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Earth

NASA Finds Family of Habitable Planets 184

Posted by samzenpus from the welcome-to-the-neighborhood dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA's star-gazing space telescope continues to find amazing proof that there are tons of habitable planets in space and we have only scratched the surface of what's out there. The space agency said today its Kepler space telescope spotted what it called its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in what it considers to be the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system."
Science

Super Strong Metal Foam Discovered 367

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the body-armor-in-a-can dept.
MikeChino writes to tell us that a North Carolina State University researcher has discovered what appears to be the strongest metal foam yet, capable of compressing up to 80% of its original size under load and still retain the original shape. The hope is that this amazing material could be used in cars, body armor, or even buildings to absorb the shock from earthquakes. "Metal foam is exactly what you might think – a cellular structure made from metal with tiny pockets of space inside. What makes Rabiei’s metal foam better than others is that she’s been able to make the tiny pockets of space more uniform. And that apparently is what gives it the strength as well as elasticity it needs in order to compress as much as it does without deformation. Many tests are being performed in the laboratory to determine its strength, but so far Rabiei says that the spongy material has 'a much higher strength-to-density ratio than any metal foam that has ever been reported.' Calculations also predict that in car accidents, when two pieces of her composite metal foam are inserted 'behind the bumper of a car traveling at 28 mph, the impact would feel the same to passengers as an impact traveling at only 5 mph.'"
Privacy

Facebook Lets Advertisers Use Pictures Without Permission 260

Posted by kdawson from the controlling-rights-to-your-face dept.
Krokz sends in an LA Times piece that begins "A warning is bouncing through cyberspace today, landing on the Facebook statuses of many of the social networking site's users. The message: 'Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission.' It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos." The attention-grabbing incident in this furor involved a married woman, whose photo appeared in an ad for a dating service that was presented to her husband to view. Fortunately, both husband and wife had a sense of humor about it.

Feed Hurricane Prediction Should Improve With New Computer Model (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Aided by new observations from the Coupled Boundary Layer Air-Sea Transfer (CBLAST) – Hurricane field program, scientists at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science have helped to develop and test a new, high-resolution computer model to better understand how air-sea interactions directly affect hurricane intensity, a factor not yet possible in the current operational forecast models.

Feed 1 In 3 HIV Positive Gay Men Report Unprotected Sex (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
More than one in three HIV positive gay men say they have unprotected sex, reveals a community survey, published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. And almost one in five HIV negative men said that they do the same, the figures show.

Feed Los Angeles Most Polluted US City, According To American Lung Association Report (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
For the first time since the American Lung Association began issuing its annual air quality report card, data reveal a split picture along either side of the Mississippi River, as particle pollution (soot) - the most dangerous pollutant - increased in the East but decreased in the West, while ozone (smog) decreased nationwide from peaks reported in 2002.
Science

Building a Silicon Brain 236

Posted by kdawson from the million-neuromimes dept.
prostoalex tips us to an article in MIT's Technology Review on a Stanford scientist's plan to replicate the processes inside the human brain with silicon. Quoting: "Kwabena Boahen, a neuroengineer at Stanford University, is planning the most ambitious neuromorphic project to date: creating a silicon model of the cortex. The first-generation design will be composed of a circuit board with 16 chips, each containing a 256-by-256 array of silicon neurons. Groups of neurons can be set to have different electrical properties, mimicking different types of cells in the cortex. Engineers can also program specific connections between the cells to model the architecture in different parts of the cortex."
Intel

Intel 45nm Fab Process Launched And Penryn Preview 113

Posted by CowboyNeal from the new-and-improved dept.
NinjaKicks writes "Intel has decided to make public details of their new 45nm manufacturing process and also has broken news that next-gen Penryn core processors are running various versions of Windows and Vista successfully. Penryn will offer a host of core tweaks over Conroe, larger cache sizes, and SSE4 support. Also, although clock speeds will be increased, processors based on Penryn should fall within the same thermal power range as Conroe. Word is Penryn will also be compatible with some of the existing motherboards on the market while others will need either a BIOS update or perhaps other board-level changes."
Red Hat Software

Red Hat Sales Surge 109

Posted by Zonk from the stylish-chapeus dept.
head_dunce writes "Red Hat has reported earnings from its third quarter, and it did quite a bit better than expected. Even with the movement within the business by Oracle and SuSE/Microsoft, Red Hat came out quite a bit ahead. TheStreet.com reports on the company's $29.6 Million dollars windfall, and some of the tough times the company has had in the past year. From the article: 'CFO Charlie Peters said on a conference call with analysts that the company is "cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity."'"

Comment Why can't geeks be practical - give HP some credit (Score 1) 697

by tmandry (#17266130) Attached to: HP's Windows Bundle Trouble

I've heard some of the most ridiculous things in these comments.. including all the bad car-gas/printer-cartridge/dvd player-dvd metaphors. Unfortunately they all have a very important thing in common: those products are meant to have their corresponding 'parts' exchanged by the average user regularly, and the 'parts' are meant to be exchanged quickly and easily. An OS is usually only a one-time thing: you install it and you're done.

The point is, it's not practical at all for HP to not sell computers with Windows pre-installed, for the sake of the consumers. The case could be made that other options should be available, but computers that come with Windows will always be mainstream.

But but computers without an OS forced on you are cheaper and give you more options. And they work! You just have to install the OS on them for them to be useful, but ask anyone who knows anything and they can tell you that's easy...

Show me an entrepreneur or CEO that's willing to license, obtain, and have Windows installed on every computer they buy themselves, and I'll show you a fool. For those who just need what's mainstream and what's best for them and/or their employees, preinstallation is faster, cheaper, and easier. The rest of us linux nerds? We'll just have to do our own thing.
Supercomputing

Steve Chen Making China's Supercomputer Grid 128

Posted by CowboyNeal from the teraflops-to-spare dept.
nanotrends writes "Steve Chen was the principal designer of the Cray X-MP supercomputer. He recently created multi-teraflop blade based supercomputers for a Chinese company. He is now creating a supercomputer grid across China and he is working on a bio-supercomputer extension to human brains called THIRD-BRAIN. The THIRD-BRAIN project has significant 3 year and 5 year targets."

Opening Zune Sales Flaccid 451

Posted by CowboyNeal from the meager-beginnings dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As 'Black Friday' approaches and consumers line up for the Playstation 3 it looks like Zune has become an afterthought. Despite months of hype, opening Zune sales are only so-so. While Zune did reach the top 10 on Amazon's Top 25 list for electronic product sales on its first day, it quickly fell below the top 15 and continues to drop. Six separate iPod models now outsell it as well as SanDisk's e250 player. In-store sales are not much better."
Open Source

Copyright Protection Problems For OSS Project 390

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the copy-wrong dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There's a federal case in the Northern District of California where copyright for open source is being challenged. The free software project JMRI discovered that a commercial company was using some of their files in a product, in violation of the license. They added a copyright claim to an ongoing legal action about cybersquatting, software patent abuse, etc. The patent case was covered on Slashdot back in June but the copyright part is new. The other side came back with an argument that copyright law didn't apply, simply because they software was 'being given away for free.'"

Linus Torvalds Officially a Hero 406

Posted by kdawson from the laurels-for-tux dept.
CortoMaltese writes "The European edition of the Time magazine has selected Linus Torvalds as one of the heroes of the past 60 years. From the main article: 'In the 60 years that Time has been publishing an Atlantic edition, extraordinary people have emerged from the churn and turmoil, creativity and chaos of a period that witnessed the aftermath of world war, the toppling of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the vanquishing of apartheid in South Africa, the advance of women, the failure of old certainties and the rise of new fears. These people are our heroes, and in this special anniversary issue, we celebrate them and their many achievements.' The article on Linus is titled 'By giving away his software, the Finnish programmer earned a place in history.' Linus is cited in the 'Rebels & Leaders' category along with Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, and others."

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