A battle far from Iraq but just as hot: related news

A battle far from Iraq but just as hot

National Guardsman Mike Valdivia, right, cuts through the thick brush to help battle wildfires in California.

Hot Docs: Contractors in Iraq, Online Consumers at Risk, Georgia, and More

Contractors' Support of U.S. Operations in Iraq: Spending on contractors doing Iraq-related work made up nearly 20 percent of the total funding for U.S. operations in Iraq between 2003 and 2007, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO surveyed the $85 billion that the United States has paid to contractors working on military, security, reconstruction, and economic projects in Iraq during the first four years of the U.S. presence there.

Social media isn't about just consuming news or entertainment but sharing â?" and sharing early and often.  But how can you stay always-on and still get your work done? Easy â?" if you have the right tools.

Social media isn't about just consuming news or entertainment but sharing — and sharing early and often. The good news? You can do most of your updating from your mobile device.

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

Gore's Bold Plan to Save the Planet

When I caught up with Al Gore at his home in Nashville last December, the former Vice President turned green guru was in a pensive mood. I was surprised — he was just finishing his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which he was due to give in Stockholm a few days later. For a man who had lost the Presidency in the most agonizing way possible, winning the Nobel should have offered some consolation. But when I asked Gore if he felt vindicated, he shook his head. "It's hard to celebrate recognition of an effort that has thus far failed," he said. He was referring to his work not only to awaken the world to the danger of climate change, but to get us to really do something about it. "I'm not finished, but thus far, I have failed. We have all failed.

iPhone 3G Gets Hot and Melty, Cooks Dude's Leg

While the iPhone 3G definitely feels warmer than the original, it shouldn't get hot enough to cook human flesh. Or melt. But a MacRumors forum member says he fell asleep with his iPhone 3G in his pocket and woke up when he felt a burning sensation in his pants (not the good kind either). He says he pulled out the phone, which was incredibly hot. Like, plastic-meltingly hot. Check out the damage to the dock connector (and his leg), where you can really see the bubbly, heat-warped plastic:

Iraq Surge Ends, But There Are 15K More Troops than Before Surge

The military surge into Iraq that began more than 18 months ago has ended. But 150,000 U.S. troops remain, as many as 15,000 more than before the buildup began.

Hot Water, Hot Earth

Calopteryx notes a New Scientist article on the discovery of "supercritical" water emerging from a vent in the Atlantic Ocean at 407 deg. C (765 deg. F). One of its discoverers actually said, "It's water, but not as we know it"; it's the hottest water ever found on earth. The cause seems to be a huge bubble of magma beneath the ocean floor, 3 km below the sea surface. Meanwhile Nymz shares a journal entry on a hot spot on land: a 2-acre patch in Ventura county, in California, that has heated up to 433 deg. C (812 deg. F). Here geologists blame buried hydrocarbons burning as they get access to air through cracks in the ground. That high temperature was measured a foot below the ground surface.

Some like it hot, but not fungi

Chiliheads who savor the kick of hot peppers are sampling one of the earliest examples of chemical warfare. In this case, it's a battle between the peppers and a type of microbial fungus that destroys their seeds, researchers report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They studied wild peppers growing in Bolivia.

Shopping Experience - Best Buy Will No Longer Get My Business

Awhile ago, I needed a new printer. Nothing fancy, just something for my home office. I’d settled on an HP all-in-one. But when I went into Best Buy, not once did any of the blue-shirted customer service reps offer to assist me, but that’s just as well. That’s not what I found to be rude. Rather, once I’d picked a printer, I had to get an employee to either retrieve my selection from the back room or from one of the mountainous stacks above the display shelves. But after approaching three different blue shirts, I noticed a trend: they run away from you.

Sony US Confirms VPL-HW10 and VPL-VW70 Projectors ($3,500 or $8,000, Your Choice)

Sony may have teased us with its newest projectors at IFA, but today in the US, the company announced availability and pricing. We guessed $3,000 for the VPL-HW10, but we were close but not totally right. The solid 1080p Bravia SXRD (LCOS-based) projector with 30,000:1 dynamic contrast is a "value" play, but it's still expensive at $3,500. The step-up VPL-VW70 doubles the contrast, and lets you fit an external lens that morphs the picture into a 2.35:1 widescreen ratio without losing pixels. (That extra lens is sold separately.) The VW70 is $8,000. There aren't much more details about either yet, but what we do have is below.

DOJ Reviewing Yahoo-Google Ad Deal, Will Consult Rivals: Report

They gave the Department Of Justice three and a half months to review their ad deal - and it’s now doing just that in earnest. An unnamed source tells Washington Post the DOJ is not just looking over the Yahoo-Google (NSDQ: GOOG) partnership but has begun a formal investigation and will request documents not just from the pair but also from other online media players - a move that may please Microsoft.

Best Way To Put a Monitor On a Robot?

I'm part of my schools IGVC team, and we're upgrading our bot's computer to an onboard mini-itx. Most of the access to the box is gonna be through ssh, but I want a terminal I can just mount on the bot for convenience. Bidding on a psOne LCD already, but what are some good options if that doesn't pan out? I want to keep it as cheap as possible and small (in the 5-7 inch range). I haven't found any good guides to modding a digital photo frame or portable DVD player, but I'm probably just not looking in the right places.

Deal on US troops in Iraq 'close'

Iraq's foreign minister has said Iraq and the US are "very close" to a deal on the future of US forces in Iraq.

MIPS Hot Spot Analyzer for Linux Kernel Profiling

The Hot Spot Analyzer (HSA), from MIPS Technologies (NasdaqGS: MIPS), is a new software utility for its family of System Navigator EJTAG probes that enables fast, accurate profiling of the Linux kernel. With the Hot Spot Analyzer (HSA), software engineers can quickly identify program bottlenecks that are restricting system performance. The HSA builds on the unique Zero Overhead Program Counter (PC) Sampling feature built into the MIPS32 24K, MIPS32 34K and MIPS32 74K core families. MIPS Technologies' Hot Spot Analyzer is available for immediate delivery. It is delivered as an Eclipse Plug-in and is also available with the Eclipse-based MIPS Navigator Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Soldiers yearn to leave quiet Iraq for 'real war'

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Spc. Grover Gebhart has spent nine months at a small post on a Sunni-Shiite fault line in western Baghdad. But the 21-year-old soldier on his first tour in Iraq feels he's missing the real war -- in Afghanistan, where his brother is fighting the Taliban.

FIRST LOOK: KID ROBOT, READY TO WEAR It's not just neon hoodies anymore...

Facebook just started an application called Nu Rave. It drops day-glo sunglasses onto your friends pages, and it's basically just insane - but it makes you smile and immediately want to share.

Linux 'Just Works' For Me (or, how I came to love Red Hat and Gnome)

IconI keep reading all these tales of woe of people having bad experiences with Linux. Sure, I've had my own bad experiences, across many an OS, but just lately I've been running a Red Hat Linux 9 desktop full-time at home and have yet to run into any major issue. What follows is an overview of my personal experiences with Linux. But first, a bit about me.

Hitwise lists the UK's online Hot Shops

IMRG-Hitwise has just published its Hot Shops List for the UK for August 2008. The list has a Top 50 but here's the Top 20:

Next legal battle for eBay may be over counterfeit software

Online auction house eBay may have won a major court victory when it prevailed over Tiffany, but its legal troubles are hardly behind it. In that case, a judge ruled that eBay was taking reasonable efforts to keep counterfeit items off its site and used Tiffany's trademarked name appropriately, but the auctioneer lost a similar battle against Louis Vuitton in French courts. Now, word comes that a software industry group is considering suing the auctioneer over counterfeit items, this time on copyright grounds.

STEREO Maps Far Reaches of Solar System

NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft have been studying the sun since their launch in 2006. But the mission made a surprising and unexpected discovery by detecting particles from the edge of the solar system, and for the first time, scientists have now been able to map the region where the hot solar wind meets up with the cold interstellar medium. However, this wasn't done with optical instruments imaging in visible light, but by mapping the region by means of neutral, or uncharged, atoms. This breakthrough is a "new kind of astronomy using neutral atoms," said Robert Lin, from the University of California Berkeley, and lead for the suprathermal electron sensor aboard STEREO. "You can't get a global picture of this region, one of the last unexplored regions of the heliosphere, any other way because it is too tenuous to be seen by normal optical

Video-game news: Best of 2008, so far

BEST OF 2008 (SO FAR): E3, the video-game industry's big trade show, is next week, and you'll be hearing a lot about all the new software coming between now and Christmas. But there's a bit of a lull until Aug. 12, when "Madden NFL 09" unofficially marks the beginning of the fall game season. July is a good time to catch up on some of the games you may have missed. Here are the best of the year so far:

Turns Out People Say They're Concerned About Privacy, But They're Not

Well, this shouldn't surprise very many people, but following on plenty of earlier studies that have made it clear that most people don't do much to protect their privacy, a new study out of the UK pretty much states the obvious: people say they're concerned about privacy, but they sure don't act that way. The study found 84% of users say they carefully guard their info online -- but when tested, 89% of people actually did give away info in the same exact survey. To be fair, the specific set of questions was first asking people if they carefully guard their income info, followed later by a question asking them what income bracket they fell into. It's reasonable to think that some folks believe that the bracket is not the same as giving away their actual income -- which is what the first question implied.

PC Video Games Thriving... But In Different Ways Than You Might Expect

Recently, we had a story about a lawyer who was suing a bunch of folks for uploading a pinball video game, with some questionable statements about how piracy was destroying the PC gaming industry. Of course, that's not actually true. An excellent post by Cord Blomquist explains how the PC gaming business is actually growing, but in different ways than most people expect. Sure, it may be harder to find certain types of video games that you see on consoles these days, but other games are thriving. But they're doing so by adopting different business models that aren't so impacted by unauthorized distribution. For example, they involve online services (ongoing MMO type games, where the payment is for service, rather than the software) or they focus on making money through other means, such as advertising or upselling premium editions.

The iPhone is More Powerful Than the DS, But Sucks As a Controller

You know that the iPhone is powerful enough to render 3D games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, as well as various other ones we covered in the marathon review session, but just how powerful is it? How does it compare to actual gaming handhelds like the Nintendo DS and PSP? An EA developer put it this way. On a scale of the three, it's in between the DS and the PSP, but sliding more towards the PSP. That's right. In terms of power, you can expect to see games that look at least as good as the DS once developers get enough (read: more than four months) development time with it.

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