Slashdot Mirror

eldavojohn writes "Scientists at Fermilab have decided that it's high time they build a 'holometer' to test the smoothness of space-time. Theoretical physicists like Stephen Hawking have proposed that space-time is not smooth but it's been a lot of math and no actual data. The Fermilab team plans to build two relatively small devices that act as 'holographic interferometers' to measure the shaking or vibration in split beams of light traveling through a vacuum. If the team finds the shaking in their measurements and records them, the theory of a holographic universe will have some evidence of non-smoothness in space-time and perhaps a foothold in bringing light to the heavily debated theoretical physics."

An anonymous reader writes "Another American election is almost here, and while electronic voting is commonplace, it is still overwhelmingly run by closed source, proprietary systems. It has been shown that many of these systems can be compromised (and because they are closed, there may be holes we simply cannot know about). Plus they are vulnerable to software bugs and are often based on unstable, closed-source operating systems. By the inherent nature of closed software, when systems are (optionally!) certified by registrars, there is no proof that they will behave the same on election day as in tests. The opportunities for fraud, tampering and malfunction are rampant. But nonetheless, there is very little political will for open source voting, let alone simple measures like end-to-end auditable voting systems or more radical approaches like open source governance. Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

An anonymous reader writes "Another American election is almost here, and while electronic voting is commonplace, it is still overwhelmingly run by closed source, proprietary systems. It has been shown that many of these systems can be compromised (and because they are closed, there may be holes we simply cannot know about). Plus they are vulnerable to software bugs and are often based on unstable, closed-source operating systems. By the inherent nature of closed software, when systems are (optionally!) certified by registrars, there is no proof that they will behave the same on election day as in tests. The opportunities for fraud, tampering and malfunction are rampant. But nonetheless, there is very little political will for open source voting, let alone simple measures like end-to-end auditable voting systems or more radical approaches like open source governance. Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

An anonymous reader writes "Another American election is almost here, and while electronic voting is commonplace, it is still overwhelmingly run by closed source, proprietary systems. It has been shown that many of these systems can be compromised (and because they are closed, there may be holes we simply cannot know about). Plus they are vulnerable to software bugs and are often based on unstable, closed-source operating systems. By the inherent nature of closed software, when systems are (optionally!) certified by registrars, there is no proof that they will behave the same on election day as in tests. The opportunities for fraud, tampering and malfunction are rampant. But nonetheless, there is very little political will for open source voting, let alone simple measures like end-to-end auditable voting systems or more radical approaches like open source governance. Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

An anonymous reader writes "Another American election is almost here, and while electronic voting is commonplace, it is still overwhelmingly run by closed source, proprietary systems. It has been shown that many of these systems can be compromised (and because they are closed, there may be holes we simply cannot know about). Plus they are vulnerable to software bugs and are often based on unstable, closed-source operating systems. By the inherent nature of closed software, when systems are (optionally!) certified by registrars, there is no proof that they will behave the same on election day as in tests. The opportunities for fraud, tampering and malfunction are rampant. But nonetheless, there is very little political will for open source voting, let alone simple measures like end-to-end auditable voting systems or more radical approaches like open source governance. Why do we remain in the virtual dark ages, when clearly we have better alternatives readily available?"

KingofGnG writes with this excerpt from King Arthur's Den: "One of the forthcoming versions of the best PC-with-DOS emulator out there should include a very important architectural novelty, ie the software implementation of the historical Voodoo Graphics chipset created by 3dfx Interactive in the Nineties. "Kekko", the programmer working on the project with the aid of the DOSBox crew and the coding-capable VOGONS users, says that his aim is the complete and faithful emulation of SST-1, the first Voodoo chipset marketed in 1996 inside the first 3D graphics accelerated cards on the PC."

KingofGnG writes with this excerpt from King Arthur's Den: "One of the forthcoming versions of the best PC-with-DOS emulator out there should include a very important architectural novelty, ie the software implementation of the historical Voodoo Graphics chipset created by 3dfx Interactive in the Nineties. "Kekko", the programmer working on the project with the aid of the DOSBox crew and the coding-capable VOGONS users, says that his aim is the complete and faithful emulation of SST-1, the first Voodoo chipset marketed in 1996 inside the first 3D graphics accelerated cards on the PC."

Pickens writes "Do university bureaucracies still make sense in the era of networks? At the recent Educause conference, David J. Staley laid out the findings of a focus group he conducted asking educators what a college would look like if it operated like Wikipedia. The 'Wiki-ized University' wouldn't have formal admissions, says Staley; people could enter and exit as they wished and the university would consist of voluntary and self-organizing associations of teachers and students 'not unlike the original idea for the university, in the Middle Ages.' In addition, the curriculum of the 'Wiki-ized University' would be intellectually fluid, and instead of tenure, professors' longevity 'would be determined by the community.' Staley predicts that a new form of academic organization is emerging that will be driven by volunteerism. 'We do see some idea today of how "volunteer teaching" might look: think of the faculty at a place like the University of Phoenix. Most teaching faculty have day jobs — and in fact are hired because they have day jobs — and teach at the university for a nominal stipend,' writes Staley. 'If something like the Phoenix model is what develops in a wiki-ized university setting, this would suggest that a new type of "professorate" will emerge, consisting of those who teach or publish or conduct research for their own personal or professional satisfaction or for some other nonmonetized benefit.'"

Beetle B. writes "Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Ghost From The Grand Banks. Soon after, I got hold of the best fractal generation software of the day — Fractint — and ran it for long periods of time on my XT, exploring the beautiful world that Mandelbrot, among others, had opened up for me. That it was only on a 4-color CGA did not deter me!"

Beetle B. writes "Benoit Mandelbrot has passed away at the age of 85. I first learned of the Mandelbrot set while reading Arthur C. Clarke's The Ghost From The Grand Banks. Soon after, I got hold of the best fractal generation software of the day — Fractint — and ran it for long periods of time on my XT, exploring the beautiful world that Mandelbrot, among others, had opened up for me. That it was only on a 4-color CGA did not deter me!"

An anonymous reader writes "A Finnish secular web site that facilitates electronic resignation from the Finnish state church gained wide attention in the media this week. A gay rights TV panel discussion was followed by thousands resigning from the church. On Wednesday, 2633 people resigned through the web site, which is more than all the resignations in July. The Internet is secularizing the Finnish with increasing speed; over 90% of resignations in Finland go through the site administered and marketed by hobbyists driving Finland towards a secular, non-religious state."

Anonymous Dupaeur writes "Switzerland, co-home of CERN and numerous other world organizations, has come closer to the completion of their recent megaproject: the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man. The project is due to be completed in 2017, and will host 200 to 250 trains a day with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams." After the completion of today's work, the tunnel is now 57 kilometers long, surpassing Japan's 53.9-kilometer Seikan Tunnel. There are a few longer tunnels in existence, such as the 137-kilometer Delaware Aqueduct, but they all move water rather than people.

Anonymous Dupaeur writes "Switzerland, co-home of CERN and numerous other world organizations, has come closer to the completion of their recent megaproject: the Gotthard Base Tunnel, which will be the largest railway tunnel made by man. The project is due to be completed in 2017, and will host 200 to 250 trains a day with a significantly larger kinetic energy than the LHC's beams." After the completion of today's work, the tunnel is now 57 kilometers long, surpassing Japan's 53.9-kilometer Seikan Tunnel. There are a few longer tunnels in existence, such as the 137-kilometer Delaware Aqueduct, but they all move water rather than people.

zrbyte writes "Are you an electronics hobbyist or a garden shed tinkerer? If so, then move aside, because there's a new kid on the block: the DIY biotechnologist. The decreasing price of biotech instrumentation has made it possible for everyday folks (read: biotech geeks) with a few thousand dollars to spare to equip their garages and parents' basements with the necessary 'tools of the trade.' Some, like PCR machines, are available on eBay; other utensils are hacked together from everyday appliances and some creativity. For example: microscopes out of webcams and armpit E. coli incubators. Nature News has an article on the phenomenon, describing the weird and wonderful fruits of biotech geek ingenuity, like glow-in-the-dark yogurt. One could draw parallels with the early days of computer building/programming. It may be that we're looking at a biotech revolution, not just from the likes of Craig Venter, but from Joe-next-door hacking away at his E. coli strain. What are the Steve Wozniaks of biotech working on right now?"

wiredmikey writes with a story from Security Week that describes a security silver lining to the inevitable errors that arise in NAND flash chips. By seeking out (or intentionally causing) defects in a given part of the chip, a unique profile can be created for any device using NAND flash which the author says may be obscured, but not reproduced: "[W]e recognize devices (or rather: their flash memory) by their defects. Very much like humans recognize faces: by their defects (or deviations from the 'norm') a bigger nose, a bit too bushy eyebrows, bigger cheeks. The nice twist is that if an attacker manages to read your device identity, he cannot inscribe it into his own device. Yes, he can create errors — like we did. But he cannot control where in the block they occur as this relies solely on microscopic manufacturing defects in the silicon."

Anonymous Dupaeur writes "The goals for the first run of the most powerful particle collider (and the most energetic storage ring since ISR) were recently surpassing the 10^32 level of luminosity, with a destructive 15 MJ energy per-beam. This is a significant milestone, opening the way to collect more and more data. The current plan is to stop the proton collisions soon, and provide an ion (Pb) beam and conclude this year with a X-mass break. The next year is expected to bring at least one inverse femtobarn of data, which is achievable with such beam power. After that, the entire accelerator complex will be shut down for a year, due to budget costs for science in Europe."

eldavojohn writes "Some of the juiciest parts of mathematics are the really simple statements that cause one to immediately pause and exclaim 'that can't be right!' But a recent 28 page paper in The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast (PDF) spends a great deal of time fielding questions by researchers who have explored this in depth and this seemingly impossibility is further explored in a brief history by Dev Gualtieri who presents the digit manipulation proof: Let a = 0.999... then we can multiply both sides by ten yielding 10a = 9.999... then subtracting a (which is 0.999...) from both sides we get 10a — a = 9.999... — 0.999... which reduces to 9a = 9 and thus a = 1. Mathematicians as far back as Euler have used various means to prove 0.999... = 1."

RulerOf writes "Just over a year after hiring IceFrog, the lead developer of the wildly popular DotA Allstars mod for Warcraft III, and the speculation surrounding Valve's recent trademark filing for the 'DotA' name, Valve has officially announced Dota 2. Gameplay of Dota 2 is being ported 'exactly' from the current DotA Allstars and includes every hero, but vast improvements are being made to the game including VoIP, a coaching system, in-game rewards, and AI that takes over for disconnected players. Lastly, it all runs on top of the Source engine. (GameInformer's website appears to be struggling right now though, as they had an exclusive on this story.)"

hankwang writes "The Dutch telecommunications authority OPTA has announced that Dutch hotels must register as internet providers (original version, in Dutch) because that is what they formally are, according to Dutch laws. It is well possible that once hotels are officially internet providers, they will also have to abide by the European regulations on data retention and make efforts to link email headers and other data traffic to individual hotel guests. Could this also happen in other European countries? This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels."

An anonymous reader writes "Several newspapers have reported that DRDO (the defence R&D organization of the Indian military) is planning to create an OS. The need for this arose due to the cyber security concerns facing India and that all [conventional] operating systems are made outside India. About 50 professionals in Bangalore and New Delhi are expected to start work on this operating system." At least one of the linked articles says the new OS, though home-grown, would run Windows software.

mknewman writes "SpaceShipTwo was successfully dropped off its WhiteKnight 2 mothership today from an altitude of 45,000 feet and glided to a landing in the Mojave airstrip." From the article: "More than 300 would-be passengers have already put down more than $45 million in deposits for $200,000-a-seat rides on the plane. The experience will include a roller-coaster rocket ride to a spaceworthy altitude of more than 65 miles, several minutes of weightlessness, a picture-window view of the curving Earth beneath the black sky of space ... and spaceflight bragging rights for years afterward."

theodp writes "Newsweek reports on a company called True Alaska Bottling that has purchased the rights to transfer 3 billion gallons of water a year from Sitka, Alaska's bountiful reserves. If all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will soon be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East. Think of it as a proof of concept for turning life's most essential molecule into a global commodity." I'm sure the residents of Saratoga Springs and Perrier (not to mention the island nation of Fiji) can think of some prior art.

a_nonamiss writes "The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting today on new forensic analysis by audio scientists Stuart Allen and Tom Owen on a recently discovered audio tape from the Kent State shootings. The analysis suggests that four shots from a .38-caliber pistol were fired 70 seconds before the National Guard opened fire on a crowd of student protesters, killing four and wounding nine others. The alleged shooter, student Terry Norman, was hired by the FBI to take photos of the protesters. It has been known for some time that he had a .38-caliber pistol on his person the day of the shootings, but he has always claimed that the gun was not fired during the protest, a claim that was backed up in sworn testimony from authorities at the time."

Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."

Algorithmnast writes "The Economist has a short article on using big, slow-moving airships to move large objects without the need to dismantle them. The company mentioned, Skylifter, refers to the lifting ship as an 'aerial crane,' not a Thor weapon. It could easily help move research labs to new parts of the Antarctic, or allow a Solar Tower to be inserted into an area that's difficult to drive to, such as a mesa in New Mexico."

gbrumfiel writes "As we discussed on Tuesday, Andre Geim won this year's Nobel prize in physics for graphene, but he never patented it. In an interview with Nature News, he explains why: 'We considered patenting; we prepared a patent and it was nearly filed. Then I had an interaction with a big, multinational electronics company. I approached a guy at a conference and said, "We've got this patent coming up, would you be interested in sponsoring it over the years?" It's quite expensive to keep a patent alive for 20 years. The guy told me, "We are looking at graphene, and it might have a future in the long term. If after ten years we find it's really as good as it promises, we will put a hundred patent lawyers on it to write a hundred patents a day, and you will spend the rest of your life, and the gross domestic product of your little island, suing us." That's a direct quote.'"

GillBates0 writes "Last weekend saw the world's largest aerostat of its kind featured at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The helium balloon or aerostat measures 40x80x12 meters, contains 20,000 cubic meters of helium and features lights, mirrors, cameras, a 360 degree projection screen, projectors and a reflective underbelly. During the show, it was raised 25 meters off the ground and transformed into a giant Bodhi Tree and a meditating Buddha, with giant puppets to complement the cultural performances beneath. These slideshows tell the story."

GillBates0 writes "Last weekend saw the world's largest aerostat of its kind featured at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The helium balloon or aerostat measures 40x80x12 meters, contains 20,000 cubic meters of helium and features lights, mirrors, cameras, a 360 degree projection screen, projectors and a reflective underbelly. During the show, it was raised 25 meters off the ground and transformed into a giant Bodhi Tree and a meditating Buddha, with giant puppets to complement the cultural performances beneath. These slideshows tell the story."

GillBates0 writes "Last weekend saw the world's largest aerostat of its kind featured at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi. The helium balloon or aerostat measures 40x80x12 meters, contains 20,000 cubic meters of helium and features lights, mirrors, cameras, a 360 degree projection screen, projectors and a reflective underbelly. During the show, it was raised 25 meters off the ground and transformed into a giant Bodhi Tree and a meditating Buddha, with giant puppets to complement the cultural performances beneath. These slideshows tell the story."

An anonymous reader writes "Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool has been convicted of 'failing to disclose an encryption key,' which is an offense under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and as a result has been jailed for 16 weeks. Police seized his computer but could not get past the 50-character encrypted password that he refused to give up. And just to get it out of the way, obligatory XKCD."

An anonymous reader writes "Today, scientists have announced the completion of the first ever Census of Marine Life. The colossal 10-year effort involved 2,700 researchers from 80 countries. To mark the occasion, Discover's blog 80beats has a photo gallery of some of the most marvelously strange sea creatures photographed in the course of the census. The blog post also explains some of the census's most important findings, including the dramatic decline of many commercially important large marine animals, and troubling new evidence of a decline in the phytoplankton that serves as the base of the marine food chain."

An anonymous reader writes "On this day, 25 years ago, Richard Stallman created the Free Software Foundation. He had been the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Lab. Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation. The original license was written by Stallman. Stallman had subsequently written a large number of GNU tools, but the license was his most important contribution."

Hugh Pickens writes "Alexis Madrigal has an interesting essay in the Atlantic about the popular response of people in the 19th century to the development of the electric power industry in America. Before electricity, basically every factory had to run a bit like a Rube Goldberg machine, transmitting power from a water wheel or a steam engine to the machines of a manufactory but with the development of electric turbines and motors the public believed engineers were tapping mysterious, invisible forces with almost supernatural powers for mischief. 'Think about it,' writes Madrigal. 'You've got a wire and you've got a magnet. Switch on the current — which you can't see and have no intuitive way to know exists — and suddenly the wire begins to rotate around the magnet. You can reverse the process, too. Rotate the magnet around the wire and it generates a current that can be turned into light, heat, or power.' And that brings us back to Rube Goldberg, a cartoonist who was was shockingly popular in his heyday and whose popularity closely parallels the rise of electrification in America. 'I think Goldberg's drawings reminded his contemporaries of a time when they could understand the world's industrial processes just by looking. No matter how absurd his work was, anyone could trace the reactions involved,' writes Madrigal. 'People like to complain that they can't understand modern cars because of all the fancy parts and electronic doo-dads in them now, but we lost that ability for most things long ago.'"

theodp writes "Back in 1972, Georgle Carlin gave us the Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Thirty-eight years later, Valleywag reports on The Definitive List of Words Google Thinks Are Naughty. You've probably noticed how the new Google Instant tries to guess what you're searching for while you type — unless it thinks your search is dirty, in which case you'll be forced to actually press ENTER to see your results. Leave it to the enterprising folks at 2600 to compile an exhaustive list of words and phrases Google Instant won't auto-search for."

Shag writes "Although searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have thus far come up empty-handed, the United Nations appears to be preparing for eventual 'first contact.' Many media outlets are carrying the story that Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who heads the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna — already charged with things like keeping track of satellites to prevent Kessler Syndrome and coordinating the international response to any earth-impacting asteroids — will be the first person to meet with aliens if they do show up." Update: 09/27 16:42 GMT by S : Looks like this one's too good to be true — in an email to The Guardian, Othman said, "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it."

Shag writes "Although searches for extraterrestrial intelligence have thus far come up empty-handed, the United Nations appears to be preparing for eventual 'first contact.' Many media outlets are carrying the story that Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist who heads the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs in Vienna — already charged with things like keeping track of satellites to prevent Kessler Syndrome and coordinating the international response to any earth-impacting asteroids — will be the first person to meet with aliens if they do show up." Update: 09/27 16:42 GMT by S : Looks like this one's too good to be true — in an email to The Guardian, Othman said, "It sounds really cool but I have to deny it."

eldavojohn writes "In 1974, a young newcomer to the Royal Society named Stephen Hawking predicted that black holes emit Hawking Radiation. Researchers have been looking for it in space ever since. A new paper up for publication claims to have beaten searchers by observing it in a lab. Doing it wasn't easy. They say they brought light to a standstill by drastically increasing the refractive index of the material it was being fired at, creating a 'white hole.' This horizon, beyond which light cannot penetrate (event horizon), is the same between white and black holes, which caused the team to suspect they observed Hawking Radiation when light of a different uniform wavelength than the input laser was emitted. But, before you rejoice, the Tech Review article notes, 'Of course, the big question is whether the emitted light is generated by some other mechanism such as Cerenkov radiation, scattering or, in particular, fluorescence which is the hardest to rule out.'"

eldavojohn writes "In 1974, a young newcomer to the Royal Society named Stephen Hawking predicted that black holes emit Hawking Radiation. Researchers have been looking for it in space ever since. A new paper up for publication claims to have beaten searchers by observing it in a lab. Doing it wasn't easy. They say they brought light to a standstill by drastically increasing the refractive index of the material it was being fired at, creating a 'white hole.' This horizon, beyond which light cannot penetrate (event horizon), is the same between white and black holes, which caused the team to suspect they observed Hawking Radiation when light of a different uniform wavelength than the input laser was emitted. But, before you rejoice, the Tech Review article notes, 'Of course, the big question is whether the emitted light is generated by some other mechanism such as Cerenkov radiation, scattering or, in particular, fluorescence which is the hardest to rule out.'"

Mogster writes with this news from New Zealand: "'University of Otago scientists have made a 'major physics breakthrough' with the development of a technique to consistently isolate and capture a fast-moving single atom. A team of four researchers from the university's physics department are believed to be the first to isolate and photograph the Rubidium 85 atom.' Good to see Kiwis following in Rutherford's footsteps."

Gsparky2004 writes "Over at Engineering Radio, Paul suggests that Digital Radio Mondiale (or 'Digital Radio Worldwide') may be a better alternative than the US-adopted, proprietary IBOC system. But he's concerned that the FCC is too far down the 'IBOC is the way!' road and won't accept an open source alternative, even one that may work better." For a slightly more pointed take on the matter, check out this anti-IBOC site, which paints IBOC as something akin to the devil himself.

eldavojohn writes "As you're probably aware, HTML is in a transition period, lost somewhere in the mire between versions 4 and 5. That doesn't stop us from using the latest and greatest, but it does create a requirement for gracefully falling back when a user does not have native support for features like canvas, video, audio, local storage, web workers and geolocation. HTML5: Up and Running is a great resource for someone tasked with bringing HTML4 webpages up to HTML5 standards, but it's mediocre-to-poor in illustrating advanced usage. For example, author Mark Pilgrim invests around thirty pages on video, while putting at most half a page toward web workers. Some of this is not his fault, due to support (or lack thereof), but the book felt skimpy at a couple hundred pages. For me, this book had value if only for the many wrapper scripts and workarounds like Modernizr, complete with code snippets. This book is for the beginner to intermediate developer and also for developers tasked with implementing HTML5 immediately. I received my copy for review from O'Reilly, but you can also find a draft of it under CC-BY-3.0 license. And the sample code is available online, so you can follow along." Read on for the rest of eldavojohn's review. HTML5: Up and Running author Mark Pilgrim pages 224 publisher O'Reilly Media rating 8/10 reviewer eldavojohn ISBN 978-0596806026 summary A brief initial look at the cemented changes and features in HTML5 as well as those to come. The first chapter gives the impression that Pilgrim wants the reader to feel the pains so many in the HTML working groups have felt over the past two decades. But after all the anecdotes, after all the distribution list forensics, after 'too bad I'm doing it this way,' this chapter could be shortened down to one sage and universal rule for software: those who ship win. If you want to dictate HTML5 behavior and interfaces, sitting around e-mailing doesn't matter when other browsers are shipping code that works.

Chapter two is entirely focused on checking whether or not the user's browser supports any of the many features HTML5 is bringing to web developers' fingertips. An important thing to note throughout the book is that Pilgrim makes sure to keep mobile browsers in mind and a part of the discussion. While useful, this occupies fifteen verbose pages of the already short book.

Chapter three has really good material in it if you're looking to evolve from HTML4 to HTML5 without any of the added functionality (just markup). It makes for cleaner code and introduces all the new tags and their functionality. Here you'll see how navigation has been generalized (much to the joy of disabled/impaired users who rely on screen readers) and how to properly transform and maintain HTML towards to HTML5.

Chapter four does a good job of beginning to cover the canvas element and drawings in HTML5. Drawing shapes, lines, setting text and rendering images multiple times on the canvas are all covered. The chapter presents many examples and ends with a simple implementation of a game of halma. It's inefficient, and he alludes to better ways of rendering game graphics (like redrawing only 'dirty' parts of the screen). But I hope he takes the time to flesh out this chapter, as I've seen impressive things done with canvas already. I really hoped for more out of this chapter, but must concede that it might be better off in a book devoted to game design.

The next chapter exhaustively covers video and audio codecs. From there the book steps the user through how to make their page foolproof so that the video tag gracefully resorts back to Flash (or whatever you want), should it be unable to find a supported video codec. From batch encoding with ffmpeg to Firefogg to using handbrake, the author holds the user's hand and more (even explains MIME types). This chapter is very valuable to anyone who is sitting on some video data that wants anyone to be able to access it and isn't opposed to multiple encodings.

I'd like to mention also that Pilgrim is an entertaining author. As he covers the available codecs, he pokes fun at a few corporations:

MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 is colloquially known as "MP3." If you haven't heard of MP3s, I don't know what to do with you. Walmart sells portable music players and calls them "MP3 players."Walmart. Anyway ...

And in regards to DRM:

Originally, all AAC files "bought" from the iTunes Store were encrypted with Apple's proprietary DRM scheme, called FairPlay. Selected songs in the iTunes Store are now available as unprotected AAC files, which Apple calls "iTunes Plus" because it sounds so much better than calling everything else "iTunes Minus."

It should be noted that Pilgrim can at times seem a little pro-Google. They are his employer, but I would appreciate it if he was an equal opportunity humorist and didn't pick on just the others.

Chapter six gives a short introduction to the geo-location features and the API provided by HTML5. It explains how to use gears or geo.js to work around IE's lack of support and also explains how to opt out of this sort of service — as it might seem a little too much for some people. I guess this is a feature for advertisers (not like they aren't doing it already, anyway).

Chapter seven briefly covers local storage in HTML5 and the precursors to it (cookies). It's got a few code snippets you can tinker with. There's a great meme embedded in this chapter: 'userData allows web pages to store up to 64 KB of data per domain, in a hierarchical XML-based structure. (Trusted domains, such as intranet sites, can store 10 times that amount. And hey, 640 KB ought to be enough for anybody.)' The chapter covers competing visions and notes that this is a separate effort from the core elements of HTML5. At the end, Pilgrim adds persistence to the halma game from earlier. This is already being abused, by the way.

Chapter eight shows how to markup your pages so that they operate offline. You include resources in the cache manifest file to let the browser know what to cache for offline usage (and more importantly, what not to cache). Again, at the end of this chapter, we take the halma game offline.

Chapter nine is one of the better chapters, as it extensively covers the various new types of form inputs we have in HTML5. Gone are the days of importing calendar scripts to create a date popup widget (although we already know how to check whether that's required). Search inputs, different kinds of integer selectors and color pickers are all covered in this chapter. While you might have experienced this in many other UI technologies, we're finally receiving native support in the browser!

The final chapter is relatively lengthy and very informative. It explains microdata and how to make HTML5 extensible so you can define your own markup (while keeping it normal so that older browsers don't plotz). It's like advanced metadata. You might wonder: Why would you do this? Well, the chapter continually shows how Google search results interpret this data ... but we aren't informed of any competitors using it or any plans of them using it. Pilgrim informs us that we should put this around our data and let others decide what to do with it (they might surprise you). So while the work is pretty extensive, you won't immediately see the fruits of your labors (unless everyone else is already doing it).

HTML5 has a long way to go. I hope this book is a living document, and I imagine the final O'Reilly book on HTML5 will be several times the length of Up and Running, but until those who ship their code cement it (after reading this book, my money's on Google), we'll have to wait. In the meantime, Pilgrim has some great resources on his site and done a decent job with this book.

You can purchase HTML5: Up and Running from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

schliz writes "Murdoch University professor Graham Mann is developing algorithms to simulate 'free thinking' and emotion. He refutes the emotionless reason portrayed by Mr Spock, arguing that 'an intelligent system must have emotions built into it before it can function.' The algorithm can translate the 'feel' of Aesop's Fables based on Plutchick's Wheel of Emotions. In tests, it freely associated three stories: The Thirsty Pigeon; The Cat and the Cock; and The Wolf and the Crane, and when queried on the association, the machine responded: 'I felt sad for the bird.'"

gr8_phk writes "As reported over at Phoronix, the Direct X 11 API now has an open source implementation on top of Gallium3d which should ease porting of games to Linux with or without Wine. While still in its infancy, you can see where this is heading. All this while Microsoft hasn't offered DX11 for their own aging WindowsXP. Could it be that Linux may soon support this Microsoft API better than Microsoft itself?"

Bruce Perens writes "Codec2 is an Open Source digital voice codec for low-bandwidth applications, in its first Alpha release. Currently it can encode 3.75 seconds of clear speech in 1050 bytes, and there are opportunities to code in additional compression that will further reduce its bandwidth. The main developer is David Rowe, who also worked on Speex. Originally designed for Amateur Radio, both via sound-card software modems on HF radio and as an alternative to the proprietary voice codec presently used in D-STAR, the codec is probably also useful for telephony at a fraction of current bandwidths. The algorithm is based on papers from the 1980s, and is intended to be unencumbered by valid unexpired patent claims. The license is LGPL2. The project is seeking developers for testing in applications, algorithmic improvement, conversion to fixed-point, and coding to be more suitable for embedded systems."

__roo writes "In a bizarre case of life imitates the Simpsons, New York City officials introduced a population of opossums into Brooklyn parks and under the boardwalk at Coney Island, apparently convinced that the opossums would eat all of the rats in the borough and then conveniently die of starvation. Several years later, the opossums have not only failed to eliminate the rat epidemic from New York City, but they have thrived, turning into a sharp-toothed, foul-odored epidemic of their own."

gust5av writes "I'm working on a little script to provide very simple and easy to use steganography. I'm using bash together with cryptsetup (without LUKS), and the plausible deniability lies in writing to different parts of a container file. On decryption you specify the offset of the hidden data. Together with a dynamically expanding filesystem, this makes it possible to have an arbitrary number of hidden volumes in a file. It is implausible to reveal the encrypted data without the password, but is it possible to prove there is encrypted data where you claim there's not? If I give someone one file containing random data and another containing data encrypted with AES, will he be able to tell which is which?"

YokimaSun writes "Following the recent exploit that allows you to jailbreak your PS3, the homebrew community have now breached the console with the first homebrew game, which is the classic Pong. Also released is the first emulator for the system in the shape of a SNES Emulator great for those 16-bit games. Finally drk||Raziel, the coder of the Dreamcast Emulator NullDC, has posted screenshots of his Dreamcast emulator working on the PS3 (albeit at a very early stage). The PS3 is building up to be the Dream Console for emulation."

frank249 writes "In January, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Trieste descent, the X Prize Foundation announced a $10 million prize for the first privately funded craft to make two manned descents to the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the oceans. Now, James Cameron has announced he has commissioned a submarine capable of surviving the tremendous pressures at a depth of seven miles, from which he will not only try for the X prize but also shoot 3D footage that may be incorporated in Avatar's sequel."

lukehopewell1 writes "In an interview for the ABC's PM program yesterday, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said that there would be no conscience vote on the Australian government's proposed mandatory internet filter. 'Conscience votes go to matters to do with life and death in the [Australian] Labor Party,' Conroy said. The minister said that the filter debate was not about censorship, rather it centred around refused classification material — an issue up for review in parliament. 'I'm not sure that the censorship claim stacks up. This is about classification systems. At the moment in Australia, there is no conscience vote on refused classification for movies, TV, DVDs or book stores,' the minister said. Conroy then called on the newly installed Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull to justify his position on the filter to families concerned about child pornography. 'According to the latest information I have here from the [Australian Communications and Media Authority], there are 430 child pornography sites on the [World Wide Web] ... that are accessible to anyone...[Malcolm Turnbull] has to explain to Australian families that he is prepared to do nothing about blocking access to those sites,' Conroy added." I hope some Australian and UK readers can help the rest of us understand the significance of conscience votes, though Wikipedia helps.

ElectricSteve writes "Research conducted at the University of Bristol means a number of quantum computing algorithms may soon be able to execute calculations of a complexity far beyond what today's computers allow us to do. The breakthrough involves the use of a specially designed optical chip to perform what's known as a 'quantum walk' with two particles ... and it suggests the era of quantum computing may be approaching faster than the scientific establishment had predicted. A random walk – a mathematical concept with useful applications in computer science – is the trajectory of an object taking successive steps in a random direction, be it over a line (with only two possible directions) or over a multi-dimensional space. A quantum walk is the same concept, but translated to the world of quantum computing, a field in which randomness plays a central role. Quantum walks form an essential part of many of the algorithms that make this new kind of computation so promising, including search algorithms that will perform exponentially faster than the ones we use today."