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Robotics

Submission + - Robots that bounce in bed (nytimes.com)

nem75 writes: "The NY Times has a review of British AI researcher David Levy's book "Love and Sex with Robots". He claims that within a span of about 50 years the day will come, when people could actually fall in love with life-like robots and want to live with them instead of a human mate. While this may seem far fetched at first, he has some pretty interesting views on this. Like the sexual part being the easyest thing, what with brothels exclusively offering life-like sex dolls already existing in Japan and South Korea. The case he builds goes much further though, and certainly provides food for thought."
Toys

Submission + - How to turn a Mini Maglite into a powerful laser (lifehacker.com) 3

Lucas123 writes: "Using the laser from a DVD burner, this instructional video shows you how to create a hand-held laser that is powerful enough to light a match and pop a balloon. There's some soldering involved and the Maglite's bulb housing needs to be drilled out to fit the new laser diode, but with some basic skill, most people could do this. Just plain cool."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Replacing atime With relatime in the Kernel (kerneltrap.org)

eldavojohn writes: "Our friend Jeremy at the Kernal Trap has has dug up some interesting criticism of atime from god himself, Linus Torvalds. As Linus submitted patches to improve relatime he noted: "I cannot over-emphasize how much of a deal it is in practice. Atime updates are by far the biggest IO performance deficiency that Linux has today. Getting rid of atime updates would give us more everyday Linux performance than all the pagecache speedups of the past 10 years, _combined_." And later severely beat atime about the head with a pointed stick: "It's also perhaps the most stupid Unix design idea of all times. Unix is really nice and well done, but think about this a bit: 'For every file that is read from the disk, lets do a ... write to the disk! And, for every file that is already cached and which we read from the cache ... do a write to the disk!" Well, I guess I can expect my Linux machine to become a little bit faster!"
Operating Systems

Submission + - A CIO's View of Ubuntu (cio.com)

onehitwonder writes: "Well-known CIO John Halamka has rigorously tested six different operating systems over the course of a year in an effort to find a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows on his laptop and his company's computers. CIO.com reported his experiences in Windows vs. Linux vs. OS X and in a follow-up article on SUSE. In Windows vs. Linux vs. OS X: CIO John Halamka Tests Ubuntu, the CIO explains how Ubuntu stacks up against Novell SUSE 10, RHEL, Fedora, XP and Mac OS X, in a life-and-death business environment. He also shares his individual and enterprise desktop OS plans moving forward. Things are not going to be the same for him or his company: SUSE and Ubuntu have dealt Windows a blow."

Feed Top 10 Internet Crimes of 2006 (schneier.com)

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center and reported in U.S. News and World Report, auction fraud and non-delivery of items purchased are far and away the most common Internet crimes. Identity theft is way down near the bottom. Although...
Programming

Submission + - The Virtues of a Monoculture: Why Microsoft Wins

blackbearnh writes: "Why does Microsoft win the development environment war so often, when we all know it's a lifetime lock-in to Windows? Perhaps it's because the open source community offers too much choice, as this blog on the O'Reilly ONLamp site suggests. From the blog:

Microsoft offers the certainty of no choices. Choice isn't always good, and the open source community sometimes offers far too many ways to skin the same cat, choices that are born more out of pride, ego or stubbornness than a genuine need for two different paths. I won't point fingers, everyone knows examples.
"
Privacy

Journal Journal: amerika uber alles

The Bush administration asked Congress on Friday to allow monitoring of more foreigners in the United States during intelligence investigations. The plan is among several proposed changes, which have been in the works for more than a year, that go to the heart of a major U.S. surveillance law.
The administration says the changes are intended to help the government deal with national security threats better by updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to bring it into line with rap
Books

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Dies At 84 380

At least twenty-two readers took the trouble to make sure we knew that Kurt Vonnegut has died at 84. From the Times obituary: "Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' 'Cat's Cradle' and 'God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater' caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan... Mr. Vonnegut suffered irreversible brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago, according to his wife, Jill Krementz." Reader SPK adds: "He will be remembered not only as a great writer, but also as a staunch civil libertarian (long-term member of the ACLU) and as a 'mainstream/literary' author who integrated science fiction concepts into his writing. So it goes."
Desktops (Apple)

Submission + - Hackers Turn $300 Apple TV into Cheapest Max

Anonymous Coward writes: "Apple TV is dead, long live the Mac Nano. Sort of.

Just two weeks after Apple released its streaming media box to the public, hackers successfully installed OS X, Apple's desktop operating system, on the $300 device, making it the cheapest PC Cupertino has ever sold.

"The breakthrough is done, OS X runs on Apple TV!" wrote "Semthex," the anonymous hacker responsible for the mod, at his website. "Now we got (the) low-budget Mac we ever wanted."

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2007/04/appl etvhacks_0406"
It's funny.  Laugh.

Submission + - Top 21 Tech Flops

PetManimal writes: "Whatever happened to Digital Audio Tape? Or Circuit City's DIVX program? Or IBM's PCjr. and the PS/1? Computerworld's list of 21 biggest tech flops is an amusing trip down the memory lane of tech failures. Some are obvious (Apple Newton), while others are obscure (Warner Communications' QUBE). Strangely, Y2K didn't make the list."

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