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Programming

Submission + - Java apps have most flaws, Cobol least (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: An analysis of 745 applications for violations of good architectural and coding practices, found that Java applications had the most problems and Cobol-built systems, the least. Some 365 million lines of code were analyzed by Cast Software, which makes tools for this, to assess “technical debt,” or the cost to fix the violations. Java was calculated at $5.42 per line of code, while Cobol did best at $1.26. Cobol code had the least number of violations because programmers “have been beating on it for 30 years,” said Cast. As far as Java goes, “there are many people going into Java now that really don’t have strong computer science backgrounds,” said its chief scientist, Bill Curtis.

Submission + - New all-sky map shows the magnetic fields of the M (mpa-garching.mpg.de)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With a unique new all-sky map, scientists at MPA have made significant progress toward measuring the magnetic field structure of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail. Specifically, the map is of a quantity known as Faraday depth, which among other things, depends strongly on the magnetic fields along a particular line of sight. To produce the map, data were combined from more than 41,000 individual measurements using a novel image reconstruction technique. The work was a collaboration between scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), who are specialists in the new discipline of information field theory, and a large international team of radio astronomers. The new map not only reveals the structure of the galactic magnetic field on large scales, but also small-scale features that provide information about turbulence in the galactic gas.
Power

Submission + - New wave of ocean energy to be trialed off the coa (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: The researchers at Australia's BioPower Systems evidently looked at kelp, and thought, "what if we could use that swaying action to generate power?" The result was their envisioned bioWAVE system, which could soon become a reality, thanks to a just-announced AUD$5 million (US$5.1 million) grant from the Victorian Minister for Energy and Resources that will go towards an AUD$14 million (US$14,365,000) four-year pilot demonstration unit, to be installed at a grid-connected site near Port Fairy, Victoria.
Censorship

Submission + - Indian minister seeks censorship for user generate (hindustantimes.com)

Submitted by punit_r
punit_r writes: Indian minister for Communications & Information Technology, Kapil Sibal, met officials from Facebook, Google, YouTube and Yahoo on Monday, 5 December 2011, and told them to screen what goes on the sites. He basically asked the websites to actively screen content..

How, do screen such massive amount of data? Well, the IT minister has the perfect recipe. "We'll use humans to screen content and not technology", said the IT minister.

Meanwhile, he got it back from the social media.
Space

Submission + - Osteoporosis drug makes lengthy space trips more l (yomiuri.co.jp)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese researchers have discovered that by taking drugs normally targeted at osteoporosis sufferers they can mitigate the long term effects of weightlessness. This makes it more possible that humans could reasonably fly to Mars land there and be fully functional even after the lengthy journey.
The Internet

Submission + - Kapersky quits BSA; SOPA not supportable (betanews.com)

Submitted by Cmdrm
Cmdrm writes: Kapersky to release additional information as to why it is intent on leaving the Business Software Alliance. "Kaspersky Lab would like to clarify that the company did not participate in the elaboration or discussion of the SOPA initiative and does not support it. Moreover, the company believes that the SOPA initiative might actually be counter-productive for the public interest, and decided to discontinue its membership in the BSA as of January 1, 2012", said a Monday press release.

Submission + - Guardian gagged from reporting UK parliament (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The prominent UK newspaper The Guardian has been legally prevented from reporting a question in UK parliament. This is fairly absurd given that the question is a matter of public record (#61) — but the country's special libel laws mean that the newspaper cannot inform the public of what parliament are up to.

The question concerns the oil trading company trafigura, the toxic waste scandal they are involved in, and their generous use of libel lawyers to silence those who would report on the whole thing.

(Dear editors, the reason you should use this submission rather than the one already made is that I've provided more context in the form of what the gagged question is, and what it's about.)
Role Playing (Games)

Dungeons & Dragons Online Goes Free-To-Play 178

Posted by Soulskill from the level-up-for-3d20-cents dept.
Dungeons & Dragons Online developer Turbine has announced that they'll be launching a new version of the game, called Eberron Unlimited, which makes it free to play, with the option of using micro-transactions to buy certain items and customize characters. Players will also be able to earn points through normal play that they can spend in the DDO Store. There's an additional option to pay a normal subscription fee for priority access to servers, a monthly allotment of points for the store, and extra character slots. Further details and a sign-up for the beta are available at the game's website.
Software

Submission + - Computer scientists develop P2P system that promis

Submitted by
Andreaskem
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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