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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Kills Expression Suite (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: Microsoft has announced that the Expression suite of design tools is no more. It has been removed from sale immediately and it has been placed on a maintenance only status until it reaches its end of life. Expression was Microsoft’s offering for designers and competed directly with Adobe products. You can now download the components of Expression — Design 4, Web 4 and Encoder 4 — for free but you can’t buy them. Of course, knowing that you are using "doomed" products, even for free, takes some of the icing off the cake.The central component of the suite the UI designer Blend is to be integrated with Visual Studio 2012 probably along with Update 2. It looks as if Microsoft is giving up on trying to get designers to use its tools.
Robotics

Submission + - Arduino and MK802 Robot, Controlled by Phone (youtube.com)

Submitted by
beefsack
beefsack writes: "An engineer by the name of Andrej Skraba has combined an Arduino board and an MK802 mini PC running Ubuntu to create a robot which is controllable via it's own node.js server and a mobile phone. Seen by some as products competing in a similar space, Andrej shows how the two devices can make the most of their unique features to complement each other well working together."
Space

Submission + - All Systems Go for Highest Altitude Supercomputer (eso.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the most powerful supercomputers in the world has now been fully installed and tested at its remote, high altitude site in the Andes of northern Chile. It's a critical part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the most elaborate ground-based astronomical telescope in history. The special-purpose ALMA correlator has over 134 million processors and performs up to 17 quadrillion operations per second, a speed comparable to the fastest general-purpose supercomputer in operation today.
The Internet

Submission + - DARPA competition seeks wireless bandwidth intimidators (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "What if your wireless communications just absolutely, positively have to be heard above the din of other users or in the face of massive interference? That is the question at the heart of a new $150,000 challenge that will be thrown down in January by the scientists at DARPA as the agency detailed its Spectrum Challenge — a competition that aims to find developers who can create software-defined radio protocols that best use communication channels in the presence of other users and interfering signals."
United Kingdom

Submission + - UK Gov plans to give "greater freedom to use copyright works" (bis.gov.uk)

Submitted by crimperman
crimperman writes: The Uk Government is planning to change their copyright laws to give "greater freedom" on usage. The Dept for Business Innovation and Skills say the new measures "include provisions to allow copying of works for personal use parody and for the purposes of quotation." (there is currently no "fair usage" law in the UK). They also say the provisions "allow people to use copyright works for a variety of ... purposes without permission from the copyright owners." and ""bring up to date the provisions for education use."
A sensible copyright law from the UK? What are the chances of this getting through?
Patents

Submission + - Reexamination Request Filed Against Another Apple Patent (fosspatents.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After the rubber-banding, 'Steve Jobs' heuristics and pinch-to-zoom patents, another Apple patent in use against Samsung comes under pressure. An anonymous filer (or 'anonymous coward' in traditional Slashdot terminology), most likely Samsung, has filed a reexamination request against Apple's RE41,922 patent on a "method and apparatus for providing translucent images on a computer display". It's not among the patents a California jury evaluated this summer, but one of four patents an ITC judge preliminarily found Samsung to infringe. The reexamination request features five new pieces of prior art (three U.S. patents from the early 1990s and two Japanese patents), all of which dealt with translucent images. The patent office will decide next year whether to grant or deny the request for reexamination. Expect more such petitions targeting Apple patents.
Operating Systems

Submission + - FreeBSD Fundraising almost there (freebsdfoundation.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It seems that the FreeBSD Doundation fundraising is going pretty well. 461k $ funded in less that one month its a success and seems better than expected by other slashdot readers(http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/12/12/09/1726222/freebsd-project-falls-short-of-year-end-funding-target-by-nearly-50), and should not be rated as "fail". Since the FBD Foundation site have a lot of details of what is being done to improve FreeBSD and what will be done(in a non-tech description), what is the feature/subsystem/port that you thing deserves some love from FreeBSD developers?
DRM

Submission + - UK law change to allow digital copying (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: Making digital copies of music, films and other copyrighted material for personal use is to be made legal for the first time under government plans.

It has previously been illegal in the UK to rip songs from a CD to a digital player or transfer eBooks, music, films and games from one device to another.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said the move was "not only common sense but good business sense".

"Bringing the law into line with ordinary people's reasonable expectations will boost respect for copyright, on which our creative industries rely," he said.

"We feel we have struck the right balance between improving the way consumers benefit from copyright works they have legitimately paid for, boosting business opportunities and protecting the rights of creators."

Submission + - First Radeon HD 8000M GPU benchmarked (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: As Slashdot noted earlier this week, AMD has a new line of mid-range Radeon GPUs aimed at notebooks. The chips are based on the Graphics Core Next microarchitecture, and they're slated to show up in systems early next year. While the initial report was limited to specification details, the first review of the Radeon HD 8790M is now out, complete with benchmark data from the latest games. The 8790M is about 35% smaller than its 7690M predecessor but offers substantially better gaming performance across the board. Impressively, the new chip has similar power draw as the outgoing model under load, and its idle power consumption is slightly lower. Notebook makers should have no problems making the switch. However, it is worth noting that this new mobile GPU exhibits some of the same frame latency spikes observed on desktop Radeons, including in games that AMD itself has sponsored.
Power

Submission + - Atmospheric Vortex Engine creates tornadoes to generate electricity (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Tornadoes generally evoke the destructive force of nature at its most awesome. However, what if all that power could be harnessed to produce cheaper and more efficient electricity? This is just what Canadian engineer Louis Michaud proposes to achieve, with an invention dubbed the “Atmospheric Vortex Engine” (or AVE). It works by introducing warm air into a circular station, whereupon the difference in temperature between this heated air and the atmosphere above creates a vortex – or controlled tornado, which in turn drives multiple wind turbines in order to create electricity. The vortex could be shut down by simply turning off the source of warm air.

Michaud’s company, AVEtec Energy Corporation, reports that the system produces no carbon emissions, nor requires energy storage to function, and that further to this, the cost of energy generated could potentially be as low as US$0.03 per kilowatt hour.
Apple

Submission + - Apple Kills a Kickstarter Project (venturebeat.com) 1

Submitted by Nerdfest
Nerdfest writes: Venturebeat is reporting that:

Edison Junior, the technology and design lab behind the POP portable power station, is returning the full $139,170 in funding it received from Kickstarter backers to develop the device. Unfortunately, Apple has refused to give the project permission to license the Lightning charger in a device that includes multiple charging options.

“We are pissed,” Edison Junior CEO Jamie Siminoff told me on the phone today. “I think they are being a bunch of assholes, and I think they’re hurting their customers.”
Math

Submission + - Juggling by the Numbers

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The BBC News' Laura Gray reports on a juggling notation system developed in the 80's called Siteswap (aka Quantum Juggling and Cambridge Notation) and how it has helped jugglers discover and share thousands of new tricks. Frustrated that there was no way to write down juggling moves, mathematician Colin Wright and others helped devised Siteswap, which uses sequences of numbers to encode the number of beats of each throw, which is related to their height and the hand to which the throw is made. 'Siteswap has allowed jugglers to share tricks with each other without having to meet in person or film themselves,' says James Grime, juggling enthusiast and math instructor for Cambridge University. Still unclear on the concept? Spend some time playing around with Paul Klimek's most-excellent Quantum Juggling simulator, and you too can be a Flying Karamazov Brother!
Linux

Submission + - Learn Linux The Hard Way (nixsrv.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Author of Learn Python Te Hard Way and other works, Zed Shaw, has released a free interactive beta of Learn Linux The Hard Way; a web-based virtual Linux environment which introduces the command line and other essential Linux concepts in 30 exercises. Of course, my first entry was rm -rf /* which only produced a stream of errors. Missing vim, nano, etc., I amused myself by entering other commands and creating a few files — appending to them with "echo "*" > text.txt, etc. I wish I had discovered something like a long time ago.

Submission + - 2012 another record-setter, fits climate forecasts (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by Layzej
Layzej writes: Fox News reports: In 2012 many of the warnings scientists have made about global warming went from dry studies in scientific journals to real-life video played before our eyes. As 2012 began, winter in the U.S. went AWOL. Spring and summer arrived early with wildfires, blistering heat and drought. And fall hit the eastern third of the country with the ferocity of Superstorm Sandy. Globally, five countries this year set heat records, but none set cold records. 2012 is on track to be the warmest year on record in the United States. Worldwide, the average through November suggests it will be the eighth warmest since global record-keeping began in 1880 and will likely beat 2011 as the hottest La Nina year on record. America's heartland lurched from one extreme to the other without stopping at "normal." Historic flooding in 2011 gave way to devastating drought in 2012. But the most troubling climate development this year was the melting at the top of the world. Summer sea ice in the Arctic shrank to 18 percent below the previous record low.
These are "clearly not freak events," but "systemic changes," said climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute in Germany. "With all the extremes that, really, every year in the last 10 years have struck different parts of the globe, more and more people absolutely realize that climate change is here and already hitting us."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Do coding standards make a difference? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Every shop I've ever worked in has had a "Coding Style" document that dictates things like camelCase vs underscored_names, placement of curly braces, tabs vs spaces, etc... As a result, I've lost hundreds of hours in code reviews because some pedant was more interested in picking nits over whitespace than actually reviewing my algorithms. Are there any documents or studies that show a net productivity gain for having these sorts of standards? If not, why do we have them? We live in the future, why don't our tools enforce these standards automagically?
Windows

Submission + - Animated Rant about Windows 8 from former tech journalist. (youtube.com)

Submitted by
Funksaw
Funksaw writes: "Back in 2007, I wrote three articles on Ubuntu 6, MacOSX 10.4, and Windows Vista which were all featured on Slashdot. Now, with the release of Windows 8, I took a different tactic and produced an animated video. Those expecting me to bust out the performance tests and in-depth use of the OS are going to be dissapointed. Whilt that was my intention coming into the project, I couldn't even use Windows 8 long enough to get to the in-depth technical tests. In my opinion, Windows 8 is so horribly broken that it should be recalled."

Submission + - Atmospheric Vortex Engine creates tornadoes to generate electricity (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tornadoes generally evoke the destructive force of nature at its most awesome. However, what if all that power could be harnessed to produce cheaper and more efficient electricity? This is just what Canadian engineer Louis Michaud proposes to achieve, with an invention dubbed the âoeAtmospheric Vortex Engineâ (or AVE) — is this possible for real ?
Linux

Submission + - GarageGames Starts IndieGoGo Campaign to Port Torque 3D to Linux (indiegogo.com)

Submitted by
iamnothing
iamnothing writes: "GarageGames is heading to IndieGoGo to port Torque 3D to Linux! The campaign is centered around hiring a dedicated developer or team to port Torque 3D to Linux. The primary target is Ubuntu 32bit with other flavors of Linux as stretch goals. All work will be done in the public eye under our Github repository under the MIT license.

Check out the campaign!"
The Military

Submission + - DARPA's Headless Robotic Mule Takes Load Off Warfighters

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "If robots are ever really going to carry the equipment of US soldiers and Marines, they're going to have to act more like pack animals. Now Terri Moon Cronk reports that DARPA’s semiautonomous Legged Squad Support System — also known as the LS3 — will carry 400 pounds of warfighter equipment and walk 20 miles at a time also acting as an auxiliary power source for troops to recharge batteries for radios and handheld devices while on patrol. “It’s about solving a real military problem: the incredible load of equipment our soldiers and Marines carry in Afghanistan today,” says Army Lt. Col. Joseph K. Hitt, program manager in DARPA’s tactical technology office. The robot’s sensors allow it to navigate around obstacles at night, maneuver in urban settings, respond to voice commands, and gauge distances and directions. The LS3 can also distinguish different forms of vegetation when walking through fields and around bushes and avoid logs and rocks with intelligent foot placement on rough terrain (video). The robot's squad leader can issue 10 basic commands to tell the robot to do such things as stop, sit, follow him tightly, follow him on the corridor, and go to specific coordinates. Darpa figures that it's illogical to make a soldier hand over her rucksack to a robotic beast of burden if she's then got to be preoccupied with "joysticks and computer screens" to guide it forward. "That adds to the cognitive burden of the soldier," Hitt explains. "We need to make sure that the robot also is smart, like a trained animal.""

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