Windows 7 Review: You Can Quit Complaining Now – “Could Windows 7 accomplish everything that’s expected of it? Probably not, but it makes a damn good attempt. We’ve tested the gold master, the final version going out on October 22. Upgrade without trepidation, people. With excitement, even…”

Sacrificial virgins of the Mississippi – “Archaeologists are slowly unearthing the ghastly secrets of Cahokia, an ancient city under the American heartland…”

How Netflix gets your movies to your mailbox so fast – “Out of sight in Carol Stream, 42 people move 60,000 discs daily with quiet efficiency. But don’t drop off your flicks there…”

Men who do the housework are more likely to get the girl – “An Oxford study suggests that if you want to settle down, your chances of getting married or living with someone are probably highest in Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries and the United States…”

Revenge Of The Nerd: What The Media Won’t Tell You About The Rampage Killer Who Attacked A Pittsburgh Aerobics Class – “This is one of the clearest and most painful “going postal” rampage massacres I’ve studied, and I’ve looked at a lot of them. The reason is that the murderer, George Sodini, left behind a diary that makes everything as clear as can be–so clear, in fact, that the media is doing everything it can to avoid looking at what it really says…”

Idealab rebounds with recent focus on clean technology – “The hundreds of glass mirrors break the dusty field in Lancaster, a sea of silver in a landscape of brown. When switched on for the first time today at an opening gala with investors, local politicians and others, they’ll make up the first operational solar tower energy facility in the United States…”

SolFocus Designs CPV Solar Panels for Commercial Scale Deployment – “Concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) is not a new technology, but commercial utilization is. In the past, panels demonstrated high efficiency in the laboratory, but were not designed for manufacturability. Since SolFocus was founded in 2005, the company has taken a different approach to this technology.”

Scientists study huge plastic patch in Pacific – “Marine scientists from California are venturing this week to the middle of the North Pacific for a study of plastic debris accumulating across hundreds of miles (km) of open sea dubbed the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”"

Andrew Sullivan: Opposition to Cash-for-Clunkers Shows GOP Not Serious About Limited Government – “As for the factual claims, did cash-for-clunkers indeed “help everyone”? Well, no…” – the flip side of Cash for Clunkers

Refrigerator Recycling Programs Take Off – “Programs that allow homeowners to trade in their old refrigerators and scoop up a rebate — a sort of “cash for clunkers” system for the fridge — are spreading quickly across the country…”

Apple’s Mysterious iProd Gets an Upgrade – “More Apple gadget wonder has hit the Web with further interest sparked in the mysterious new device called the iProd…”

Apple’s Rejection of Google Voice Points to Just One Thing – “Why would Apple deny customers the Google Voice functionality and risk the ire of the FCC? eWEEK Labs’ Andrew Garcia suspects it’s because Apple is building a similar service for MobileMe…”

Climate-Change Calculus – Why it’s even worse than we feared – “Among the phrases you really, really do not want to hear from climate scientists are: “that really shocked us,” “we had no idea how bad it was,” and “reality is well ahead of the climate models.” Yet in speaking to researchers who focus on the Arctic, you hear comments like these so regularly they begin to sound like the thumping refrain from Jaws: annoying harbingers of something that you really, really wish would go away…”

5 futuristic interfaces – “A good example of this is the following five futuristic type interfaces that will be presented at this year’s ACM’s Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques – otherwise known as SIGGRAPH 2009 – which is taking place in New Orleans this week…”

Toshiba Unleashes the World’s First 64GB SDXC Cards – “Toshiba announced today they achieved the development of all new SDXC cards that provide up to 64GB of memory. According Toshiba the first sample will be available in November, while the official launch is scheduled for the spring of 2010. They feature 64GB of storage space with the exFAT file system, provide a writing speed of 35MB/s and a reading speed of 60MB/s…”

Finally, the Spleen Gets Some Respect – “As a confirmed crab apple who has often been compared to the splenetic Lucy Van Pelt character from Peanuts, I am gratified to learn that should my real spleen ever decide to vent in earnest, the outburst may just help save my life…”

Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames – “Todd Pedersen had to hustle—the sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn’t want to miss it…”

Low Power Microcontroller-based Design Techniques – “Technology Editor Bill Wong talks to Brant Ivey, Application Engineer at Microchip, about low power microcontroller system design. Low power design tends to be application specific so there is a lot of ground to cover. Brant touches on a range of power related issues and discusses ways to reduce power consumption…”

Ghana – digital dumping ground – “On the outskirts of Ghana’s biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah…”

Your Kid’s Price Tag: $221,000 – “A government report released Tuesday says a middle-income family with a child born last year will spend about $221,000 raising that child through age 17…” – that’s $221K not counting college…

New Biomass Cookstove Also Doubles As Electrical Generator – “Called the SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity), the cookstove converts heat into acoustic energy and then into electricity through a linear alternator…”

Pee in the shower to save rainforest – “Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Atlantica says the campaign, running on several television stations, uses humor to persuade people to reduce flushes…”

This message will self-destruct – “A new way of keeping private correspondence private…”

Hands-On With the Zune HD – “The upcoming Zune HD was the talk of the GDGT launch event in San Francisco last night, and we got a look at the device. First impressions: It’s compact, lightweight, good-looking and has a very slick interface…”

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