CWmike writes "Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate. 'Though we grow it from the vapor phase, this material [graphene] is just like graphite in a pencil. You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper. If you were to place Scotch tape over it and pull up, you can sometimes pull up as small as one sheet of graphene. It is a little under 1 nanometer thick,' Professor James Tour said."

Last week we discussed news of Sony Online Entertainment's unveiling of a store that would allow players to purchase in-game Everquest items for real money. Massively spoke with John Smedley, SOE's CEO, about the system and what their goals were. He made the point that they were limiting sales to things that wouldn't unbalance the game. "They're fun and they're convenient. That's all they are. We're not selling power. There are a lot of respectable viewpoints on this, and a lot of reasonable people can disagree on them. Our view is that nothing here is gamebreaking." Edge Magazine has a related piece about Mytheon, an upcoming action-strategy game that will rely on micro-transactions to support its otherwise free-to-play business model. The game's producer suggests that micro-transactions are "a model that really gets us closer to the end user, and that's the way things need to be in the future, online."

Trigger writes "At our work we were decomissioning six old HP/Compaq servers to clear up space for new servers and, naturally, each server had a fairly large raid array. Instead of formatting every hard drive (would have taken weeks performing a DoD level wipe) and disposing them all together with the servers, I decided to disassemble the hard drives and recycle them into something neat. With a lot (a lot) of patience, I made this shiny Xmas tree. In total there are around 70 old SCSI hard drives, between 9gb and 18gb in size each. They were nice and chunky, oldschool style. There were quite a few different hard drive models, which is good because they each had different bits which I could use. The Xmas tree is made with parts from hard drives only except for one nut which I had to purchase for $0.39." It's good to see that this guy has plenty to do at work.

It appears that the exploit in IE briefly mentioned a few days ago is causing a serious reaction: SteveAU writes "Microsoft has begun flooding media outlets with information advising users to switch to an alternate browser while a serious security flaw is being patched. The flaw, which affects all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, is manifested via malware and has infected over 6,000 sites thus far. Microsoft states: 'The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data-binding function of Internet Explorer. When data binding is enabled (which is the default state), it is possible under certain conditions for an object to be released without updating the array length, leaving the potential to access the deleted object's memory space. This can cause Internet Explorer to exit unexpectedly, in a state that is exploitable.'" According to the BBC report, though, Microsoft itself is only asking that users be "vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch"; it's outside experts who say to dump IE (at least for now). Update: 12/16 21:11 GMT by KD : Microsoft will issue an emergency critical update for IE tomorrow.

At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."

CWmike writes to tell us that researchers at MIT have found a way to wrap nanotube sensors in DNA to detect the results of chemotherapy. The sensors are able to detect whether the drugs are attacking their targets or healthy cells. "Cancer researchers have long been trying to figure out a way to better deliver drugs to cancer cells without blasting surrounding cells as well. The Stanford researchers devised a way to use single-walled carbon nanotubes as targeted medicinal delivery vehicles. By better targeting the chemotherapy, less of the drug needs to be injected into the patient for cancer treatment. And that would reduce the side effects of chemotherapy treatment, such as nausea, hair loss, weight loss and fatigue."

ruphus13 writes "HP finally begins to actively push open source in its products. From the post, 'HP has been quirky over the years when it comes to open source. It has been, traditionally, a company that supports open source — especially in larger enterprises... Wednesday, it announced two new open source products, geared to small businesses and educational institutions. HP plans on including its 'Mozilla Firefox for HP Virtual Solution' on more of its business class desktop PCs (to a total of seven models between the HP Compaq dc/dx lines in the US, eight models worldwide). Come December 15th, HP will also offer Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on its HP Compaq dc5850 model. The base SLED-equipped model will cost $519, and features the usual open source suspects for the small business setting — OpenOffice, and mail clients such as Evolution.'"

Lucas123 writes "The Santa Cruz, Calif. DA's office had been counting on a DVD with the recorded testimony of a victim in case against a serial rapist, but when they popped the video into the player, nothing came up — the disc was blank. To make matters worse, the cop who performed the original interview with the victim told the DA she never said she was 'forced,' so the judge wasn't going to allow the witness to testify in a case where her original statement to police was in conflict with her current testimony. After two local data recovery firms said there was no way to restore the data, a third was able to recover the police interview from two years earlier, which led the defendant to plead guilty earlier this month. Close call."

GameCyteSean writes "GameCyte is reporting that a new class-action lawsuit has challenged Nintendo's Wiimote straps once more. Interestingly, the suit was filed by the same lawyer who led the original 2006 attempt, and now argues that Nintendo hid records of broken TVs from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. From the article: 'This doesn't seem like a spurious accusation, either. Attached to the court filing (PDF) as a matter of public record is the very evidence Nintendo allegedly tried to hide: actual, internal Nintendo documents (PDF) where customer service reps received complaints of cracked televisions and broken Wiimote straps — and the corresponding Monthly Reports that Nintendo was compelled to file with the CPSC as part of their agreement.'"

Lucas123 writes "Linux, Vista and Mac OS perform differently with solid state disks. While all of them work well with SSDs, as they write data more efficiently or run fewer applications in the background than XP, surprisingly Windows 2000 appears to be the winner when it comes to performance. However, no OS has yet been optimized to work with SSDs. This lost opportunity is one Microsoft plans to address with Windows 7; Apple, too, is likely to upgrade its platform soon for better SSD performance."

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Total Drama Action - 26 x 22' They thought it was over...but then came the most dramatic series yet - lights - camera - TOTAL - DRAMA aaaaaACTION!

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In order of elemination 1yin 2Courtney 3Ezikial… ... In order of elemination 1yin 2Courtney 3Ezikial 4noah 5beth 6sadie no longer BFFFLs with kadie now kate

LONDON, October 27: Cake Distribution has sold Fresh TV’s Total Drama Action, which is the sequel to the animated reality series Total Drama Island, to Cartoon Network in the U.S

For the off-topic discussions. Anything and everything. ... Hahaha Oh wow, Talk about ironicypocrit. How many pointless, non meaningful blabber comes from your mind including the ...

After Season 1, there was Total Drama Action, season 2. 15 of the original contestants will return. It will take place on a deserted film studio lot. The contestants will be ...

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For the off-topic discussions. Anything and everything. ... toni sati fighy gher jiterferd yogutikiymum defrerterery suninvnfv fhd deweyniyeyeyererydffiighd dv cvbcb fgr3wq ...

For the off-topic discussions. Anything and everything. ... Hahaha Oh wow, Talk about ironicypocrit. How many pointless, non meaningful blabber comes from your mind including the ...

For the off-topic discussions. Anything and everything. ... toni sati fighy gher jiterferd yogutikiymum defrerterery suninvnfv fhd deweyniyeyeyererydffiighd dv cvbcb fgr3wq ...

watch in normal quality watch in high quality. Rate: 24 ratings. Sign in to rate. Views: 2,661. Share: Favorite: Playlists: Flag: MySpace. Facebook. Digg. more share options

Total Drama Action - 26 x 22' They thought it was over...but then came the most dramatic series yet - lights - camera - TOTAL - DRAMA aaaaaACTION!

zinc Roe creates engaging online content for kids and youth. ... 02 December 2008 • zinc Roe is working with the fine folks at FreshTV to produce interactive content for their ...

LONDON, October 27: Cake Distribution has sold Fresh TV’s Total Drama Action, which is the sequel to the animated reality series Total Drama Island, to Cartoon Network in the U.S

In order of elemination 1yin 2Courtney 3Ezikial… ... In order of elemination 1yin 2Courtney 3Ezikial 4noah 5beth 6sadie no longer BFFFLs with kadie now kate

After Season 1, there was Total Drama Action, season 2. 15 of the original contestants will return. It will take place on a deserted film studio lot. The contestants will be ...

Last visit was: Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:35 pm: It is currently Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:35 pm

Tue Oct 28, 2008 — by Robert Greenberger 'Total Drama Action' Joins Cartoon Network Sequel to 'Total Drama Island' Coming in 2009. Total Drama Island is getting a spinoff as the ...

For the off-topic discussions. Anything and everything. ... Hahaha Oh wow, Talk about ironicypocrit. How many pointless, non meaningful blabber comes from your mind including the ...

For the off-topic discussions. Anything and everything. ... toni sati fighy gher jiterferd yogutikiymum defrerterery suninvnfv fhd deweyniyeyeyererydffiighd dv cvbcb fgr3wq ...

watch in normal quality watch in high quality. Rate: 24 ratings. Sign in to rate. Views: 2,661. Share: Favorite: Playlists: Flag: MySpace. Facebook. Digg. more share options

Total Drama Action - 26 x 22' They thought it was over...but then came the most dramatic series yet - lights - camera - TOTAL - DRAMA aaaaaACTION!

zinc Roe creates engaging online content for kids and youth. ... 02 December 2008 • zinc Roe is working with the fine folks at FreshTV to produce interactive content for their ...

LONDON, October 27: Cake Distribution has sold Fresh TV’s Total Drama Action, which is the sequel to the animated reality series Total Drama Island, to Cartoon Network in the U.S

In order of elemination 1yin 2Courtney 3Ezikial… ... In order of elemination 1yin 2Courtney 3Ezikial 4noah 5beth 6sadie no longer BFFFLs with kadie now kate

After Season 1, there was Total Drama Action, season 2. 15 of the original contestants will return. It will take place on a deserted film studio lot. The contestants will be ...

Last visit was: Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:35 pm: It is currently Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:35 pm

Tue Oct 28, 2008 — by Robert Greenberger 'Total Drama Action' Joins Cartoon Network Sequel to 'Total Drama Island' Coming in 2009. Total Drama Island is getting a spinoff as the ...