Dell reportedly prepping Adamo successor

In the coming weeks, Dell is planning on introducing a sleek new 15.6-inch laptop that will succeed the Adamo. It will be the first in a line (models will come in different sizes) designed to be the thinnest in their respective class. The laptops will be positioned as "prosumer" products that have plenty of performance for business users but also "style and beauty" for consumers, according to sources close to Dell.

"This is the first in a series of products where [Dell is] going to focus on ultra-performance and ultrathin," one source told CNET. "This is not a one-time product. This is a full commitment to a product category that is focused on thin and powerful."

The first model will pack the latest Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 and Core i7 processors, will have a high-resolution display, and will be fashioned from "special materials." Despite the new high-class brand, the first device will reportedly cost under $1,000.

In January of this year, Dell started to offer steep discounts on its ultra-thin Adamo notebook (pictured above). One month later, in February 2011, the inventory was depleted, and consumers looking to buy the 13-inch laptop on Dell's website were recommended the thicker but more powerful XPS 15 or 17 instead. In short, the Dell Adamo line and brand name was discontinued. 

First revealed at CES in 2009, the Adamo boasted looks and portability to challenge Apple's 13-inch MacBook Air. Besides an eye-catchingly thin (0.65-inch) aluminum casing, it also offered fast storage via solid-state drives, ultra-power-efficient Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and a SIM card slot on the side of the notebook.

When we first heard of Adamo going the way of the dodo, Dell was expected to launch a successor system within the next six months, but instead under one of its existing consumer brands. That timeframe is now fast approaching.

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A Vaccine to Attack Cancer Early

Most cancer vaccines are intended to rally a patient's immune system to fight cancers that have already progressed. But the startup company OncoPep, based in North Andover, Massachusetts, is developing a vaccine designed to prevent one kind of cancer?multiple myeloma?by treating patients who have only a precursor of the disease.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of blood plasma cells. It develops when abnormal plasma cells in bone marrow multiply and accumulate, eventually damaging bones and other tissues in the body, and finally overwhelming the immune system. Currently, treatments can extend the lives of patients with the cancer but not cure it.

The company's approach grew out of research by Kenneth Anderson, Nikhil Munshi, and Jooen Bae at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The researchers deployed a combination of peptides?small pieces of protein?that are known to be specific to multiple myeloma cells and are important for their survival. The goal is to train the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells bearing these peptides; the vaccine would also contain substances designed to boost immune response.

Plans call for the vaccine to be administered to people diagnosed with smoldering multiple myeloma, a condition in which plasma cells are unusually abundant and produce abnormal proteins but cause no symptoms of disease. Currently, patients with SMM are not treated. Although a majority of them go on to develop symptomatic cancer, it may take many years. Anderson hopes that the ability to detect the cancer in this early phase will make possible early, effective intervention. "The idea would be to prevent the development of an active cancer," he says. Administering the vaccine to patients before they have received other, possibly debilitating cancer treatments, and while their immune systems are healthy, may give it a better chance of working.

Doris Peterkin, CEO of OncoPep, says that like several other experimental cancer vaccines in development, this one will be matched to people with a particular immune-system type: HLA type A2, the most common type in the U.S. Peterkin says the vaccine is most likely to be effective in these patients because the peptides are have a better chance of triggering an immune response in them.

Ronald Levy, an oncologist and cancer researcher at Stanford University, says that despite the advantages of vaccinating early, targeting this early stage of the disease may pose practical problems in testing the vaccine. Although nearly 80 percent of patients with SMM go on to develop multiple myeloma, they do so at a rate of only about 10 percent per year?so it may take a while to collect enough patients to test the vaccine. And limiting the vaccine to people with a particular HLA type will narrow the already small field. Levy says that the ultimate test of the vaccine's success will be how well its chosen peptides provoke a specific immune response against the cancer, which has been the challenge for all peptide-based cancer vaccines.

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Prosecutors Are Expected to Seek Dismissal of Charges Against Bin Laden

The move should formally close a case against the leader of Al Qaeda that began in Federal District Court in Manhattan with an indictment on June 10, 1998, and expanded over the years with later versions, adding some two dozen defendants.

A recent version of the indictment was most recently used against Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to be tried in the civilian system. Among those still charged in the indictment is Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda?s second in command.

The first indictment against Bin Laden ran eight pages and charged him with conspiracy to attack United States defense installations.

But if the original indictment seems almost forgotten in the post-9/11 era and the debates over civilian versus military justice, it is still offered by early investigators as proof that the authorities had grasped the threat Bin Laden posed and could have gone after him much earlier.

?It shows that in spite of whatever everyone says, there were people in the government who knew about Bin Laden prior to 9/11 and were prepared to do something about it,? said Daniel J. Coleman, who in 1996 was the first F.B.I. agent detailed to the Central Intelligence Agency in the investigation of Bin Laden.

?There was a lack of political will to do anything,? said Mr. Coleman, who is retired.

The indictment detailed Al Qaeda?s history and Bin Laden?s role as its leader. It charged that his operatives had trained and assisted Somali tribesmen in an ambush in 1993 that killed 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu.

Later indictments charged a broad conspiracy that also included the bombings on Aug. 7, 1998, of two American Embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people and the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in 2000.

The original indictment, kept secret at first, came at a time when the C.I.A. was considering a plan to capture Bin Laden and turn him over for trial, either in the United States or in an Arab country, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. Those plans were not carried out, but the law enforcement investigation continued.

?There was no question from our perspective that at the time of the June 1998 indictment, the objective was to bring Bin Laden back for trial,? said Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan at the time.

Ms. White said there was always a risk he would have been killed in an attempted capture. But if Bin Laden had been captured, she added, ?our expectation was that he would be tried.?

Another former agent, Jack Cloonan, likened the case to that of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former Panamanian leader who was flown to Miami and tried after he was ousted in the invasion of Panama in 1989.

Mr. Cloonan said that there were even discussions about how Bin Laden would be read his rights, adding that agents had envisioned Bin Laden standing in court in shackles and ?an orange jumpsuit.?

The string of indictments resulted in a series of trial convictions and guilty pleas. The evidence in the early investigations offered a primer on Bin Laden and his organization. ?It was essential to understanding Al Qaeda,? said Ali H. Soufan, a retired F.B.I. agent who was the case agent on the Cole investigation.

Mr. Coleman said he had learned of Bin Laden?s death after his son, a former Army Ranger who had been part of the initial American operations in Afghanistan after 9/11, called Sunday night and said he had heard the president would be speaking.

?It seemed really fitting,? Mr. Coleman said, ?that they dumped him in the same ocean? where the Cole was attacked. ?The deaths of those young men and women were never avenged,? he added. ?There was no military response for an act of war.?

Mr. Coleman and other F.B.I. agents and prosecutors involved in the early Bin Laden investigation hailed the operation that led to his death.

?We started the fight; the military ended it,? Michael Anticev, an F.B.I. agent, said. ?Everybody?s proud.?

Mr. Coleman said he hoped other defendants in the Bin Laden case would be brought to Manhattan for trial. But, he added, Bin Laden?s actions dictated that he no longer deserved even treatment like a criminal. ?It had gone too far,? he said.

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A Vaccine to Attack Cancer Early

Most cancer vaccines are intended to rally a patient's immune system to fight cancers that have already progressed. But the startup company OncoPep, based in North Andover, Massachusetts, is developing a vaccine designed to prevent one kind of cancer?multiple myeloma?by treating patients who have only a precursor of the disease.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of blood plasma cells. It develops when abnormal plasma cells in bone marrow multiply and accumulate, eventually damaging bones and other tissues in the body, and finally overwhelming the immune system. Currently, treatments can extend the lives of patients with the cancer but not cure it.

The company's approach grew out of research by Kenneth Anderson, Nikhil Munshi, and Jooen Bae at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The researchers deployed a combination of peptides?small pieces of protein?that are known to be specific to multiple myeloma cells and are important for their survival. The goal is to train the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells bearing these peptides; the vaccine would also contain substances designed to boost immune response.

Plans call for the vaccine to be administered to people diagnosed with smoldering multiple myeloma, a condition in which plasma cells are unusually abundant and produce abnormal proteins but cause no symptoms of disease. Currently, patients with SMM are not treated. Although a majority of them go on to develop symptomatic cancer, it may take many years. Anderson hopes that the ability to detect the cancer in this early phase will make possible early, effective intervention. "The idea would be to prevent the development of an active cancer," he says. Administering the vaccine to patients before they have received other, possibly debilitating cancer treatments, and while their immune systems are healthy, may give it a better chance of working.

Doris Peterkin, CEO of OncoPep, says that like several other experimental cancer vaccines in development, this one will be matched to people with a particular immune-system type: HLA type A2, the most common type in the U.S. Peterkin says the vaccine is most likely to be effective in these patients because the peptides are have a better chance of triggering an immune response in them.

Ronald Levy, an oncologist and cancer researcher at Stanford University, says that despite the advantages of vaccinating early, targeting this early stage of the disease may pose practical problems in testing the vaccine. Although nearly 80 percent of patients with SMM go on to develop multiple myeloma, they do so at a rate of only about 10 percent per year?so it may take a while to collect enough patients to test the vaccine. And limiting the vaccine to people with a particular HLA type will narrow the already small field. Levy says that the ultimate test of the vaccine's success will be how well its chosen peptides provoke a specific immune response against the cancer, which has been the challenge for all peptide-based cancer vaccines.

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Baidu reveals revamped legal music platform

Baidu just launched its revamped music platform called Baidu Ting (or Baidu Listen) in private beta and screen shots have been leaked.

Penn-Olson got a first look inside Baidu Ting and explains that among the features would be a combination of free and paid music streaming and downloading of legal music. It will take on a new approach for monetization with a quick and easy payment method as well as support for songwriters through royalties.

The platform will be open to the music rights holders so that they can share their own music and reap the benefits. To bring down the cost, money only covers the songwriters in the downloads while record companies won?t receive any.

It is reported by early beta testers that the current song selection of Baidu Ting is very limited, especially when it comes to foreign music. Also, there?s no support for music analysis and recommendation like Last.fm?s ?scrobbling?.

The new MP3 service will no longer link to pirated music and will abide by the regulations set by the Music Copyright Society of China for the payment of music royalties to benefit the music industry at large.

Baidu has been the focus of a lot of anti-piracy groups for years. Some experts claim the MP3 service, due to its tolerance to piracy, was responsible for bringing Baidu to the top in China, which now holds 75.5 percent of the country?s search market.

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Failure Cascading Through the Cloud

Recently two major cloud computing services, Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud and Sony's PlayStation Network, have suffered extended outages. Though the circumstances of each were different, details that the companies have released about their causes show how delicate complex cloud systems can be.

The Elastic Compute Cloud?one of Amazon's most popular Web services?was down from Thursday, April 21, to Sunday, April 24. Popular among startups, the service is used by Foursquare, Quora, Reddit, and others. Users can rent virtual computing resources and scale up or down as their needs fluctuate.

Amazon's outage was caused by a feature called Elastic Block Store, which provides a way to store data so that it works optimally with the Elastic Compute Cloud's virtual machines. Elastic Block Store is designed to protect data from being lost by automatically creating replicas of memory units, or "nodes" within Amazon's network.

The problem occurred when Amazon engineers attempting to upgrade the primary Elastic Block Store network accidentally routed some traffic onto a backup network that didn't have enough capacity. Though this individual mistake was small, it had far-reaching effects that were amplified by the systems put in place to protect data.

A large number of Elastic Block Store nodes lost their connection to the replicas they had created, causing them to immediately look for somewhere to create a new replica. The result was what Amazon calls "a re-mirroring storm" as the nodes created new replicas. The outage worsened as other nodes began to fail under the traffic onslaught, creating even more orphans hunting for storage space in which to create replicas.

Amazon's attempts to fix the problem were stymied by the need to avoid interference with other systems. For example, Elastic Block Store doesn't reuse failed nodes, since the engineers who built it assumed they would contain data that might need to be recovered.

Amazon says the problem has led to better understanding of its network. "We now understand the amount of capacity needed for large recovery events and will be modifying our capacity planning and alarming so that we carry the additional safety capacity that is needed for large scale failures," the team responsible for fixing the network wrote in a statement.

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Meet Heather Poe


This is Heather Poe. She?s a young woman, living in Los Angeles and attending college there, though it isn?t her hometown. She?s kind, happy, eager to please and a little bit geeky. She?s also one of the best features of one of my favourite games, Troika?s Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

You find Heather in the hospital, where she?s been rushed into the emergency room for some strange neck wound. As a newly turned vampire yourself, you know that there?s more to this story than meets the eye, but your heightened senses also tell you that she?ll survive her undead encounter if she just gets some fresh haemoglobin. Unfortunately, there isn?t a doctor to hand and the hospital is criminally understaffed.

Earlier, a friend of yours told you that vampire blood has certain special characteristics when drunk by humans ? mainly as a healing elixir. You pause, then slit your wrist to save her young life before disappearing back into the night. You have errands to run, after all. Little do you know that this isn?t the last time you?ll be seeing Heather.

She shows up a few nights later, grabbing you on the street and desperate to thank you. She?s babbling and doe-eyed and she knows far too much about you and your kind ? you?ll suffer reprisals if you don?t take this matter in hand, but now is not the time. You send her back to your haven ? that grotty motel in Santa Monica ? and tell her to wait for you.

You have a choice now. Your blood is mixing with Heather?s and creating a potent, mind-altering brew. The more time she spends with you, the more she falls under your thrall, whether you want her to or not. You know you should send her away, break the bond and tell her to forget all this silliness about vampires. You know you should, but a lot of reasons run through you mind for why you shouldn?t ? a lot of excuses.

You?re little more than a servant for others at the moment, so the idea of cultivating your own slave does have a certain appeal. Letting her go may bring the wrath of your superiors if she exposes you. You wonder about the direction you could steer Heather, making her serve you in a way that seems repugnant in the daylight hours.

That?s what's great about being a vampire; not casting a reflection. You can avoid a lot of guilt and shame when you don?t have to meet your own gaze.


Over the next few days or weeks, Heather changes. Sometimes you're the one pushing, telling her how to dress or to surrender her life savings. At other times, it?s the blood that changes her. She was eager to please at the beginning, but now her devotion is fanatical. One day you find she?s bought you home some food - still alive and locked in the bathroom. The longer the ?relationship? lasts, the more you get the idea that it isn?t going to end well, but the harder it becomes to end it.

Heather?s fate ultimately lies in your hands. She?s a nice, likeable person and you want to do well by her. At the same time, though, the rest of LA is working to reshape you. You may have been just an average guy a few weeks ago, but now you?re a vampire; suffering and cruelty is your stock and trade.

As you acclimatise to this new existence, you start to adapt. You already don?t have to look at yourself in the mirror, but now you?re learning to hide the rest of yourself behind your new definition of what you are. You are a demon. Once you accept that, it becomes very easy to do very nasty things to a very nice person.

Then, when the game ends, you realise what?s happened and you learn something about yourself. That?s why Vampire: Bloodlines is one of my favourite games.

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News Analysis: Amid Skepticism, Pakistan Calculates Its Response

It was amply clear on Monday that the Pakistani military was experiencing a gamut of shock and embarrassment. Pakistan?s official statement, slow in coming, was clearly calculated to put the best face on a moment that threatens to reset relations with the United States.

But the United States? preoccupation with Pakistan ? a nuclear-armed state with rising levels of militancy ? revolves around more than Bin Laden, important as he was, and officials on both sides may seek to avoid a sharp turn toward hostility.

Not least, the United States would like Pakistani cooperation in the continuing fight against terrorism and in ending the war in Afghanistan at a moment when Bin Laden?s capture was bound to alter the debate about whether the United States should withdraw from a costly nine-year war.

American officials stopped well short of accusing Pakistan of sheltering Bin Laden, but they strongly indicated that they would want answers about the extent of the network in Pakistan that allowed Bin Laden to live and hide in apparent comfort for so long.

?It?s inconceivable that Bin Laden did not have a support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time,? John O. Brennan, the president?s top counterterrorism official, said at a White House briefing on Monday.

?I am not going to speculate about what type of support he might have had on an official basis inside of Pakistan,? he added. ?We are closely talking to the Pakistanis right now, and again, we are leaving open opportunities to continue to pursue whatever leads might be out there.?

At a Pentagon briefing in Washington on Monday, a senior Defense Department official said, ?We have no indications that the Pakistanis were aware that Osama Bin Laden was at the compound in Abbottabad,? the city where he was killed, about an hour?s drive from the capital.

Similarly, a former senior C.I.A. official who closely followed the hunt for Bin Laden said he had heard of no evidence that Bin Laden was being protected by the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan?s spy agency. He called speculation on the subject premature.

?I would be very surprised if he was under ISI protection,? said the former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said that the ISI probably knew the identity of the owner of the large compound where Bin Laden was discovered, but not that Bin Laden was hiding there. He said many religiously conservative Pakistanis had a favorable view of Bin Laden.

But others were deeply skeptical, noting that Bin Laden was hiding virtually next door to a military academy.

Some said that at worst, rogue ISI officers or former officers might be involved. But others saw a darker conspiracy.

?Someone knew,? Maj. Gen. James R. Helmly, who was the top American officer in Pakistan from mid-2006 to mid-2008, said in a telephone interview from Georgia, where he is now retired.

?Whether it?s in the top echelons of the ISI is anyone?s guess,? he said. ?But if someone is building a big ostentatious project like that, and if it?s like where I live, people are going to say, ?I wonder who?s living there?? ?

Some American counterterrorism officials said it was almost inconceivable that Pakistan?s security services would be in the dark about the residents of such a compound. ?It would be a major intelligence lapse by Pakistani military and police not to know what was going on there,? said Seth G. Jones, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation who until February worked on Afghanistan and Pakistan issues for United States Special Operations Command.

Pakistani analysts expressed puzzlement that while the Pakistani government had issued a statement acknowledging Bin Laden?s capture, the military and intelligence service were strangely silent.

?If Bin Laden?s presence was not known to Pakistan?s security agencies when he was located close to important military installation, it will be viewed as their incompetence or overconfidence,? Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore, said in an e-mail message. ?If they knew about his presence but did not take action, this will raise questions about the agenda of Pakistan?s security agencies for fighting terrorism. ?

Some senior American military and counterterrorism officials said that the Obama administration could use the moment to prod Pakistan to take more aggressive actions against militant groups within its borders.

?It has the potential to further sour relations or, for the United States, it could be an opportunity to leverage this for more cooperation,? said Juan Zarate, a top counterterrorism official under President George W. Bush. ?The Pakistanis are cowed and chagrined.?

Carlotta Gall reported from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt from Brussels. Reporting was contributed by Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan; Waqar Gillani from Islamabad; Salman Masood from Abbottabad, Pakistan; and David Rohde and Pir Zubair Shah from New York.

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Talking to the Wall

Our lives are awash with ambient electromagnetic radiation, from the fields generated by power lines to the signals used to send data between Wi-Fi transmitters. Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington have found a way to harness this radiation for a computer interface that turns any wall in a building into a touch-sensitive surface.

The technology could allow light switches, thermostats, stereos, televisions, and security systems to be controlled from anywhere in the house, and could lead to new interfaces for games.

"There's all this electromagnetic radiation in the air," says Desney Tan, senior researcher at Microsoft (and a TR35 honoree in 2007). Radio antennas pick up some of the signals, Tan explains, but people can do this too. "It turns out that the body is a relatively good antenna," he says.

The ambient electromagnetic radiation emitted by home appliances, mobile phones, computers, and the electrical wiring within walls is usually considered noise. But the researchers chose to put it at the core of their new interface.

When a person touches a wall with electrical wiring behind it, she becomes an antenna that tunes the background radiation, producing a distinct electrical signal, depending on her body position and proximity to and location on the wall. This unique electrical signal can be collected and interpreted by a device in contact with or close to her body. When a person touches a spot on the wall behind her couch, the gesture can be recognized, and it could be used, for example, to turn down the volume on the stereo.

So far, the researchers have demonstrated only that a body can turn electromagnetic noise into a usable signal for a gesture-based interface. A paper outlining this will be presented next week at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Vancouver, BC.

In an experiment, test subjects wore a grounding strap on their wrist?a bracelet that is normally used to prevent the buildup of static electricity in the body. A wire from the strap was connected to an analog-to-digital converter, which fed data from the strap to a laptop worn in a backpack. Machine-learning algorithms then processed the data to identify characteristic changes in the electrical signals corresponding to a person's proximity to a wall, the position of her hand on the wall, and her location within the house.

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