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Submission + - The World's Tweets Light Up the Globe in Stunning Live Visualization (wired.com)

Submitted by anavictoriasaavedra
anavictoriasaavedra writes: It’s simple, but lovely. Web designer Franck Ernewein‘s real-time Twitter visualization, Tweetping, drops a bright pixel at the location of every tweet in the world, starting as soon as you open the page. The result is a constantly changing image that grows to look like a nighttime satellite shot, bright spots swarming over the most developed areas.
Your Rights Online

Submission + - PG County MD considers copyright ownership of student and teacher works (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A proposal by the Prince George’s County Board of Education to copyright work created by staff and students for school could mean that a picture drawn by a first-grader, a lesson plan developed by a teacher or an app created by a teen would belong to the school system, not the individual.

It’s not unusual for a company to hold the rights to an employee’s work, copyright policy experts said. But the Prince George’s policy goes a step further by saying that work created for the school by employees during their own time and using their own materials is the school system’s property.
Games

Submission + - Fight you own muscles to create force-feedback on smartphones (newscientist.com)

Submitted by FatLittleMonkey
FatLittleMonkey writes: Researchers in Germany have developed a device that allows users of portable devices, such as smartphones, experience force-feedback from games using just their own muscles... and a small EMS device. When stimulated by a painless electric pulse, the player's arm moves the device in whichever direction the game commands. The player then fights the movement with their other muscles, creating a strong sensation that the device itself is bucking in their hands. According to the developers, users found the sensation much more realistic than traditional vibrotactile feedback. (Should make PvP more interesting too.)
Space

Submission + - Multiple minds smooths your ship's path (newscientist.com)

Submitted by FatLittleMonkey
FatLittleMonkey writes: My mind to your mind... my thoughts to your thoughts... Researchers at the University of Essex have shown that combining the output from two non-invasive "brain-computer interfaces", computer-interpreted EEG signals, led to a much clearer signal of the subjects' intention than the output from a single subject. To test this idea, they had two subjects try to steer a simulated space-ship at a target planet, by thinking of one of eight possible directions. While a single user could achieve 67% accuracy, this jumped to 90% when two minds were combined. Researchers believe the technique also compensates for individual lapses in attention, and thus may have applications in real-world space missions.
Education

Submission + - Internet-Deprived Kids Turning to 'McLibraries'

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: After the school computer lab and public library close for the night in many communities, the local McDonald's is often the only place to turn for students without internet access at home. 'Cheap smartphones and tablets have put Web-ready technology into more hands than ever,' reports the WSJ's Anton Troianovski. 'But the price of Internet connectivity hasn't come down nearly as quickly. And in many rural areas, high-speed Internet through traditional phone lines simply isn't available at any price. The result is a divide between families that have broadband constantly available on their home computers and phones, and those that have to plan their days around visits to free sources of Internet access.' The FCC says it can make broadband available to all Americans by spending $45 billion over 10 years, but until then the U.S. will have to rely on Mickey D's, Starbucks, and others to help address its digital divide. Time to update that iconic McDonald's sign?
Java

Submission + - Java alternative for physics simulations? (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm a physics professor who relies on Java applets in many of my courses. They can do heavy-duty number crunching, and until recently they would run on almost any platform, so it was feasible to write my own simulations and expect every student to be able to run them without hassle. Now that students are migrating to tablets and many computers/browsers are no longer configured to run Java, is there a decent alternative?

Submission + - Startup kick-starting a high-bandwidth Software Defined Radio (SDR) peripheral 2

Submitted by TwineLogic
TwineLogic writes: Many Slashdot readers have been enjoying the availability of $20 USB radios which can tune in the range of 50MHz-2GHz. These devices, while cheap, have limited bandwidth (about 2MHz) and minimal resolution (8-bit).

Nuand, a new start-up from Santa Clara, wants to improve on that. Their Kickstarter proposal for bladeRF, a Software Defined Radio transceiver, will support 20MHz bandwidth and 12-bit samples. The frequency range to be covered is planned as 300MHz-3.6Ghz. In addition to the extended spectrum coverage, higher bandwidth, and increased resolution, the bladeRF will have an on-board FPGA capable of performing signal processing and an Altera processor as well.

SDR hobbyists have been using the inexpensive receivers to decode airplane data transmission giving locations and mechanical condition, GPS signals, and many other digital signals travelling through the air around us. This new device would extend the range of inexpensive SDRs beyond the spectrum of 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. In addition, the peripheral includes a low-power transmitter which the experimenter can use without needing a "Ham" license.
Hardware

Submission + - Magnetic transistor could cut power consumption and make chips reprogrammable (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Transistors, the simple switches at the heart of all modern electronics, generally use a tiny voltage to toggle between ‘on’ and ‘off’. The voltage approach is highly reliable and easy to miniaturize, but has its disadvantages. First, keeping the voltage on requires power, which drives up the energy consumption of the microchip. Second, transistors must be hard-wired into the chips and can’t be reconfigured, which means computers need dedicated circuitry for all their functions.
Now, researchers have made a type of transistor that can be switched with magnetism. The device could cut the power consumption of computers, cell phones and other electronics — and allow chips themselves to be 'reprogrammed'' (abstract)."

Comment Re:How does cuba have an embargo (Score 1) 325

by Forty-3 (#42637285) Attached to: Thailand Jails Dissident For What People Thought He Would Have Said

Neither is democracy any more stable. Most democracies before the US (and some after) did not last long due to the difficulties of starting one. After the US got itself established, democracies had more of a fighting chance because the US generally supports them. Communism never really had a country where it went into a stable state (the revolutions which led up to establishing them did not help) so there was no role model or guiding hand to keep them from becoming totalitarian states.

However, Democracy/Capitalism have the same problems as Communism when it comes to long term success. After a while, people in democracy realize that by voting for people, they can get more money. At this point, they do not vote based on the competence or political views (unrelated to money) of the candidate, but on how much money the candidate pledges to give to them. In a similar way, people in communist states (to each according to his needs) realize that no matter how much they work, they will still receive the same amount of money. Even in socialist states (to each according to his contribution), people realize that, much like in democracies, they can influence the amount of money they receive. Either way, the government will slowly devolve into a totalitarian state.

I am not denouncing either of these ideas, though. They are the best methods by which we have come up with for governing, and may be the best we will ever think of. The United States has done very well over its 200+ year course. Nothing can really be said about communism, since at this point it is still waiting to be actually put into practice and not be used as just a slogan. Unfortunately, the US is already showing signs of decline: the national debt is growing as politicians try to bribe voters with even more money while corporations and banks gain even more power (Oligarchy, anyone?). All this will be solved when we get some angels to govern us, but until then, this is the best we've got.

Submission + - In Calculator Arms Race, Casio Fires Back: Color Touchscreen ClassPad (cemetech.net) 2

Submitted by
KermMartian
KermMartian writes: "In what seems to be an accelerating arms race for graphing calculator supremacy between Texas Instruments and Casio, the underdog Casio has fired a return salvo to the recently-announced TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. The new ClassPad fx-CP400 has a massive color touchscreen and a Matlab-esque CAS. Though not accepted on the SAT/ACT, will such a powerful device gain a strong following among engineers and professionals?"

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