to recreate the music video for the song Sabotage by Beastie Boys. You can also watch both videos side by side at YouTube Doubler. Link [YouTube] – via Nerdcore
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Google's announcement that it intends to build and test super fast fiber-optic broadband networks in a few communities around the US has a few communities in the US pulling out all the stops to be selected with some attention-getting stunts that scream to the search giant "Pick me! Pick ME!"

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Neuroscientists hope to harness computing power to help map millions of miles of "wiring" that connects brain cells.
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Another one of our '80s idols is gone. This morning Corey Haim was found dead of an apparent accidental overdose. The LAPD has confirmed the reports and says Haim's mother was with the actor at the time.

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The Pop Five is a series of Pop Candy readers' top five lists. Today's contribution comes from Josh (hellsbells53):

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Over the past seven years, I've had the outlandishly talented country blues singer and guitarist Charley Patton looking over me. (Don't know Charley Patton? Hear him here and then buy what may be the greatest CD box set ever.) For many years, a photo of Patton was as hard to come by as a pic of Robert Johnson, and -- as with Johnson -- the legitimacy of the image has been challenged. For our purposes today, let's assume that this is Patton. I draw your attention to his left hand, how it is posed over the frets like crab legs. Patton's style has always felt a bit eccentric compared to other country blues purveyors, and I wonder whether he might have fingered the frets in an unusual way, too. Now I know there are plenty of other guitarists from the 1920s and 1930s who have posed in similar ways, but I wonder: does this photo reveal something about Patton's style. I know there are a lot of guitarists here (hey, the guy who let me in here builds 'em), so I'm eager to hear any theories, no matter how dubious. And to learn more about the fellow in the photograph, see R. Crumb's comix history of Patton. (The Patton pic above belongs to Blues Images.)...


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Hey, guys -- you're looking lovely today, despite staying up so late debating that final shot on Lost. (The conversation rages on right here.)

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In 1556, a man calling himself ‘Martin Guerre’ had returned to his home village after disappearing without a trace for several years. He lived with Guerre’s wife and son for three years. But he was not Guerre. On September 16, 1560, in the small French village of Artigat in the foothills of the Pyrenees, an unusually large [...]
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There has been a rash of corporate scandals and greed over the past decade, but it is hardly new.  Here are a few financial scandals that made news long before Enron and Worldcom. Back in 1864, Credit Mobilier was a construction company started by executives of Union Pacific Railroad. They then had Union Pacific make [...]
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With a click of a mouse, cyclists can get the quickest, and flattest, route between Point A and Point B.

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