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eldavojohn writes "A new award-winning thesis from an MIT computer science assistant professor showed that the Nash equilibrium of complex games (like the economy or poker) belong to problems with non-deterministic polynomial (NP) complexity (more specifically PPAD complexity, a subset of TFNP problems which is a subset of FNP problems which is a subset of NP problems). More importantly there should be a single solution for one problem that can be adapted to fit all the other problems. Meaning if you can generalize the solution to poker, you have the ability to discover the Nash equilibrium of the economy. Some computer scientists are calling this the biggest development in game theory in a decade."

mpapet writes to ask about the ins and outs of datacenter evaluation. Beyond the simpler questions of physical access control, connectivity, and power redundancy/capacity and SLA review, what other questions are important to ask when evaluating a data center? What data centers have people been happy with? What horror stories have people lived through with those that didn't make the cut?

An anonymous reader writes to tell us that a recent FAQ released by Oracle outlines the plans for many of Sun's popular products like GlassFish, MySQL, and NetBeans. Many are worried at some of the possible avenues the decisions outlined could lead to, especially with respect to NetBeans. "What should have happened, Oracle should not have missed a beat and should have announced work on Oracle plugins for NetBeans and active Oracle support of NetBeans. This type of announcement would have brought a large and some-what skeptical NetBeans community much closer to Oracle. It would have been a big win for Oracle. NetBeans will continue to grow either way - but Oracle has missed a big chance to really change perceptions and at the same time move their tools to another level. What JDeveloper lacks is buzz, a wealth of community developed plugins, a wealth of support for other languages and a very, very large community. And of course it does not offer a platform in the NetBeans and Eclipse sense of the word. This is a huge missed opportunity for Oracle."

There's only one thing Cook County prosecutors hate more than crime, and that's being proven wrong. This leads us to journalism professor David Protess and his class. Already having helped prove the innocence of 11 men behind bars, his investigative journalist students have spent 3 years investigating the case of a man convicted of killing a security guard. The students believe they have evidence that shows the wrong man is in prison. In response, the Prosecutors Office has issued subpoenas to professor David Protess seeking his students’ grades, his syllabus and their private e-mails. They claim since the team was made up of students, they may have been under pressure to prove the case to get a good grade. “Why are we talking about our grades when we should be talking about whether there’s an innocent man in prison?” said Evan Benn, a former Protess student mentioned in the state’s subpoena.

futurity.org writes with news that Iowa State researchers have made a breakthrough that could eventually lead to a cure for Parkinson's. Identifying the protein that kills the dopamine-producing cells in the brain has allowed the researchers to disable it and could be the first step in the development of new treatments. "Now, Kanthasamy’s group is looking for additional compounds that also can serve to neutralize protein kinase-C. By identifying more compounds that perform the function of neutralizing kinase-C, researchers are more likely to locate one that works well and has few side effects. This discovery is expected to provide new treatment options to stop the progression of the disease or even cure it. 'Once we find the compound, we need to make sure it’s safe. If everything goes well, it could take about 10 years, and then we might be able to see something that will truly make a difference in the lives of people with this disorder,' says Kanthasamy."

yuveraj writes to mention that Pranav Mistry, the brain behind the innovative "SixthSense" application demoed earlier this year, plans to open source the technology in order to get this to the streets faster. "Mistry’s decision has meaning beyond Sixth Sense. The desire of inventors is always to get their work into the market as quickly as possible. Usually this means waiting for it to be turned into a useful, profitable invention. Mistry is bypassing this by going straight to open source. There is no report on which license he will use, but whichever one he does choose he has put paid to the canard that open source and innovation are incompatible, for all time."

jones_supa writes "Sheboygan Press tells a story of an American youngster called Calvin Gosz who was selling a right to his name in eBay. The auction site later removed the item as inappropriate. However, the "Newegg of Finland", Verkkokauppa.com caught on the idea and contacted Calvin via Facebook. For $5,000 Mr. Gosz changed his name to Verkkokauppa Com. Gosz, who moved to Sheboygan from Florida in September, said the name change was an idea to raise money after many unsuccessful attempts in finding a job. "That company has been great to me. I was just surprised they actually transferred the money. Nice of them to help me out like that.", Calvin comments. He is eligible to change his name back after two months."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton changes things up today by reviewing The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics. Questions that big need a big review and you can learn what Bennett has to say about it all by reading below.

emeraldd writes "Everett Bradford's "Prometheus Device" is a hand-mounted appliance that shoots fire."

mr crypto writes 'From the BBC News article, "A South Korean woman is celebrating after passing the written exam for a driving license - on her 950th attempt. After four years of trying, 68-year-old Cha Sa-soon finally managed to secure the 60 out of 100 points needed to pass the test." Maybe some things should just not be.'

clickclickdrone writes to mention that "road trains," a system linking vehicles together via wireless sensors could soon be rolled out in Europe. The system is designed primarily at cutting fuel consumption, travel time, and congestion. "Funded under the European Commission's Framework 7 research plan, Sartre (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) is aimed at commuters in cars who travel long distances to work every day but will also look at ways to involve commercial vehicles. Tom Robinson, project co-ordinator at engineering firm Ricardo, said the idea was to use off-the-shelf components to make it possible for cars, buses and trucks to join the road train."

Since the release of Baldur's Gate in 1998, BioWare has cultivated a strong reputation for quality role-playing games, exploring various aspects of the genre ranging from traditional D&D roles and rules to space marine and Jedi Knights. Dragon Age: Origins is a shift back to traditional swords-and-sorcery standards, unashamedly embracing the archetypes that made RPGs what they are, and using them to tell a complex, interesting story in a familiar yet unexplored world. In addition, BioWare has done yet another iteration of their combat system to make it deeper and allow the player to dictate the level of engagement. The result is that Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best RPGs in recent history. Read on for the rest of my thoughts.

halfEvilTech writes 'Five years ago today, Mozilla released Firefox 1.0. Ars celebrates the occasion by taking a trip back in time to revisit our classic coverage of the original release.' For fun we dug up the oldest Slashdot Firefox story which was a firebird story proclaiming yet another name change from Feb 04. At least this name change stuck.

An anonymous reader writes "By 2030 [Japan] wants to collect solar power in space and zap it down to Earth, using laser beams or microwaves. The government has just picked a group of companies and a team of researchers tasked with turning the ambitious, multi-billion-dollar dream of unlimited clean energy into reality in coming decades."

chopsuei3 writes 'As a System Administrator, I am charged with providing more insight into the functioning of the system. What types of reports and information do other System Administrators submit to executives and on what frequency? Measurements such as uptime and average page latency are useful, but our site is relatively stable and we see minimal downtime, so I'm looking for other important and useful information I can report up to better illustrate my efforts. Our system is also unique in that about 70% of the traffic we see is from devices and not human browsers. I am a lone System Administrator in a 20 person company which specializes in web based irrigation management. I also simultaneously perform all IT related tasks in the office, which may also be important to report up to executives on regular basis.'

destinyland writes "A Vermont city once proposed a one-mile dome over its 7,000 residents. (They paid $4 million a year in heating bills, and HUD seriously considered funding their proposal.) The city's architectural concept included supporting the Dome with air pressure slightly above atmospheric pressure. (Buckminster Fuller warned their biggest challenge would be keeping it from floating away...) There would be no more heating bills, fly-fishing all year, and no more snow shoveling. And to this day, the former city planner insists that 'Economically it's a slam dunk.'"

Pickens writes "Tom Bradley reports in PC World that the new Motorola Droid smartphone will cost users $199.99 with a 2-year contract, with an additional $30 per month for the mandatory 'unlimited' data plan that has a monthly cap of 5Gb. Verizon will charge $50 for each additional gigabyte over the 5Gb limit on the unlimited data plan. Verizon has confirmed that tethering will cost another $30 per month for an additional unlimited data plan that is also limited to 5Gb. If you want tethering you will pay $60 above and beyond the monthly contract for service for an 'unlimited' 10Gb of data per month, and if you plan on connecting with an Microsoft Exchange email account you have to pay another $15 a month. 'Verizon seems to be doing everything it can to make the Droid as unappealing as possible by nickel and diming customers so that actually using it is not cost-effective,' writes Bradley. 'After all of the hype around Verizon's marketing efforts, and generally favorable reviews of the Motorola Droid, users that rush out to get the new device may be in for a shock.' Droid users will have to wait until sometime in 2010 for tethering. 'That service is on our schedule for next year,' says Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney. The delay is because 'the service has to be tested on the phone so until we know it works, we don't offer the service. It is not uncommon for us to introduce the phone and continue to test the service and offer it later.'"

fatnickc writes "The UK's Channel 4, from the 16th of September, will be broadcasting a few programmes in 3D, the full list of which can be found here. While the likes of a 3D Miley Cyrus concert aren't exactly groundbreaking, this will give 3D viewing at home much more publicity, paving the way for even more interesting projects in the future. In partnership with retailer Sainsbury's, Channel 4 are producing free 3D glasses so that as many people as possible can watch them, although it's unclear which of the various types they'll be. "

antdude writes "The New York Times' Well blog reports that 'for some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don't necessarily lose weight.' A study published online in September 2009 in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that. How can that be?"

uyguremre writes "After a little over a year and a half in the making, the developers of MythTV announced that MythTV 0.22 is now available. There have been a lot of large changes since 0.21, including a port from Qt v3 to Qt v4 and a major UI rewrite to convert to MythTV's new MythUI user interface libary. As always, this release adds support for some new hardware, in this case VDPAU video acceleration, DVB-S2, and the Hauppauge HD-PVR. The MythUI toolkit allows themes much greater control over the user interface and today we're announcing a competition to design new themes for MythTV. With the new release comes a theming competition too. For a more complete list of changes and new features, read the Release Notes on the wiki."

Hugh Pickens writes "CBS reports on 60 minutes that a massive two-day power outage in Brazil's Espirito Santo State affecting more than three million people in 2007, and another, smaller event in three cities north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005, were perpetrated by hackers manipulating control systems. Former Chief of US National Intelligence Retired Adm. Mike McConnell says that the 'United States is not prepared for such an attack' and believes it could happen in America. 'If I were an attacker and wanted to do strategic damage to the United States, I would either take the cold of winter or the heat of summer,' says McConnell, 'I would probably sack electric power on the US East Coast, maybe the West Coast and attempt to cause a cascading effect.' Congressman Jim Langevin says that US power companies need to be forced to deal with the issue after they told Congress they would take steps to defend their operations but did not follow up. 'They admit that they misled Congress. The private sector has different priorities than we do in providing security. Their bottom line is about profits,' says Langevin. 'We need to change their motivation so that when see vulnerability like this, we can require them to fix it.' McConnell adds that a similar attack to the one in Brazil is poised to take place on US soil and that it may take some horrific event to get the country focused on shoring up cyber security. 'If the power grid was taken off line in the middle of winter and it caused people to suffer and die, that would galvanize the nation. I hope we don't get there.'"