Forget Hybrids, Forget H2

CNN

(CNN) — A Korean company has created a car engine that runs on air.

The engine, which powers a pneumatic-hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), works alongside an electric motor to create the power source.

The system eliminates the need for fuel, making the PHEV pollution-free.

Cheol-Seung Cho, of Energine Corporation, told CNN the system is controlled by a computer inside the car, which instructs the compressed-air engine and electric motor what to do.

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XForms For The Masses

Claus Wahlers Blog

The FormFaces project team announced their open source ECMAScript XForms solution today. The engine processes XForms entirely on the client side and runs on any ECMAScript and DOM Level 2 powered Webbrowser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, Konquerer, Safari and others). All the author has to do is add one JavaScript include to her XHTML/XForms document: .

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Filesharing Goes to Supreme Court

CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) – High-tech reached the nation’s high court Tuesday as Supreme Court justices questioned whether online file-sharing networks could be held accountable for copyright infringement.

At issue is whether the entertainment industry can continue aggressively pursuing not only those who illegally download copyrighted songs, movies and photos, but also those who sell file-sharing software and services.

A San Francisco-based federal appeals court in August ruled those file-sharing companies were not responsible, since their products do not directly tell users where they can download protected material.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios sued the two makers of file-sharing software, Grokster and StreamCast Networks, claiming it has lost billions of dollars in revenue from the illegal distribution of its property, and has had to spend millions more developing anti-theft technology and prosecuting offenders.

Just remember this, nobody sues the gun manufacturer when their loved one is murdered. Just because something can be used to break the law, does not mean it will.

8.2 Earthquake Hits Indian Ocean

CNN

Officials in Thailand and Sri Lanka report that residents are evacuating coastal regions in the Indian Ocean after an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of at least 8.2 struck off the coast of Indonesia Monday.

In Thailand, thousands of people in the six provinces affected by the December 26 tsunami were moving to higher ground or 2 km (1.25 miles) inland, the governor of Phang Nga province said.

Sri Lanka also issued a warning that the earthquake may spawn a tsunami that would reach Sri Lanka’s shores by about 3 a.m. Tuesday (4 p.m. ET Monday) and urged those living in low lying areas to move to higher ground.

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'Hang-and-Run' Artist Strikes NYC Museums

NPR

In a reverse-theft of sorts, a British artist has been sneaking his works into some of New York’s top museums.

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Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue

MSNBC

A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.

Paleontologists forced to break the creature’s massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.

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Easter Traditions Stem from Paganism

Discovery Channel :: News

Easter is the holiest Christian festival, celebrating as it does the resurrection of Christ, but oddly enough cute bunnies and chocolate eggs have become its most recognized modern-day symbols.

The roots of the holiest day in the Christian calendar appear to lie in a pagan spring festival that celebrated the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, known as Eostre or Eastre.

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Heretical Weed Challenges DNA Rulebook

Discovery Channel :: News

A dreary weed that grows in the cracks of parking lots has caused an uproar amongst biologists by challenging one of the basic laws of genetics.

U.S. researchers, reporting Wednesday in the journal Nature, say their lab samples of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) appear to bust a fundamental rule of inheritance.

Convention dictates that all of one’s genetic toolbox, for better or for worse, is handed down from one’s parents.

But in the bizarre case reported in Nature, the weeds seem to have genes that existed in their grandparents, but not in their parents.

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A new approach to web applications

adaptive path ajax

If anything about current interaction design can be called “glamorous,“ it’s creating Web applications. After all, when was the last time you heard someone rave about the interaction design of a product that wasn’t on the Web? (Okay, besides the iPod.) All the cool, innovative new projects are online.

A new approach? WTF? This shit isn’t new. Get real! Yay buzzwords!. Yes, it’s cool. It’s been cool for years.

Here’s something else that is cool: BAM.

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Faster XML ahead?

CNET News.com

The Net’s top standards body is getting closer to speeding up XML-based software, a move that could benefit everyone from cell phone carriers to television broadcasters to the military.

But critics say the group’s favored approach could cause major compatibility problems, among other things.

If you BIN it they will come (Mobile Apps).

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