Here we genome again: related news

KDE on KDE 4.0 (Groklaw)

Lately a lot has been said (or bemoaned) in the community about KDE 4, the 4.0 release and the KDE developers. In the following article we would like to address some common misconceptions about KDE 4 as we see it. As we firmly believe in KDE 4 and the future of the Free Desktop, we expected the heated discussions about KDE4 and especially the 4.0 release to go away - and we were wrong about that. As blogging about the issues raised didn't seem to reach the audience we intended, we took the opportunity presented by Groklaw for this article with both hands. We sincerely hope it sheds some light on why the KDE community did what it thought it had to do and we hope it shows we do take the criticism seriously.

NBCU Wireless GM On iPhone: 'We Didn't Feel That We Had To Be There On Day One'

When it comes to the iPhone, large entertainment companies are sitting on the sidelines. NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) can’t justify investing in one platform, but instead is putting equal time and investment across the board at this point, Salil Dalvi, NBCU’s GM of wireless, told mocoNews. He’s not yet convinced there’s a huge advantage of building on-device applications for the iPhone’s updated operating system. “We didn’t feel that we had to be there on day one … One of the real surprises from my perspective is it just really changes how we approach the market,â€� Dalvi said. “We’re taking a look at it. We haven’t ruled it in or ruled it out at this point … Do we get 80 percent of what the benefit is just by offering a highly-optimized experience on a web site?â€� For games, thereâ€

Our Solar System: An Island of Calm in a Violent Universe (and it's special, too)

We humans like to think we're special, but astronomically speaking we've been shot down quite severely and humbly put in our place. We're not at the center of our solar system, nowhere near the center of our galaxy and certainly not at the center of the universe. But now comes great news for the human psyche from scientists trying to explain solar system formation. As far as solar systems go, we have thought ours was just average and that all solar systems were like ours. But in looking at the 300 plus extrasolar planets that have been discovered and the systems they are in, none so far are anything like our home solar system. In fact, say scientists at Northwestern University, we may be special after all. In a study using computer simulations (this is the week for computer simulations, see here and here), researchers ran more than a hund

iPhone games: Ars staff favorites

The App Store has introduced a bevy of third-party apps in every category imaginable. Admittedly, some are of questionable quality, but others, we have discovered, are made of pure win with a sprinkle of crack cocaine. At the Ars Orbiting HQ, we find ourselves frequently chatting about which apps we can't live without, and games are naturally at the top of everyone's lists. And, because we love our readers, we thought we might share with you a list of our favorite iPhone games that you should check out. Here we go, in no particular order:

We are not alone - NASA astronaut

I am totally with you Jeda of Melbourne... To think that we human on Earth are the only one in this universe is a total arrogance that is beyond comprehension. We, along with all things exists are made out of the same particles that made up the rest of the Universe. Instead of welcoming the findings and entertaining the possibilities, the ruling governments allow fear to set in and squashed all evidence. We need to change it to the perspective of love... not fear. Perhaps and just perhaps that if we collectively realized that we do indeed share the airspace with other civilizations it might give us a better incentive to unite as one to move our consciousness to a new height. And we might start to treat our own kind a little bit more humanely without the differentiations of country, race and religion.

Here we genome again

BOSTON—The 108th meeting of the American Society for Microbiology here in early June provided a bit of a kickoff for fleshing out the Human Microbiome Project launched by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the end of last year.

My LittleBig Game

We are now getting close to finishing LittleBigPlanet – it’s due for release in October so that doesn’t leave us much time. At the moment we’re basically making proper seat of the pants last minute changes and panicking about everything. There’s a lot of pressure to live up to but the game’s looking really good and it’s shaping into something that I know we’re going to be proud of here at Media Molecule, which is great because when we first pitched it we weren’t even quite sure of what we were going to create...

I think it's fair to say we lacked a proven goalscorer last season, but at least we found the back of the net. The last three pre-season games have seen a goal drought of worrying proportions.

Now I realise pre-season stands for little. The results don't matter, it's the performances but when you've not scored in 3 games - two of which were against teams who we should really have hit the back against - then you start to get a bit jittery. Now, let's not get this out of context. On Friday night we had seven players missing who would be in a starting line up and shortly afterwards lost Stephen McPhee which means we effectively were playing our second string. However, that still doesn't mean we shouldn't have done better against Shrewsbury and at least scored a goal.

Internet Radio's "Last Stand"

We've been discussing the plight of Internet radio for some time, as the Copyright Royalty Board imposed royalties that industry observers predicted would prove lethal to the nascent industry. We discussed Web radio's day of silence in protest, which won the industry a reprieve, and the futile efforts to find relief in Congress. Now it's looking as if the last act is indeed close. Death Metal Maniac sends along this Washington Post story with extensive quotes from Pandora CEO Tim Westergren, who said: "The moment we think this problem in Washington is not going to get solved, we have to pull the plug because all we're doing is wasting money... We're funded by venture capital. They're not going to chase a company whose business model has been broken.

Alien Rumors Quelled as NASA Announces Phoenix Perchlorate Discovery

"We don't want to come to you and say 'we found chocolate on Mars,' then come back and say, 'We were wrong it was strawberry.' We don't want to do that," MECA lead scientist Michael Hecht told reporters. Over in the U.K., Stuart Atkinson was listening and responded immediately. Even before the press briefing was over, some of the Phoenix team saw it on UnmannedSpaceFlight.com, where Atkinson posted it, and were seen to be chuckling. "It was the best," Hecht said later. We, too found it amusing and with Atkinson's permission are reposting it here.

LittleBigPlanet will have 'global server'

"We're confused, Mr. Pete Smith, producer of upcoming platform-a-thon LittleBigPlanet. When we spoke to you during today's LittleBigPlanet breakdown session you said that "the game will have a global server." Now we hear that you told CVG something a little different. User generated content will be region locked? Normally we'd say "we're not sure who to believe" at this point, but seeing as both statements come from the same person, we're doubly confused."

The Coker Tour Blog 3

Tuesday morning we were up and rolling early. We had a 1 PM appointment in York, Pa at the Harley-Davidson assembly plant. From Charlottesville, Va. where we had stayed the previous night it was a four hour drive. The morning trip took us through the beautiful Virginia countryside then into Pennsylvania through the Gettysburg area. We arrived at the Harley-Davidson Assembly facility at 12:30 and at 1PM we took the one hour tour. Assembly had already begun on the 2009 models and they were going to debut in one week at the Harley dealers convention in Las Vegas. We were not able to see the 2009 models up close but did get a detailed look at the stamping area for fenders and the new 6 gallon tanks. It was a very interesting tour and nice to see that there really are still things that are "Made in America"

Apple iPod Nano (3rd Generation) Review

(Review) - We couldn't wait to get our hands on the latest of Apple's iPod music players, as the company put on its annual show to update the most successful product line in its history last week. Needless to say, the industry is buzzing once again and for a good reason. We've got to be honest though. When Jobs first showcased the new line, our jaws dropped. We were horrified with the new designs. They appeared to be chubby, clunky and anything but sexy. Was Apple losing its touch with reality? Who would want an out of shape iPod? Certainly not us. But we were wrong. Boy, we were wrong. Just like with a lot of other Apple products, you can't truly get a feel for them with text, photos, audio and videos. You have got to see them in real life to truly appreciate their beauty.

Gadget Lab Flickr Group Now Live

flickr_logo.jpgGadget Lab now has a Flickr Group, and we want your pictures. Gadgets, hacks, lovingly documented unboxings, pretty much anything to do with what we write about here on the blog. It's a little sparse right now, but we'll be populating it with more and more of our own photographs as we go, and with our zillions of avid, web 2.0 savvy readers, we're hoping that it will become another great place for gadget lovers to hang out.

Sowing Nanophobia to Reap Regulation?

With the recent publication of a particular MWCNTs-in-mice experiment, and pundits' various comments thereupon, we're back where we always are on the "unknown risks" of nanotechnology. Do we embrace innovation or fear it? Do we seek to build communities and business networks based on knowledge and trust, or do we imagine that a comprehensive scheme of prohibitions and penalties will lead to better outcomes? The answer is by no means an anarchical free-for-all (we're way past that), but rather collaborative and interdisciplinary mechanisms for reducing uncertainty that are as innovative and forward-looking as nanotechnology itself.

PlanetXbox's 360 Degrees of E3 2008 Coverage

Tomorrow morning at 4:30 a.m. we leave the Birmingham International Airport for the sunny shores of Los Angeles, CA to attend what most gamer's in the country are dreaming about; the 2008 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). In the four days that we will be at E3 we'll be covering such a mass of games, attending many free dinners, and late drunken parties, followed by all-night writing sessions, that we are actually a bit nervous about the whole thing. This is the Super Bowl of our industry though, thus in the end our excitement to have a beer with Cliff Bleszinski outweighs the overall severity of our fear. These are only the announced games we can tell you about, even so this is more than enough reasons for you to come back and spend E3 2008 with us, here at PlanetXbox360.

Barracuda Spam Firewall Named 2008 Editor's Best Award Winner by Windows IT Pro Magazine

Since 1996 ActiveHost has been dedicated to offering advanced ASP and ASP.NET hosting services. With a proven track record of surpassing client expectations time and time again, ActiveHost has grown to a world leader in advanced Microsoft based hosting. Because we are focused on the developer in leveraging state-of-the-art technology and superior customer service, we provide one of the best values available in the hosting industry. Being a Microsoft Certified Partner and a Microsoft Web Presence Provider we fully support all of Microsoft e-business technologies. We like what we do and it shows! Plans start at $14.95.

Netflix Changes Its Mind, Will Keep Profiles Feature

xChange writes "I too was disappointed at Netflix's decision to remove the Profiles feature, and let them know via email and telephone. I was surprised to find the following email in my inbox today: 'You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are. We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.' I thought that it sounded too good to be true, and went to their blog to confirm, finding this entry. Netflix decided to listen to its customers, and keep a feature that many of us find essential for our use of their service. I am surprised, and very pleased."

Firefox's Effect On Other Browsers

An anonymous reader points out an interview with Mozilla's "evangelist," Christopher Blizzard, regarding the future of Firefox and how it affects other browsers. It's an Austrian site, so forgive the comma abuse. From derStandard: "It's sort of interesting though, part of our strategy is to make sure, that we continue making change and the indirect effect of this is that Microsoft continues to have to do releases, because if we get so far ahead that we're able to drive the platform they are not able to keep up and keep their users. I mean, we have this joke which says "Internet Explorer 7 is the best release we ever did", because they would not have done it, if we would have not built Firefox. And the same is true for Apple, they are doing a lot to keep up with us.

NetShare Pulled From iPhone App Store (Again)

We've been wondering how the people behind NetShare get their app approved by Apple for the iPhone App Store. It adds the ability to tether your laptop to your iPhone, using the handset's 3G modem as your laptop's own, meaning you can go pretty much anywhere you can find a decent signal and have full Internet access on your laptop without Wi-Fi, all for free. And then the app was pulled from the store. And then it was back. And now it's gone again. Hopefully you were lucky enough to grab it while it was available, because we're not sure Apple's going to let it out again.

A Genome in Any Format

In a recent post, Andrew Yates asked, "How much data is a human genome?" He then did a little math to show that an uncompressed diploid human genome would easily fit on two music CDs, if stored as a text file. That got Genetic Future's Daniel MacArthur thinking. There are, he says, other formats that a human genome could be stored in, including as images from an Illumina machine. In that format, a genome with 30x coverage would take up about 28.80 terabytes. Also, if the sequence data is stored as a Sequence Read Format file, the storage space'll top out at 1.98 terabytes.

Me and my genome

BACK in 2002, before the $3 billion Human Genome Project was even complete, some biologists began to talk of sequencing the entire genome of any individual for just $1000. While DNA sequencing is getting ever cheaper and faster, we are not quite there yet: about a tenth of the human genome remains impossible to sequence with existing methods.

TV-B-Gone SHP Looks Like an iPhone, and We Will Not Take the Bait

OK, so the new TV-B-Gone SHP (super high power) is designed to look like an iPhone. It appears to be designed just for us here at Gizmodo, embodying two things that, for better or for worse, we're known for. But no matter what this thing looks like, there ain't no way we're getting within 10 feet of a TV-B-Gone again. Even if it is an upgraded model with eight powerful infrared emitters that can turn off 90% of the world's TVs. No. No, ma'am. [Maker Shed via Ubergizmo]

Nikon D90: Video thrilled the dSLR

We knew where we were in the old days. New gadgets would come along that we couldn't afford, and eventually the features and innovations would trickle down to the high street. But that's not the case now. Ideas are flying about all over the shop, with consumer-friendly features such as live view and face detection appearing in compact cameras first and then trickling up into dSLR territory. After live view, the feature that we get asked about most with regards to dSLRs is video, and it's finally here: the new 12.3-megapixel Nikon D90 shoots video, and high definition to boot.

Search took 0.31 seconds.