A Cow writes "The Tribler BitTorrent client, a project run by researchers from several European universities and Harvard, is the first to incorporate decentralized search capabilities. With Tribler, users can now find .torrent files that are hosted among other peers, instead of on a centralized site such as The Pirate Bay or Mininova. The Tribler developers have found a way to make their client work without having to rely on BitTorrent sites. Although others have tried to come up with similar solutions, such as the Cubit plugin for Vuze, Tribler is the first to understand that with decentralized BitTorrent search, there also has to be a way to moderate these decentralized torrents in order to avoid a flood of spam."

Barence writes "Microsoft has released the first pre-beta code of Windows 7, and PC Pro has a series of in-depth, hands-on examinations of all the new features. The revamped user interface has clearly gleaned more than a little inspiration from the Mac OS X Dock, but it goes further than the Apple concept with 'jumplists,' new gadgets and an updated system tray. The much-vaunted multi-touch controls were there to play with, and it seemed to work well. Networking has been given the full treatment, with new features HomeGroup and Libraries. Windows 7 debuts a new feature called Device Stage that has the potential to be unbelievably handy ... or a complete disaster. Finally, several new features could make PCs easier to manage and secure for IT departments, such as BitLocker To Go and Branch Cache." All in all, these features together lead some people to the conclusion that Windows 7 will "suck less than Vista" — that last link from reader ThinSkin, who also points to a related sampling of screenshots from the current iteration of Windows 7.

kpearson writes "Distributed.net's 8-year-old OGR-25 distributed computing project has just proven conclusively that the predicted shortest 25-mark Golomb ruler is optimal. 'The total length of the ruler is 480, with marks at positions: 0 12 29 39 72 91 146 157 160 161 166 191 207 214 258 290 316 354 372 394 396 431 459 467 480. (This ruler may alternatively be expressed in terms of the distance between those positions, which is how dnetc displays them: 12-17-10-33-19-...).' 124,387 people participated in the project and two people found the shortest ruler, one on October 10, 2007 and the other on March 24, 2008."

missb writes "Could the gentle currents from a fluctuating magnetic field be used to reverse the effects of traumatic brain injury? New Scientist reports on a patient in the US who was in a coma-like state, but can now speak very simple words after being given transcranial magnetic stimulation. This is the first time TMS has been used as a therapy to try and rouse a patient out of a coma."

As_I_Please writes "At 8:40AM (GMT) this morning, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang successfully spent 18 minutes in a tethered spacewalk outside the spacecraft Shenzhou 7. This is an important step in China's goal of building an orbiting space station and sending astronauts to the moon."

blackbearnh writes "The Linux Standard Base is the grand attempt to create a binary-level interface that application developers can use to create software which will run on any distribution of Linux. Theodore Tso, who helps maintain the LSB, talked recently with O'Reilly News about what the LSB does behind the scenes, how it benefits ISVs and end users, and what the greatest challenges left on the plate are. 'One of the most vexing problems has been on the desktop where the Open Source community has been developing new desktop libraries faster than we can standardize them. And also ISVs want to use those latest desktop libraries even though they may not be stable yet and in some ways that's sort of us being a victim of our own success. The LSB desktop has been getting better and better and despite all the jokes that for every year since I don't know probably five years ago, every year has been promoted as the year of the Linux desktop. The fact of the matter is the Linux desktop has been making gains very, very quickly but sometimes as a result of that some of the bleeding edge interfaces for the Linux desktop haven't been as stable as say the C library. And so it's been challenging for ISVs because they want to actually ship products that will work across a wide range of Linux distributions and this is one of the places where the Linux upstream sources haven't stabilized themselves.'"

jesuscash writes "It seems early adopters of the new iPod Touch are out of luck when they bring it home and attempt to connect it to their WPA/WPA2 secured network. Reading this Apple forum thread shows that many tests with different configurations show a no-go on WPA. Some of the last entries give the best clue, revealing a 'received deauthentication' error in their router logs. Apple has yet to respond."

Scott Aaronson offers an intriguing call for ideas on how nerds can supercharge the political process this year. He's clearly an Obama admirer and phrases his challenge this way: "What non-obvious things can nerds who are so inclined do to help the Democrats win in November?" But the question itself is not inherently partisan. The analogy Aaronson gives is to the Nadertrading idea in 2000 (which we discussed at the time). What's the Nadertrading for 2008? "The sorts of ideas I'm looking for are ones that (1) exploit nerds' nerdiness, (2) go outside the normal channels of influence, (3) increase nerds' effective voting power by several orders of magnitude, (4) are legal, (5) target critical swing states, and (6) can be done as a hobby."

Anonymous Hacker writes "I'm in a bit of a bind. My young teenage son is starting to get curious about computers, and in particular, programming. Now, I'm a long time kernel hacker (Linux, BSD and UNIX). I have no trouble handling some of the more obscure things in the kernel. But teaching is not something that I'm good at, by any means. Heck, I can't even write useful documentation for non-techies. So my question is: what's the best way to encourage his curiosity and enable him to learn? Now, I know there are folks out there with far better experience in this area than myself. I'd really appreciate any wisdom you can offer. I'd also be especially interested in what younger people think, in particular those who are currently in college or high school. I've shown my son some of the basics of the shell, the filesystem, and even how to do a 'Hello World' program in C. Yet, I have to wonder if this is the really the right approach. This was great when I was first learning things. And it still is for kernel hacking, and other things. But I'm concerned whether this will bore him, now that there's so much more available and much of this world is oriented towards point-n-click. What's the best way to for a young teen to get started in exploring this wonderful world of computers and learning how to program? In a *NIX environment, preferably." Whether or not you have suggestions for generating interest or teaching methods, there was probably something that first piqued your curiosity. It seems like a lot of people get into programming by just wondering how something works or what they can make it do. So, what caught your eye?

jg21 writes "As previously discussed on Slashdot, the new tendency to speak of 'The Cloud' or 'Cloud Computing' often seems to generate more heat than light, but one familiar industry fault line is becoming clear — those who believe clouds can be proprietary vs. those who believe they should be free. One CEO who sides with open clouds in order that companies can pick and choose from vendors depending on precisely what they need has written a detailed article in which he outlines how, in his opinion, Platform-as-a-Service should work. He identifies nine features of 'an ideal PaaS cloud' including the requirement that 'Developers should be able to interact with the cloud computer, to do business with it, without having to get on the phone with a sales person, or submit a help ticket.' [From the article: 'I think this means that cloud computing companies will, just like banks, begin more and more to "loan" each other infrastructure to handle our own peaks and valleys, But in order for this to happen we'd need the next requirement.']"

At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1. "University of Pennsylvania tech staffers are advising faculty and students not to upgrade their computers to the new service pack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The school's Information Systems & Computing department said it will support Vista SP1 on new systems where it's pre-installed, but added that it 'strongly recommends that all other users adopt a "wait and see" attitude,' according to a newly published department bulletin." And CIO magazine doesn't quite go so far as to call on Microsoft to throw away Vista, but it does ask its readers to weigh in on that topic.

News.com has up a piece from the NYT about the concept of 'video snacking', a new focus for media companies as they gain a certain savvy about the internet. They're increasingly targeting the 'lunch market' for office workers, creating short to-the-point videos that can be consumed over a sandwich. "The midday spike in Web traffic is not a new phenomenon, but media companies have started responding in a meaningful way over the last year. They are creating new shows, timing the posts to coincide with hunger pangs. And they are rejiggering the way they sell advertising online, recognizing that noontime programs can command a premium. In 2007, a growing number of local television stations, including WNCN in Raleigh, N.C., and WCMH in Columbus, Ohio, began producing noon programming exclusively for the Web."

Shadow7789 writes "No surprise here, but to complete its humiliation, PC World has declared that Windows Vista is the most disappointing product of 2007. Quoting: 'Five years in the making and this is the best Microsoft could do?... No wonder so many users are clinging to XP like shipwrecked sailors to a life raft, while others who made the upgrade are switching back. And when the fastest Vista notebook PC World has ever tested is an Apple MacBook Pro, there's something deeply wrong with the universe.'"

angrykeyboarder writes "Scientists have discovered a way to fit 500 GB of data onto DVD-sized discs. These discs would be created with a process called 'microholography, which combines multilayer storage of data with holographic imagery. From the article: 'Microholography allows data to be stored in three dimensions. The technology works by replacing the two-dimensional pit-land structures currently found on CDs and DVDs with microgratings, which are holographically induced using two laser beams. In other words, instead of recording to a series of bumps and pits like standard CDs, the new technology creates three-dimensional holographic grids that can be used for reading and writing data throughout the physical structure of the disc.'"

Jared writes "Michael Moore was afraid the Feds might sieze his new documentary Sicko, a scathing indictment of the US health-care system, because part of it was filmed in Cuba despite the US embargo. So he stashed a copy of the film in Canada just to be safe. He might as well not have bothered — the film has shown up on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere. So it's safe now."