The R.A.T. series of mice isn’t designed to be subtle. The surface of each model is broken, split, and in many cases adjustable. While it looks like a hot mess in pictures, all it takes is putting your hands on one to understand the method to the madness. In terms of options and features, this is a mouse that offers everything you could ask for—and…

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Most people involved in scientific research are well aware of the big three ethical lapses: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. These acts are considered to have such a large potential for distorting the scientific record that governments, research institutions, and funding bodies generally have formal procedures to investigate incidents, and formal sanctions for those found to have infringed. But the big three are hardly a complete list of all the problems…

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Those of you holding out for white iPhone 4s will have to continue your practice in patience: Apple says that they continue to be a challenge to manufacture and won’t be available until later this year . That’s right—no longer will they be available in the second half of July, which was already pushed back from late June when the iPhone 4 originally launched. Apple has pushed …

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Do you like loot? Do you enjoy classical video game humor? DeathSpank is a game that’s hard to pin down from a quality point of view; it’s an experience that knows exactly what it wants to be and if you’re not along for that ride, it doesn’t do much to try to win you over. It’s an action RPG, a hack n’ slash title with a flair for the …

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XP fans get reprieve in form of downgrade rights extension : Windows XP is getting another reprieve. In a response to business demands, Microsoft is extending the right to downgrade OEM-licensed copies of Windows 7 to Windows XP. Originally due to end in October, the downgrade right will now be available for the duration of Windows 7’s availability. Microsoft coverage: tell us what you want : What would you like to see …

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The public generally views winning the Nobel Prize as reaching the pinnacle of scientific achievement, which raises an awkward question: does that mean it’s inevitably downhill from there? For many laureates, research careers continue on regardless of the level of public recognition. But others take the prestige afforded by the Prize and use it to advance issues that aren’t directly related to their work. The two researchers who were honored for their…

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Though cloud computing offers users a number of advantages—increased scalability, reduced maintenance costs—it is not suitable for every task. A common problem is that many would-be users can’t afford the loss of physical control of their data, typically for regulatory reasons. To meet these needs, Microsoft today announced the Windows Azure platform appliance —a Windows Azure cloud-in-a-box system enabling the creation of private Windows …

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A report yesterday in the Wall Street Journal claims to expose details of a new NSA program, codenamed “Perfect Citizen,” that will monitor critical infrastructure networks, both public and private, in order to look for suspicious activity that could be evidence of an impending hack attack. The Journal says that the NSA would deploy a set of sensors on the relevant networks, and that the networks…

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Google’s Android mobile operating system got some significant performance improvements in version 2.2, codenamed Froyo. A high-performance JIT was introduced in Android’s Dalvik runtime environment and the browser got some very deep optimizations. These enhancements make Android’s performance more competitive than ever. In our recent review of Android 2.2, we conducted some tests on the Nexus One to measure the extent of the JavaScript performance improvements. SunSpider …

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Kiddies, gather round and let me tell you another chapter in the story of “If you irritate people, they act irritated.”