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Technology

New Nanotech Fabric Never Gets Wet 231

Posted by timothy from the good-for-lining-lunchboxes dept.
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a simple coating for polyester that renders it unwettable — even after two months underwater it emerges dry to the touch. Water cannot attach to the new fabric thanks to nanostructured filaments and a structure that traps a constant air layer. One potential use is for low-drag swim wear."
Input Devices

Submission + - New Apple Patent Hints at Multi-Touch iBooks

Submitted by General Lee's Peking
General Lee's Peking writes: From the article:

[...] Apple's patent proposes [...] a combination of sensors and intelligence to monitor a user's hands. When typing, a tounchpad (or touchpad bar that runs the width of the keyboard) "sees" nothing but the wrists or arms of the user. When a touchpad is being used, the touchpad "sees" the circular impression of a finger.
Google

Submission + - Interview: how Google tweaks rank algorithm (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
nbauman
nbauman writes: "New York Times interview with Amit Singhal, who is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm. They use 200 "signals" and "classifiers," of which PageRank is only one. "Freshness" defines how many recently changed pages appear in a result. They assumed old pages were better, but when they first introduced Google Finance, the algorithm couldn't find it because it was too new. Some topics are "hot". "When there is a blackout in New York, the first articles appear in 15 minutes; we get queries in two seconds," said Singhal. Classifiers infer information about the type of search, whether it is a product to buy, a place, company or person. One classifier identifies people who aren't famous. Another identifies brand names. A final check encourages "diversity" in the results, for example, a manufacturer's page, a blog review, and a comparision shopping site. If the user has signed in to Google, they can tell whether a search for "dolphins" is by a football fan or marine biologist. Examples of problems that Google identified and tweaked the algorithm to avoid: a search for "french revolution" returned too many results about the French presidential elections. A search for "teak patio palo alto" didn't return a store called the Teak Patio. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmon ey/03google.html Inside the Black Box By SAUL HANSELL, June 3, 2007"
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Fedora 7 Released!

Submitted by Vertana
Vertana writes: After being developed for 6 months, the Fedora Project today has released the 7th release of Fedora (formerly Fedora Core). New in this release are Fast User Switching, the merging of the repositories (Core and Extras are now all in Core), faster package management, as well as more robust hardware detection. Read more about it here.
The Internet

Submission + - Can regular people order takedowns?

Submitted by slapdfsckr
slapdfsckr writes: Can a regular person order a takedown of site content? What is a takedown anyway? Is it just a threat? I ask because recently I found out that my company launched a pirate ship full of lawers at a popular social networking site to remove content from a disgruntled employee. I didn't notice anything outstandingly damaging about these comments, however they didn't exactly paint a pretty picture and I can understand why certian people would be rather upset. The point is that the content was removed, the account seems quite inactive and for all I know this guy is no longer employeed. Whatever. My concern is how fast and seemingly easy it was to have the content removed. So I query: If I read some defamatory comments about myself on someones blog, can I order them to take it off or do I need the backing of a well paid legal team?
Bug

After 9 Years, Bugzilla Moves Up to 3.0 99

Posted by Zonk from the moving-on-up dept.
BuggyUser writes "Bugzilla, the popular application to track and manage software development bug reports, has moved up to version 3.0. The 2.x series has been in service for the last nine years. From the article: 'According to the Bugzilla 3.0 release announcement, some of the new features in this version include custom fields, support for the Apache mod_perl module, per-product permissions, an XML-RPC interface, and the ability to create and edit bugs via email. A demo site has been set up where users can test the new version before downloading.'" Linux.com and Slashdot.org are both owned by OSTG.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Battlestar Galactica To Continue

Submitted by turboflux
turboflux writes: According to executive producer David Eick, Battlestar Galactica is still an open-ended adventure and it will not be ending after the 4th season as previously reported. Evidently Edward James Olmos jumped the gun on confirming the show would be ending while attending the Saturn Awards this month. Eick goes on to say that the fourth season would actually be 22 episodes (2 more than prior seasons) rather than the reported 13 episode order.
Programming

Submission + - Accurate microseconds delay in Linux?

Submitted by
reachanil
reachanil writes: "I recently required to incorporate a 20 micro seconds delay in my linux (user space) application. I tried usleep and nanosleep and both failed to give me any accuracy less than 10millisec. The nanosleep man page indicated that I schedule my process in the SCHED_FIFO mode, but that didn't help either. I ended up hand coding my own micro seconds delay routine. Is there any other alternative? If you are interesting in reading a complete blog of what I tried and how I ended solving my problem, please refer — http://bapatonline.blogspot.com/2007/05/accurate-d elays-in-linux.html"

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