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Book Reviews

Java Generics and Collections

andrew cooke writes "Java 6 was recently released, but many programmers are still exploring the features introduced in Java 5 — probably the most significant changes in the language's twelve year history. Amongst those changes (enumerations, auto-boxing, foreach, varargs) generics was the most far-reaching, introducing generic programming in a simpler, safer way than C++ templates and, unlike generics in C#, maintaining backwards (and forwards) compatibility with existing Java code." Read on for the rest of Andrew's review.
Digital

Submission + - Get High-Quality Audio From Your PC

audiophile writes: Just because it's a PC doesn't mean it can't output good-sounding audio. In the same vein as specialty A/V products, you can find PC-based A/V systems with extensive audio processing and step-up performance specifications, including Signal-to-Noise ratio, which can make a significant difference when using the analog outputs. Media center manufacturer Niveus shares tips for getting high-quality audio from a PC.
Censorship

Journal Journal: Global Warming (Censorship) Is Real

George Monbiot has posted his latest Guardian article on the censorship of the scientific consensus on Global Warming to his blog at www.monbiot.com. From the article: " The report released on Friday, for example, was shorn of the warning that 'North America is expected to experience locally severe economic damage, plus substantial ecosystem, social and cultural disrupti

Feed NASA Predicts Nongreen Plants On Other Planets (sciencedaily.com)

NASA scientists believe they have found a way to predict the color of plants on planets in other solar systems. Green, yellow or even red-dominant plants may live on extra-solar planets, according to scientists whose two scientific papers appear in the March issue of the journal, Astrobiology.
Power

Journal Journal: Georgia Tech Unveils Prototype Nanogenerator 208

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have created a working prototype nanogenerator capable of generating as much as 4 watts per cubic centimeter of continuous direct current. The generators are green (to use), drawing power from natural motion in the surrounding environment. They are based on non-toxic chemicals and should be safe for use in biomechanical implants, but that's not their only potential use. From the artic

Details of Next Gen Zune Surface 308

KMG writes "Zune Scene has got a scoop about the next generation Microsoft Zune. There will be two new models; a flash memory based and a hard drive based. Zune with HDD will be thinner and have larger storage capacity while the flash based will feature Wi-fi, video playback. So will we see another try from Microsoft to beat Apple's iPod or it will be another vain attempt from the Redmond guys."
Google

Google to Hold Worldwide Developer Day 60

Incon writes "Google is holding a day for developers to meet and learn from Google staff at its various worldwide offices. Places at the event are sure to go quicker than hotcakes, so get in quickly. Locations that Developer Day will be held at are: Beijing, Hamburg, London, Madrid, Moscow, Paris, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Tokyo and of course at Google HQ in Mountain View."
Intel

Submission + - Intel reveals the future of the CPU-GPU war

Arun Demeure writes: Beyond3D's ninjas have once again obtained new information on Intel's plans to compete against NVIDIA and AMD's graphics processors, in what the Chief Architect of the project presents as a "battle for control of the computing platform". He describes a new computing architecture based on the many-core paradigm with super-wide execution units, and the reasoning behind some of the design choices. Looks like computer scientists and software programmers everywhere will have to adapt to these new concepts, as there will be no silver bullet to achieve high efficiency on new and exotic architectures.
Hardware Hacking

Oil Soaked Servers Coming Soon 321

grease_boy writes "A UK company will start selling server racks submerged in oil baths within a year. Very-PC is working on prototypes and says that because oil transfers heat more efficiently, power usage can be cut by fifty percent."
Displays

Submission + - Nearly transparent, electrically conductive cement

zero_offset writes: The Tokyo Institute of Technology has announced a process for creating an inexpensive, nearly transparent, electrically conductive alumina cement, reports Pink Tentacle, a blog that focuses on a broad range of interesting news from Japan. Conductivity is comparable to metal, and the transparency should be adequate for use in display panels. The process relies upon commonplace and inexpensive metals compared to the rare metals such as iridium currently used in display panels. (This is probably useful in many other ways, but slashdot's section/topic choices for articles are somewhat arbitrary and limited.) The blog links to several Japanese-language articles which have defied all my attempts to translate them.
Software

China Slams US Piracy Complaint 346

bingoathome writes with a link to a BBC article on China's criticism of the US over its complaint to the WTO. The Bush administration is breaking its long-standing policy of backroom conversations with Beijing to condemn the country's continued 'failure to address copyright piracy and counterfeiting.' "The US says that China's failure to enforce copyright laws is costing software, music and book publishers billions of dollars in lost sales ... The US has been threatening a WTO complaint against China since 2005. It said on Tuesday that the two cases had been submitted to the WTO. One case claims that Beijing's poor enforcement of copyright and trademark protections violates WTO rules. The other contends that illegal barriers to hamper sales of US films, music and books. "
Software

Submission + - Computer scientists develop P2P system that promis

Andreaskem writes: "A Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist says transferring large data files, such as movies and music, over the Internet could be sped up significantly if peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services were configured to share not only identical files, but also similar files.

"SET speeds up data transfers by simultaneously downloading different chunks of a desired data file from multiple sources, rather than downloading an entire file from one slow source. Even then, downloads can be slow because these networks can't find enough sources to use all of a receiver's download bandwidth. That's why SET takes the additional step of identifying files that are similar to the desired file... No one knows the degree of similarity between data files stored in computers around the world, but analyses suggest the types of files most commonly shared are likely to contain a number of similar elements. Many music files, for instance, may differ only in the artist-and-title headers, but are otherwise 99 percent similar.""

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