Alles over High-Tech Research Moving From US To China | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 23:12:25
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that American companies like Applied Materials are moving their research facilities and engineers to China as the country develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs in China after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world's solar panels by the end of this year and their chief technology officer, Mark R. Pinto, is the first CTO of a major American tech company to move to China. 'We're obviously not giving up on the US,' says Pinto. 'China needs more electricity. It's as simple as that.' Western companies are also attracted to China's huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies. Applied Materials decided to build their new $250 million research facility in Xi'an after the city government sold them a 75-year land lease at a deep discount and is reimbursing the company for roughly a quarter of the lab complex's operating costs for five years."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/D5svQD-4juM/High-Tech-Research-Moving-From-US-To-China
Alles over Startup's Submerged Servers Could Cut Cooling Costs | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 21:25:24
1sockchuck writes "Are data center operators ready to abandon hot and cold aisles and submerge their servers? An Austin startup says its liquid cooling enclosure can cool high-density server installations for a fraction of the cost of air cooling in traditional data centers. Submersion cooling using mineral oil isn't new, dating back to the use of Fluorinert in the Cray 2. The new startup, Green Revolution Cooling, says its first installation will be at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (also home to the Ranger supercomputer). The company launched at SC09 along with a competing liquid cooling play, the Iceotope cooling bags."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/2K0q6YP6Qwo/Startups-Submerged-Servers-Could-Cut-Cooling-Costs
Alles over What Free Antivirus Do You Install On Windows? | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 19:59:20
Techman83 writes "After years of changing between AVG Free + Avast, it's coming time to find a new free alternative for friends/relatives who run Windows. AVG and Avast have been quite good, but are starting to bloat out in size, and also becoming very misleading. Avast recently auto updated from 4.8 to 5 and now requires you to register (even for the free version) and both are making it harder to actually find the free version. Is this end of reasonable free antivirus, or is there another product I can entrust to keep the 'my computer's doing weird things' calls to a minimum?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/sKUV1KbF2Fc/What-Free-Antivirus-Do-You-Install-On-Windows
Alles over Frog Foam Photosynthesis | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 19:31:59
Garrett Fox writes "University of Cincinnati researchers describe a method of getting photosynthesis from a high-surface-area foam containing enzymes that produce sugar using light and CO2 (abstract). Oddly, the foam itself is derived from a species of frog. More interesting is that the technique doesn't use whole cells or apparently even chloroplasts. The researchers claim 'chemical conversion efficiencies approaching 96%,' as well as tolerance for deliberately high-CO2 environments."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/gfX26VG7TYI/Frog-Foam-Photosynthesis
Alles over Court Says Parents Can Block PA "Sexting" Prosecutions | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 19:16:04
mikesd81 writes "In the first federal appeals court opinion dealing with 'sexting,' a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Wednesday that parents could block the prosecution of their children on child pornography charges for appearing in photographs found on some classmates' cellphones. Miller vs. Mitchell (PDF) began in 2008 when school officials in Tunkhannock, Pa., discovered seminude and nude photographs of some female students on other student's phones. George Skumanick Jr., the DA at the time, said the students and their parents could be prosecuted if they did not participate in an after-school 'education program.'
The unanimous ruling of the judges, Thomas L. Ambro, Michael A. Chagares and Walter K. Stapleton, criticized the district attorney's reliance on the girls' presence in the photographs as a basis for the potential charges. 'Appearing in a photograph provides no evidence as to whether that person possessed or transmitted the photo,' said the opinion, by Judge Ambro."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/5WLMsq5yW3M/Court-Says-Parents-Can-Block-PA-Sexting-Prosecutions
Alles over Filming For The Hobbit Begins In July | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 18:46:20
krou writes "Sir Ian McKellen has revealed that filming for The Hobbit and its sequel is scheduled to begin in July, and will take approximately a year to complete. Casting is now 'taking place in LA, London and New York,' and [director Guillermo] Del Torro is already 'living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons' and the studio in Miramar.' Apparently the script is still being worked on, and 'the first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle-earth.' The planned sequel to The Hobbit is to be an original story not written by Tolkien, covering the 60 years between The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/u4pfPTijG24/Filming-For-emThe-Hobbitem-Begins-In-July
Alles over Quantum State Created In Largest Object Yet | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 18:29:53
SpuriousLogic writes "A team of researchers have created a 'quantum state' in an object billions of times larger than ever before. From the article: 'Such states, in which an object is effectively in two places at once, have until now only been accomplished with single particles, atoms and molecules. In this experiment, published in the journal Nature, scientists produced a quantum state in an object billions of times larger than previous tests. The team says the result could have significant implications in quantum computing.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/-HkXDFy_GPo/Quantum-State-Created-In-Largest-Object-Yet
Alles over Berners-Lee Calls For Government Data Transparency | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 18:11:17
eldavojohn writes "Two months ago, Tim Berners-Lee unveiled a UK Government data project with the goal to make government data more useful for everyone. Today he is calling on the rest of the world governments to become more transparent with their nonsensitive data. After only a few months, his project boasts around forty applications for using government data (screen shot example here). The BBC article notes the interesting uses of public data in India and Brazil that are disappointingly lacking in other countries — even the United States. Hopefully the US's data.gov will evolve to hosting apps instead of just data."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/A3m8dU1Czo4/Berners-Lee-Calls-For-Government-Data-Transparency
Alles over Filming For the Hobbit Begins In July | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 17:17:54
krou writes "Sir Ian McKellen has revealed that filming for The Hobbit and its sequel is scheduled to begin in July, and will take approximately a year to complete. Casting is now 'taking place in LA, London and New York', and Del Torro is already 'living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons' and the studio in Miramar'. Apparently the script is still being worked on, and 'the first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle-earth'. The planned sequel to The Hobbit is to be an original story not written by Tolkien, covering the 60 years between The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ElWSF9yHb2o/Filming-For-the-Hobbit-Begins-In-July
Alles over YouTube's Bandwidth Bill May be Zero | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 16:19:14
MrShaggy writes "Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was costing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streamed 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that even though Google is approaching 10 percent of the net's traffic, it's got so much fiber optic cable it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net's largest ISPs. 'I think Google's transit costs are close to zero,' said Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist for Arbor Networks and a longtime internet researcher. Arbor Networks, which sells network monitoring equipment used by about 70 percent of the net's ISPs, likely knows more about the net's ebbs and flows than anyone outside of the National Security Agency."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KUpeIBYcjmc/YouTubes-Bandwidth-Bill-May-be-Zero
Alles over MP3 Player Tax Proposed In Canada | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 15:31:09
Interoperable writes "The status of sharing music in Canada is, to some extent, ambiguous. This is partly due to a levy imposed on blank media, CD-Rs and cassette tapes, that compensates artists and the recording studios for a loss of revenue due to copying. Legislation proposed by the NDP and supported by the Bloc Quebecois would extend that levy to cover MP3 players with the intent of decriminalizing audio file sharing for Canadian citizens. The proposed legislation, however, faces opposition from the governing Conservative party; the Liberal party has agreed to discuss the proposed bill."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/eVro07W63JM/MP3-Player-Tax-Proposed-In-Canada
Alles over I Want My GTV | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 14:43:16
theodp writes "The NY Times reports that Google and Intel have teamed with Sony to develop a platform called Google TV to bring the Web into the living room through a new generation of TVs and set-top boxes. The three companies have tapped Logitech for peripheral devices, including a remote with a tiny keyboard. Based on Google's Android operating system, the TV technology runs on Intel's Atom chips. Google is expected to deliver a toolkit to outside programmers within the next couple of months, and products based on the software could appear as soon as this summer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/nX2wVxV5faw/I-Want-My-GTV
Alles over GM Working On Interactive Windshields | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 13:54:59
this_boat_is_real writes "Rather than project info onto a portion of the windshield, GM's latest experiment uses the entire windshield as a display. Small ultraviolet lasers project data gleaned from sensors and cameras onto the glass. General Motors geeks are working alongside researchers from several universities to develop a system that integrates night vision, navigation and on-board cameras to improve our ability to see — and avoid — problems, particularly in adverse conditions like fog."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/cEJgJB-8Bzw/GM-Working-On-Interactive-Windshields
Alles over Professor Ditches Grades For XP System | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 13:15:04
schliz writes "Like in World of Warcraft, students of Indiana University's game design classes start as Level 1 avatars with 0 XP, and progress by completing quests solo, as guilds, or in 'pick up groups.' Course coordinator Lee Sheldon says students are responding with 'far greater enthusiasm,' and many specifics of game design could also be directly applied to the workforce. These included: clearly defining goals for workers; providing incremental rewards; and balancing effort and reward."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/7_oN8BBYW2o/Professor-Ditches-Grades-For-XP-System
Alles over Can You Fight DRM With Patience? | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 10:58:47
As modern DRM schemes get more annoying and invasive, the common wisdom is to vote with your wallet and avoid supporting developers and publishers who include such schemes with their games. Or, if you simply must play it, wait a while until outcry and complaints have caused the DRM restrictions to be loosened. But will any of that make game creators rethink their stance? An article at CNet argues that gamers are, in general, an impatient bunch, and that trait combined with the nature of the games industry means that progress fighting DRM will be slow or nonexistent. Quoting:
"Increasingly so, the joke seems to be on the customers who end up buying this software when it first comes out. A simple look back at some controversial titles has shown us that after the initial sales come, the publisher later removes the vast majority of the DRM, leaving gamers to enjoy the software with fewer restrictions. ... Still, [waiting until later to purchase the game] isn't a good long-term solution. Early sales are often one of the big quantifiers in whether a studio will start working on a sequel, and if everyone were to wait to buy games once they hit the bargain price, publishers would simply stop making PC versions. There's also no promise that the really heavy bits of DRM will be stripped out at a later date, except for the fact that most publishers are unlikely to want to maintain the cost of running the activation, and/or online verification servers for older software."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/CBGoRpIdJZk/Can-You-Fight-DRM-With-Patience
Alles over P2P and P2P Links Ruled Legal In Spain | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 08:42:51
Nieriko writes After three years of arduous litigation, Jesus Guerra Calderon, owner of both a small bar and the P2P link webpage 'elrincondejesus.com' has beaten the SGAE (something like the spanish version of the RIAA). The historic ruling states not only the legality of link webpages, but also the legality of P2P file-sharing networks. Quoting the judge: 'P2P Networks as mere data transmision networks between individual internet users, do not breach any rights protected by the Intelectual Property Law.' Downloading a file (from a P2P network) for private use is perfectly legal as long as there is no lucrative or collective use of the downloaded copy."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/JcJJhtrDhuk/P2P-and-P2P-Links-Ruled-Legal-In-Spain
Alles over Wikipedia's Assault On Patent-Encumbered Codecs | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 07:55:01
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Video Alliance is launching a campaign today called Let's Get Video on Wikipedia, asking people to create and post videos to Wikipedia articles. (Good, encyclopedia-style videos only!) Because all video must be in patent-free codecs (theora for now), this will make Wikipedia by far the most likely site for an average internet user to have a truly free and open video experience. The campaign seeks to 'strike a blow for freedom' against a wave of h.264 adoption in otherwise open HTML5 video implementations."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/b_0jHETv4Jo/Wikipedias-Assault-On-Patent-Encumbered-Codecs
Alles over Devs Finally Finding Success With Xbox Indie Games | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 07:55:01
McBacon writes with this excerpt from Wired.co.uk:
"Often dismissed as a failed venture, the Xbox Indie Games programme has earned successful man-and-his-dog developers tens of thousands of pounds from sales of their homebrew games. Wired explores the success stories of this hidden marketplace. ... now, more than a year since its launch, the Xbox Indie Games are seeing something of a revival. Microsoft has made huge strides to improve the service, games are beginning to be taken more seriously and success stories are becoming more and more common. Especially for [James] Silva, a New York-based developer, who became an impromptu Indie celebrity after his game The Dishwasher won Microsoft's Dream-Build-Play competition. He says he's 'absolutely thrilled' to have seen I Maed a Gam3 w1th Zomb1es!!!1 — his latest game — become a cult hit, for gamers to flock to it in record numbers and to have sold over 200,000 copies."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ZF0RKnLTzRg/Devs-Finally-Finding-Success-With-Xbox-Indie-Games
Alles over Science and the Shortcomings of Statistics | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 03:45:45
Kilrah_il writes "The linked article provides a short summery of the problems scientists have with statistics. As an intern, I see it many times: Doctors do lots of research but don't have a clue when it comes to statistics... and in the social science area it's even worse. From the article: 'Even when performed correctly, statistical tests are widely misunderstood and frequently misinterpreted. As a result, countless conclusions in the scientific literature are erroneous, and tests of medical dangers or treatments are often contradictory and confusing.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/ndyDxBeXlL8/Science-and-the-Shortcomings-of-Statistics
Alles over Disgruntled Ex-Employee Remotely Disables 100 Cars | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-18 00:47:25
hansamurai writes "Over one hundred cars equipped with a Webtech Plus blackbox were remotely disabled when a former employee of dealership Texas Auto Center got hold of his employer's database of users. Webtech Plus is repossession software that allows the dealership to disable a car's ignition or trigger the horn to honk when a payment is due. Owners had to remove the battery to stop the incessant honking. After the dealership began fielding an unusually high number of calls from upset car owners, they changed the passwords to the Webtech Plus software and then traced the IP address used to access the client to its former employee."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/grKgbKQCWOo/Disgruntled-Ex-Employee-Remotely-Disables-100-Cars
Alles over Lord British's Lost Lunar Rover Found, After 37 Years | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-17 23:35:22
Lanxon writes "The guy behind Ultima Online once bought an old Russian rover, despite it being lost on the moon somewhere. And now, using images released by NASA, it has been located on the moon's surface after nearly four decades of being MIA, reports Wired. Richard Garriott, who created the Ultima Online multiplayer game, bought the Lunokhod 2 in a Sotheby's auction in New York in 1998. And so new was the discovery of his lost possession, he hadn't even heard that the craft had been discovered when Wired spoke to him."
(Richard Garriott is also well known as Lord British.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/bEYiAs87RdE/Lord-Britishs-Lost-Lunar-Rover-Found-After-37-Years
Alles over Wikipedia's Assault On Patent-Encumbered Codecs | rss feed | toevoegen | e-mail nieuwsalarm | | 2010-03-17 21:59:33
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Video Alliance is launching a campaign today called Let's Get Video on Wikipedia asking people to create and post videos to Wikipedia articles (good, encyclopedia style videos only!). Because all video must be in patent-free codecs (theora for now), this will make Wikipedia by far the most likely site for an average internet user to have a truly free and open video experience. The campaign seeks to 'strike a blow for freedom' against a wave of h.264 adoption in otherwise open HTML5 video implementations."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_Lm7WWvMLlI/Wikipedias-Assault-On-Patent-Encumbered-Codecs
