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Silverlight On the Way To Linux

Posted: November 21st, 2008, 4:39am MST by timothy

Afforess writes "For the past two years Microsoft and Novell have been working on the 'Moonlight' project. It is a runtime library for websites that run Silverlight. It should allow PCs running Linux to view sites that use Siverlight. Betanews reports 'In the next stage of what has turned out to be a more successful project than even its creators envisioned, the public beta of Moonlight — a runtime library for Linux supporting sites that expect Silverlight — is expected within days.' Moonlight 2.0 is already in the works."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hacks Allowing Disabled Gamers To Play Guitar Hero

Posted: November 21st, 2008, 2:01am MST by Soulskill

angrymilkman writes "Here are two interesting new approaches where researchers modified the popular Guitar Hero game so it can be played by gamers with disabilities. Air Guitar Hero modifies the Guitar Hero controller so someone without limbs can play it by using electrodes attached to the user's residual arm. Blind Hero is a mod for Frets on Fire that uses a haptic glove that can turn visual feedback into haptic feedback, allowing blind gamers to play Guitar Hero songs." There have been a variety of Guitar Hero hacks in the past, including a custom drum pad for playing the guitar part, using the plastic guitar as a real instrument, and rocking out with your bike, but it's nice to see some more serious modifications showing up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oblong's g-speak Brings "Minority Report" Interface to Life

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 10:50pm MST by timothy

tracheopterix writes "Oblong Industries, a startup based in LA has unveiled g-speak, an operational version of the notable interface from Minority Report. One of Oblong's founders served as science and technology adviser for the film; the interface was an extension of his doctoral work at the MIT Media Lab. Oblong calls g-speak a 'spatial operating environment' and adds that 'the SOE's combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984.'" The video shown on Oblong's front page is an impressive demo.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Massive Martian Glaciers Found

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 7:56pm MST by timothy

Kozar_The_Malignant writes "Scientific American is reporting that 'data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris.' Data from the surface-penetrating radar on MRO revealed that two well-known mid-latitude features are composed of solid water ice. One is about three times the size of the City of Los Angeles. This certainly makes the idea of establishing a station on Mars far more plausible."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How To Find a Mobile Games Publisher?

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 5:45pm MST by timothy

n01 writes "In the last few months of my spare time, I've been implementing an abstract strategy board game (that I invented) along with a decent AI. The game resembles TwixT in that it is also a connection game, and could be played without the need for a cellphone or computer. The implementation on the Java 2 Mobile Edition platform will soon be finished, with only some minor usability and sound issues to fix. While I enjoyed working on the game (actually more than on my day job as a programmer) I would still like to earn some money from selling the game, so I can work more on such projects in the future. What experiences have Slashdot readers had with selling their applications/games for mobile phones? With which publisher will I have the broadest audience and achieve the highest earnings? Would you try to publish the game both as a mobile game and a traditional board game?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Resurrecting the Mighty Mammoth, Cheaply

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 4:34pm MST by timothy

somanyrobots writes with an interesting followup in the New York Times to the earlier-reported substantial reconstruction of the woolly mammoth genome: "Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million. The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA." (The Washington Post article linked from the earlier post was much more skeptical, calling such an attempt "still firmly the domain of science fiction." The New York Times article, while describing the process in similar terms, also calls attention to recent advances in sequencing DNA, as well as recoding DNA for cloning.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unix Dict/grep Fixes Left-Side-of-Keyboard Puzzle

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 3:40pm MST by timothy

destinyland writes "For decades, people have been asking this brain teaser: 'What's the longest word you can type with only the left-hand letters on a keyboard?' The answer is supposed to be 'stewardesses,' but grepping the standard dictionary that ships with Unix reveals a much better answer. There's nearly 2,000 shorter words that can typed with only the left hand — including one word that's even longer. (The article also quotes a failed novel attempt using nothing but words typed on the keyboard's left side.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Unix Dict/grep Solves Left-Side-of-Keyboard Puzzle

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 3:40pm MST by timothy

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Kaminsky Bug Options Include "Do Nothing," Says IETF

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 2:46pm MST by timothy

netbuzz writes "Meeting in Minneapolis this week, the Internet engineering community is debating whether to aggressively fashion and apply fixes for the so-called Kaminsky bug in the DNS discovered this summer, or to simply let its threat stand as motivation for all to move with greater speed toward DNSSEC, which is considered the best long-term security solution. Problem with the latter approach is that DNSSEC has been in the works for a decade already, no one is confident it will be universally embraced, and the Kaminsky flaw is causing real problems today.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Search For the Tomb of Copernicus Reaches an End

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 2:00pm MST by timothy

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The Associated Press reports that after 200 years of speculation and investigation, the tomb of Nicolaus Copernicus has been found. Although the heliocentric concept had been suggested earlier, Copernicus is widely thought of as the father of the scientific theory of the heliocentric solar system. The positive identification was made by comparing the DNA from a skeleton's teeth with that from hairs in a book known to have belonged to Copernicus. A computer-generated facial reconstruction is said to also bear a resemblance to contemporary portraits of the scientist."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple DMCAs iPodHash Project

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 1:18pm MST by timothy

TRS-80 writes "Apple has sent a DMCA takedown notice to the IpodHash project, claiming it circumvents their FairPlay DRM scheme. Some background: Apple first added a hash to the iTunesDB file in 6th-gen iPods, but it was quickly reverse-engineered. They changed it with the release of iPhone 2.0 and a project was started to reverse the new hash, but wasn't successful yet. My guess is Apple used the same algorithm as FairPlay for the new hash, so Apple could use the DMCA to prevent competing apps like Songbird and Banshee from talking to iPods/iPhones. BTW, don't tell Apple, but the project uses a wiki, so the old page versions from before the takedown are still there."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HappyMapper: Easy XML / Object Mapping for Rubyists

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 1:00pm MST by Peter Cooper

HappyMapper is John Nunemaker's attempt at "making XML fun again" for Rubyists by providing an object to XML mapping library with a succinct syntax. Essentially, you can use HappyMapper to rapidly turn XML into Ruby objects - even nesting them inside and referring to each other. This is powerful stuff. To install, just gem install happymapper

John's own examples are powerful demonstrations of how it works, so check them out. The first is parsing the XML returned from Twitter. The statues and associated users in that XML can be processed (with the relationship maintained) with the following code:

class User
  include HappyMapper

  element :id, Integer
  element :name, String
  element :screen_name, String
  element :location, String
  element :description, String
  element :profile_image_url, String
  element :url, String
  element :protected, Boolean
  element :followers_count, Integer
end

class Status
  include HappyMapper

  element :id, Integer
  element :text, String
  element :created_at, Time
  element :source, String
  element :truncated, Boolean
  element :in_reply_to_status_id, Integer
  element :in_reply_to_user_id, Integer
  element :favorited, Boolean
  has_one :user, User
end

statuses = Status.parse(xml_string)
statuses.each do |status|
  puts status.user.name, status.user.screen_name, status.text, status.source, ''
end

Added: Or.. how about a similar library that doesn't require naming the elements to work (but then lacks typecasting)? Check out xml-object by Jordi Bunster.

Permalink for 'Slashdot/2008/11/20/Network_Neutrality__mdash__Without_Regulation'

Network Neutrality — Without Regulation

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 12:32pm MST by timothy

boyko.at.netqos writes "Timothy B. Lee (no relation to Tim Berners-Lee), a frequent contributor to Ars Technica and Techdirt, has recently written 'The Durable Internet,' a paper published by the libertarian-leaning CATO institute. In it, Lee argues that because a neutral network works better than a non-neutral one, the Internet's open-ended architecture is not likely to vanish, despite the fears of net neutrality proponents, (and despite the wishes of net neutrality opponents.) For that reason, perhaps network neutrality legislation isn't necessary — or even desirable — from an open-networks perspective. In addition to the paper, Network Performance Daily has an interview and podcast with Tim Lee, and Lee addresses counter-arguments with a blog posting for Technology Liberation Front."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lessig, Zittrain, Barlow To Square Off Against RIAA

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 11:47am MST by timothy

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The RIAA's case in Boston against a 24-year-old grad student, SONY BMG Music v. Tenenbaum, in which Prof. Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, along with members of his CyberLaw class, are representing the defendant, may shape up as a showdown between the Electronic Frontier and Big Music. The defendant's witness list includes names such as those of Prof. Lawrence Lessig (Author of 'Free Culture'), John Perry Barlow (former songwriter of The Grateful Dead and cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), Prof. Johan Pouwelse (Scientific Director of P2P-Next), Prof. Jonathan Zittrain (Author of 'The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It'), Professors Wendy Seltzer, Terry Fisher, and John Palfrey, and others. The RIAA requested, and was granted, an adjournment of the trial, from its previously scheduled December 1st date, to March 30, 2009. (The RIAA lawyers have been asking for adjournments a lot lately, asking for an adjournment in UMG v. Lindor the other day because they were so busy preparing for the Tenenbaum December 1st trial ... I guess when you're running on hot air, you sometimes run out of steam)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Study Recommends Online Gaming, Social Networking For Kids

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 11:02am MST by Soulskill

Blue's News pointed out a report about a study sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation which found that online gaming and social networking are beneficial to children, teaching them basic technical skills and how to communicate in the Information Age. The study was conducted over a period of three years, with researchers interviewing hundreds of children and monitoring thousands of hours of online time. The full white paper (PDF) is also available. "For a minority of children, the casual use of social media served as a springboard to them gaining technological expertise — labeled in the study as 'geeking out,' the researchers said. By asking friends or getting help from people met through online groups, some children learned to adjust the software code underpinning some of the video games they played, edit videos and fix computer hardware. Given that the use of social media serves as inspiration to learning, schools should abandon their hostility and support children when they want to learn some skills more sophisticated than simply designing their Facebook page, the study said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CRTC Rules Bell Can Squeeze Downloads

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 10:21am MST by samzenpus

pparsons writes "Bell Canada Inc. will not have to suspend its practice of 'shaping' traffic on the Internet after a group of companies that resell access to Bell's network complained their customers were also being negatively affected. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission today released a decision that denied the Canadian Association of Internet Providers' request that Bell be ordered to cease its application of the practice to its wholesale customers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

MIT and NASA Designing Silent Aircraft

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 9:42am MST by samzenpus

Iddo Genuth writes "Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics recently won a contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to design quieter, more energy efficient, and more environmentally friendly commercial airplanes. The two-million-dollar contract from NASA is just an initial step in bringing green technologies to the sky."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 8:56am MST by CmdrTaco

Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Studios Sue Oz ISP Over Allowing Piracy

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 8:10am MST by CmdrTaco

Da Massive writes "Leading Hollywood film studios Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Disney Enterprises are suing Australia's second largest ISP, iiNet, saying it's complicit in the infringement of their copyrighted material. According to a statement of claim, 'the ISP knows that there are a large number of customers who are engaging in continuing infringements of copyright by using BitTorrent file sharing technology.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Terminates Lively

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 7:33am MST by CmdrTaco

FornaxChemica writes "In a surprise move, Google announced today, both on-site and in its blog, that it will permanently shut down its 3D virtual world, Lively, by the end of the year. This makes Lively one of Google's few scrapped products, and one of the most short-lived, too, barely lasting 6 months. No official reason was given, only that Google wants to 'prioritize [its] resources and focus more on [its] core search, ads and apps business.' Lively might have taken too much and given back too little, even by Google's standards."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IRS Looking at Google/Mozilla Relationship

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 6:45am MST by CmdrTaco

ric482 writes "With the release of the Mozilla Foundation's 2007 financial report, questions have been raised by the IRS, who are due to perform an audit on the non-profit organization behind the massively popular Firefox browser. Last year, the Foundation received $66 million of its total $75 million revenue (88 percent) from search engine maestros Google, so the IRS are looking for blood over the organization's tax exempt status. Back in 2006, Mozilla got $59.5 million from Google — around 85 percent of the organization's revenue. Google and Mozilla are part of a 'you scratch my back, I'll pay your bills' sort of agreement, with the Google search bar firmly placed in the toolbar, and on the default homepage. Things were a bit rocky a couple of months back when Google unveiled the Beta-run of its Chrome browser, but Mozilla and Google hugged it out and sealed a deal that will last for another three years. That deal will expire in November 2011."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Most of Woolly Mammoth Genome Reconstructed

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 5:57am MST by samzenpus

geekmansworld writes "From the Washington Post, 'An international team of scientists has reconstructed more than three-quarters of the genome of the woolly mammoth using DNA extracted from balls of hair, the first time this has been accomplished for an extinct species.' Who wants a pet mammoth?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Xbox Experience Goes Live

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 1:30am MST by Soulskill

Today, Microsoft launched the New Xbox Experience for Xbox Live. The list of new features includes the streaming of TV shows and movies through Netflix, the ability to install games to the HDD, an avatar system, and the Community Games platform. The launch itself was shaky at first, but most issues have been smoothed out. Sony-owned Columbia Pictures immediately pulled their movie selection, though it may return when a licensing deal gets worked out. Halo 3 developer Bungie pointed out that not all games will run faster when installed to a HDD because of the way the games already interact with the drive.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA Exploring 8 New Space Expeditions

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 11:06pm MST by samzenpus

coondoggie writes "NASA is trying to decide between eight space exploration missions that include further exploring Venus and comet composition as well landing on an asteroid or examining the space around Jupiter. The space agency today began accepting solicitations for these space exploration opportunities and will ultimately pick one of them to begin perusing in 2009 with a launch date targeted at 2018. The solicitations and ultimate expedition are part of NASA's New Frontiers program, which has as its main objective to explore the solar system with medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations, NASA said. The first New Frontiers mission was selected in 2003 and will result in the launch of Juno, a Jupiter polar orbiter mission set to blast off in 2011."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Towards a World Wide Grid?

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:02pm MST by samzenpus

Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent months, the concept of 'cloud computing' was all the buzz. European researchers think about another name, the World Wide Grid, which could run on top of the Internet. In an article to appear soon, ICT Results will report about the g-Eclipse project. As the scientists said, 'the g-Eclipse project aims to build an integrated workbench framework to access the power of existing Grid infrastructures. The framework will be built on top of the reliable eco-system of the Eclipse community to enable a sustainable development.' The project started in July 2006 and was successfully completed in June 2008 for a total cost of €2.5 million, including a EU contribution of €1.96 million."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers Getting the Lead Out of Electronics

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 5:57pm MST by samzenpus

alphadogg writes "Researchers at the University of Maryland say they have discovered a material to replace lead, a potential environmental hazard, in electronics products. The material, bismuth samarium ferrite (BSFO), was found by researchers in the university's A. James Clark School of Engineering. It can be used in products such as biomedical imaging devices and inkjet printers, and if implemented commercially could keep lead out of landfills and the ecosystem, they say. While manufacturers have developed replacements for lead in many products, until now no commercial replacement existed for lead zirconate titanate (PZT) — the material of choice for transducers, actuators, sensors and microelectromechanical systems used in common electronic devices, the university says."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe Releases C/C++ To Flash Compiler

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 4:47pm MST by samzenpus

SnT2k writes "Adobe recently released the beta version of Alchemy which compiles C/C++ code into AS3 bytecode (which runs on AVM2) that can run on the Flash or Flex platform and boasts increased performance for computationally-intensive tasks (but still slower than native C/C++). It was demonstrated last year during the Chicago MAX 2007 to run Quake. A few months later it has been demonstrated to run a Python interpreter and Nintendo Emulator. One interesting tidbit is that the thing is built upon the open source LLVM Compiler Infrastructure."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple's New MacBooks Have Built-In Copy Protection

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 3:46pm MST by timothy

raque writes "Appleinsider is reporting that the new MacBooks/MacBookPros have built-in copy protection. Quote: 'Apple's new MacBook lines include a form of digital copy protection that will prevent protected media, such as DRM-infused iTunes movies, from playing back on devices that aren't compliant with the new priority protection measures.' Ars Technica is also reporting on the issue. Is this the deal they had to make to get NBC back? Is this a deal breaker for Apple or will fans just ignore it to get their hands on the pretty new machines? Is this a new opportunity for Linux? And what happened to Jobs not liking DRM?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows Breaks Into Supercomputer Top10

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 3:02pm MST by timothy

yanx0016 writes "Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Interviewing Experienced IT People?

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 2:19pm MST by timothy

thricenightly writes "After more than 20 years in IT I've learned that the most valuable people in a team are frequently the old timers. Young pups straight out of college might (think they) know all the latest buzzwords and techniques, but in the real world, where getting working products delivered on time and on budget is of paramount importance, people who have been doing the job for a decade or two tend to be the people I'd rather be working alongside. I've recently been elevated to a position where I get to interview and choose those who get hired in my department. Although I'm very much focused on choosing the right person for the role regardless of age, experience or whatever, it's probably fair to say the more mature applicants will get a more sympathetic hearing from me than they might from most other interviewers for IT roles. The question is, what do I ask older applicants to get them to demonstrate the value of their experience? My current gambit is something like 'IT is seen as a young man's game. My next applicant after you is 23 years old. What do you know that he doesn't?' This gets responses ranging from the vague to the truly enlightened. All next week I'm interviewing for a number of senior software designer and developer roles. What should I be asking of the more experienced applicants, and what responses should I be looking out for?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Monty Python Banks On the Long Tail Via YouTube

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 1:31pm MST by timothy

JTRipper writes "Monty Python seems to have done the right thing. Instead of issuing take down notices of their videos on YouTube, they are doing it better themselves with their own YouTube channel. They are putting all their clips (including snips from their movies) up in a decent resolution, with the only caveat being a link to buying the movies and TV episodes from Amazon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FCC Publishes "White Spaces" Rules

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:43pm MST by timothy

Stellian writes "The Federal Communications Commission adopted a Second Report and Order that establishes rules to allow new, sophisticated wireless devices to operate in broadcast television spectrum on a secondary basis at locations where that spectrum is open. It's the first time we have access to clear specifications for these devices, dubbed TVBDs — 'TV band devices' by the FCC. The published guidelines allow manufactures to create protocols and build compatible devices, which could be available in 18 Months, according to Larry Page. The full PDF text of this Second R&O is published on the FCC site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cucumber: The Latest in Ruby Testing

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:35pm MST by Mike Gunderloy

Testing is a firmly ingrained part of the Ruby culture: you probably ran across Test::Unit not long after you first started writing Ruby code (though it wouldn't be surprising if you ignored it for a while). But it hasn't been a static part of Ruby - we've seen the simple availability of tests evolve into test-driven development (TDD) that in turn gave rise to behavior-driven development (BDD). Along the way, Ruby has spawned a variety of testing tools and frameworks. The latest, Aslak Hellesoy's Cucumber, is the latest addition to the RSpec family of tools.

Cucumber is designed to allow you to execute feature documentation written in plain text (often known as "stories"). I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for integration tests in Rails. With Cucumber, you can write tests that look like this:


Scenario: See all vendors
    Given I am logged in as a user in the administrator role
    And There are 3 vendors
    When I go to the manage vendors page
    Then I should see the first 3 vendor names

With Cucumber, that it an executable specification that you can discuss with the customer and then use to verify the correct behavior of tests. Behind the scenes, you make it work by writing "steps," which are regex matchers that execute Ruby code. Here's one of the steps for that scenario:

Given /there are (\d+) vendors/i do |n|
  Vendor.transaction do
    Vendor.destroy_all
    n.to_i.times do |n|
      Factory.create(:vendor, :business_name => "Vendor #{n}")
    end
  end
end

Ideally, you'll do this all in true BDD fashion: write the Cucumber features first, watch them fail, implement code to make them pass (with lower-level tests written with RSpec or Test::Unit), and repeat.

Cucumber is under rapid development, but it's already a useful part of my testing toolbox. In addition to integrating with RSpec and Rails, it works with Merb, Sinatra, and the Webrat web-testing framework (as well as, of course, pure Ruby projects). It also has translations into 20 languages and the ability to run FIT-style tabular tests. If you're looking for a higher level of abstraction in your tests, it's definitely worth checking out.

Supported by: ActionGear is a menu-bar app for task management on your Mac. It's lightweight, quick, and helps you get stuff done. Try it out for free.

NRDC Rates Energy Efficiency of Video Game Consoles

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:00pm MST by timothy

An anonymous reader writes "Today, more than 40 percent of all homes in the United States contain at least one video game console. Recognizing that all that gaming could add up to serious demand for electricity, NRDC and Ecos Consulting performed the first ever comprehensive study on the energy use of video game consoles and found that they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year — roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego. Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation's electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year. In this November 2008 issue paper, NRDC provides recommendations for users, video game console manufacturers, component suppliers and the software companies that design games for improving the efficiency of video game consoles already in homes as well as future generations of machines yet to hit the shelves." The full report is freely downloadable as a PDF.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

London's Oystercard Gets New Contract, But Same Suppliers

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 11:15am MST by timothy

nk497 writes "Over the summer, the London travelcard ticketing system — called Oyster — fell over twice, forcing the transport authority to offer free travel to the six million Londoners using the system. After that, it cut its contract with the supplier of the system, a consortium called TranSys. But now, Transport for London has signed a new contract to replace the TranSys one — with the same two companies that made up the TranSys consortium. Sure, that should fix everything."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wolfram Research Releases Mathematica 7

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 10:23am MST by CmdrTaco

mblase writes "Wolfram Research has released the seventh version of Mathematica, and it does a lot more than symbolic algebra. New features range from things as simple as cut-and-paste integration with Microsoft Word's Equation Editor to instant 3D models of mathematical objects to the most expensive clone of Photoshop ever. Full suites of genome, chemical, weather, astronomical, financial, and geodesic data (or support for same) is designed to make Mathematica as invaluable for scientific research as it is for mathematics."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lunar Oxygen and Water Production Tech Tested

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 9:50am MST by CmdrTaco

savuporo writes "NASA and its industry partners organized a two-week lunar in-situ resource utilization field test in Hawaii. The tested machines included a few different rovers and prototype plants for generating oxygen and water from lunar regolith. Astrotoday has a picture gallery and a video report. This follows on the heels of the recent ESA lunar robotics challenge event held on Tenerife, which tasked student teams to build a lunar robot that would be able to search for water ice in lunar polar craters."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Feared Mac vs. Vista In '05

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 9:08am MST by CmdrTaco

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows," Mossberg had written. "Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista." Warrier added a comment of his own: "A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Feared Mac vs. Vista In '05

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 9:08am MST by CmdrTaco

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer sifted through many threads of e-mails released under the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit to dig up this jewel...More than a year before Windows Vista's release — and long before Apple started poking fun at the OS — Microsoft officials were already worried about comparisons between Mac OS X and Vista. An e-mail thread from October 2005 showed that an article in the Wall Street Journal by Walt Mossberg grabbed the attention of managers at Microsoft. In a column headlined What PC to Buy If You Are Planning On a Vista Upgrade, Mossberg alarmed one Windows manager who forwarded a bit from the column.... 'You won't have to worry about Vista if you buy one of Apple Computer's Macintosh computers, which don't run Windows,' Mossberg had written. 'Every mainstream consumer doing typical tasks should consider the Mac. Its operating system, called Tiger, is better and more secure than Windows XP, and already contains most of the key features promised for Vista.' Warrier added a comment of his own: 'A premium experience as defined by Walt = Apple. This is why we need to address [the column].'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

American Nerd

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:23am MST by samzenpus

Adam Jenkins writes "This book seemed to have potential, particularly since the image of nerds has changed in recent times. Once objects of derision and schoolyard bullying, nerds are now acknowledged as having a place in society. The Lord of the Rings became a multi-million dollar movie trilogy, the internet is now used by an incredible number of people, and computer games are no longer seen as being 'just for kids.' Around the years of the dot-com boom, successful nerds were driving Ferraris and going to cool parties. So it's not so surprising that the definition of a nerd has changed over time, nor that a society which has generally become better at accepting people who are different, has accepted nerds." Read below for the rest of Adam's review.

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Astronaut Loses Tools While Performing an EVA

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 7:32am MST by CmdrTaco

tpheiska writes "NASA press release states that 'At approx. 3:33 p.m. EST, Piper reported that one of the Braycote lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag. As she was cleaning the bag and wiping the tools and equipment inside, the bag floated away. Another bag carrying identical equipment is now being shared by Piper and Bowen.' Luckily they had a spare."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ray Kurzweil Wonders Can Machines Ever Have Souls?

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 6:52am MST by CmdrTaco

Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ray Kurzweil Wonders, Can Machines Ever Have Souls?

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 6:52am MST by CmdrTaco

Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness ... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Fewer Than 1% Arrested From TSA's "Behavior Detection"

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 6:01am MST by kdawson

An anonymous reader writes "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports using the much vaunted 'suspicious behavior detection' techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. It has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program." In related news, the odds of sanity coming to the TSA plummeted today when Schneier said he's not interested in the top job there.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Psystar Antitrust Claim Against Apple Dismissed

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 3:40am MST by kdawson

CNet has a report that a federal judge has dismissed Psystar's antitrust suit against Apple. Observers had said that the counter-suit embodied the Mac clone-maker's best chance of prevailing and staying in business. We've been following Psystar and the dueling lawsuits since the beginning.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oldest Nuclear Family Found Murdered In Germany

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 1:16am MST by kdawson

Pickens writes "The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany where the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and their two children. 'We're really sure, based on hard biological facts not just supposing or assuming,' says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, from The Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords. The children and adult males had the same type of strontium in their teeth — which was also found locally, but the nearest match to the women's teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area. 'They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken,' says Dr. Alistair Pike from Bristol University. He noted that one victim even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra. 'You feel some kind of sympathy for them, it's a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them. ... We don't know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love,' added Dr. Haak."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Importance of Procedural Content Generation In Games

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:09am MST by Soulskill

Gamasutra reports on a talk by Far Cry 2 developer Dominic Guay in which he discussed why procedural content generation is becoming more and more important as games get bigger and more complex. He also talks about some of the related difficulties, such as the amount of work required for the tools and the times when it's hard to retain control of the art direction. Quoting: "Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approach based on algorithms — which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. 'We considered it to be a total failure,' he said. He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Court Slams Door On Sale of Spyware

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 10:55pm MST by kdawson

coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday had a US District Court issue a temporary restraining order halting the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware. According to the FTC's complaint, RemoteSpy spyware was sold to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers' computers. The defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Should You Get Paid While Your Computer Boots?

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 10:02pm MST by kdawson

An anonymous reader notes a posting up at a law blog with the provocative title Does Your Boss Have to Pay You While You Wait for Vista to Boot Up?. (Provocative because Vista doesn't boot more slowly than anything else, necessarily, as one commenter points out.) The National Law Journal article behind the post requires subscription. Quoting: "Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. ... During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. ... [A] management-side attorney... who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits... believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work."

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Ted Stevens Loses Senate Re-Election Bid

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 9:06pm MST by kdawson

JakartaDean writes "Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, famed Internet regulator, has lost his Senate seat. The AP is reporting that 'Stevens was declared the loser in Alaska on Tuesday night after a two-week-long process of counting nearly 90,000 absentee and early votes from across Alaska. With this victory, Democrat Mark Begich (the mayor of Anchorage) has defeated one of the giants in the US Senate by a 3,724-vote margin, a stunning end to a 40-year Senate career marred by Stevens' conviction on corruption charges a week before the election.' It's probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there's a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft To Offer Free Anti-Virus Software

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 7:19pm MST by kdawson

Dynamoo writes "The good news is that Microsoft have announced free anti-virus software for consumers, dubbed Morro, available late next year. The bad news is ... well, exactly the same. Although Microsoft's anti-malware products are pretty good, this move could drive many competitors out of business and create a dangerous security monoculture; major rivals will be lawyering up already. On the other hand, many malware infections could be prevented even by basic software. So is this going to be a good or bad thing overall?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NASA Tests Deep-Space Network Modeled On the Internet

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 5:31pm MST by kdawson

hcg50a writes "NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. Working as part of a NASA-wide team, engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA science spacecraft located about 20 million miles from Earth. The store-and-forward protocol was designed by NASA in consultation with Vint Cerf. Here's a discussion from last July before the test began."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

McColo Briefly Returns, Hands Off Botnet Control

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 4:43pm MST by kdawson

A week ago we discussed the takedown of McColo (and the morality of that action). McColo was reportedly the source of anywhere from 50% to 75% of the world's spam. On Saturday the malware network briefly returned to life in order to hand over command and control channels to a Russian network. "The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to... Trend Micro. The brief resurrection allowed miscreants who rely on McColo to update a portion of the massive botnets they use to push spam and malware. Researchers from FireEye saw PCs infected by the Rustock botnet being updated so they'd report to a new server located at abilena.podolsk-mo.ru for instructions. That means the sharp drop in spam levels reported immediately after McColo's demise isn't likely to last."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google To Host 10M Images From Life Magazine's Archive

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 3:52pm MST by kdawson

CWmike and other readers alerted us to Google's announcement that it was making available 10 million images from Life magazine's archives dating back to the 1750s. (Most of the news accounts covering this announcement refer to Life's "photos," and none mention that photography wasn't invented until early in the 19th century.) Only a small percentage of the images — including newly digitized images from photos and etchings — have even been published. The rest have been "sitting in dusty archives in the form of negatives, slides, glass plates, etchings, and prints." At this point about 20% of Life's archive is online; the rest is promised within months.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Neurological Basis of Con Games

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 3:01pm MST by kdawson

Hugh Pickens writes "If we humans have such big brains, how can we get conned? Neuroeconomist Paul J. Zak has an interesting post on Psychology Today in which he recounts how he was the victim of a classic con called 'The Pigeon Drop' when he was a teenager and explains how con men take advantage of the Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System, called THOMAS, a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown. 'The key to a con is not that you trust the con man, but that he shows he trusts you. Con men ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable,' writes Zak. 'Because of THOMAS, the human brain makes us feel good when we help others — this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers.' Zak's laboratory studies have shown that two percent of the college students he tested are 'unconditional nonreciprocators' who have learned how to simulate trustworthiness and would make good con men. Watch a video of Skeptics Society founder Michael Shermer running the classic pigeon drop on an unsuspecting victim and see if you wouldn't be taken in by a professional c

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Posted: November 21st, 2008, 4:39am MST by timothy

Posted: November 21st, 2008, 2:01am MST by Soulskill

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Posted: November 20th, 2008, 1:00pm MST by Peter Cooper

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 12:32pm MST by timothy

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Posted: November 20th, 2008, 11:02am MST by Soulskill

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 10:21am MST by samzenpus

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 9:42am MST by samzenpus

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 8:56am MST by CmdrTaco

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Posted: November 20th, 2008, 7:33am MST by CmdrTaco

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Posted: November 20th, 2008, 5:57am MST by samzenpus

Posted: November 20th, 2008, 1:30am MST by Soulskill

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 11:06pm MST by samzenpus

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Posted: November 19th, 2008, 3:46pm MST by timothy

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Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:35pm MST by Mike Gunderloy

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:00pm MST by timothy

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Posted: November 19th, 2008, 10:23am MST by CmdrTaco

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 9:50am MST by CmdrTaco

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Posted: November 19th, 2008, 9:08am MST by CmdrTaco

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 8:23am MST by samzenpus

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 7:32am MST by CmdrTaco

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Posted: November 19th, 2008, 6:52am MST by CmdrTaco

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 6:01am MST by kdawson

Posted: November 19th, 2008, 3:40am MST by kdawson

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Posted: November 19th, 2008, 12:09am MST by Soulskill

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Posted: November 18th, 2008, 3:52pm MST by kdawson

Posted: November 18th, 2008, 3:01pm MST by kdawson