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Politics

Submission + - Scientists step down after CRU Hack fallout (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of the recent release of thousands of private files and emails after a server of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia was hacked, Prof. Phil Jones is stepping down as head of the CRU. Prof. Michael Mann, another prominent climate scientist is also under inquiry by Penn State University.
Microsoft

Submission + - Seattle CTO and OpenSource... NOT (wordpress.com)

An anonymous reader writes: This post by the CTO of the City of Seattle is vehemently pro Microsoft. What is amazing is just how much so. Consider the opening rationale: "Microsoft provides 40,000 jobs in my area" and then another gem: "But I’m somewhat baffled that any CIO of a large government would seriously consider using open source software for our mission critical systems and services. This seems a little bit like using cell phones to dispatch police officers and firefighters or outsourcing your help desk to India. It will save money in the short term and work pretty well “most” of the time "
Science

Submission + - Machine converts CO2 into fuel (physorg.com)

krou writes: Called the Counter-Rotating-Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5), researchers at Sandia National Laboratories believe it is capable of using the sun's energy to convert CO2 waste from power plants into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.

the cylindrical machine consists of two chambers on the sides and 14 rotating rings in the center. The outer edges of the rings are made of iron oxide. When the scientists heat the inside of one chamber to 1,500C with a solar concentrator, the iron oxide undergoes a thermo-chemical reaction where it gives up oxygen molecules. As the rings rotate (at one revolution per minute), the hot side approaches the opposite chamber and begins to cool down. When carbon dioxide is pumped into this chamber, the iron oxide retrieves oxygen molecules from the carbon dioxide, transforming it into carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide could then serve as a building block to create a liquid combustible fuel.

They also note that the machine is capable of producing syngas, and hydrogen. It's still 15-20 years from being marketable, and they still need to increase overall efficiency of the machine, hoping to at least "get in the range of 10% sunlight-to-fuels".

The Internet

Submission + - Mininova limits its activities (mininova.org)

dazaris writes: "Complying with court order Mininova a popular bittorrent search engine has taken it's services offline except as a Content Distribution service. According to the verdict they would have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. They had tested some different filtering systems in the last couple of months, but had found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, they decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. They are still considering an appeal."
Google

Submission + - Google-Microsoft Crossfire Will Hit Consumers 1

theodp writes: Newsweek's Dan Lyons doesn't know who will be the winner in Google and Microsoft's search battle, but that's not stopping him from picking a loser — consumers. As we head towards a world where some devices may be free or really cheap, consumers should prepare to be bombarded by ads or pay a premium to escape them. 'The sad truth is that Google and Microsoft care less about making cool products than they do about hurting each other,' concludes Lyons. 'Their fighting has little to do with helping customers and a lot to do with helping themselves to a bigger slice of the money we all spend to buy computers and surf the Internet. Microsoft wants to ruin Google's search business. Google wants to ruin Microsoft's OS business. At the end of the day, they both seem like overgrown nerdy schoolboys fighting over each other's toys.'
Games

Submission + - Japanese Man Marries a DS Game Character (yahoo.com) 1

uncholowapo writes: "In another sign that the world is about to collapse, multiple blogs are reporting that a fan of the Nintendo DS dating sim Love Plus (you know, the really creepy one) liked his virtual lady so much that he decided to marry her. For real.

Apparently, a Japanese gamer known as 'Sal9000' was officially wed to Nene Anegasaki, one of the game's three virtual girlfriends, in what must have been the weirdest ceremony in the history of ceremonies. We can only assume that Ms. Pac-Man was the maid of honor."

I can't imagine how the children will look like...

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's top devs don't seem to like own tools (computerworld.com)

ericatcw writes: Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of hacking code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet.
News

Submission + - Bomb suspected in Russia train crash (guardian.co.uk)

reporter writes: According to a disturbing report just published by Guardian News (headquartered in Great Britain), "At least 22 people were feared dead and many more injured last night after an express train carrying hundreds of passengers from Moscow to St Petersburg derailed.

Early indications from government officials suggest a bomb may have been the cause, after investigators found a three-foot crater beneath the rails.

Russian Railways, the state-owned train operator, said four carriages of the luxury Nevsky Express came off the tracks near the town of Bologoye, 200 miles from Moscow, just after 9.30pm local time [on November 27].

In addition to those killed, more than 50 injured passengers required treatment at hospitals in St Petersburg.

An officer at the emergencies ministry said: 'A one metre-diameter hole has been found next to the railway track. Witnesses heard a loud slap before the accident. All of this could point to a possible act of terrorism.'
"

President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the Federal Security Service (successor to the KGB) to investigate the "accident".

More information is available in a news report published by Voice of America.

Also, the "New York Times" has published a report (supplied by the Associated Press) that provides additional information.

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft actively stifling Win 7 complaints

aybiss writes: Aside from failing to provide support for its medium grade server OSes, Microsoft seems to also be directly working to keep bad publicitiy about Windows 7 down. Not only have they closed (or rather renamed) the Windows 7 general discussion forum, they've been removing posts and forcing the closure of topics about Windows 7 that seem to get a little hot. For anyone who hasn't been watching the forums, you may find it interesting to see how many cases are closed by an MSFT, and there are cases all over the forum that are marked answered but are clearly unresolved.

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The Courts

Submission + - Film studios issue ultimatum to ISPs (itnews.com.au) 1

bennyboy64 writes: The court case between the film industry and ISP iiNet drew to a close yesterday after the film studios issued an ultimatum: Take copyright responsibilities seriously or leave the industry. 'Businesses such as ISPs want to enjoy the benefit of being able to make money out of the provision of internet service facilities and they enjoy that benefit. But it carries with it a responsibility,' said Tony Bannon SC, the film industry's lawyer. 'They provide a facility that is able to be used for copyright infringement purposes. If they don't like having to deal with copyright notices then they should get out of the business'. iTnews has done a short one minute interview with iiNet's CEO Michael Malone as he left the court on the final day. The judge also, on the final day, dismissed the Internet Industry Association's involvement in the case.
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

Submission + - Analytics at Twitter (tonybain.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Twitter, like many web 2.0 apps, started life as a MySQL based RBDMS application. Today, Twitter is still using MySQL for much of their online operational functionality (although this is likely to change in the near future – think distributed), but on the analytics side of things Twitter has spent the last 6 months moving away from running SQL queries against MySQL data marts. This was because their need for timely data was becoming a struggle with MySQL, particularly when dealing with very large data volumes and complicated queries. For Web 2.0 the ability to understand, quantify and make timely predictions from user behavior is very much their life blood. When Kevin arrived at Twitter 6 months ago he was tasked with changing the way Twitter analyzed their data. Now the bulk of their analytics is executed using a Hadoop platform with Pig as the “querying language”.

Submission + - Contributors Leaving Wikipedia in Record Numbers

Hugh Pickens writes: "CNET reports that the volunteers who create Wikipedia's pages, check facts and adapt the site are abandoning Wikipedia in unprecedented numbers with tens of thousands of editors going “dead” — no longer actively contributing and updating the site — a trend many experts believe could threaten Wikipedia’s future. In the first three months of 2009 the English-language version of Wikipedia suffered a net loss of 49,000 contributors, compared with a loss of about 4,900 during the same period in 2008. “If you don’t have enough people to take care of the project it could vanish quickly," says Felipe Ortega at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid who created a computer system to analyze the editing history of more than three million active Wikipedia contributors in ten different languages. "We’re not in that situation yet. But eventually, if the negative trends follow, we could be in that situation.” Contributors are becoming disenchanted with the process of adding to the site which is becoming increasingly difficult says Andrew Dalby, author of The World and Wikipedia: How We are Editing Reality and a regular editor of the site. “There is an increase of bureaucracy and rules. Wikipedia grew because of the lack of rules. That has been forgotten. The rules are regarded as irritating and useless by many contributors.” Arguments over various articles have also taken their toll. "Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again," adds Ortega."

Comment Comment (Score 1) 2

The only reason Mr. Atkinson is holding back R18+ is because he believes that video games' content makes a higher impact than other forms of media. This means that games which may get a 18+ rating in other countries, but are not refused classification, get a MA15+ instead. This is a very bad thing, as adult material does get to younger people.

The petition suggests that the Queensland Government wants to go a step further. Instead of just allowing the R18+ rating, they also want to make some currently refused classification games R18+, which Mr. Atkinson would definitely oppose.

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