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Science

Hadron Collider Relaunch Delayed 223

SpuriousLogic writes "There's been another delay in the schedule announced for getting the Large Hadron Collider switched back on — now it's September 2009, a year after it shut down due to a malfunction. Scientists had said they expected the $5.4B machine to be repaired by November 2008, but then pushed the date back to June 2009, before the latest delay."
Education

Australian State May Give Students Linux Laptops 302

Whiteox writes "The Australian Prime Minister's plan to equip high schools with 'one laptop per child' may go open source. Kevin Rudd's $56 million digital revolution will include 'laptops [that will] run on an open source operating system with a suite of open source applications like those packaged under Edubuntu. This would include Open Office for productivity software, Gimp for picture editing and the Firefox internet browser.' So far this has been considered for New South Wales and I think other states may follow."
Space

New Study Shows Solar System Is Uncommon 290

Iddo Genuth writes "Research conducted by a team of North American scientists shows our solar system is special, contrary to the accepted theory that it is an average planetary system. Using computer simulations to follow the development of planets, it was shown that very specific conditions are needed for a proto-stellar disk to evolve into a solar system-like planetary system. The simulations show that in most cases either no planets are created, or planets are formed and then migrate towards the disk center and acquire highly elliptical orbits." The research was published in Science magazine; here's the paper on ArXiv (PDF).
Networking

Typical Home Bandwidth Usage? 656

Broadband writes "With a growing number of internet service providers imposing hard bandwidth caps, I too will soon find myself with a limit. In typical Slashdot fashion I use the Internet for everything from movie streaming to online backup and just realized I have no idea how much data traverses my pipes on a monthly basis. While I have wised up and installed a bandwidth monitoring solution, it'll be some time until I have a normalized average. So my question is: What is the average monthly data usage in your household? How many people share the connection and is there anything you've found essential yet bandwidth intensive that you couldn't live without? (E.g. VOIP, movie downloads, streaming audio, etc.)"
Science

Nuclear Decay May Vary With Earth-Sun Distance 418

KentuckyFC writes "We've long thought that nuclear decay rates are constant regardless of ambient conditions (except in a few special cases where beta decay can be influenced by powerful electric fields). So that makes it hard to explain two puzzling experiments from the 1980s that found periodic variations over many years in the decay rates of silicon-32 and radium-226. Now a new analysis of the raw data says that changes in the decay rate are synchronized with each other and with Earth's distance from the sun. The physicists behind this work offer two theories to explain why this might be happening (abstract). First, some theorists think the sun produces a field that changes the value of the fine structure constant on Earth as its distance from the sun varies. That would certainly affect the rate of nuclear decay. Another idea is that the effect is caused by some kind of interaction with the neutrino flux from the sun's interior which also varies with distance. Take your pick. What makes the whole story even more intriguing is that for years physicists have disagreed over the decay rates of several isotopes such as titanium-44, silicon-32, and cesium-137. Perhaps they took their data at different times of the year?"
Windows

Black Screens For Unauthorized Copies of Windows 762

arcticstoat writes "In a bid to deter people from using pirate versions of Windows XP, Microsoft is now updating its Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool to introduce a few uncomfortable niggles for users of pirated versions of Windows. These include replacing the desktop wallpaper with a black screen every 60 minutes, although you can still replace it with your wallpaper of choice in the intervening period. As well as this, copies of Windows deemed to not be genuine will also have a translucent watermark above the system tray, which Microsoft calls a 'persistent desktop notification.'"
Windows

Lenovo Requires NDA For Windows License Refund 321

tykev writes "A customer wanted to return the license for preinstalled Windows Vista Business that came with his Lenovo laptop. After some lengthy negotiations with representatives of Lenovo's technical support and management, he was offered financial compensation for returning the license in the amount of CZK 1950 (USD 130, EUR 78), pending his acceptance of a non-disclosure agreement that would cover the entire negotiations with the company and its results. He declined and published his experiences on a Czech Linux website. The website editors decided to reward the customer for publishing the article by paying him an author's royalty in the same amount as was the offered compensation for returning the license."
Internet Explorer

IE8 Beta Released To Public 605

Tim writes "English, German, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese versions of Internet Explorer 8 have been released for public beta. New features include accelerators, which provide instant context menu access for a number of common tasks; automatic crash recovery, which prevents a single page's failures from taking down your entire browser; and browser privacy, a feature that didn't make Firefox 3. I'm primarily a Firefox user, and I've been using IE8 at work (MS) for the past few weeks. It's a definite improvement over previous versions, and brings a lot to the table that Firefox requires extensions for. Give it a spin, submit feedback, and help keep all browser makers on their toes by facing each other's competition."
Math

45th Known Mersenne Prime Found? 396

An anonymous reader writes "The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) has apparently discovered a new world-record prime number. A GIMPS client computer reported the number on August 23rd, and verification is currently under way. The verification could take up to two weeks to complete. The last Mersenne prime discovered was over 9.8 million digits long, strongly suggesting that the new value may break the 10 million digit barrier — qualifying for the EFF's $100,000 prize!"
Input Devices

Submission + - Optimus Maximus keyboard gets price and date

tedgyz writes: With duke-nukem-forever style delays, it appears there is light at the end of the tunnel for the Optimus Maximus keyboard. Engadget reports:

After some OLED display supply issues and a few setbacks, it looks like Lebedev and company have finally settled on a launch date and price for the king of keyboard, the Optimus Maximus. Hold your breath, it'll be due late November (the 30th, to be specific) for $1536 US ("Shakespeare's birthday"). Bad news, we know, but the worst news is still to come: only 200 keyboards per month for November and December, and 400 keyboards are scheduled to be made next January. (On second thought, at over $1500 apiece, maybe that's not so few keyboards.) Ok, exhale, it's going to be alright.
Games

Videogames Really Are Linked to Violence 204

ahoehn writes "Amanda Schaffer has written a refreshingly balanced piece about the connection between video games and violence. Instead of regurgitating the typical reactionary voices in this debate, she looks at what scientific studies suggest about the issue. From the article: 'Pathological acts of course have multiple, complex causes and are terribly hard to predict. And clearly, millions of people play Counter-Strike, Halo, and Doom and never commit crimes. But the subtler question is whether exposure to video-game violence is one risk factor for increased aggression: Is it associated with shifts in attitudes or responses that may predispose kids to act out? A large body of evidence suggests that this may be so ... Given this, it makes sense to be specific about which games may be linked to harmful effects and which to neutral or good ones. Better research is also needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse.'"
Biotech

Submission + - A pill that makes women slimmer and hornier

The Great Pretender writes: The BBC reports that scientists are developing a pill which could boost women's libido and reduce their appetite. The hormone-releasing pill has so far only been given to female monkeys and shrews who displayed more mating behavior and ate less. The team from the Medical Research Council's Human Reproduction Unit in Edinburgh believe a human version could be available within a decade. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6606927.stm. I was married to a shrew once...
Censorship

Submission + - Breast cancer portrait banned from group art showh

Daddy Rhon writes: "http://www.daddyrhon.com/?p=741 A portrait of a breast cancer survivor was deemed indecent, banned and removed from an art show. The piece is a simple figure study of a woman with a scar. Why was this piece considered morally offensive? Because the model is older? Disfigured by disease? Or are there implied subtexts to this piece simply because the artist is a dyke?"

Feed Xerox developing "natural language color editing" (engadget.com)

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets


Xerox's Geoffrey Woolfe seems to think he's found a way to make picking just the right color a bit easier, laying out his plans for so-called "natural language color editing" at the annual meeting of the Inter-Society Color Council (ISCC). While it's apparently still in the early stages, the system will supposedly let you adjust colors simply by describing them in natural langauge, using voice or typed commands like "make the sky a deeper blue" or "make the background carnation pink" -- the software then does all the rest of the work. Of course, Xerox isn't exactly giving any indication when that may happen, so you'll have to make do with the cumbersome point-and-click method of color-choosing we've somehow managed to get along with all these years for a little while longer.

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