stoolpigeon writes "Cascading Style Sheets are now the dominant method used to format web pages. Even something as simple as modifying a WordPress blog can involve digging around a bit in CSS. A quick search at Amazon on CSS returns over 7 thousand books in the computer category alone. This book claims to be the ultimate though, and that made me approach it with a bit of skepticism. Sure, it could be a decent reference, but is it truly the ultimate reference?

eldavojohn writes "There have been a lot of tests in using quantum mechanics to communicate across large distances. But a student & a professor at USC have proven that the Viterbi algorithm can be applied to quantum communication. In the traditional Alice sends Bob a message scenario, 'Bob can reliably spot errors, and knows which message qubits are bogus before he opens the message — crucial, because opening it destroys it; and if it is garbled, he has nothing.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "A new study at the Jet Propulsion Labs shows that weak gravitational pull of a "gravity tractor" could deflect an Earth-threatening asteroid if it was deployed when the asteroid was at least one orbit away from potential impact with Earth. First a spacecraft would be crashed directly into the asteroid, similar to the Deep Impact mission that impacted a comet in 2005. This would provide a big change of direction, but in a less controllable fashion that could push the path of the asteroid into a dangerous keyhole.

The economy is digging into revenues, but thanks to reductions in capex, Embarq enjoyed a 17% jump in profits

AlcaLu's Q2 results, overshadowed by resignations and wireless woes, show some progress in cost control and margins

Investors send stock down almost 19% after video tech specialist issues conservative guidance for the second half of 2008

A pending PON chipset from Broadcom could give Entropic its first tough competition

Upgrades from Comcast Media Center and Motorola will enable smaller MSOs to reclaim analog using digital terminal adapters

As expected, BT beefs up its Telco 2.0 strategy with the acquisition of voice services software platform Ribbit

Derived from www.technologyreview.com
A New Competitor to LCD
A novel pixel design promises to be faster and brighter.
By Prachi Patel-Predd

A pixel that uses a pair of mirrors to block or transmit light could lead to displays that are faster, brighter, and more power efficient than liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Researchers at Microsoft Research who published their novel pixel design in Nature Photonics say that their design is also simpler and easier to fabricate, which should make it cheaper.