Slashdot users of the Discussion2 system now have a new 'Update' button visible on their floating control slider, as well at the end of the discussion. This button will update your page to include comments posted since the page was loaded, so now you can keep discussion pages up to date without doing a full reload. It's nowhere near complete yet, but it's a nice step that goes a long ways towards making it easier to use larger discussions while they are actively updating. If you aren't using Discussion2, you need to log in, and toggle the checkbox visible on every page. You probably need bother only if you are using Firefox 1.5 or 2.x or Safari. You can send bug reports to me if you want.

Londovir asks: "Recently, our school board made the decision to block Wikipedia from our school district's WAN system. This was a complete block — there aren't even provisions in place for teachers or administrators to input a password to bypass the restriction. The reason given was that Wikipedia (being user created and edited) did not represent a credible or reliable source of information for schools. Should we block sites such as Wikipedia because students may be exposed to misinformation, or should we encourage sites such as Wikipedia as an outlet for students to investigate and determine the validity of the information?"

Sparr0 asks: "Microsoft has announcement that DirectX 10 will not be released for Windows XP (which means no Shader Model 4.0 and no Geometry Shaders). I have since been waiting for news of game developers switching to OpenGL, in order to get the best graphics on the best hardware on the most popular gaming OS, however there is nary a whisper of such. Will such a shift occur, even if only in small amounts? When? Why not? It is probably safe to say that Unreal Tournament 3 (AKA UT2007) will have OpenGL as an option in Windows, but that is both unsurprising and also a long way off. Ditto for Quake Wars, and most other games that are planning a native Linux clients. Where are all of the other big names with Windows-only offerings? Why haven't we heard from Valve, Blizzard, Sony, or EA, to name a few?"

jlbrown writes "In a new benchmarking paper, MIT professor Mike Stonebraker and colleagues demonstrate that specialized databases can have dramatic performance advantages over traditional databases (PDF) in four areas: text processing, data warehousing, stream processing, and scientific and intelligence applications. The advantage can be a factor of 10 or higher. The paper includes some interesting 'apples to apples' performance comparisons between commercial implementations of specialized architectures and relational databases in two areas: data warehousing and stream processing." From the paper: "A single code line will succeed whenever the intended customer base is reasonably uniform in their feature and query requirements. One can easily argue this uniformity for business data processing. However, in the last quarter century, a collection of new markets with new requirements has arisen. In addition, the relentless advance of technology has a tendency to change the optimization tactics from time to time."

dido writes "The BBC reports that the Hubble Space Telescope has been used to make a map of the dark matter distribution of the universe, providing the best evidence of the role dark matter plays in the structure and evolution of the universe. From the article: 'According to one researcher, the findings provide "beautiful confirmation" of standard theories to explain how structures in the Universe evolved over billions of years.'"

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of researchers has discovered a new generation of optical molecules which interact 50% more strongly with light than any molecules ever tested. These organic molecules, known as chromophores, have been theorized by physicists at Washington State University, synthesized by chemists in China and tested for their actual optical properties by chemists in Belgium. But if they're excellent candidates for being used in optical technologies such as optical switches and Internet connections, these new materials should not be used before several years — if ever. Read more for additional details and a picture of the physicist who broke a law he established in 1999."