Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "As discussed previously on slashdot, the Old Man Murray article was deleted from Wikipedia. After much controversy, the article has been restored. However, the debate to delete the article continues, with both deletionists and Old Man Murray fans swarming to the article."

rubycodez writes "The Tianhe-1A system will be the last Chinese supercomputer to use imported Intel and AMD processors. By years end, China's own 64 bit MIPS-compatible 65nm 8-core 1GHz version of the Godsen (Longsoon family) processors will be used, including 10,000 of them for the 'Dawning 6000' supercomputer. Yes, the chips can and usually do run GNU/Linux, but also can run FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

decora writes "After a version of the PS3 Free Speech Flag (from the Yale Law & Tech blog) was deleted from Wikipedia, for being a copyright violation, discussion turned to the original Free Speech Flag, from the HD DVD / AACS encryption key controversy. The result is that this flag too (currently in use on six different wikipedias) has now been nominated for deletion."

langelgjm writes "The Social Science Research Council, an independent, non-profit organization, today released a major report on music, film and software piracy in developing economies. It's a product of three years of work, and the authors conclude that piracy is primarily driven by excessively high prices and that anti-piracy education and enforcement efforts have failed. Still, chief editor Joe Karaganis believes that businesses can survive in these high piracy environments. The report is free to readers in low-income countries, but behind a paywall for certain high-income countries, although the SSRC notes, 'For those who must have it for free anyway, you probably know where to look.'"

G3ckoG33k writes "Fact-free science is not a joke; it is very much on the move, and it is quite possibly the most dangerous movement in centuries, for the entirety of mankind. One can say it began as counter-movement to Karl Popper's ground-breaking proposals in the early 20th century, which insisted that statements purporting to describe the reality should be made falsifiable. A few decades later, some critics of Popper said that statements need peer acceptance, which then makes also natural science a social phenomenon. Even later, in 1996, professor Alan Sokal submitted a famous article ridiculing the entire anti-science movement. Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the socially relativistic, postmodern loons. It is a chilling read, and they may be swinging both the political left and right. Have they been successful in transforming the world yet? How would we know?"

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Paul Krugman writes in the NY Times that information technology seems to be reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers (reg. may be required), because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing. One good recent example is how software is replacing the teams of lawyers who used to do document research. 'From a legal staffing viewpoint, it means that a lot of people who used to be allocated to conduct document review are no longer able to be billed out,' says Bill Herr, a lawyer at a major chemical company who used to muster auditoriums of lawyers to read documents for weeks on end. 'People get bored, people get headaches. Computers don't.' If true this raises a number of interesting questions. 'One is whether emphasizing education — even aside from the fact that the big rise in inequality has taken place among the highly educated — is, in effect, fighting the last war,' writes Krugman. 'Another is how we [can] have a decent society if and when even highly educated workers can't command a middle-class income.' Remember the Luddites weren't the poorest of the poor, they were skilled artisans whose skills had suddenly been devalued by new technology."

GrumpyBagpuss writes "We all know that the internet is supposed to route around damage, but currently eastern Libya is off the net because all their connectivity goes through Tripoli. How difficult would it to be to reconnect eastern Libya via a microwave link to Crete? It's less than 200km away, on the Libyan end there are mountains up to 850m and on Crete they're higher than 2000m. People have achieved distances of over 300km with simple WiFi equipment, but would it be possible to increase the bandwidth to handle a whole, or at least half a country? How would you connect the link at both ends? What other problems would there be? How many Pringles cans would we need?"

Atriune writes "The creator of the renowned Creatures artificial life series is at it again. Fifteen years after the initial success of the Creatures Trilogy, Steve Grand continues his quest to go beyond simulation, and create real artificial life." It's hard to tell if the approach is realistic, but it is certainly novel. Perhaps this will succeed in the areas the Lisp hackers of the '80s failed.

dmmiller2k writes "Apparently, after 'nearly four years in prison, the man dubbed the 'Spam King' by federal prosecutors, is allowed back online.' I wonder if there's some variation of Megan's Law requiring him to register with the local police department and notify all his neighbors with computers?" I sure hope any potential employers google "Robert Soloway" and find "Spam king" high on the results list.

xt writes "A recently submitted paper in arXiv claims that by using Bessel beams it is theoretically possible to pull particles towards the light source, opening up new avenues for optical micromanipulation (the direction of the force is size dependent, so it could be used for particle sorting). There is also a simpler article translated in English (original article in Greek)."

gbrumfiel writes "The Large Hadron Collider is just getting ready for its next big science run. One thing researchers hope it will find is evidence for supersymmetry, a theory that could help to unify fundamental forces and explain mysterious dark matter. But as Nature reports this week, the LHC has shown no signs of supersymmetry in data from last year's run. If super particles don't appear by 2012, then physicists might give up on the theory for good."

Phoghat writes "Overcoming a down-to-the-last-second problem, space shuttle Discovery made history yesterday, launching on its final mission to orbit. The most-traveled orbiter is carrying a crew of six astronauts and one human-like Robonaut, along with a new permanent storeroom and supplies for the International Space Station." The launch itself went as planned; a few pieces of foam insulation broke free of the external fuel tank on the way up, but it's not expected to be a safety concern, and they're planning an inspection to make sure. NASA has videos of yesterday's launch and a Discovery retrospective, and the Atlantic has a great collection of pictures involving the shuttle. Mike Coats, pilot of Discovery's first mission in 1984, spoke in an interview about his connection to the orbiter. Discovery comes back to Earth on March 7th.

eldavojohn writes "After 65 years, Paul Erdos' combinatorial problem has been solved by Indiana University professor Nets Hawk Katz. The problem involved determining the minimum number of distinct distances between any finite set of points in a plane and its applications range from drug development to robot motion planning to computer graphics. You can find a description of the problem here and the prepublication of the paper on arXiv. The researchers used the existing work on the problem and included two new ideas of their own, like using the polynomial ham sandwich theorem, to reach a solution that warranted at least half of Erdos' $500 reward posted for solving this problem way back in 1935."

Weezul writes "The US Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in 'psychological operations' to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war. An officer who tried to stop the operation was railroaded by military investigators. (see also the Hatch Act of 1939)."

Hugh Pickens writes writes "We've all heard of people who claim to have 'photographic memories.' Now Joshua Foer writes in the NY Times magazine (reg. may be required) that a 'skilled memory' can be acquired and proves it by explaining how he trained his brain to became a world-class memory athlete winning first place in the speed cards competition last year at the USA Memory Championship by memorizing a deck of cards in one minute forty seconds. According to Foer, memory training is a lost art that dates from antiquity. 'Today we have books, photographs, computers and an entire superstructure of external devices to help us store our memories outside our brains, but it wasn't so long ago that culture depended on individual memories,' writes Foer. 'It was considered a form of character-building, a way of developing the cardinal virtue of prudence and, by extension, ethics.' Foer says that the secret to supermemory is a system of training and discipline that works by creating 'memory palaces' on the fly filled with lavish images, painting a scene in the mind so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. 'Photographic memory is a detestable myth. Doesn't exist. In fact, my memory is quite average,' concludes Ed Cooke who recently invented a code that allows him to convert every number from 0 to 999,999,999 into a unique image that he can then deposit in a memory palace. 'What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly.'"

unassimilatible writes "Trial lawyers are increasingly using social networking sites like Facebook to research jurors in real-time during the voir dire process. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection. But what of the jurors who have their privacy settings restricted to 'friends only?' Mr. Villalobos has thought of a potential workaround: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily 'friending' his office. Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?"

citking writes "The Science Channel has purchased the rights to Firefly and plans to air all episodes in order and in high definition. In addition, physicist Dr. Michio Kaku will appear to explain the theoretical science behind the show's sci-fi concepts. There's a brief interview in the article as well with Nathan Fillion, who chimes in with his thoughts on Firefly and playing Mal."

jfruhlinger writes "Despite the fact that Oracle is suing Google over claims that Android violates Java IP, Android is roaring ahead in the marketplace. Still, some groups are wondering if they can implement Android without incurring Oracle's current or future wrath by avoiding the Dalvik VM. A project called IcedRobot aims to create a GNU-compatible version of Android, and rumors abound that RIM is planning on putting an OpenJDK-version of Android on its upcoming PlayBook tablets."

Whatsmynickname writes "Thought oil companies were done patent trolling to try to shut down any efforts to wean us off of crude oil (e.g. Chevron and NiMH batteries)? Think again. BP and DuPont (Butamax) have taken an advanced biofuel company to court over infringement of newly awarded patents for developing biobutanol. When an oil company advertises it is looking for alternative fuels, it's not necessarily because they want to be socially responsible..."

An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously, but its activities aren't confined to mass global protests, as the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is discovering, according to p2pnet. Says the Examiner, 'Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their "Love Crusades," obnoxious displays of insensitivity and homophobia at the funerals of fallen American soldiers. The controversial if monotone message of the "Love Crusade" seems to be to blame everything that is wrong in the world on homosexuality. The crusades are part of a hate-based mission started in Kansas by the WBC and Fred Phelps.' In an open letter on AnonNews, 'We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,' says Anonymous, stating 'Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS.'"

mask.of.sanity writes "The United States and Australia will enter bilateral talks in an attempt to unify controversial policies that would force internet providers to retain logs on the online habits of citizens. The US has urged Australia to take a moderate approach as it drafts its legislation and said it should not keep logs for longer than a year. Some EU nations keep the logs for as long as five years, although European nations disagree over the need for the plan." And of course, that's also how long we should keep recordings of everyone's phone calls, and copies of their (opened) mail, too.

schliz writes "When building a network from scratch, Argentine ants tend to connect their nests in the way that, while more inconvenient for individual ants, requires the minimum amount of trail. Researchers studying 'supercolonies' of the ants found them building networks that closely resembled the mathematical shortest path — a Steiner tree. They hope to apply their work to self-healing, organic computing networks of self-organising sensors, robots, computers, and autonomous cars." This story adds to the earlier report of ants' networking prowess.

RickJWagner writes "jBPM is a mature, open source business process management (BPM) solution. This book, written in a developer-centric manner, guides the reader through the framework and exposes many important considerations for production use. BPM tools are used to define and execute business processes. They usually come with a graphical editor, which is used to drag and drop boxes onto a graph. The boxes represent activities performed by programs, activities performed by humans, and decision points. If this all sounds like 'graphical programming', it isn't. The picture does draw out the desired series of steps, but there's always configuration and maybe some programming involved as well." Read below for the rest of Rick's review. jBPM Developer Guide author Mauricio Salatino pages Packt Publishing publisher 372 rating RickJWagner reviewer 1847195687 ISBN A complete developer's guide to working with jBPM in a J2EE enterprise environment summary 7/10 Developers new to the scene will probably draw parallels between BPEL and BPM. While they both allow the designer to orchestrate a series of activities, BPEL uses web services exclusively. (BPM doesn't specify, and often uses Java classes to accomplish desired goals.) BPEL offers support for human-activities (from BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask), but BPM has offered human tasks from the early days, so probably is a better choice if you have lots of them.

The book is true to it's title, it's definitely a book for developers. In the early chapters the reader is guided through implementing their own mini-BPM engine. This is an interesting exercise and helps solidify in the reader's mind the core concepts behind jBPM. It also reinforces the notion that jBPM can be used in a lightweight manner-- it's just as easily embeddable in a standalone Java application as it is deployed in a JEE container.

Speaking of JEE containers, jBPM is a JBoss product, so it's natural that it makes use of available infrastructure like Hibernate, poolable data sources, and enterprise beans for enterprise use. These are all optional-- if you want to write a minimal application that sits outside of JBoss, that's fine. But if you have heavyweight needs, heavyweight infrastructure is readily available. The book covers these important options in detail, which will be useful for developers writing real-world applications.

jBPM is popular enough that it's mentioned in quite a few SOA books as an enabling technology for process management. Most of these books provide coverage of the minimal, embedded use of jBPM. This book differs in that it provides good explanations of the 'enterprise' use.

Normally I strongly prefer paper books to electronic versions, but in this case I'd recommend you might consider the eBook. I say that because the book is much more useful if it's used in conjunction with the source code found on the publisher's site. The book shows source code in each example, but it's just a snippet out of context. I found the content much easier to understand when it was viewed next to all the related artifacts, so you can understand how they relate. (By the way, the toolkit used includes Maven and Eclipse. The reader is given adequate instruction in the front part of the book on setting these up.)

There's not much fluff in the book. It runs about 350 pages. Heavy Developer-type stuff starts after about 40 pages and never really gets lighter after that. Screen shots and diagrams are given where necessary, but mostly it's code and text. Sometimes books are criticized for being light on technical content and overstuffed with pictures and basic diagrams. This criticism does not apply in this case.

A big part of jBPM development is in data handling-- how do you get data into your process instance, and how do you get data out? The author explains this well, and it is a necessary discussion.

You might wonder why you should be interested in this book, which covers jBPM 3.2.6. After all, jBPM 5 was just released. What about jBPM 4? I believe this book will be relevant for quite a while yet, as jBPM 4 is not going to be included in JBoss's support cycle. They'll stay with jBPM 3 (the current supported standard) and will eventually move on to jBPM 5 (after it's gone through the 'community trial by fire' on it's way to productization.) jBPM 5 is going to be a big change from the current landscape-- it's converging with the rules engine Drools. For these reasons, I expect there will be a lot of jBPM 3 development done for a while yet.

So, who would I recommend this book for? I'd say it's a good book for anyone supporting a jBPM 3 deployment, or anyone considering developing a process-centric application. jBPM is a good product, and this book can help a reasonably skilled Java developer get off the ground. I would not recommend the book for someone just out trolling for a technology book to pick up, or an analyst charged with developing the graphical process depictions. As the title says, this is a book for developers.

You can purchase jBPM Developer Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

RickJWagner writes "jBPM is a mature, open source business process management (BPM) solution. This book, written in a developer-centric manner, guides the reader through the framework and exposes many important considerations for production use. BPM tools are used to define and execute business processes. They usually come with a graphical editor, which is used to drag and drop boxes onto a graph. The boxes represent activities performed by programs, activities performed by humans, and decision points. If this all sounds like 'graphical programming', it isn't. The picture does draw out the desired series of steps, but there's always configuration and maybe some programming involved as well." Read below for the rest of Rick's review. jBPM Developer Guide author Mauricio Salatino pages Packt Publishing publisher 372 rating RickJWagner reviewer 1847195687 ISBN A complete developer's guide to working with jBPM in a J2EE enterprise environment summary 7/10 Developers new to the scene will probably draw parallels between BPEL and BPM. While they both allow the designer to orchestrate a series of activities, BPEL uses web services exclusively. (BPM doesn't specify, and often uses Java classes to accomplish desired goals.) BPEL offers support for human-activities (from BPEL4People and WS-HumanTask), but BPM has offered human tasks from the early days, so probably is a better choice if you have lots of them.

The book is true to it's title, it's definitely a book for developers. In the early chapters the reader is guided through implementing their own mini-BPM engine. This is an interesting exercise and helps solidify in the reader's mind the core concepts behind jBPM. It also reinforces the notion that jBPM can be used in a lightweight manner-- it's just as easily embeddable in a standalone Java application as it is deployed in a JEE container.

Speaking of JEE containers, jBPM is a JBoss product, so it's natural that it makes use of available infrastructure like Hibernate, poolable data sources, and enterprise beans for enterprise use. These are all optional-- if you want to write a minimal application that sits outside of JBoss, that's fine. But if you have heavyweight needs, heavyweight infrastructure is readily available. The book covers these important options in detail, which will be useful for developers writing real-world applications.

jBPM is popular enough that it's mentioned in quite a few SOA books as an enabling technology for process management. Most of these books provide coverage of the minimal, embedded use of jBPM. This book differs in that it provides good explanations of the 'enterprise' use.

Normally I strongly prefer paper books to electronic versions, but in this case I'd recommend you might consider the eBook. I say that because the book is much more useful if it's used in conjunction with the source code found on the publisher's site. The book shows source code in each example, but it's just a snippet out of context. I found the content much easier to understand when it was viewed next to all the related artifacts, so you can understand how they relate. (By the way, the toolkit used includes Maven and Eclipse. The reader is given adequate instruction in the front part of the book on setting these up.)

There's not much fluff in the book. It runs about 350 pages. Heavy Developer-type stuff starts after about 40 pages and never really gets lighter after that. Screen shots and diagrams are given where necessary, but mostly it's code and text. Sometimes books are criticized for being light on technical content and overstuffed with pictures and basic diagrams. This criticism does not apply in this case.

A big part of jBPM development is in data handling-- how do you get data into your process instance, and how do you get data out? The author explains this well, and it is a necessary discussion.

You might wonder why you should be interested in this book, which covers jBPM 3.2.6. After all, jBPM 5 was just released. What about jBPM 4? I believe this book will be relevant for quite a while yet, as jBPM 4 is not going to be included in JBoss's support cycle. They'll stay with jBPM 3 (the current supported standard) and will eventually move on to jBPM 5 (after it's gone through the 'community trial by fire' on it's way to productization.) jBPM 5 is going to be a big change from the current landscape-- it's converging with the rules engine Drools. For these reasons, I expect there will be a lot of jBPM 3 development done for a while yet.

So, who would I recommend this book for? I'd say it's a good book for anyone supporting a jBPM 3 deployment, or anyone considering developing a process-centric application. jBPM is a good product, and this book can help a reasonably skilled Java developer get off the ground. I would not recommend the book for someone just out trolling for a technology book to pick up, or an analyst charged with developing the graphical process depictions. As the title says, this is a book for developers.

You can purchase jBPM Developer Guide from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

NumberField writes "The RSA Conference is underway in San Francisco. A theme among the opening speakers is that the attackers are winning, and even well-funded organizations like NASDAQ can't secure their networks reliably. The show floor is lively, but dominated by the typical firewalls and 'compliance solutions.' One interesting exception is a scary side-channel analysis demo in the Cryptography Research booth using GNU Radio to capture secret keys from various smartphones from about 10 feet away. (The method is related to early computer music using AM radio interference.)"

eldavojohn writes "It's a lengthy read, but Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker has released a 26 page expose on Scientology. In a world where such innocuous sounding words as 'squirrels,' 'security-checked,' 'disconnection,' 'contra-survival,' 'suppressive persons,' 'clear' and 'open season' carry very serious and heavy baggage, director Paul Haggis has exited after thirty four years of membership and massive funding. Now he speaks at length of Scientology's controversies. From how celebrities were recruited with a 10% commission by a worker at Beverly Hills Playhouse to the current investigation by the FBI of physical abuse and human trafficking, Wright draws surrounding histories and accounts of the Church including Anonymous' crusade. The length of this article reflects the unusually large number of individuals (12 cases of physical abuse) cited as testimony of Scientology Leader David Miscavige's inurement and physical violence. The case remains open as the FBI collects data and testimony — especially in relation to Sea Org. Most disturbing are the disappearances of people that the New Yorker piece enumerates. The piece concludes with the author's interaction with the Church that results in several conflicting foundational statements from its stance on homosexuality (Haggis' original reason for publicly leaving it) to almost all details of L. Ron Hubbard's naval service and discharge. The article ends with Haggis' quote: 'I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don't know why I couldn't.' You can find summaries of the lengthy article and its suspected results along with corresponding reports listing politicians involved with the Church. Copyrighted work, leaked government documents, PS3 encryption keys and everything else has been posted on Slashdot but only the Church of Scientology has forced comments out of existence."

eldavojohn writes "It's a lengthy read, but Lawrence Wright at The New Yorker has released a 26 page expose on Scientology. In a world where such innocuous sounding words as 'squirrels,' 'security-checked,' 'disconnection,' 'contra-survival,' 'suppressive persons,' 'clear' and 'open season' carry very serious and heavy baggage, director Paul Haggis has exited after thirty four years of membership and massive funding. Now he speaks at length of Scientology's controversies. From how celebrities were recruited with a 10% commission by a worker at Beverly Hills Playhouse to the current investigation by the FBI of physical abuse and human trafficking, Wright draws surrounding histories and accounts of the Church including Anonymous' crusade. The length of this article reflects the unusually large number of individuals (12 cases of physical abuse) cited as testimony of Scientology Leader David Miscavige's inurement and physical violence. The case remains open as the FBI collects data and testimony — especially in relation to Sea Org. Most disturbing are the disappearances of people that the New Yorker piece enumerates. The piece concludes with the author's interaction with the Church that results in several conflicting foundational statements from its stance on homosexuality (Haggis' original reason for publicly leaving it) to almost all details of L. Ron Hubbard's naval service and discharge. The article ends with Haggis' quote: 'I was in a cult for thirty-four years. Everyone else could see it. I don't know why I couldn't.' You can find summaries of the lengthy article and its suspected results along with corresponding reports listing politicians involved with the Church. Copyrighted work, leaked government documents, PS3 encryption keys and everything else has been posted on Slashdot but only the Church of Scientology has forced comments out of existence."

An anonymous reader writes "As the technology used to fuel democracy protests in Egypt continues to evolve, Whisper Systems, the company founded by well-known security researcher Moxie Marlinspike, just released encrypted calling and text messaging applications into Egypt to help keep protesters safe from surveillance."

An anonymous reader writes "Free software is about freedom. So it shouldn't be any surprise that the ideals behind the free software movement have spread to the place where freedom is most affected: government. The old definition of e-democracy is, basically, 'using computers in politics and governance.' So a politician sending out a batch e-mail is e-democracy. The new movement is about removing the power from politicians and making governance collaborative. The analogy to FOSS is remarkable: think of the current governments as the old guard computing companies, and the collaborative governance movement as the geeks with crazy notions of a different way of organizing things. FOSS looked like an impossible pipe-dream when it started. Tell that to the Apache group today."

eldavojohn writes "Coinciding with the 32nd anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Iran opened a center to receive satellite images built 'entirely by Iranian engineers.' Iran promised that by the end of their year (March of 2011) they would launch two observational satellites: Fajr (Dawn) and Rasad-1 (Observation-1). You might recall two years ago when they launched Omid, which completed about 700 orbits in two weeks. There are reports that new launch rockets will be revealed in February to launch the new satellites — all equipment is claimed to be entirely Iranian made. Iranian media is reporting that one of the satellites 'carries remote measuring equipment that would be used in meteorology and identifying sea borders.' The Iranian Student News Agency says Explorer 4 (Kavoshgar 4) is meant to transport humans and other living organisms into space, and that the sensory on the satellites 'is able to find gas and oil resources, identify coal mines, jungles and agricultural products as well as salty-marsh and contaminated environments.' These rapid fire achievements are not the only bragging Iran has done as of late; they also claim 'new gamma radiation units for medical treatments and a supercomputer billed as among the top 500 most powerful in the world. But, fact or fiction aside, the satellites have old enemies speculating."

brindafella writes "Look out, Stonehenge, here come the Wurdi Youang rocks in the Australian state of Victoria. The semi-circle of stones has been examined by an astrophysicist from Australia's premier research group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), who says this arrangement of rocks is a carefully aligned solar observatory that may be 10,000 years old. It would have been created by local Aborigines, the Wathaurong people, who have occupied the area for some 25,000 years."

eldavojohn writes "The US government's Broadcasting Board of Governors has revealed in a completed FOIA request the development, testing and planned use of Feed Over E-mail (FOE) to push news through China's firewall. This FOIA request (PDF) indicates that the US government is interested in making sure Chinese people receive up-to-date news, and it wants to expand the arsenal of anti-censorship tools (for news at least). The FOE project is GPLv3 and maintained by Sho Ho of BBG."

nk497 writes "Controversial legal firm ACS Law and its sole file-sharing client Media CAT have shut down their businesses, days before a ruling is due in a case they brought to the UK Patent Court. ACS Law is infamous for sending out letters to alleged illegal file sharers, demanding payment and threatening law suits. Now that ACS has a case before a judge, it's trying to drop the cases, and has now completely closed its doors. The defendants' lawyers are trying to keep the case going, in order to be able to claim back costs." That sounds right in line with other recent ACS happenings, from getting upbraided by a judge to being blacklisted by an ISP, and even putting the brakes on the file-sharing cases themselves.

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from a blog at the Federation of American Scientists' website: "In order to help determine the origins of microbial threats in terrorist incidents or epidemics, it would be useful to have a deep archive of various strains of lethal bacteria, the JASON defense advisory panel told the National Counterproliferation Center in a newly released 2009 report (PDF). ... 'This library would consist of strains collected worldwide by methods that preserve sample properties, and capture all relevant data (e.g. geolocation, local environmental conditions). It should include laboratory isolates, natural isolates, and DNA sequence data.'"

neosaurus writes "In India, the Bombay High Court recently ruled astrology to be 'a time tested science more than 4000 years old.' Not only does this stretch the definition of science, it also reaffirms people's faith in pseudosciences at a broader level." At least we can know for certain the people trying to get creationism taught as science in our schools have equally wacky friends around the globe.

eldavojohn writes "According to Interfax reports, a GEO-IK-2 spacecraft launched yesterday from Plesetsk went missing hours after launch. Its intended purpose is to measure specific curvature of the Earth to aid Russia's military in building excellent 3D maps. Early today, Russia announced that they found it, but unfortunately it's in the wrong orbit. China's state media called the launch 'successful.' Reuters reminds us of a GLONASS mishap, which resulted in Medvedev firing two top space officials."

An anonymous reader writes "Even as President Obama prepares to follow Mubarak with his own 'internet kill switch', Egyptians were turning to the Tor anonymiser to organise their protests online. The number of Egyptians connecting to the internet over Tor rose more than five-fold after protests broke out last week before crashing when the Government severed links to the global internet. Information security researcher, Tor coder and writer of the bridge that allowed Egypt's citizens to short-circuit government filters, Jacob Appelbaum, told SC Magazine Egyptians were 'concerned and some understand the risk of network traffic analysis.' Appelbaum has himself been the subject of attention from US security services who routinely snatch his electronics and search his belongings when he re-enters the country and who subpoenaed his private Twitter account last December." Which helps explain why Appelbaum is helping to organize a small fundraiser to get more communications gear into Egypt.

eldavojohn writes "The universe is only fourteen billion years old so we are unable to observe anything more than fourteen billion light years away. This makes it a bit difficult for us to measure how large the universe actually is. A number of methodologies have been devised to estimate the size of the universe including the universe's curvature, baryonic acoustic oscillations and the luminosity of distant type 1A supernovas. Now a team has combined all known methods into Bayesian model averaging to constrain the universe's size and their research is saying with confidence that the universe is at least 250 times larger than the observable universe."

eldavojohn writes "Scientific American is running a piece by science journalist John Horgan attacking pop physicist Brian Greene's latest offering, titled The Hidden Reality. He's not entirely alone; Not Even Wrong backs him up and reminds us of a growing list of multiverse propaganda. The journal Nature ran a short piece (subscription required) trying to remind everyone that Greene's book is more theory than fact, but apart from those three responses, the popular press seems to be gobbling up this tantalizing concept of a multiverse. NPR offers an excerpt while SFGate and The Wall Street Journal entertain us with interviews of the controversial Greene. The New York Times and Salon seem to think it's worthwhile, with Salon even calling it 'the science behind' the multiverse theory. The New York Times thought it worthwhile to give Greene an op-ed column. For better or for worse, Greene has certainly brought this great debate to the public's attention — similar to his exhibition of String Theory."

RedEaredSlider writes "An asteroid that once was seen as a danger to the Earth may soon provide a once-in-a-century opportunity to get a close look at one — and learn more about the ones that really are a hazard. The asteroid is called Apophis. It's a near-Earth asteroid that is a type called a chondrite, essentially a stony body that has high silicate content and few metals. It is about 330 meters across, and it's due to pass the Earth in 2029."

gbrumfiel writes "As Slashdot has noted, the kilogram has a problem. The SI unit is officially defined as the weight of a 130-year-old platinum-iridium cylinder in France. But the physical object appears to be getting lighter. Scientists want to replace the cylinder with a new standard based on Planck's constant, but two experiments designed to facilitate the switch keep coming up with different results. Now one researcher is proposing a solution: just average the two diverging experiments and use that value as the official definition. Not everyone thinks that averaging the two amounts to sound research: 'Deciding to just average these two results would be perfectly proper mathematics, but it would not be science,' says Michael Hart, a physicist at the University of Manchester, UK."

Barnes & Noble markets the Nook Color as an e-reader with tablet functionality handily built in, but that designation undersells it a bit — it's just as easy to see it as an Android tablet with a 7" multitouch display and a Cortex A8 processor that happens to have strong book-reading features. Compared to the current big name in 7" Android tablets, Samsung's Galaxy Tab, it's quite underspec'd (no camera or GPS receiver, Wi-Fi but no 3G), but it also costs only $250. A few days ago, Android hackers managed to put Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) onto the Color, though in a mostly crippled state. Now Liliputing points out that they've enabled hardware acceleration, too. Pretty neat that one of the cheapest capacitive-screen tablets you can get handles an operating system that a few weeks back was expected to require heavier iron. As comments at Engadget point out, it's not the very smoothest performance, but this is an early build by enthusiasts, and doesn't look too shabby. The developer's announcement of the port points out that this is a work in progress: "What is not working... pretty much everything else, no accelerometer, no wlan, no sound. Haven't started working on those things yet."