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Transportation

Submission + - Another shot at the mass-market electric car (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Slatterz
Slatterz writes: The Tesla Roadster has almost mythical status among electric car enthusiasts. It's fast, with high torque over a wide RPM range, and can beat a Ferrari in terms of acceleration. Now Tesla has released new video of its upcoming new electric car, called the Model S, which Tesla Motors claims is the world's first mass produced fully-electric vehicle. Unlike the Lotus-Elise based Roadster, the Model S is a traditional sedan of the type millions of commuters might actually drive. Tesla claims it will fit seven people, and has mounted a rather large 17in LCD in the dash. Key to Telsa's future will be the evolution of lithium-ion battery technology. Tesla Motors claiming the new Model S can travel up to 300 miles on a single charge, but the battery will still take 45 minutes to quick-recharge.
Cellphones

Submission + - Apple rejects iPhone app, files a patent for it (tuaw.com) 1

Submitted by recoiledsnake
recoiledsnake writes: Yet another app has been buried in the iPhone Application Graveyard . While this is nothing new, the kicker this time is that Apple has filed a patent on karaoke functionality in the iPod application a few weeks after rejecting the iKaraoke app for duplicating functionality that doesn't exist... yet. Maybe the $99 iPhone Developer Program fee should include a crystal ball for testing apps for duplicating Apple programs' functionality before submitting them so that precious time and resources of app developeres is not unnecessarily wasted. Jobs himself had responded to accusations of political censorship of iPhone applications in the past.
Media

Submission + - Pirate Party Coming to Canada (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After scoring a surprise electoral win in Sweden and getting high-profile support in Germany, The Pirate Party is coming to Canada. The party's goals are fairly simple. People should have the right to share and copy music, movies and virtually any material, as long as it is for personal use, not for profit. It opposes government and corporate monitoring of Internet activities, unless as part of a criminal investigation. It also wants to phase out patents.

Comment Re:A step back perhaps? (Score 2) 202

by Bobnova (#28494799) Attached to: The Battle Between Google and Facebook
That's my issue with this. Unless my facebookies have used dozens of different cameras/heatsinks/whatevers their advice just isn't useful, and none of them are likely to know how to build a heatpipe, or other esoteric things like that. Moreover, if they did know i'd just, you know, ask them.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Developer creates DIY 8-bit CPU (wired.com) 1

Submitted by MaizeMan
MaizeMan writes: Not for the easily distracted. A Belmot software developer's hand built CPU was featured in wired recently. Starting with a $50 wire wrap board Chamberlin built his CPU with 1253 pieces of wire, each wire wrapped by hand at both ends. Salvaging parts from 70's and 80's era computers, the final result is an 8-bit processor with keyboard input, a USB connection and VGA graphical output. More details on the developer's blog
Mars

Mars Robot May Destroy Life It Was Sent To Find 129

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oops-sorry-my-bad dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "New Scientist reports that instead of identifying chemicals that could point to life, NASA's robot explorers may have been toasting them by mistake. Even if Mars never had life, comets and asteroids that have struck the planet should have scattered at least some organic molecules over its surface but landers have failed to detect even minute quantities of organic compounds. Now scientists say they may have stumbled on something in the Martian soil that may have, in effect, been hiding the organics: a class of chemicals called perchlorates. At low temperatures, perchlorates are relatively harmless but when heated to hundreds of degrees Celsius perchlorates release a lot of oxygen, which tends to cause any nearby combustible material to burn. The Phoenix and Viking landers looked for organic molecules by heating soil samples to similarly high temperatures to evaporate them and analyse them in gas form. When Douglas Ming of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and colleagues tried heating organics and perchlorates like this on Earth, the resulting combustion left no trace of organics behind. "We haven't looked the right way," says Chris McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center. Jeffrey Bada of the University of California, San Diego, agrees that a new approach is needed. He is leading work on a new instrument called Urey which will be able to detect organic material at concentrations as low as a few parts per trillion. The good news is that, although Urey heats its samples, it does so in water, so the organics cannot burn up."
NASA

Challenges Ahead In Final Hubble Servicing Mission 130

Posted by CmdrTaco from the good-luck-up-there-guys dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Space shuttle Atlantis is slated to lift off Monday on the fifth and final servicing mission to Hubble with four mission specialists alternating in two-astronaut teams will attempt a total of five spacewalks from Atlantis to replace broken components, add new science instruments, and swap out the telescope's six 125-pound (57-kilogram) batteries, original parts that have powered Hubble's night-side operations for nearly two decades. 'This is our final opportunity to service and upgrade Hubble,' says David Leckrone, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope. 'So we're replacing some items that are getting long in the tooth to give Hubble longevity, and then we'll try to take advantage of that five- to 10-year extra lifetime with the most powerful instrumental tools we've ever had on board.' Some of the upgrades are relatively straightforward and modular: yank out old part, put in new. But they're big parts: The 'fine guidance sensors' sound delicate but weigh as much as a grand piano back on Earth. But what's different this time is that the astronauts will also open up some instruments and root around inside, doing Geek Squad-like repairs while wearing bulky spacesuits and traveling around the planet at 17,000 mph. 'We have this choreographed almost down to the minute of what we want the crew to do. It's this really fine ballet,' said Keith Walyus, the servicing mission operations manager at Goddard. 'We've been training for this for seven years. We can't wait for this to happen.'"
Intel

Sources Say EU Will Find Intel Anti-Competitive 210

Posted by kdawson from the slap-on-the-wrist-with-a-broadsword dept.
Anarchduke sends in a Reuters story quoting unnamed sources who say that the European Union has decided to find Intel anti-competitive. The finding should be announced in the coming week. "...the Commission will say Intel paid PC makers to delay or scrap the launch of products containing AMD chips. The Commission will characterize the payments as 'naked restrictions' to competition, the sources said. ... Intel set percentages of its own chips that it wanted PC makers to use, the sources said. For example, NEC Corp was told that 20 percent of its desktop and notebook machines could have AMD chips, the sources said. All Lenovo notebooks had to use Intel chips, as did relevant Dell products. The figure was 95 percent for Hewlett-Packard's business desktops, they said." Previous infractions by Intel include giving illegal rebates to computer makers back in 2007 and paying retailers not to sell AMD-based computer systems.

Comment Big surprise (Score 5, Interesting) 262

by Bobnova (#27402337) Attached to: Ubuntu vs. Windows In OpenOffice.org Benchmark
XP faster then vista/7? I'm shocked. I've been doing some general testing between XP and ubuntu 8.10 as well as dellbuntu 8.04. Ubuntu gets 25% longer battery life on my netbook, but cannot play youtube videos (on either version) without lurching video. XP on the same netbook does youtube just fine, but has a 3 hour batter life to ubuntu's 4 hour. On an old p4 i have xp scrolls smoothly and instantly in firefox, where 8.10 has a delay before anything happens. My conclusion: On a slow system, XP is faster.

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