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Domain: nyud.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nyud.net.
Stories · 155
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Linux and OpenOffice save Microsoft Presentation
EvilGrinUK writes "A presentation about Shared Source (SSI) by the head of Microsoft Ukraine was almost ruined when the Windows machine (a Tablet PC) linked to the projector developed problems. The solution was to adopt OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 and ALT Linux Compact 2.3, which was already running on the presenter's laptop (an IBM Thinkpad). Here's a picture." -
Half-Life 2 Panoramics
rgovostes writes "VRMag, an online panoramic magazine, has QuickTime VR scenes from Half-Life 2. The corresponding article, Half Life 2: A Panoramic Approach, explains how the images were made and relates photographic elements with the game's rendering engine." -
Figuring Out the Font System on Linux Desktops?
koreth asks: "Last year I switched to Debian sarge on my office desktop machine. For the most part it's been great, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around fonts. For example, my favorite programming font is Sheldon Narrow. After running it through a few conversion tools and copying it to various font directories, I was able to start using it in xterm. But no sign of it in Konsole, despite running it through KDE's font installer tool. A few times I've installed new fonts that appear in the font lists of GNOME apps but not KDE apps or vice versa, and it's unclear to me how either environment's fonts interact with what I see when I run 'xlsfonts'. I have yet to find any documentation describing how either GNOME or KDE decides which fonts it likes. And then there's Debian's 'defoma', which seems to interact with everything somehow. Are there any good resources out there for learning what's going on under the hood of a modern Linux desktop environment's font subsystem?" -
Aquarium Full of Oil For PC Cooling
JaredOfEuropa writes "Forget fancy watercooled CPUs or complicated heat pipes. Annoyed with the noise of the forced-air cooling in his computer, this guy simply dumped his entire motherboard in an aquarium filled with mineral oil. (coral cache). No modifications were necessary; he even left the fans running to keep the oil moving about. The only thing not submersed in oil is the hard disk." -
Viva La Resolution
Via Games*Design*Art*Culture, a post over on the O'Reilly network discussing an unofficial "anthem" for the GDC entitled Viva La Resolution. From the post: "So imagine an alternate universe in which a major game publisher--Microsoft, say--actually embraced the notion that games are an artform and encouraged innovation. If that were to happen, they might conceivably commission a song like this to get game developers excited and pumped up and ready to go. Now here's the weirdness---apparently, they did commission the song, from the Fatman (George Sanger, one of the industry's best-known composers)--and then canned it when they heard it and found out what it was...Guess it wasn't the message they wanted, eh?" Update: 05/10 03:47 GMT by Z : Mirrors for the song can be found here and here. -
Fast Generation of 3D City Models
FleaPlus writes "New Scientist and UC Berkeley News report on research by Avideh Zakhor and Christian Früh on rapidly and automatically generating photo-realistic 3D models (coral cache) of city environments. This is reminiscent of research mentioned here in March, although the approach is rather different. Applications for areas like urban planning, entertainment, emergency response, and the military are discussed. Zakhor's group is also working on 4D systems, to allow for recording of events over time as moving 3D models." -
Space Elevator Group to Open Nanotube Factory
FleaPlus writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Universe Today report that the LiftPort Group, a consortium dedicated to commercially developing and constructing a space elevator, will be opening a carbon nanotube manufacturing plant in June of this year. The new facility has been dubbed LiftPort Nanotech. Many expect the LiftPort Group to be a front-runner in NASA's recently-announced Centennial Challenges competitions for space elevator technologies, which begin in September of this year." -
SCO Missing 16,209 Files?
FileSortingZombie writes "After all the allegations by SCO that IBM is abusing or dragging out the discovery process, over in this story on Groklaw you can read about IBM's objections to what SCO is producing in discovery, not the least of which is that there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log, and IBM wants to know what's become of them. Are they unprivileged, lost, destroyed, already produced, or quite simply gone? As of yet, no one seems to know. All told, IBM found fault with some 76% of their claims, especially one case where IBM says that SCO appears to be trying to claim that a conversation it had with an IBM employee should be considered confidential. One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site for those interested in just how objectionable IBM found SCO's filing." -
Bird Brains Explain How Humans Learn to Talk
eaglebtc writes "A team of neuroscientists at MIT have made tremendous progress in understanding how birds learn to sing: a part of the brain called the basal ganglia is primarily responsible for controlling the learning of movement and the production of speech. This circuitry is also present in humans, and it is the same way that a baby's random babbling eventually becomes the proficient speech of adults. It is hoped that this research can provide further insights into Parkinson's Disease, an inherited genetic condition that causes rapid breakdown of motor control and speech production. The full research study is available as a downloadable PDF." -
NASA Builds Worlds Largest Paper Airplane
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has designed and built the world's biggest paper airplane. The 98-foot, $1.2 billion bird isn't a mere museum piece or just for show. It's code name the "Flying Squirrel" for some odd reason doesn't seem to fit as the engineering drawings suggest a more shuttle like heritage. Here is the original article." -
NASA Builds Worlds Largest Paper Airplane
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has designed and built the world's biggest paper airplane. The 98-foot, $1.2 billion bird isn't a mere museum piece or just for show. It's code name the "Flying Squirrel" for some odd reason doesn't seem to fit as the engineering drawings suggest a more shuttle like heritage. Here is the original article." -
Gallery and Coppermine Merger
ckdake writes "In a move designed to stun the market, the Gallery team has publicly announced its plans to merge with the Coppermine project. 'After Yahoo bought Flickr we started feeling a little bit left out! Why do those corporate droids get to do all the acquisitions?' asked Bharat Mediratta, co-founder of the Gallery project, in a joint press conference. Joachim "GauGau" Müller, the lead developer for Coppermine, added 'It's time for us open source guys to get in on the fun of burning money by making senseless acquisitions!' Get the full story at coppergallery.org (Coral link)" -
Automatic 3D Reconstruction of Scenes
Neil Halelamien writes "New Scientist reports on a piece of software by MDRobotics called instant Scene modeler (iSM), which automatically generates 3D reconstructions of scenes, using a few hundred frames from a pair of ordinary video cameras. The software uses David Lowe's SIFT vision algorithm to quickly locate common features between sequential images, for use in the reconstruction; SIFT has also been useful for generating panoramas and object recognition. MDRobotics has a demo page showing the software being used for crime scene reconstruction, along with animated GIFs of input video and the resulting 3D model." -
Automatic 3D Reconstruction of Scenes
Neil Halelamien writes "New Scientist reports on a piece of software by MDRobotics called instant Scene modeler (iSM), which automatically generates 3D reconstructions of scenes, using a few hundred frames from a pair of ordinary video cameras. The software uses David Lowe's SIFT vision algorithm to quickly locate common features between sequential images, for use in the reconstruction; SIFT has also been useful for generating panoramas and object recognition. MDRobotics has a demo page showing the software being used for crime scene reconstruction, along with animated GIFs of input video and the resulting 3D model." -
Whirlwinds on Mars, From the Ground
Neil Halelamien writes "Back in 1999, satellite images were photographed of 5-mile-high whirlwinds streaking across the surface of Mars. A couple of months ago the Spirit rover got a close up view of whirlwind tracks, and this past week photographed a whirlwind in action (animation). It's thought that these dust devils may be responsible for the mystery power boost to the rovers' solar cells. Last year the rovers also spotted clouds and frost." -
Enemy Territory Fortress Mod Arrives
Rogerpq3 writes "Enemy Territory Fortress (ETF), a port of the Quake3 mod Q3F is now available for Enemy Territory players. ETF is based off the Team Fortress concept: 10 unique classes and a ton of very cool weapons along with some killer maps. The mod includes many game types like CTF, Reverse CTF, Single Flag, Capture & Hold, Assault, King of the Hill and Duel. To play the mod, all people need to do is download Enemy Territory and the latest patch which are both free. You can find a list of download mirrors for ETF here." -
Green Security Clearance Laser Pistol Available
nazgul000 writes "You thought those green laser pointers sold by ThinkGeek and others were pretty cool, didn't you? Well, think again." It seems obligatory to point out that even laser pointers, and certainly anything more powerful than those, are capable of causing real damage. -
Google Suggest Dissected, Part II
Bert690 writes "To complement the recent dissection of Google Suggest's innovative front end, I investigated [Coral Link & mirror] the back end of the system in an effort to determine just how it generates suggestions. Along with some preliminary findings, you'll find a pointer to a program for enumerating all possible suggestions from a given starting point. I found the number of possible suggestions to be surprisingly small considering the immense scope of the web." -
Google Suggest Dissected, Part II
Bert690 writes "To complement the recent dissection of Google Suggest's innovative front end, I investigated [Coral Link & mirror] the back end of the system in an effort to determine just how it generates suggestions. Along with some preliminary findings, you'll find a pointer to a program for enumerating all possible suggestions from a given starting point. I found the number of possible suggestions to be surprisingly small considering the immense scope of the web." -
Gaming Gaffes of 2004
jvm writes "It's about time for the "Best Games of 2004" articles to flood the web, and in preparation Curmudgeon Gamer has assembled Gaming Gaffes of 2004 (alternate link), a followup to our 2003 edition. This year we point to the the EA_spouse blog, the Driv3r review scandal, Sony's hardware missteps, and seven other less than impressive moments from the past year." -
How to Build a Better Browser
TuringTest writes "Interface designer and IE ex-developer Scott Berkun writes an essay on basic principles of web browser design, moved by the recent presence of Firefox and Opera in the headlines. Gives plenty of design constraints and guidelines, some insightful, some debatable. Personally some features that I'd like to see in my browser include colaborative filtering (a.k.a. del.icio.us integration), a unified tool for history+bookmarks in a single list (filtered by keyword tags), and automatic generation of keywords for the bookmarked pages (something that Open Text Summarizer can do)." -
How to Build a Better Browser
TuringTest writes "Interface designer and IE ex-developer Scott Berkun writes an essay on basic principles of web browser design, moved by the recent presence of Firefox and Opera in the headlines. Gives plenty of design constraints and guidelines, some insightful, some debatable. Personally some features that I'd like to see in my browser include colaborative filtering (a.k.a. del.icio.us integration), a unified tool for history+bookmarks in a single list (filtered by keyword tags), and automatic generation of keywords for the bookmarked pages (something that Open Text Summarizer can do)." -
How to Build a Better Browser
TuringTest writes "Interface designer and IE ex-developer Scott Berkun writes an essay on basic principles of web browser design, moved by the recent presence of Firefox and Opera in the headlines. Gives plenty of design constraints and guidelines, some insightful, some debatable. Personally some features that I'd like to see in my browser include colaborative filtering (a.k.a. del.icio.us integration), a unified tool for history+bookmarks in a single list (filtered by keyword tags), and automatic generation of keywords for the bookmarked pages (something that Open Text Summarizer can do)." -
How to Build a Better Browser
TuringTest writes "Interface designer and IE ex-developer Scott Berkun writes an essay on basic principles of web browser design, moved by the recent presence of Firefox and Opera in the headlines. Gives plenty of design constraints and guidelines, some insightful, some debatable. Personally some features that I'd like to see in my browser include colaborative filtering (a.k.a. del.icio.us integration), a unified tool for history+bookmarks in a single list (filtered by keyword tags), and automatic generation of keywords for the bookmarked pages (something that Open Text Summarizer can do)." -
How to Build a Better Browser
TuringTest writes "Interface designer and IE ex-developer Scott Berkun writes an essay on basic principles of web browser design, moved by the recent presence of Firefox and Opera in the headlines. Gives plenty of design constraints and guidelines, some insightful, some debatable. Personally some features that I'd like to see in my browser include colaborative filtering (a.k.a. del.icio.us integration), a unified tool for history+bookmarks in a single list (filtered by keyword tags), and automatic generation of keywords for the bookmarked pages (something that Open Text Summarizer can do)." -
Sony PSP Launched With Long Queues In Akihabara
Juergen writes "At 7 a.m. JST, the first shops in Tokyo's 'Electric City' Akihabara opened their doors and sold the brand-new Sony PSP to the long queues of gamers (Mirror) who had waited already for more than 24 hours in a chilly 5 degrees Celsius." -
P2P Not Dead, Just Hiding
adavies42 writes "Contrary to media reports, P2P is not dying (PDF); it's just becoming harder to detect. In a paper for CAIDA, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis, researchers present evidence that the supposed decline in P2P traffic is actually due to a decline in easy-to-track protocols as those that change port numbers on a regular basis become more popular." -
Exploring Antarctica
dargaud writes "There will soon be some firsts on the high Antarctic plateau: after getting 150km from it last year a Chinese expedition plans on reaching Dome A, the highest part of the Antarctic ice sheet (4200m), farthest to reach and coldest place on Earth, untrodden yet. Then in a few months the French-Italian station of Concordia at Dome C (3200m) will open year-round for its first winter-over, of which I will be part. The location of these ice domes make them great for atmospheric physics, glaciology, astronomy and more. Big projects are getting interested in Antarctica again, just in time for the International Polar Year of 2007, 50 years after the first one." -
Exploring Antarctica
dargaud writes "There will soon be some firsts on the high Antarctic plateau: after getting 150km from it last year a Chinese expedition plans on reaching Dome A, the highest part of the Antarctic ice sheet (4200m), farthest to reach and coldest place on Earth, untrodden yet. Then in a few months the French-Italian station of Concordia at Dome C (3200m) will open year-round for its first winter-over, of which I will be part. The location of these ice domes make them great for atmospheric physics, glaciology, astronomy and more. Big projects are getting interested in Antarctica again, just in time for the International Polar Year of 2007, 50 years after the first one." -
Data Mining the US Senate Votes
AJ writes "We used some old and new data mining techniques to see what was happening in the US Senate in 2003. Among other things, we identified the 'social' network of similarities between senators, how influential is each senator and each state, and a 3D VRML view of the Senate. You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal, and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans. We provide our data and the source of all our analysis software (Orange and MPCA, both under GPL)." -
Data Mining the US Senate Votes
AJ writes "We used some old and new data mining techniques to see what was happening in the US Senate in 2003. Among other things, we identified the 'social' network of similarities between senators, how influential is each senator and each state, and a 3D VRML view of the Senate. You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal, and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans. We provide our data and the source of all our analysis software (Orange and MPCA, both under GPL)." -
Data Mining the US Senate Votes
AJ writes "We used some old and new data mining techniques to see what was happening in the US Senate in 2003. Among other things, we identified the 'social' network of similarities between senators, how influential is each senator and each state, and a 3D VRML view of the Senate. You will be able to check whether Senator Kerry was a centrist or a liberal, and who is acting more cohesively, the Democrats or the Republicans. We provide our data and the source of all our analysis software (Orange and MPCA, both under GPL)." -
Nuclear Rockets Moving Along
AKAImBatman writes "Bruce Behrhorst of NuclearSpace.com recently stumbled across a new engine from everyone's favorite Jet Engine maker, Pratt & Whitney. Unlike P&W's previous engines, however, this engine is not a jet, and is powered by Nuclear Fission. It seems that P&W has responded to the need for Mars transportation by inventing the first commercially viable nuclear thermal rocket. They have heavily improved upon the NERVA NRX design from the 60's, and have even solved the graphite ablation problem! With this new engine, it seems that an inexpensive trip to Mars is now firmly within our grasp. Will we rise to the challenge?" -
Sender-ID Back From The Dead
NW writes "Microsoft's Sender-ID standard has been left for the dead since the rejection earlier this fall by the IETF. According to a Reuters story, it has been revised and will be resubmitted to the IETF. Along the way, Microsoft managed to pick up AOL's endorsement of Sender-ID. My humble analysis appears here." -
Replacing TCP?
olau writes "TCP, the transfer protocol that most of the Internet is using, is getting old. These guys have invented an alternative that combines UDP with rateless erasure codes, which means that packets do not have to be resent. Cool stuff! It also has applications for peer-to-peer networks (e.g. for something like BitTorrent). They are even preparing RFCs! The guy who started it, Petar Maymounkov, is of Kademlia fame." -
Replacing TCP?
olau writes "TCP, the transfer protocol that most of the Internet is using, is getting old. These guys have invented an alternative that combines UDP with rateless erasure codes, which means that packets do not have to be resent. Cool stuff! It also has applications for peer-to-peer networks (e.g. for something like BitTorrent). They are even preparing RFCs! The guy who started it, Petar Maymounkov, is of Kademlia fame." -
Replacing TCP?
olau writes "TCP, the transfer protocol that most of the Internet is using, is getting old. These guys have invented an alternative that combines UDP with rateless erasure codes, which means that packets do not have to be resent. Cool stuff! It also has applications for peer-to-peer networks (e.g. for something like BitTorrent). They are even preparing RFCs! The guy who started it, Petar Maymounkov, is of Kademlia fame." -
Replacing TCP?
olau writes "TCP, the transfer protocol that most of the Internet is using, is getting old. These guys have invented an alternative that combines UDP with rateless erasure codes, which means that packets do not have to be resent. Cool stuff! It also has applications for peer-to-peer networks (e.g. for something like BitTorrent). They are even preparing RFCs! The guy who started it, Petar Maymounkov, is of Kademlia fame." -
Replacing TCP?
olau writes "TCP, the transfer protocol that most of the Internet is using, is getting old. These guys have invented an alternative that combines UDP with rateless erasure codes, which means that packets do not have to be resent. Cool stuff! It also has applications for peer-to-peer networks (e.g. for something like BitTorrent). They are even preparing RFCs! The guy who started it, Petar Maymounkov, is of Kademlia fame." -
Portable Usability Labs As User Research Tools
Pete Gordon writes "Do Portable Usability and User Research Labs make sense in the software development life-cycle? This interview (my bias--it's with me, and I have a tool in beta now) covers some of the issues and questions on KDE's news site. I don't have the right answers necessarily, just looking for others input and opinions. Also, here are other links about the subject over the past few months. Info World and Harry's comparison." -
World Intellectual Wealth Organisation Proposed
wikinerd writes "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) proposed the creation of a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). FSFE says that WIWO will be 'dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge'. The WIWO announcement is signed by 18 organisations and 29 individuals, including Dr. Richard M. Stallman." -
World Intellectual Wealth Organisation Proposed
wikinerd writes "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) proposed the creation of a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). FSFE says that WIWO will be 'dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge'. The WIWO announcement is signed by 18 organisations and 29 individuals, including Dr. Richard M. Stallman." -
World Intellectual Wealth Organisation Proposed
wikinerd writes "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) proposed the creation of a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). FSFE says that WIWO will be 'dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge'. The WIWO announcement is signed by 18 organisations and 29 individuals, including Dr. Richard M. Stallman." -
World Intellectual Wealth Organisation Proposed
wikinerd writes "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) proposed the creation of a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). FSFE says that WIWO will be 'dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge'. The WIWO announcement is signed by 18 organisations and 29 individuals, including Dr. Richard M. Stallman." -
World Intellectual Wealth Organisation Proposed
wikinerd writes "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) proposed the creation of a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). FSFE says that WIWO will be 'dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge'. The WIWO announcement is signed by 18 organisations and 29 individuals, including Dr. Richard M. Stallman." -
World Intellectual Wealth Organisation Proposed
wikinerd writes "Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) proposed the creation of a World Intellectual Wealth Organisation (WIWO) as an alternative to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). FSFE says that WIWO will be 'dedicated to the research and promotion of novel and imaginative ways to encourage the production and dissemination of knowledge'. The WIWO announcement is signed by 18 organisations and 29 individuals, including Dr. Richard M. Stallman." -
Linux-Powered, WiFi Handheld?
rgovostes asks: "I've been looking around for a (hopefully low-cost) Linux-based handheld device with WiFi capabilities for some network testing and security evaluation. I need to be able to ping, list nearby WiFi signals, and run Ettercap. I'd also like it to be Mac OS X compatible without much work. I found handhelds.org (Coralized), which has some information, but I'm not very handheld-savvy, so it isn't too helpful to me. Am I asking for something unrealistic or is something like this possible? Any advice on the matter would be appreciated." -
SoftIntegration Releases Ch C/C++ Interpreter 4.7
duncanbojangles writes "SoftIntegration, Inc. today announced the availability of Ch 4.7, Ch SDK 4.7 and Embedded Ch 4.7. Ch is an embeddable C/C++ interpreter for cross-platform scripting, 2D/3D plotting, numerical computing, shell programming and embedded scripting. Finally, no more compiling a 30 line program just to see if a bit of code will work." -
Report Says Patents Threaten Software Innovation
GORby_ writes "According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, software patents are 'a particular threat to the European ICT Industry.' Quote from the report: 'There are particular threats to the European ICT industry such as the current discussion on the patent on software. The mild regime of IP protection in the past has led to a very innovative and competitive software industry with low entry barriers. A software patent, which serves to protect inventions of a non-technical nature, could kill the high innovation rate.' The full report (pdf) discusses Europe's ICT strategy." -
Exceptional Seeing At Dome C in Antarctica
Michael Ashley writes "A paper published in Nature today reports on the exceptional astronomical seeing conditions at Dome C (Coral link) in Antarctica. Obtaining the data posed some significant technological challenges, given that Dome C is uninhabited over winter. The experiment was controlled by a PC/104 computer system that had to survive temperatures down to -85C, and supervise the generation of its own electricity using a jet-fuel powered stirling engine. The computer, running Linux, communicated with the outside world using an Iridium phone. The results are also covered in New Scientist, and the Sydney Morning Herald. Disclaimer: I'm a co-author."
