Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader writes "Despite the floods, linux.conf.au 2011 went ahead in Brisbane. Videos of the talks given at the conference are available via blip.tv. Highly recommended are Vint Cerf's keynote and Keith Packard's talk on X and the future of Linux graphics."

25 years ago, I peered inside through the playground window of my school. I was never particularly interested in being outside, and there was a shuttle launch on the library TV! The images of what I saw that day will stick with me forever. I didn't know what it really was I saw; I just made jokes. It's still how I deal. But I think I'm a bit wiser today, having maybe learned that the bleeding edge is sometimes literal. The technology we take for granted descends directly from the people willing to do what we never could. Thanks to the crew of Challenger, Columbia and Apollo 1.

schliz writes "Researchers have called for the development of a messaging framework that could increase the probability that our interplanetary messages are detected and deciphered – assuming Orson Scott Card's vision of telepathic buggers doesn't come true. The trio of postgraduate astrophysicists suggest a Messaging to Extraterrestrial Intelligence protocol (METI — PDF) for signal encoding, message length, information content, transmission method and periodicity. The protocol could be tested via a website that allows users to create, retrieve and decrypt sample messages that conform to the protocol — which also demonstrates communication across human cultural boundaries, they say."

tekgoblin writes "Today Sony has released a firmware update for the PS3 console that will update it to version 3.56. This comes on the same day news broke on the restraining order against George Hotz (Geohot). Sony did not state that it would stop jailbreaking the console but we can only assume that it does. With this restraining order against Geohot we see the Streisand Effect taking hold again as the key spreads all over the net. This decision by the courts may also prompt more hackers to focus their time on the PS3 from other projects. Be aware if you update your system and you like to jailbreak or hack, you will probably be unable to after the update." Actually, it might be possible after all.

Khopesh writes "Imperva blogged today about the sale of compromised .gov, .mil, and .edu sites, illustrating that cyber-criminals are getting bolder. Krebs on Security has an unredacted view of the site list. Perhaps the biggest threat is yet to come; if an industrious criminal can break into top government and military sites, so too can government-backed teams, proving that GhostNet and Stuxnet are just the beginning."

An anonymous reader writes "Vladimir Romanov has released what he claims is a polynomial-time algorithm for solving 3-SAT. Because 3-SAT is NP-complete, this would imply that P==NP. While there's still good reason to be skeptical that this is, in fact, true, he's made source code available and appears decidedly more serious than most of the people attempting to prove that P==NP or P!=NP. Even though this is probably wrong, just based on the sheer number of prior failures, it seems more likely to lead to new discoveries than most. Note that there are already algorithms to solve 3-SAT, including one that runs in time (4/3)^n and succeeds with high probability. Incidentally, this wouldn't necessarily imply that encryption is worthless: it may still be too slow to be practical."

matty619 writes "A CNET article is reporting on another try at low earth orbit satellites for internet access, reminiscent of Teledesic, an ill fated $9 billion Bill Gates/Paul Allen et al venture originally consisting of 840 low earth orbit satellites (LEO-SAT). From the article: 'MSCI, which stands for Microsat Systems Canada Inc., is trying to be a bit of a maverick with its project, called CommStellation. The company said today that its approach of using small, inexpensive satellites in low orbit — about 620 miles above the Earth — means better coverage of the world's population, quicker launch, and better network capacity.' Each MSCI satellite has a data-transfer capacity of 12 gigabits per second. The expected lifespan of each is 10 years, and they can be sent back into the atmosphere at the end of their lives to avoid more orbital clutter."

eldavojohn writes "A new reactor developed by CalTech shows promise for producing renewable fuel from sunlight. The reactor hinges on a metal oxide named Ceria that has very interesting properties at very high temperatures. It exhales oxygen at very high temperatures and inhales oxygen at very low temperatures. From the article, 'Specifically, the inhaled oxygen is stripped off of carbon dioxide (CO2) and/or water (H2O) gas molecules that are pumped into the reactor, producing carbon monoxide (CO) and/or hydrogen gas (H2). H2 can be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells; CO, combined with H2, can be used to create synthetic gas, or "syngas," which is the precursor to liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Adding other catalysts to the gas mixture, meanwhile, produces methane. And once the ceria is oxygenated to full capacity, it can be heated back up again, and the cycle can begin anew.' The only other piece of the puzzle is a large sunlight concentrator to raise the temperature to the necessary 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The team is working on modifying and refining the reactor to require a lower temperature to achieve the two-step thermochemical cycle. Another issue is the heat loss which the team claims could be reduced to improve efficiency to 15% or higher. Since CO2 is an input, the possibility exists for coal and power plants to collect CO2 emissions to be used in this process which would effectively allow us to "use the carbon twice." Another idea listed is that a "zero CO2 emissions" is developed along these lines: 'H2O and CO2 would be converted to methane, would fuel electricity-producing power plants that generate more CO2 and H2O, to keep the process going.' The team's work was published last month in Science."

littlekorea writes "The Australian Government has released a common operating environment desktop policy that — among security controls aimed at reducing the potential for leaks of Government data — mandates the ECMA-376 version of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) standard and productivity suites that can 'read and write' the .docx format, effectively locking the country's public servants into using Microsoft Office. The policy [PDF] also appears to limit desktop operating systems to large, off-the-shelf commercial offerings at the expense of smaller distributions."

eldavojohn writes "A common argument one might encounter in intelligent design or the arduous process of resolving science with religion is that the physical constants of our world are fine tuned for life by some creator or designer. A University of Alberta theoretical physicist claims quite the opposite when it comes to the cosmological constant. His paper says that our ever expanding universe has a positive cosmological constant and he explains that the optimum cosmological constant for maximizing the chances of life in the universe would be slightly negative: 'any positive value of the constant would tend to decrease the fraction of matter that forms into galaxies, reducing the amount available for life. Therefore the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is positive, is evidence against the idea that the constants have been fine-tuned for life.'"

eldavojohn writes "A common argument one might encounter in intelligent design or the arduous process of resolving science with religion is that the physical constants of our world are fine tuned for life by some creator or designer. A University of Alberta theoretical physicist claims quite the opposite when it comes to the cosmological constant. His paper says that our ever expanding universe has a positive cosmological constant and he explains that the optimum cosmological constant for maximizing the chances of life in the universe would be slightly negative: 'any positive value of the constant would tend to decrease the fraction of matter that forms into galaxies, reducing the amount available for life. Therefore the measured value of the cosmological constant, which is positive, is evidence against the idea that the constants have been fine-tuned for life.'"

Frankie70 writes "Matt Ridley writes about Angry Birds, an iPhone game (later ported to other platforms) which has sold more than 12 million copies. The spectacular trajectory of the game, from obscure Finnish iPhone app to global ubiquity — there are board games, maybe even movies in the works — is probably inexplicable. Ridley wonders if there is an evolutionary aspect to its allure. There is something much more satisfactory about an object tracing a parabolic ballistic trajectory through space towards its target than either following a straight line or propelling itself."

angry tapir writes "The cadre of volunteer developers behind the Cassandra distributed database have released the latest version of their open source software, able to hold up to 2 billion columns per row. The newly installed Large Row Support feature of Cassandra version 0.7 allows the database to hold up to 2 billion columns per row. Previous versions had no set upper limit, though the maximum amount of material that could be held in a single row was approximately 2GB. This upper limit has been eliminated."

DesScorp writes "AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi has a challenge for climate scientists. He wants one or more of their rank to accept a bet about temperature trends in the coming decade. Bastardi is making specific predictions. 'The scientific approach is: you see the other argument, you put forward predictions about where things are going to go, and you test them,' he says. 'That is what I have done. I have said the earth will cool .1 to .2 Celsius in the next ten years, according to objective satellite data.' Bastardi's challenge to his critics — who are legion — is to make their own predictions. And then wait. Climate science, he adds, 'is just a big weather forecast.' Bastardi's challenge is reminiscent of the famous Simon-Ehrlich Wager, where the two men made specific predictions about resource scarcity in the '80s."

Kayot writes "George Hotz, or, as he is known on the internet, GeoHot, has been served court papers. Shorty after Team fail0verflow discovered faults in the PS3's TPMs, Geohot and others figured out how to extract the long sought after holy grail encryption keys. Apparently Sony is not pleased and is very keen on defending their poorly defended system with the US legal system. The basis is that GeoHot released programs that allow the signing of homebrew which can be used to make PSN-like games out of normal PS3 games. However GeoHot has never supported any form of piracy and in fact has taken a constant stance against it."

jpyeck writes "I've deliberately avoided the smartphone craze, due to the fact I've never utilized any phone (landline or otherwise) enough to justify the monthly fees. But the geek in me craves the 'smart' part of the equation, especially since I got a bonus this year-end that is burning a hole in my pocket. The iPad is out of the question because I need a bit more hack-ability in my gadgets. I am drooling over the Android Honeycomb demo from the CES. I've had my eye on the Galaxy Tab, though it sounds like it won't support Honeycomb. The Xoom looks great, but who knows when it will come out? The consensus seems to be 'wait a few months for Honeycomb.' If you were me, with limited patience, would you buy an Android tablet now? If so, which?"

KentuckyFC writes "Russian physicists have come up with a new way to communicate with hypersonic vehicles surrounded by a sheath of plasma. Ordinarily, this plasma absorbs and reflects radio waves at communications frequencies, leading to a few tense minutes during the re-entry of manned vehicles such as the shuttle. However, the problem is even more acute for military vehicles such as ballistic missiles and hypersonic planes. Radio blackout prevents these vehicles from accessing GPS signals for navigation and does not allow them to be re-targeted or disarmed at the last minute. But a group of Russian physicists say they can get around this problem by turning the entire plasma sheath into a radio antenna. They point out that any incoming signal is both reflected and absorbed by the plasma. The reflected signal is lost but the absorbed energy sets up a resonating electric field at a certain depth within the plasma. In effect, this layer within the plasma acts like a radio antenna, receiving the signal. However, the signal cannot travel further through the plasma to the spacecraft."

RFSSystems writes "I thought this was an amazing and rather rare phenomenon and wanted to share. 'The airport has closed its primary runway until Jan. 13 to repaint the numeric designators at each end and change taxiway signage to account for the shift in location of the Earth's magnetic north pole.' It appears that the shifting poles have begun to affect air travel in a somewhat modest way. Could this also be the explanation for the falling/dead birds this week?" I hope the gradualists are right, but scenarios for rapid magnetic pole shift are fun to think about.

eldavojohn writes "Over a hundred years after the death of its author, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will be released in a censored format, removing two derogatory racial slurs: 'injun' and 'nigger.' The latter appears some 219 times in the original novel but both will be replaced by the word 'slave.' An Alabama publisher named NewSouth Books will be editing and censoring the book so that schools and parents might provide their children the ability to study the classic without fear of properly addressing the torturous history of racism and slavery in The United States of America. The Forbes Blog speculates that e-readers could provide us this service automatically. Salon admirably provides point versus counterpoint while the internet at large is in an uproar over this seemingly large acceptance of censorship as necessary even on books a hundred years old. The legendary Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself once wrote, 'the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter,' and now his own writing shall test the truth in that today."

itwbennett writes "Google may seem like an odd pioneer for mobile payments, says blogger Ryan Faas, but according to recent reports, the company is developing its own NFC payment solution. Here's why Faas thinks Google has a leg up in this emerging market: 'Google does have a lot of clout when it comes to NFC because the recent launch of the Nexus S and Gingerbread (the most recent Android release) offer the first truly widespread smartphone/NFC integration. That could give Google significant bargaining power. It also makes a certain sense to expect Google to try to lead in this area when you consider that the company is hyping mobile search and recommendation features.'"

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

techmuse writes "In a veritable Who's Who of Doctor Who, 10th Doctor David Tennant is marrying Georgia Moffett, the daughter of 5th Doctor Peter Davison, who played the Doctor's daughter in an episode of Doctor Who. Except that the Doctor's daughter was a clone of the Doctor, which meant that she really was Who. So a newer Doctor is marrying an older Doctor's daughter, who is a clone of the newer doctor, but only has half the DNA of the older Doctor."

blarkon writes "Microsoft commentator and Windows Phone 7 Expert Paul Thurrott has reported a serious bug that indicates Windows Phone 7 is uploading up to 50 MB of unidentified data every day. The phone operating system apparently ignores Wi-Fi connections for sending this data, leading some Windows Phone 7 owners hitting their 2 GB plan data limit while doing little more than checking email and social networking sites. Thurrott has written a book on Windows Phone 7 and is unlikely to be making such a claim unless it has some substance. At the moment no one knows what this data contains or where it is going, though Thurrott suspects it may be related to the Windows Phone Marketplace."

eldavojohn writes "Polish Google security white hat Michal Zalewski has announced concerns that one of a hundred vulnerabilities his fuzzer tool found in IE is well known to third party hackers in China. His simple explanation provides an interesting counter argument to Microsoft's usual request that security problems not be released until they can slowly investigate them. From the article, 'Microsoft asked Zalewski to delay cross_fuzz's release, but he declined, in part because of his fear the IE vulnerability was already being explored by Chinese hackers, but also because the company's security experts had not responded to information he provided.' You can read about and download cross_fuzz for your own use."

An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission has put into effect a June 2009 agreement stating that major cellphone manufacturers should standardize their charging/data connection ports to the popular Micro-USB format. CEN-CENELEC and ETSI provided the standards by which these 14 companies will abide to make cell phone recharging and data transfer easy." Apple may even bring the next-gen iPad along for the ride.

tetrahedrassface writes "Solar maximum is supposed to be occurring, and everything from satellite communications to your toaster or radio could be affected. The only problem is that this just isn't happening, and NASA continues to revise downward the original prediction. In fact, the new forecast for Solar Cycle 24 is a lot smaller, and is now pegged at almost 40% of what was previously predicted. Recently, two scientists at the National Solar Observatory have followed the lead of a prominent Russian scientist, who almost five years ago forecast a dearth of sunspots and the subsequent cooling of Earth for the next several cycles. With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum, or worse still, yet another Maunder?"

tetrahedrassface writes "Solar maximum is supposed to be occurring, and everything from satellite communications to your toaster or radio could be affected. The only problem is that this just isn't happening, and NASA continues to revise downward the original prediction. In fact, the new forecast for Solar Cycle 24 is a lot smaller, and is now pegged at almost 40% of what was previously predicted. Recently, two scientists at the National Solar Observatory have followed the lead of a prominent Russian scientist, who almost five years ago forecast a dearth of sunspots and the subsequent cooling of Earth for the next several cycles. With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum, or worse still, yet another Maunder?"

realperseus writes "The American telecommunications satellite Galaxy 15 has been brought under control after spending most of the year traversing the sky and wreaking havoc upon its neighbors. The satellite is currently at 98.5 degrees west longitude (from 133 west). An emergency patch was successfully uploaded, ensuring that the conditions which caused it to 'go rogue' will not occur again. Once diagnosis and testing have been completed, Intelsat plans to move the satellite back to 133 west."

Frosty P writes "As a result of the US Government's complete failure to investigate credible warnings about 'Underwear Bomber' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from none other than Abdulmutallab's father, senior American counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip can lead to a name being placed on the watch list. Civil liberties groups warn that it is now even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in America's security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel. 'They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they're on,' said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union."

Nom du Keyboard writes "Recently word leaked out about Amazon removing titles containing fictional incest. Surprisingly that ban didn't extend to the 10 titles of Science Fiction Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein that incorporate various themes of incest and pedophilia. Now, it seems that the censorship is expanding to m/m gay fiction if it contains the magic word 'rape' in the title. Just how far is this going to be allowed to proceed in relative silence, and who is pushing these sudden decisions on Amazon's part?"

daveschroeder writes "The recent release of classified State Department cables has often been compared to the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, has said he supports WikiLeaks, and sees the issues as similar. Floyd Abrams is the prominent First Amendment attorney and Constitutional law expert who represented the New York Times in the landmark New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713 (1971)) Supreme Court case, which allowed the media to publish the Pentagon Papers without fear of government censure. Today, Abrams explains why WikiLeaks is unlike the Pentagon Papers, and how WikiLeaks is negatively impacting journalism protections: 'Mr. Ellsberg himself has recently denounced the "myth" of the "good" Pentagon Papers as opposed to the "bad" WikiLeaks. But the real myth is that the two disclosures are the same.'"

daveschroeder writes "The recent release of classified State Department cables has often been compared to the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, has said he supports WikiLeaks, and sees the issues as similar. Floyd Abrams is the prominent First Amendment attorney and Constitutional law expert who represented the New York Times in the landmark New York Times Co. v. United States (403 U.S. 713 (1971)) Supreme Court case, which allowed the media to publish the Pentagon Papers without fear of government censure. Today, Abrams explains why WikiLeaks is unlike the Pentagon Papers, and how WikiLeaks is negatively impacting journalism protections: 'Mr. Ellsberg himself has recently denounced the "myth" of the "good" Pentagon Papers as opposed to the "bad" WikiLeaks. But the real myth is that the two disclosures are the same.'"

H3xx writes "An international group of scientists is aiming to create a simulator — nicknamed The Living Earth Simulator — that will collect data from billions of sources and use it to replicate everything happening on Earth, from global weather patterns and the spread of diseases to international financial transactions or congestion on highways. The project aims to advance the scientific understanding of what is taking place on the planet, encapsulating the human actions that shape societies and the environmental forces that define the physical world. Perhaps this is Asimov's concept of Psychohistory come to fruition."

Indian communications satellite GSAT-5P was destroyed by the explosion of its launch vehicle, the Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle. The GSLV malfunctioned while still in its first phase of its Christmas launch, after less than a minute of flight. YouTube has a video of the explosion, taken from TV9 Kannada.

Phoghat writes "In 2015 the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford will take to the seas and the plan is to use a railgun to launch planes, instead of steam powered catapults. From the article: 'The Navy developed its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System as a replacement for the steam catapults currently used on aircraft carriers. The EMALS is a linear induction motor that's capable of accelerating a 100,000 pound aircraft to 240 miles per hour in the space of 300 feet. Compared to a steam catapult, the railgun catapult is much smaller, more efficient, simpler to maintain, gentler on airframes, and can deliver up to 30% more power. It's also capable of being cranked down a whole bunch, meaning that it can also launch smaller (and more fragile) unmanned drones.'"

An anonymous reader writes "The Senate and House have now acted to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, [a decision] which President Obama will soon sign into law. While this does not permit homosexuals to openly serve, it does return control of the policy to military leaders after nearly two decades."

achowe writes "Steve Linford of Spamhaus sent this to a private anti-spam list and asked that the message get out far and wide: 'For speaking out about the crime gangs located at the wikileaks.info mirror IP, Spamhaus is now under ddos by AnonOps. As our site cannot be reached now [actually sporadic], we can not continue to warn Wikileaks users not to load things from the Heihachi IP. ... AnonOps did not like our article update, here is what we said and what brought the ddos on us.'" At the conclusion of this message: "Spamhaus continues to warn Wikileaks readers to make sure they are viewing and downloading documents only from an official Wikileaks mirror site. We’re not saying 'don’t go to Wikileaks' we’re saying 'Use the wikileaks.ch server instead.'" Here is Spamhaus's full warning.

Pickens writes "The Palm Beach Post reports that a police officer convicted of drugging and raping a family member will get a new trial because the jury forewoman brought a Wikipedia article into deliberations. Broward Circuit Judge Stanton Kaplan declared a mistrial after Fay Mason admitted in court that she had downloaded information about 'rape trauma syndrome' and sexual assault from Wikipedia and brought it to the jury room. 'I didn't read about the case in the newspaper or watch anything on TV,' says Mason. 'To me, I was just looking up a phrase.' Judge Kaplan called all six jurors into the courtroom and explained that Mason had unintentionally tainted their verdict and endangered the officer's right to a fair trial. Mason does not face any penalties for her actions."

Hugh Pickens writes "Large images of Jimmy Wales have for weeks dominated each and every page on Wikipedia, making Wales arguably the single most visible individual on the planet. Now Molly McHugh writes that Wikipedia is once again pleading for user donations with banners across the top of its site with memos from purported authors and this week, Wales stepped up the shrillness of his rallying cry by adding the word 'Urgent' to his appeal. Wales attempted the same request for donations last year, and failed to meet the company's goal until Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar donated $2 million and Google stepped in with another $2 million gift to the foundation. This time around the foundation is approximately $7 million short of its 2010 fundraising goal, and Wikipedia analysts are saying the site would be better off with a marketing scheme as Alex Konanykhin of WikiExperts explains that the donations-only, no-commerce model restricts Wikipedia to relying exclusively on free volunteers, losing opportunities to involve qualified professionals who charge for their time in addition to the thirty staff members already on the Wikimedia payroll. 'Advertising is not cool. You're not as cool if you have advertising. But you know what else is not cool? Begging,' writes Jeff Otte. 'We do not care if there is advertising on Wikipedia, so long as it is not ridiculously invasive. So please, replace your sensitive mug with a Steak 'n' Shake ad or something, and start making advertisers pay for people to have stuff for free and not feel bad about it. It's the Internet's way.'"

angry tapir writes "This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee Software (aka 3D Realms) developed by no less than id Software — the developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake."

angry tapir writes "This week marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. For those too young to remember, Commander Keen was a series of shareware 2D platform games for the PC released by Apogee Software (aka 3D Realms) developed by no less than id Software — the developers of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake."

gbrumfiel writes "Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider are preparing to run the collider until the end of 2012 in the hopes of finding the Higgs particle, part of the mechanism that endows other particles with mass. The machine was originally supposed to stop in 2011 for a year long upgrade, but scientists now think they can find the Higgs if they run for longer. 'If we stop the machine with 3,000 people apiece in the experiments waiting for data, there is no way we could get home at night without having slashed tyres on our cars,' says Sergio Bertolucci, CERN's director for research and computing."

Skuto writes "NIST just announced the final selection of algorithms in the SHA-3 hash competition. The algorithms that are candidates to replace SHA-2 are BLAKE, Grøstl, JH, Keccak and Skein. The selection criteria included performance in software and hardware, hardware implementation size, best known attacks and being different enough from the other candidates. Curiously, some of the faster algorithms were eliminated as they were felt to be 'too fast to be true.' A full report with the (non-)selection rationale for each candidate is forthcoming."

elrous0 writes "As was previously reported, President Obama mentioned back in October that he would be appearing on an upcoming episode of the popular Discovery Channel series Mythbusters. Well, the episode is finally airing tonight. In the episode, the President helps Jamie and Adam test the 'Archimedes Death Ray' myth for a 3rd time (the myth having been 'busted' the first time, and that bust surviving a challenge from MIT students the second time out). Though the President only appears in a couple of brief scripted segments, the actual test (using 500 schoolkids doubling as mirror-bearing soldiers) is purportedly pretty interesting."

CWmike writes "Samsung on Tuesday announced a new 8GB dual inline memory module (DIMM) that stacks memory chips on top of each other, which increases the density of the memory by 50% compared with conventional DIMM technology. Samsung's new registered or buffered (RDIMM) product is based on its current Green DDR3 DRAM and 40 nanometer (nm)-sized circuitry. The new memory module is aimed at the server and enterprise storage markets. The three-dimensional (3D) chip stacking process is referred to in the memory industry as Through Silicon Via (TSV). Samsung said the TSV process saves up to 40% of the power consumed by a conventional RDIMM. Using the TSV technology will greatly improve chip density in next-generation server systems, Samsung said, making it attractive for high-density, high-performance systems."

parallel_prankster writes "I find this paper very amusing. From the abstract: 'To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies.' Hint! If you replace phrases like 'curves from metabolic studies' with just 'curves,' then you'll note that Dr. Tai rediscovered the rectangle method of approximating an integral. (Actually, Dr. Tai rediscovered the trapezoidal rule.). Apparently this is called 'Tai's Model.'"