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Rays sign Burrell (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Pat Burrell's last swing of the bat in 2008 was a double against Tampa Bay in Game 5 of the World Series. Now, his first swing of the bat in 2009 will be as a member of those very same Rays.
Wii Sports Became #1 Selling Game of All Time! Surpasses SMB (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Wii Sports has now passed sales of Super Mario Bros. (NES), making it the top selling console game of all time!
Which Summer Movies Did The Writers' Strike Hit Hardest? (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Last year, Hollywood's writers went on strike for 14 weeks, and genre television took tremendous damage as a result. But movies didn't emerge unscathed, either ? we just won't see the fallout until this year. So how does this affect the movies you care about? Here's a rundown.
Update: Twitter blames celebrity hack on 'individual' (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez wasn't really high on crack this morning, and the reason his Twitter feed said so wasn't the phishing scam that's been going around--it was a lone hacker, the microblogging service said later on Monday.
The day the music died...piano-player roll production ends (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
The remark scribbled at the end of the production sheet said simply, ?End of era.?It was written shortly after the last piano roll came off the assembly line at QRS Music Technologies, 1026 Niagara St., at noon Wednesday.
The Show Must Go On? Not If It's Public Access (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
For decades, public access programming on cable television has provided a virtually free forum for community activists and aspiring entertainers, for preening star wannabes as well as serious-minded political watchdogs. But in Los Angeles and across California that forum began crumbling last week.
The Sexiest Magazine Covers of 2008 (PICS) (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but some of these covers feel like they're worth a million bucks. Check out our picks for the hottest headliners of the year.
Spread the debt around (COMIC) (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
It's the American way!
Seagate First To Demo USB 3.0 (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Seagate has announced that it will showing off "the world's first consumer product application of USB 3.0" at this year's CES.
Rumor: New Mac Mini Stuffed With Up to 1TB Storage (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
More evidence that the new Mac minis are at least partly geared toward the cheap server market: SeeFile dropped their press release pimping support of the "new Apple Mac Mini hardware" just a little early. They specifically mention a complete bundled system with a "Mac mini server with 1 terabyte of storage."
Minnesota Canvassing Board Certifies Franken Win (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
The Minnesota State Canvassing Board on Monday certified the results of the recount of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's fight to retain his seat against Democrat Al Franken. The results showed Franken with a 225-vote lead. Coleman's attorney, Tony Trimble, said shortly after the ruling that the campaign will officially file a lawsuit.
Macworld 2009: The Gingerbread Mac [Gallery] (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Check out this gingerbread Mac, created by a festive fanboy known only as minorbug. It stands 7-8 inches tall and features chocolate icons, ports, and other lovely little iced details, as you can see in these pictures.
Kotaku's 2008 Games of the Year Awards (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
This year we decided to try something different with our Game of the Year awards: The GOTYS. We came up with categories that exemplify the areas of gaming that we think should be highlighted. Instead of awards meant to serve as a shopping list for gamers, we hope to create something that pinpoints what we think was best in gaming for the year.
Habitable Exoplanets Could be Common in Our Galaxy (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
By observing the remains of smashed up asteroids around dead stars, astronomers were able to deduce their chemical composition. They found that the dust of many chewed-up asteroids resembles the materials inside Earth and the other small, rocky inner planets of our solar system.
Guantánamo May Close, But in Afghanistan Another Gitmo Grows (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
The incoming Obama Administration says it wants to shut down the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. But even if Guantánamo closes, it won't end the controversial U.S. practice of jailing suspected al Qaeda militants and other terrorists indefinitely.
France Bans Advertising on Public TV During Primetime (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
French viewers have for the first time watched prime-time television without advert breaks, as President Nicolas Sarkozy's media reforms got under way. Advertising is now banned on French public television between 2000 and 0600. It will be phased out by 2011.
First! 14-Year-Old Already in Line for Macworld '09 Keynote (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
It wouldn't be the eve of a Macworld Expo keynote if there wasn't already some crazy person waiting in line to be first into the hall. This year, that crazy person is already there, and has been there for (as of this writing) more than 10 hours.
Fake Facebook Profile Angers Guyana President (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
There are hundreds of George Bushes, scores of Fidel Castros, and dozens of Hugo Chávezes, all with prank profiles on the social networking website Facebook, but when someone tried to pass him or herself off as the president of Guyana the real president didn't see the funny side.
Drunk Judge Hits Police Car, Gets Slap On Wrist (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
In a proceeding that took less than 15 minutes, a judge who police say was drunk when she drove into a parked state police cruiser -- and who allegedly made racist remarks after the collision -- was accepted into an alcohol education program. Which, if successfully completed, could lead to the erasure of the charges against her in a year.
China Launches Crackdown on Internet Pornography (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
China launched a major crackdown on Internet pornography Monday targeting popular online portals and major search engines such as Google.
Browser Add-On Makes Flickr's Galleries Faster (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Browser add-on Flickr Gallery Plus adds extended functionality to Flickr's set view, allowing users to click through to see full versions of each shot without having to reload the page. Once installed it will go out and pre-fetch the larger sized version of each shot, making big sets a cinch to speed through.
Armadillo Lizard (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Abstruse Goose: Lie of Omission (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
A little long but it will make you chuckle.
A new era for Macworld Expo (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Without Steve Jobs delivering his trademark keynote address, Macworld Expo won't likely make the same splash. But the show goes on, for now at least. A CNET article by CNET News.com Staff, Staff Writer, CNET News. Published on January 5, 2009 9:00 AM PST.
True or False? The EPA Wants to Tax Cows (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
In an early move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from farms, was the EPA angling to tax livestock?
Today (January 5th) Is The Most Stressful Day Of The Year (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Today is the most stressful day of the year, according to researchers. A combination of the cold weather, economic gloom and end to Christmas festivities will leave workers battling the January blues.
Researchers: Detox Products Don't Work, Not Worth Money (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
British researchers working for the nonprofit Sense About Science surveyed face creams, foods, beverages, foot pads and other products claiming to offer their users a detox experience.
Regulators probed Madoff eight times over 16 years: report (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
(Reuters) - Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was examined at least eight times in 16 years by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulators, who often came armed with suspicions, the Wall Street Journal said. SEC...
New Findings Shed Light On Why Smokers Struggle To Quit (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Just seeing someone smoke can trigger smokers to abandon their nascent efforts to kick the habit, according to new research conducted at Duke University Medical Center.
Mininova's Torrent Downloads Double to 7 Billion in a Year (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
The BitTorrent popularity surge is still underway, with more users discovering that it?s the fastest way to transfer large files online. One of the most frequently visited torrent sites, Mininova, has seen the number of torrent downloads double from 3.5 billion to 7 billion during 2008, and this download rate is still increasing.
Massachusetts Gone To Pot? Cops Won't Ticket Marijuana Users (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Police departments across the state of Massachusetts reportedly will not ticket people in possession of marijuana, even if they are caught smoking it. Officials say a new law that decriminalizes having small amounts of "pot" makes it impossible to enforce penalties because it is poorly written. "We're just basically not enforcing it right now,"
John Travolta parks a Boeing 707 in his driveway (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Icy days and nights (PICS) (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Today is the opening day of the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival, in Harbin, China. The festival lasts for one month, and features large ice and snow sculptures, ice lanterns, swimming in the icy Songhua River and more.
Grateful no longer, the Dead will tour - Los Angeles Times (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Original band members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have toured sporadically since the 1995 death of guitarist Jerry Garcia. They told Rolling Stone magazine in November that they've worked out their differences, aided by a successful October benefit concert for Obama. The group now just calls itself the Dead.
Economy Sucks But Sex Is Booming! (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
THOSE strapped for cash may be spending less on restaurants and entertainment during a downturn, but not necessarily on the quality of their sex lives.
DRIVE FOR 5 COMPLETE! CANADA BEATS SWEDEN FOR GOLD 5-1! (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Lots of videos are coming! The Markstrom dives, the awful bite by Andersson, the awesome goals, the celebration, and of course a text summary. YEAHHHHH!
Best Forum Ever: 1090 topics, 2264 posts, 1 user (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
I guess I do believe in magic.
All Congress Members to Receive $4,700 Raise This Week (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Despite the lousy economy, high unemployment and plummeting housing prices, U.S. congressional members get a $4,700 pay raise this week.
'NY Times' Breaks the Page-One Ad Barrier (digg.com: Stories / Popular)
Notice something unusual about this morning's copy of The New York Times? It features the paper's first-ever page-one display ad -- a promo for CBS whose copy playfully reads "Front Page News."
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard | The Onion - America's Finest News ...
Joomla Developer's Toolbox | Developer's Toolbox | Smashing Magazine (Delicious popular)
100 Free DIY Legal Resources on the Web by e-Justice Blog (Delicious popular)
Coderholic » Blog Archive » 25 Free Computer Science Books (Delicious popular)
tiltshiftmaker.com - Transform your photos into tilt-shift miniatures (Delicious popular)
NZ File-Sharers, Remixers Guilty Upon Accusation (Slashdot)
An anonymous reader writes "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation. The ISPs are up in arms and now artists are taking a stand for fair copyright."
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A Look Back At Kurzweil's Predictions For 2009 (Slashdot)
marciot writes "It's interesting to look back at Ray Kurzweil's predictions for 2009 from a decade ago. He was dead on in predicting the ubiquity of portable computers, wireless, the emergency of digital objects, and the rise of privacy concerns. He was a little optimistic in certain areas, predicting the demise of rotating storage and the ubiquity of digital paper a bit earlier than it appears it will actually happen. On the topic of human-computer speech interfaces, though, he seems to be way off." And of course Kurzweil missed 9/11 and the fallout from that. His predictions might have been nearer the mark absent the war on terror.
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Amazon S3 Adds Option To Make Data Accessors Pay (Slashdot)
CWmike writes "Amazon.com has rolled out a new option for its Simple Storage Service (S3) that lets data owners shift the cost of accessing their information to users. Until now, individuals or businesses with information stored on S3 had to pay data-transfer costs to Amazon when others made use of the information. Amazon said the new Requester Pays option relieves data providers of that burden, leaving them to pay only the basic storage fees for the cloud computing service. The bigger question with the cloud is, who really pays? Mark Everett Hall argues that IT workers do."
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ESA Embraces Open Source With New SAR Toolbox (Slashdot)
phyr writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) has released its Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) freely as GPL for Linux and Windows. It provides an integrated viewer for reading, calibrating, post-processing and analysis of ESA (ERS 1&2, ENVISAT) and 3rd party (Radarsat2, TerraSarX, Alos Palsar, JERS) SAR level 1 data and higher. ESA has chosen to distribute the software as fully open source to allow the remote sensing community to easily develop new readers/writers and post-processors for SAR data with their NEST Java API. The software provides both a command line interface and GUI for all features including data conversion, graph processing, coregistration, multilooking, filtering, and band arithmetic."
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LG High-Def TVs To Stream Netflix Videos (Slashdot)
DJAdapt writes to tell us that LG has launched a new line of high definition TVs that will be capable of streaming Netflix videos with no additional hardware. This is just another in a long line of expansions from the once DVD rental service, which has expanded to the Roku set top box, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and Linux platforms recently. "Piping movies directly to TV sets is the natural evolution of the video streaming service, said Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix. "The TV symbolizes the ultimate destination," he said. That idea -- shared by Sony Corp., which already streams feature films and TV shows directly to its Bravia televisions -- is still in its early stages. Netflix's streaming service taps a library of 12,000 titles, while the company's DVD menu numbers more than 100,000 titles. Hastings expects that gap will "definitely narrow" over time, but he noted that DVDs maintain an advantage over streaming, which is that "they are very profitable" for film studios."
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Do Twitter Phishing Scams Herald the End of Microblogs? (Slashdot)
An anonymous reader writes "Twitter's been hit by a big phishing scam. Culture Crash blogger Dan Tynan says this is the end of Twitter's innocence. Will tweets become like email, with two out of every three just worthless spam?"
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Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide (Slashdot)
nandemoari writes "It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months. Despite its portfolio diversity — including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles — Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15."
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35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop - Six Revisions (Delicious popular)
Tooth Regeneration Coming Soon (Slashdot)
Ponca City, We love you writes "For thousands of years, losing teeth has been a routine part of human aging. Now the Washington Post reports that researchers are close to growing important parts of teeth from stem cells, including creating a living root from scratch, perhaps within one year. According to Pamela Robey of the NIH. 'Dentists say, "Give me a root and I can put a crown on it."' In a few years dentists will treat periodontal disease with regeneration by using stem cells to create hard and soft tissue; they will take out a tooth that is about to fall, and reconnect it firmly to the regenerated tissue. Although nobody is predicting when it will be possible to grow teeth on demand, in adults, to replace missing ones, a common guess is five to ten years. Baby and wisdom teeth are sources of stem cells that could be 'banked' for future health needs, says Robey. 'When you think about it, the teeth children put under their pillows may end up being worth much more than the tooth fairy's going rate. Plus, if you still have your wisdom teeth, it's nice to know you're walking around with your own source of stem cells.'"
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Milky Way Heavier Than Thought, and Spinning Faster (Slashdot)
An anonymous reader writes "The Milky Way is spinning much faster and has 50 per cent more mass than previously believed. This means the Milky Way is equivalent in size to our neighbor Andromeda — instead of being the little sister in the local galaxy group, as had been believed. One implication of this new finding is that we may collide with Andromeda sooner than we had thought, in 2 or 3 billion years instead of 5."
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Carefully Timed Jerks Could Power Space Elevator (Slashdot)
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."
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New Method To Revolutionize DNA Sequencing (Slashdot)
Anonymous Coward writes "A new method of DNA sequencing published this week in science identifies incorporation of single bases by fluorescence. This has been shown to increase read lengths from 20 bases (454 sequencing) to >4000 bases, with a 99.3% accuracy. Single molecule reading can reduce costs and increase the rate at which reads can be performed. 'So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs [waveguides], which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs [waveguides] onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.'"
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Picasa for Mac: Free download from Google (Delicious popular)
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Employees the Next (Continuing) Big Security Risk? (Slashdot)
surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "A nationwide survey finds that most companies consider their systems vulnerable to attack. Historically, crime rates increase during recessions — and some believe that cybercrime may well follow suit, especially given massive layoffs and the dim prospects many laid-off employees face in finding a new job. 'One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage, Brill said. In many cases, companies may not have the internal capability to do this, but outsourcing options are available. Kroll Ontrack, for instance, will be rolling out a 24/7 monitoring service for its global clients manned from a US location by professionals in early 2009.'"
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A Hacker's Audacious Plan To Rule the Underground (Slashdot)
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has the inside story of Max Butler, a former white hat hacker who joined the underground following a jail stint for hacking the Pentagon. His most ambitious hack was a hostile takeover of the major underground carding boards where stolen credit card and identity data are bought and sold. The attack made his own site, CardersMarket, the largest crime forum in the world, with 6,000 users. But it also made the feds determined to catch him, since one of the sites he hacked, DarkMarket.ws, was secretly a sting operation run by the FBI."
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Distributed "Nuclear Batteries" the New Infrastructure Answer? (Slashdot)
thepacketmaster writes "The Star reports about a new power generation model using smaller distributed power generators located closer to the consumer. This saves money on power generation lines and creates an infrastructure that can be more easily expanded with smaller incremental steps, compared to bigger centralized power generation projects. The generators in line for this are green sources, but Hyperion Power Generation, NuScale, Adams Atomic Engines (and some other companies) are offering small nuclear reactors to plug into this type of infrastructure. The generator from Hyperion is about the size of a garden shed, and uses older technology that is not capable of creating nuclear warheads, and supposedly self-regulating so it won't go critical. They envision burying reactors near the consumers for 5-10 years, digging them back up and recycling them. Since they are so low maintenance and self-contained, they are calling them nuclear batteries."
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??????????????Photoshop?PSD????????????????????? - GIGAZINE (Delicious popular)
?????????????????????????????????????????????flipping typical? - GIGAZINE (Delicious popular)
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Ubuntu Kung Fu (Slashdot)
Lorin Ricker writes "Back in the dark ages of windows-based GUIs, corresponding to my own wandering VMS evangelical days, I became enamored of a series of books jauntily entitled Xxx Annoyances (from O'Reilly & Assocs.), where "Xxx" could be anything from "Windows 95", "Word", "Excel" or nearly piece of software which Microsoft produced. These were, if not the first, certainly among the most successful of the "tips & tricks" books that have become popular and useful to scads of hobbyists, ordinary users, hackers and, yes, even professionals in various IT pursuits. I was attracted, even a bit addicted, to these if only because they offered to try to make some useful sense out of the bewildering design choices, deficiencies and bugs that I'd find rampant in Windows and its application repertory. Then I found Keir Thomas, who has been writing about Linux for more than a decade. His new "tips" book entitled, Ubuntu Kung Fu — Tips & Tools for Exploring Using, and Tuning Linux, and published by Pragmatic Bookshelf, is wonderful. Having only recently wandered into the light of Linux, open source software, and Ubuntu in particular, this book comes as a welcome infusion to my addiction." Read below for the rest of Lorin's review.
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