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Things that make me go Hmmm . . .
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About Things that make me go Hmmmm - Subscribe to this Feed Every once in a while something catches my eye, and just has to be shared
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India makes history, launches Tricolour on moon
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India marked its presence on Moon tonight to be only the fourth nation to scale this historic milestone after a Moon Impact Probe
with the national tri-colour painted successfully landed on the lunar surface after being detached from unmanned spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.
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Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction
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In this century a number of events could extinguish humanity. The probability of these events may be very low, but the expected value of preventing them could be high, as it represents the value of all future human lives. We review the challenges to studying human extinction risks and, by way of example, estimate the cost effectiveness of preventing extinction-level asteroid impacts.
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Online Carpooling Service Fined For Unregulated Transportation
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TechCrunch points us to the news that the Ontario transportation board has sided with the bus company and fined PickupPal. It's also established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service -- including no crossing of municipal boundaries -- meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits.
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Controllers Cheer as Data Arrive from NASA’s Spirit Rover
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PASADENA, Calif., (NASA) — NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of “She’s talking!” among the rover team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Ancient Rome goes online with Google Earth
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Google Earth has added to its software a 3-D simulation that painstakingly reconstructs nearly 7,000 buildings of ancient Rome, including the Colosseum, the Forum and the Circus Maximus, officials said Wednesday.
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Net Neutrality Advocates In Charge Of Obama Team Review of FCC
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Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC.- Susan Crawford - Kevin Werbach
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Ruggedised, weaponised' raygun modules now on sale - FIRESTRIKE™:
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US killtech behemoth Northrop Grumman has has said that it is ready to take orders for the "world's first ruggedised, weaponised high energy solid state laser designed for battlefield applications". The raygun module is dubbed FIRESTRIKE™.
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Crisis Spreads to Tech Sector as Sun to Cut Work Force
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Before the stock market opened Friday, Sun disclosed that it would lay off 5,000 to 6,000 workers, or 15 percent to 18 percent of its work force.
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Has new physics been found at the ageing Tevatron?
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Last week, physicists announced that the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, has produced particles that they are unable to explain. Could it be a sign of new physics?
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Large Hadron Collider out of action until spring
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The huge Large Hadron Collider, built to simulate the conditions at the very start of the universe, will not restart until spring 2009,
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Violent video games linked to child aggression
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About 90 percent of U.S. kids ages 8 to 16 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing so (more if you're a boy). Now a new study suggests virtual violence in these games may make kids more aggressive in real life.
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Wirelessly, Home Security Becomes a D.I.Y. Project
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pre-wired home security installations by alarm companies are on the way out. Thanks to wireless window and door sensors and motion detectors, installing and maintaining one's own security system is becoming a do-it-yourself project - InGrid LaserShield-
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Plasma Engine for Spacecraft
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The helicon first stage of the VX-200 VASIMR plasma rocket prototype has achieved its full power rating of 30 kW
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Ultramassive: as big as it gets
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A black hole can consume anything in its path. These monsters can become huge — but perhaps only so huge.
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NASA Solar System Exploration
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Check out all the missions
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Financial Fiasco
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Soon people will learn that it is dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check.
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Scientists selected for new eye on the universe
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SOFIA is a highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft that carries a 98-inch (2.5-meter) diameter airborne infrared telescope.
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'Digital Dark Age' may doom some data
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What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer’s hard drive?
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Virtual worlds
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A virtual world is a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. These avatars are usually depicted as textual, two-dimensional, or three-dimensional graphical representations,
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Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web
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Today's internet is largely an outgrowth of the much-reviled Digital Millennium Copyright Act that lawmakers passed in 1998
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Cellphone Banking Helping To Fight Poverty In India
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Old Coots Alert !! Sometimes we are lucky to see the start of something really new on the face of the planet. In India they are using technology to change the way things work for everyone in a fundimental way; Video mChek |
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Are you living in a "Constitution Free" Zone
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Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
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Bill Gates’ mysterious new company
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Just months after his Microsoft farewell, Bill Gates is quietly creating a new company — complete with high-tech office space, a cryptic name and even its own trademark. C3
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Team records 'music' from stars
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Scientists have recorded the sound of three stars similar to our Sun using France's Corot space telescope. Click and Listen
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Google Founders buy Fighter
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A company controlled by Google’s top executives, including its billionaire founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, appears to have added a fighter jet
to its well-equipped fleet, with in air refueling it can reach Microsoft:
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Open Source Hardware
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Open source hardware refers to computer and electronic hardware that is designed in the same fashion as free and open-source software.
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Labor's web gag 'worse than Iran'
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The Federal Government is attempting to silence critics of its controversial plan to censor the interne
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SideShow Devices
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Linux DeviceInexpensive USB Display with Sideshow support displays stocks, weather and much more.- Windows Site -
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Cloud computing may draw government action
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Cloud computing will soon become an area of hot debate in Washington, D.C., with policy makers debating issues such as the privacy and security of data in the cloud - What is Cloud Computing
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Integrated circuit is 50 years old today
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If it wasn’t for the invention of the integrated circuit, then computers today would probably be housed in huge mahogany cabinets with a baffling array of polished, brass valves
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Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) - Think about Joining
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From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense
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Jedi Knights course offered by Queen's University Belfast
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A university is offering a course to teach students Jedi Knights communication skills and personal development.
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Think Geek
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Great Geek Toys
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China sets dates for space launch
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China will launch its third manned space mission in late September
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Biologists on the Verge of Creating New Form of Life
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It's not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.
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Water Bears', first animal to survive in space
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Tiny invertebrates called 'water bears' can survive in the vacuum of space, a European Space Agency experiment has shown.
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Monogamy gene found in people
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What if you could tell whether a man is husband material just by peering at his genes?
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Laboring longer a growing trend for Americans
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Americans are changing the game plan for retirement, with millions laboring right past the traditional retirement age and working into their late 60s and beyond.
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Next Extinction Coming Soon?
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Scientists from the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology have developed a model showing that our solar system goes through the plane of the galaxy every 35-40 million years, coinciding with mass life extinctions on Earth.
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Hook it to my Veins
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Can Videogaming be an Addiction?
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Report: ISS Changes Orbit To Avoid Russian Debris
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Crewmembers onboard the International Space Station had to take the unusual step this week of firing booster rockets to lower the station's orbit, in order to avoid a chunk of space debris that may have come within a mile of the orbital platform.
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Now it's the citizen snoopers: Councils recruit unpaid volunteers to spy on their neighbours
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Little Brother is watching you
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Fixing a fine data mess
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Recently the uber sysop in San Francisco caused problems when he refused to disclose system passwords. A more typical problem occurs when a KeyMan moves on to a better job.
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IT staff would steal secrets if laid off
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Most IT staff would steal sensitive company information, including CEO's passwords and customer details, if they were laid off, according to a new survey from Cyber-Ark.
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Bitten by the Red Hat Perl bug
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Is it realistic to expect stem-to-stern application platform support from any one vendor?
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Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Physics Research
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Alcatel-Lucent, the parent company of Bell Labs, is pulling out of basic science, material physics and semiconductor research and will instead be focusing on more immediately marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.
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In Texas School, Teachers Carry Books and Guns
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Barely 100 students attend classes at Harrold, a tiny town in north-central Texas. But the school board's decision to allow teachers to carry concealed weapons has drawn national attention.
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Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits
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The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
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Introducing Ubiquity
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Today we’re announcing the launch of Ubiquity, a Mozilla Labs experiment into connecting the Web with language in an attempt to find new user interfaces that could make it possible for everyone to do common Web tasks more quickly and easily.
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Stealing the Internet
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An Internet Scale Man-In-The-Middle Attack
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Tiny object points to remote solar system reservoir
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Possible comet may hail from inner region of the Oort Cloud, a proposed comet reservoir
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The Stuff of Life on Titan
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Titan, the sixth and largest moon of the planet Saturn, is thought to be made largely of ice.
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A walk through mathematics!
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Nine chapters, two hours of maths, that take you gradually up to the fourth dimension. Mathematical vertigo guaranteed!
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Photo Stamps
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Stumped for a gift for the grandkids, or someone special, check out order Photo Stamps from the USPS on line
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Thinking outside the square finds light in oven
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She has developed a simple, cheap way of producing solar cells in a pizza oven that could eventually bring power and light to the 2 billion people in the world who lack electricity.
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Home Fusion
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Getting bored after retirement ? Now you can build your own fusion plant at home.
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Intel Moves to Free Gadgets of Their Recharging Cords
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SAN FRANCISCO — Intel has made progress in a technology that could lead to the wireless recharging of gadgets and the end of the power-cord spaghetti behind electronic devices.
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Cassini Pinpoints Source of Jets on Saturn's Moon Enceladus
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In a feat of interplanetary sharpshooting, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the surface of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus.
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Ubuntu ready to compete wit Windows for Enterprise Desktop
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At the LinuxWorld expo in San Francisco, analyst Jay Lyman of the 451 Group spoke about the potential for enterprise adoption of Ubuntu and the impact that community-driven Linux distributions will have on the market.
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Do subatomic particles have free will?
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If we have free will, so do subatomic particles, mathematicians claim to prove.
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Low Cost Solar Power
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Before First Solar's manufacturing innovations, cadmium-telluride photovoltaic cells were the size of postage stamps; now the company makes them as big as window panes
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