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Power

Submission + - Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell generates electricity from living plants (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Wetlands are estimated to account for around six percent of the earth’s surface and a new Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell technology developed at Wageningen University & Research in The Netherlands could see some of these areas become a viable source of renewable energy. More than that, the developers believe that their technology could be used to supply electricity to remote communities and in green roofs to supply electricity to households. Unlike biogas, which is produced by the anaerobic digestion or fermentation of biomass, the Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell generates electricity while the plants continue to grow. Importantly, the researchers say the system doesn’t affect the plant’s growth of harm its environment.
NASA

Submission + - What Will NASA Do with Its Gifted Spy 'Scopes? (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "NASA has begun surveying scientists on what they would like to do with two Hubble-class space telescopes donated to the civilian space agency by its secretive sibling, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) — which operates the nation's spy satellites. But the gifts have some formidable strings attached, including costs to develop instruments and launch the observatories. The telescopes, though declassified, also are subject to export regulations.

"We need to retain possession and control," NASA's astrophysics division director Paul Hertz told Discovery News. "That doesn't preclude us from partnering (with other countries). It just sets boundaries on the nature of the partnership." NASA also isn't allowed to use the telescopes for any Earth-observing missions. Topping the list of possible missions for the donor hardware is a remake of NASA's planned Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, known as WFIRST. The mission, estimated to cost between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, is intended to answer questions about dark energy, a relatively recently discovered phenomenon that is believed to be speeding up the universe's rate of expansion."
Earth

Submission + - The Straight Poop on Microsoft's New Data Center (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: "Microsoft is planning a zero-carbon data center in Wyoming that will use biogas from an adjacent wastewater treatment plant as its power supply.

Once the R&D project is complete, Microsoft will donate the Data Plant to the City of Cheyenne and the University of Wyoming for future research.

The ultimate goal of the Data Plant program is to free data centers from having to rely on expensive and potentially unstable power grids."

Submission + - U.S. regulators sue Intrade, Intrade blocks US accounts (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Charliemopps
Charliemopps writes: “We are sorry to announce that due to legal and regulatory pressures, Intrade can no longer allow US residents to participate in our real-money prediction markets,”

The CFTC’s civil complaint charged that Intrade and its operator solicited customers to trade investment contracts that technically are options. Options must be traded on approved, regulated exchanges.

Well... at least they're going after the real crooks right?

Submission + - InTrade bans U.S. customers. (intrade.com)

Submitted by
MyFirstNameIsPaul
MyFirstNameIsPaul writes: "In an announcement dated Monday, Nov 26, 2012, Dublin based InTrade stated "that due to legal and regulatory pressures, Intrade can no longer allow US residents to participate in our real-money prediction markets." The Washington Post reports that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint in federal court against InTrade for "illegally facilitating bets on future economic data, the price of gold and even acts of war," demonstrating just how far the long arm of U.S. law can reach."
Space

Submission + - Hairspray Could Help Us Find Advanced Alien Civilizations 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Charles Q. Choi writes that hairspray could one day serve as the sign that aliens have reshaped distant worlds because one group of gases that might be key to terraforming planets are chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), long-lived non-toxic greenhouse gases that were often used in hairspray and air conditioners, among many other products. "Our hypothesis is that evidence of intelligent life might be evident in a planetary atmosphere," says astrobiologist Mark Claire at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. CFCs are entirely artificial, with no known natural process capable of creating them in atmospheres. Detecting signs of these gases on far-off worlds with telescopes might serve as potent evidence that intelligent alien civilizations were the cause, either intentionally as part of terraforming or accidentally via industrial pollution. "An industrialized civilization will be one that will use its planetary resources for fabrication, the soon-to-be-detectable-from-Earth atmospheric byproducts of which could be a tell-tale sign of their activity," says astrobiologist Sanjoy Som. CFCs can be easily recognized in planetary atmospheres because their atmospheric “fingerprint” (i.e. chemical spectra) is very different from natural elements, and are a tell-tale sign that life on the surface has advanced industrial capabilities. Using state-of-the-art computer models of atmospheric chemistry and climate, researchers plan to discover what visible signs CFCs and other artificial byproducts of alien terraforming or industry might have on exoplanet atmospheres. "We are about a decade away of being able to measure detailed compositions of the atmospheres of extrasolar planets," says Som."
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 18 Beta Out: Faster JavaScript Via IonMonkey, Built-in PDF Vewer

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla on Monday announced the release of Firefox 18 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can download it now from Mozilla.org/Firefox/Beta. The biggest addition in this update is significant JavaScript improvements, courtesy of Mozilla’s new JavaScript JIT compiler called IonMonkey. The company promises the performance bump should be noticeable whenever Firefox is displaying Web apps, games, and other JavaScript-heavy pages.
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Unveiling Slashdot Mobile for Tablets

Submitted by
gkuchhal
gkuchhal writes: "Slashdot Mobile has finally made it out of the gates for tablets as well as phones. The Mobile site for phones launched some weeks back, but now you can take advantage of the changes we've made to read Slashdot easier to read through touch-screen devices on tablets as well as phones. That includes features we've folded in to the mobile version from the desktop-browser view of the site, so you can scan user profiles, sip from the Firehose, and keep up with notifications. See this blog post for more details, and keep the feedback coming. If you see a problem, tell us about it!"
Chrome

Submission + - Google Touch-Screen Chromebook in the Works: Rumor (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "There are rumors going around that Google plans on launching one or more Chrome OS-powered laptops with touch-screen capability. Google’s Chrome OS is a cloud-dependent operating system for laptops and desktops. It features Google services such as Gmail, as well as access to the Chrome Web Store and its wide variety of apps. While some offline functionality exists (including the ability to edit documents via Google Docs), devices running Chrome OS are largely dependent on a constant Internet connection. DigiTimes reported Nov. 26 that Google had partnered with Taiwan-based Compal Electronics and Wintek to build such a 12.85-inch device. The newspaper cited the Chinese-language Commercial Times (CT) as its source. (Hat tip to InformationWeek for spotting the info.) “Compal will start shipments as soon as the end of 2012,” DigiTimes wrote, paraphrasing the other newspaper. However, any reader should take that with a massive grain of salt, as DigiTimes has reported on many a rumor that later failed to manifest as an actual product or service."
Government

Submission + - Sandia Lab celebrates original "Mr. Clean" the clean room inventor (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Sandia National Laboratories physicist Willis Whitfield, 92, passed away earlier this month and left a technological legacy that continues to reverberate today: The legendary clean room.

The original laminar-flow 10 x 6 clean room developed 50 years ago by Whitfield was more than 1,000 times cleaner than any cleanrooms used at the time and ultimately revolutionized microelectronics, healthcare and manufacturing development. According to Sandia, with slight modifications, it is still the clean room standard today."
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 PCs Still Throttled By Crapware (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "Windows 8's Metro UI presents a clean and spiffy new interface for Microsoft's latest OS. But one of the operating system's oldest and most hated problems — crapware — still lurks below the surface. For instance, the Acer Aspire 7600U is an all-in-one that, at $1,900, is hardly a bargain-basement PC. And yet as shipped it includes over 50 pieces of OEM and third-party software pre-installed, much of which simply offer trials for paid services."
Oracle

Submission + - Oracle Proposes Nashorn, A New JavaScript Engine for OpenJDK (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Oracle has proposed a new project for OpenJDK – Nashorn, which aims to implement a high-performance yet lightweight JavaScript runtime that would run on Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Nashorn will be headed by Jim Laskey, multi-language Lead at Oracle and the project will be sponsored by HotSpot group. The project proposes implementation of JavaScript such that it can run standalone JavaScript applications via the JSR 223 APIs. Nashorn’s design will enable it to take advantage of technologies like MethodHandles and InvokeDynamic APIs.
Google

Submission + - Will Google Go the Way of Microsoft? Ask the FTC (cio.com)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "The biggest threat to Google isn't Apple, Microsoft or Amazon — it's the U.S. government. Within the next several months, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission may sue Google for antitrust violations. If it does, Google will most likely end up like Microsoft after the government filed suit against it in the 1990s — distracted and unable to plan for the future.

The biggest potential antitrust issue is whether Google unfairly manipulates its search results to point at its own services rather than competitors'. So, for example, the suit might charge that Google manipulates search results to direct consumers to Google Places rather than Yelp or to Google Shopping rather than Pricegrabber or Shopzilla. Another potential issue is whether Google's AdWords marketplace discriminates against ads from services that compete with Google's services."

Submission + - Troubling trend for open source company... 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm one of the original founders of a open source company which offers a popular open source product (millions of downloads) targeted primarily to small businesses. We have been doing this for 10 years now and we fund the development of the open source product with the usual paid support services, custom development and addons, but over the last few years we've noticed a troubling trend...

Companies that have downloaded our product from one of the many free download sites have a question they want answered, they call our support line and once we politely explain the situation and that telephone support has a reasonable fee associated with it, more and more of them are becoming seriously irate, to the point of yelling, accusing of us fraud and/or scamming them. For some reason they think a free product should have free telephone support as well, and if we don't offer free telephone support then its not really a free product.

It would appear that these same people are then resorting to social media in an attempt to "spread the word" with the same false accusations which is starting to take its toll on our reviews, ratings and in turn our bottom line.

Does the Slashdot community have any suggestions on how we can reverse this trend? How do other open source companies handle similar situations?
Government

Submission + - Cyber Monday bust: US law joins in world-wide seizure of 132 domain names (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "A team of world-wide law enforcement agencies took out 132 domain names today that were illegally selling counterfeit merchandise online. The group, made up of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and law enforcement agencies from Belgium, Denmark, France, Romania, United Kingdom and the European Police Office (Europol) targeted alleged counterfeiters selling everything from professional sports jerseys, DVD sets, and a variety of clothing to jewelry and luxury goods."
Games

Submission + - What's it like to pilot a drone? A lot like Call of Duty (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Teenagers raised on "Call of Duty" and "Halo" might relish flying a massive Predator drone — a surprisingly similar activity. Pilots of unmanned military aircraft use a joystick to swoop down into the battlefield, spot enemy troop movements, and snap photos of terror suspects, explained John Hamby, a former military commander who led surveillance missions during the Iraq War. “You’re always maneuvering the airplane to get a closer look,” Hamby said. “You’re constantly searching for the bad guys and targets of interest. When you do find something that is actionable, you’re a hero.” Yet a new study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found real-life drone operators can become easily bored. Only one participant paid attention during an entire test session, while even top performers spent a third of the time checking a cellphone or catching up on the latest novel. The solution: making the actual drone mission even more like a video game.
Technology

Submission + - Is Intel Planning to Kill Enthusiast PCs? (semiaccurate.com)

Submitted by OceanMan7
OceanMan7 writes: According to a story by Charlie Demerjian, a long-time hardware journalist, in SemiAccurate.com, Intel's next generation of x86 CPUs, Broadwell, will not come in a package having pins. Hence manufacturers will have to solder it onto motherboards. That will likely seriously wound the enthusiast PC market.

One might think that tIntel are just cutting their own throats given the competition, but AMD is financially on the ropes. A quote from analyst Alan Brochstein in a recent article at seekingalpha.com states: "Advance Micro (AMD), on the other hand, looks terminal to me despite new management."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1026631-the-20-most-oversold-stocks-in-the-s-p-500?source=yahoo

Anti-Trust Prosecution take so long that it's not a viable alternative for stopping this. If Intel doesn't change their plans, the future pasture for enthusiasts looks like it will go to ARM chips or something from offshore manufacturers.
Medicine

Submission + - Could a Newly Developed RNA-Based Vaccine Offer Lifelong Protection From Flu? (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new experimental flu vaccine made out of messenger RNA (mRNA) that may work for life is now being developed.
German researchers said on Sunday that the vaccine, made of the genetic material that controls the production of proteins, protected animals against influenza and, unlike traditional vaccines, it may work for life and can potentially be manufactured quickly enough to stop a pandemic.
Past studies have suggested a universal flu vaccine that involved targeting other proteins on the flu virus that don't change as quickly as the NA and HA proteins, but the new newly proposed vaccine goes beyond that and targets the underlying RNA-driven processes that create the NA and HA proteins, regardless of their strain.
Open Source

Submission + - Top ten open source gifts for the holidays (opensource.com)

Submitted by tarheel2012
tarheel2012 writes: A list of ten open source gifts for that special (open source) someone. The list includes Raspberry Pi, MaKey MaKey, BeagleBone, Flora, and others. All of the gadgets are either open source hardware, or run on open source software. Which do you think are the best? Do you think any great open source gadgets were left out?

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