Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "A mechanical engineer working out of the University of Delaware has come up with a way to produce hydrogen without any undesirable emissions such as carbon dioxide. The solar reactor is capable of using sunlight to increase the heat inside its cylindrical structure above 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Zinc oxide powder is then gravity fed through 15 hoppers into the ceramic interior where it converts to a zinc vapor. At that point the vapor is reacted with water separately, which in turn produces hydrogen. If the prototype gets through 6 weeks of testing at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located in Zurich, we could see it scaled up to industrial size, producing emission-free hydrogen."

theodp writes "Many US colleges and universities have notices posted on their websites informing US companies that they're tax chumps if they hire students who are US citizens. 'In fact, a company may save money by hiring international students because the majority of them are exempt from Social Security (FICA) and Medicare tax requirements,' advises the taxpayer-supported University of Pittsburgh (pdf) as it makes the case against hiring its own US students. You'll find identical pitches made by the University of Delaware, the University of Cincinnati, Kansas State University, the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State University, and other public colleges and universities. The same message is also echoed by private schools, such as John Hopkins University, Brown University, Rollins College and Loyola University Chicago."

Roland Piquepaille writes "University of Delaware (UD) scientists and engineers are currently working at the South Pole under very harsh conditions. This research team is one of the many other ones working on the construction of IceCube, the world's largest neutrino telescope in the Antarctic ice, far beneath the continent's snow-covered surface. When it is completed in 2011, the telescope array will occupy a cubic kilometer of Antarctica. One of the lead researchers said that 'IceCube will provide new information about some of the most violent and far-away astrophysical events in the cosmos.' The UD team has even opened a blog to cover this expedition. It will be opened up to December 22, 2008. I guess they want to be back in Delaware for Christmas, but read more for additional details and references, including a diagram of this telescope array built inside ice."

SlySpy007 writes "Spaceweather.com is reporting on an enormous solar event which took place earlier this evening. This event, emanating from the gigantic sunspot 720, registered as an X7-class event, and increased the 24-hour probability of a minor geomagnetic storm to 60% in mid-latitudes (70% in high latitudes). The GOES-12 satellite happened to catch this event with its SXI instrument (Solar X-ray Imager), and there's a pretty gnarly animation of the event from 720 over at the SXI site. I know this is gonna cause havoc for plenty of missions in orbit now; wonder if we'll see any disturbance here on terra firma." Another reader points to ground-based monitoring stations detecting a surge in cosmic rays at the time of the flare.

Ed Waldmire writes "I am pleased to annouce to the /. community that the OpenDarwin community has released OpenDarwin 7.2.1. This release corresponds to Mac OS X 10.3.2 and includes many bugfixes and additions. Most notable are ncutil, YUM, and a tulip NIC driver."

An anonymous reader sends in this: "In honor of upcoming V-day, here are some geek guides for help in finding your geeky match: Guy's Guide to Geek Girls, Girl's Guide to Geek Guys, advice from a she-geek, Engineer Your Love Life and Bart's Dating Guide for Geeks. And for those of you who are absolutely hopeless, well, there is always Coincidence Designs... It's not too late, so good luck!" Another reader has some good news: "An article in Discover magazine reports on research done by scientists at the University of Toronto about how males attract mates. The cited article claims that when males are young, the show offs are actually the ones who are least likely to succeed later on. This causes a "revenge of the nerds effect:" the football players burn out but the nerds become sexy!" And if all else fails, you can try a Valentine's Day Form Letter.

Raul654 asks: "My university has a very vague Academic dishonesty policy. I have a small webpage with some code I have written (mostly C/C++ and Verilog), GPL of course. Someone warned me, rightfully so, that I might be in violation of the policy. Long story short, I have an appointment with Judicial Affairs in a few days (my doing), and I want to go in there with some persuasive arguments for why I shouldn't have to pull the page." The problem here is that the code on his webpage is code from previous programming projects. It basically boils down to the tradeoff of a student who feels pround about his work and a professor who doesn't want to interfere with the lesson plan he probably worked hard to produce. How do you feel about this?

Raul654 asks: "My university has a very vague Academic dishonesty policy. I have a small webpage with some code I have written (mostly C/C++ and Verilog), GPL of course. Someone warned me, rightfully so, that I might be in violation of the policy. Long story short, I have an appointment with Judicial Affairs in a few days (my doing), and I want to go in there with some persuasive arguments for why I shouldn't have to pull the page." The problem here is that the code on his webpage is code from previous programming projects. It basically boils down to the tradeoff of a student who feels pround about his work and a professor who doesn't want to interfere with the lesson plan he probably worked hard to produce. How do you feel about this?

Raul654 asks: "My university has a very vague Academic dishonesty policy. I have a small webpage with some code I have written (mostly C/C++ and Verilog), GPL of course. Someone warned me, rightfully so, that I might be in violation of the policy. Long story short, I have an appointment with Judicial Affairs in a few days (my doing), and I want to go in there with some persuasive arguments for why I shouldn't have to pull the page." The problem here is that the code on his webpage is code from previous programming projects. It basically boils down to the tradeoff of a student who feels pround about his work and a professor who doesn't want to interfere with the lesson plan he probably worked hard to produce. How do you feel about this?

Raul654 asks: "My university has a very vague Academic dishonesty policy. I have a small webpage with some code I have written (mostly C/C++ and Verilog), GPL of course. Someone warned me, rightfully so, that I might be in violation of the policy. Long story short, I have an appointment with Judicial Affairs in a few days (my doing), and I want to go in there with some persuasive arguments for why I shouldn't have to pull the page." The problem here is that the code on his webpage is code from previous programming projects. It basically boils down to the tradeoff of a student who feels pround about his work and a professor who doesn't want to interfere with the lesson plan he probably worked hard to produce. How do you feel about this?

PhoenxHwk writes "University of Delaware's webpage is running a story on the new Multi-Touch Keyboard by Fingerworks. This was on Slashdot once before, but the product is no longer vapor! Fingerworks's products are gesture-based keyboard-and-mouse "surfaces" that require zero force to work with - they are hailed as a product to both combat RSI and make working more efficient."

RainbowSix writes: "The sequel to Vendetta: A Christmas Story is up. Check it out here. I haven't finished downloading it yet, but hopefully it will be as entertaining as the last one. At 25k/sec, hopefully people can post mirrors too. It is only in .mov format so far, so mpg linux people will have to move to a windows box until they post the other formats." Update: 12/26 05:34 GMT by T : marks writes: "We now have an official mirror of Vendetta Parts 1 and 2 up here via http and here via ftp. We have the Quicktime/AVI full movie and segments for Part 1, and the Quicktime Full Movie and Segements for Part 2."

RainbowSix writes: "The sequel to Vendetta: A Christmas Story is up. Check it out here. I haven't finished downloading it yet, but hopefully it will be as entertaining as the last one. At 25k/sec, hopefully people can post mirrors too. It is only in .mov format so far, so mpg linux people will have to move to a windows box until they post the other formats." Update: 12/26 05:34 GMT by T : marks writes: "We now have an official mirror of Vendetta Parts 1 and 2 up here via http and here via ftp. We have the Quicktime/AVI full movie and segments for Part 1, and the Quicktime Full Movie and Segements for Part 2."

RainbowSix writes: "The sequel to Vendetta: A Christmas Story is up. Check it out here. I haven't finished downloading it yet, but hopefully it will be as entertaining as the last one. At 25k/sec, hopefully people can post mirrors too. It is only in .mov format so far, so mpg linux people will have to move to a windows box until they post the other formats." Update: 12/26 05:34 GMT by T : marks writes: "We now have an official mirror of Vendetta Parts 1 and 2 up here via http and here via ftp. We have the Quicktime/AVI full movie and segments for Part 1, and the Quicktime Full Movie and Segements for Part 2."

kelleher asks: "Wasn't sure about the topic - this could go under Hardware, Music, or Toys. I'm looking to upgrade the stereo in my car, right now it has a 14-year-old Blaupunkt AM/FM cassette (standard in an '86 Porsche 944) that is non-functional. I would like something that plays both MP3s, CDs, and has an AM/FM tuner (I can't survive without NPR in the morning). I've looked at the Aiwa CDC-MP3, the Kenwood Z919, and the empeg. The empeg is out because it doesn't play audio CDs. Right now the Aiwa is in the lead due to pricing and feature set, but before I open up my wallet I wanted to know what other people are doing." I would like something similar for the next unit I put into my car. I'm still stuck with the factory radio from a 1988 Honda Accord (LXi).

eweaver asks: "Windows has built-in color matching modules like ICM and sRBG, and 3rd-party solutions like Colorific and ColorBlind, but what is the Linux/XFree86 equivalent? Caldera Graphics seems to have some sort of solution, but I don't think it's universal, it seems to work only in their programs. What can I do so that the colors I see in all my Linux graphics apps (mainly GIMP and Blender) are accurate (adjusted for gamma, white point, lighting, etc.)?"

Let's start this off with jsewell's truly amazing story about the rocket car urban legend from the man who claims to have invented it. Did you do your homework last week? Remember that Slashdot was nominated for a Webby in Community so go do their little login dance and vote for us if you think that our First Posts, Oog, Trolls and 'God Slashdot Really Sucks These Days' messages are cool. Maybe we'll even fly CowboyNeal out to give an acceptance speech if we win ;) Glowing Spleen sent us an optical illusion that really bugs me. I had to check if it wasn't an animated GIF. A few for the do it yourselfers: Slash T.M.F.D.W. sent us a real mech and Ryan J. Evans sent in the worlds largest playable tetris. If you don't actually want to build something, but want to play anyway, try SodaPlay and you can mess with these crazy animated 2D springy models. Its surprisingly addictive. After all that building, you might need Jeremy's Microbatch Ice Cream (thanks alangmead) and its "Wired" flavor, a caffinated vanilla ice cream. Between that and the Triple Espresso flavor. Wonder what happens if you keep it in this Bio-Plastic Wrap that detects contaminated food (sent in by Accipiter) You can't use plastic wrap to preserve human heads, but ChunkyGoodness noted that Chet Fleming has US Patent number 4666425 for keeping them alive. Dugh Daren sent us a hilarious essay from Space.com on Star War's most annoying characters that I found extremely funny. brunning pointed us to perhaps the most pressing bug in all of Microsoft's software. kwsNI pointed us to an extremely disturbing article about Pandas on Viagra in China. Blake sent in a filter based on "Being John Malkovitch." Read Slashdot in Malkovitch Mode. And finally, we need a stupid lawsuit: east_bay_pete told us about a commercial that featured a cockroach scampering over the screen ... people are suing because they keep breaking TVs trying to kill the CGI Roach!

Jeff Molloy writes "The results are here link " It's a shame Linux didn't win, but it looks like the tests show where Linux might have some deficiencies. Overall, it looks better than the original test, though.

Carlie Fairchild sent us a link to SSC's Open Systems Products Directory . Next, Sean Leach sent us a link to A PlanetQuake/Linux Article. Third Joe Pranevich sent us a link to his Linux Q&A site. He's collecting FAQs to provide a database of helpful information for Linux Users. He's seeking anyone interested in helping. Finally we have another Linux help site sent in by Jason James. This site is seeking folks willing to help field technical questions for users.