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Android

Google Serves a Cease-and-Desist On Android Modder 336

Posted by kdawson from the doubleplus-ungoogly dept.
Several readers sent in word that Google has served a Cease and Desist order to Cyanogen, one of the most prolific Android modders: his CyanogenMod is enjoyed by 30,000 users. The move is puzzling. Gizmodo wonders what Google's game is, and Lauren Weinstein calls the move "not of the high 'Googley' caliber" that one would expect of the company.
Math

Pi Calculated To Record 2.5 Trillion Digits 432

Posted by samzenpus from the almost-there dept.
Joshua writes "Researchers from Japan have calculated Pi to over 2.5 trillion decimals using the T2K Open Supercomputer (which is currently ranked 47th in the world according to a June, 2009 report from Top500.org). This new number more than doubles the previous record of about 1.2 trillion decimals set in 2002 by another Japanese research team. Unfortunately, there still seems to be no pattern."

Comment Re:Please stop mounting NEMA 5-15 upside down (Score 1) 711

by mongoose(!no) (#28860815) Attached to: Favorite type of electical wall socket?
I've heard this one before, it's a good point. Of course, when I travel to latin america and forget my trusty 3 to 2 adapter, I usually just buy a small power strip or extension cable and rip out the grounding pin. Not very safe, but on most cables I've seen, they're not mounted in there really well anyway.
Space

Could Betelgeuse Go Boom? 383

Posted by timothy from the betelgeuse-betelgeuse-betelgeuse-winona dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The answer is No. In space, nobody can hear you scream. However, it might go supernova in the near future, if it hasn't already. I wanna see that, even if it would permanently disfigure Orion. Ka freaking bam!"

Best Way To Build A DIY UAV? 259

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the please-include-armament-instructions dept.
Shojun writes "I am very interested in building my own UAV. Not just one that can fly around happily, but one that I can program to say, take photos every second as it does a barrel roll under a bus (ok, that part may be a pipe dream). I have enough embedded programming experience — it's the hardware which I'm uncertain about. I can go the kit way, and then build the remaining stuff, or get some Dollar Tree Foam boards and build it all. I'm in favor of ease, however. Once the plane is built, buying a dev board seems like a possibility, but I wonder whether it's overkill. Alternatively, if there was a How-to-build example on the net for such an activity that I could adapt, to the degree that I could then program in even completely hardcoded flight instructions, I can certainly take it from there. Thoughts? Has anyone here tried something like this before?"
Social Networks

Facebook Users Get Lower Grades In College 284

Posted by timothy from the but-doodlers-do-fine dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "According to a survey of college students Facebook users have lower overall grades than non-users. The study by Aryn Karpinski, an education researcher at Ohio State University, found that Facebook user GPAs are in the 3.0 to 3.5 range on average, compared to 3.5 to 4.0 for non-users and that Facebook users also studied anywhere from one to five hours per week, compared to non-users who studied 11 to 15 or more hours per week. Karpinski emphasized that correlation does not equal causation and that the grades association could be caused by something else. 'I'm just saying that there's some kind of relationship there, and there's many third variables that need to be studied.' One hypothesis is that students who spend more time enjoying themselves rather than studying might tend to latch onto the nearest distraction, such as Facebook or that students who use the social networking site might also spend more time on other non-studying activities such as sports or music. 'It may be that if it wasn't for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.' As for herself, Karpinski said she doesn't have a Facebook account, although the co-author of the study does. 'For me, I think Facebook is a huge distraction.'"
Slashdot.org

Achievements and Optimizations 294

Posted by CmdrTaco from the because-we-can dept.
This week's code refresh has added a number of really irritating story display bugs that we're working on. But, it also added a number of cool optimizations that should improve performance for a lot of readers. Tap that link below to read a brief description of them, and also a few serious notes about the achievement system we launched last Wednesday.

Comment Re:What about software? (Score 1) 571

by mongoose(!no) (#27376727) Attached to: RIP the Campus Computer Lab, 1960-2009
As a fellow civil engineering student, I suggest you check out students.autodesk.com. They've got a bunch of their programs for free, if you are willing to put up with having a small watermark around the outside border of anything you print. It's quite nice.

I still agree, that it's really important to have a lab. I don't need to drag my laptop around with me to classes, and I can check email in a lab between classes or do work on the computers as need. Plus, it helps to be able to have a computer that is for lack of a better term, sterile. I don't have all the distractions of games, bookmarks I check daily, IM, etc. on a lab computer as I do on my own. It's easier to work on one of them than on mine.
Biotech

UV-Resistant Micro-Organisms Discovered In the Stratosphere 156

Posted by timothy from the insight-from-above dept.
junglee_iitk writes "Three new species of bacteria, which are not found on earth and highly resistant to ultraviolet radiation, have been discovered in the upper stratosphere by some Indian scientists. These bacteria, which do not match any species on earth, were found in samples collected through a balloon sent up to the stratosphere in April 2005. The payload consisted of a cryosampler containing 16 evacuated and sterilised stainless steel probes. Throughout the flight, the probes remained immersed in the liquid neon to create a 'cryopump effect.' These cylinders after collecting air samples from different heights ranging from 20 to 41 km were parachuted down and safely retrieved, it said." Here's the Indian Space Research Organisation's press release on the discovery. Adds an anonymous reader: "This paper in International Journal of Astrobiology [PDF] speculates how microorganisms reach the stratosphere."

Comment I love Python, but... (Score 1) 214

by mongoose(!no) (#27134187) Attached to: A High School Programming Curriculum For All Students?
If you're teaching them programming, and they might not all use it, maybe you should think about using MS Excel. It seems everyone uses Excel in some form, but the people who can really get into the nitty-gritty of it can do some really useful stuff. Excel is on just about every computer these days, or some similar spreadsheet, and while it's not a traditional programming language, it does require the use of logic to figure out how to set up a series of cells with different commands to give you the answer you want.

Python on the other hand, is much more traditional, and might be a bit more straightforward to teach, but I still think more students would find useful skills they can use everyday in Excel rather than in Python. If they were all going towards engineering or comp-sci, Python would be good, but for the future business people in your class, knowing how to use Excel, and use it very efficiently is a huge plus in the "real world".
Programming

Hope For Multi-Language Programming? 371

Posted by Soulskill from the one-and-done dept.
chthonicdaemon writes "I have been using Linux as my primary environment for more than ten years. In this time, I have absorbed all the lore surrounding the Unix Way — small programs doing one thing well, communicating via text and all that. I have found the command line a productive environment for doing many of the things I often do, and I find myself writing lots of small scripts that do one thing, then piping them together to do other things. While I was spending the time learning grep, sed, awk, python and many other more esoteric languages, the world moved on to application-based programming, where the paradigm seems to be to add features to one program written in one language. I have traditionally associated this with Windows or MacOS, but it is happening with Linux as well. Environments have little or no support for multi-language projects — you choose a language, open a project and get it done. Recent trends in more targeted build environments like cmake or ant are understandably focusing on automatic dependency generation and cross-platform support, unfortunately making it more difficult to grow a custom build process for a multi-language project organically. All this is a bit painful for me, as I know how much is gained by using a targeted language for a particular problem. Now the question: Should I suck it up and learn to do all my programming in C++/Java/(insert other well-supported, popular language here) and unlearn ten years of philosophy, or is there hope for the multi-language development process?"
Microsoft

Microsoft and Red Hat Team Up On Virtualization 168

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the don't-go-the-way-of-the-novell-bird dept.
mjasay writes "For years Microsoft has insisted that open-source vendors acknowledge its patent portfolio as a precursor to interoperability discussions. Today, Microsoft shed that charade and announced an interoperability alliance with Red Hat for virtualization. The nuts-and-bolts of the agreement are somewhat pedantic, providing for Red Hat to validate Windows Server guests to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies, and other technical support details. But the real crux of the agreement is what isn't there: patents. Red Hat has long held that open standards and open APIs are the key to interoperability, even as Microsoft insisted patents play a critical role in working together, and got Novell to buy in. Today, Red Hat's vision seems to have won out with an interoperability deal heavy on technical integration and light on lawyers."

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