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Media

Submission + - Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An editor from Wired writes on his blog that Wikipedia sucks for science stories — not because they are inaccurate, but because of what he calls the "tragedy of the uncommon": Too many experts writing about subjects in ways that no non-expert can understand. Would this be the dumbing-down of Wikipedia — or would it be a better resource for everyone?
Science

Ceiling Height May Affect Problem-Solving Skills 279

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the how-low-can-you-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent University of Minnesota study suggests that ceiling height may affect problem-solving skills. "'When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts.' Either can be good. The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has, said Meyers-Levy, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. The concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Optimizing Daily Habits

Submitted by Anonymous Westley
Anonymous Westley writes: Mike Elgan shows you how to Save 5 Hours a Day, the Geek Way. For example:

If you read news magazines and newspapers, and also exercise, you can combine them to gain at least an hour in your day. The secret is to replace current-events reading with podcasts, and listen while you're walking or jogging or lifting weights. Chances are, the publications you read have podcast versions. Also, try BBC programs, major TV and radio news channels offerings, as well as Slate and other online zines. By switching to podcasts, you'll save money, help the environment, and cut time spent reading (because you can listen while you're doing other things).

I've been listening to entire courses for more than a year now (thanks, Teaching Company!), plus all kinds of podcasts and even text-to-speech'ed emails. It makes even jogging almost bearable. How do you optimize your time?
The Almighty Buck

Sun Says, "Compensate OSS Developers" 210

Posted by kdawson from the just-haggling-over-the-price dept.
krelian writes "Talking at Netbeans Day, Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current open source model in which developers create free intellectual property only to have others scoop it up and generate huge amounts of revenue. Green said, 'I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.'" Green didn't provide any details about how payments from Sun or others might work.
Security

Submission + - Transportation Security Administration loses hard

Submitted by
w1z4rd
w1z4rd writes: "The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), often regarded as the cornerstone of the United States' homeland security, has lost a hard drive containing information of over 100,000 people.

The hard drive contained data from personnel who were employed by TSA as far back as 2002. The administration has teamed up with the FBI to recover the data."
The Internet

Submission + - Averting Data Center Disasters with the EPO Button

Submitted by
1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: "Most data centers have an Emergency Power Off (EPO) button that will shut off power to the entire data center floor. Designed for fire prevention, the EPO (often a red button) has also triggered many accidental outages when vendors or cleaning crews have pressed it by accident. On April 15, the EPO figured in an apparent act of sabotage that crashed the data center that controls California's electrical grid. A disgruntled sysadmin was later charged in the incident. At the recent Data Center World conference, a session focused on ways to configure and manage the EPO button to reduce the risk of an accident or sabotage. "People can get killed and lives ruined by data center failures today," said data center designer Richard Sawyer. "The EPO represents a single point of failure. Make it accessible, but don't make it easy.""

Feed Hello, Galileo: European GPS sat sends first navigation data (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: GPS

Although Galileo, the European alternative to GPS, has been beset by endless delays and even the ignominy of having its access system hacked almost immediately, the project continues to make slow progress this week with the transmission of its first navigation message. GIOVE-A, the first of a planned 30 satellites, has been floating overhead since the beginning of last year, but had only been sending "general signals" until the test last week, when the bird sent the data needed to measure the distance between itself and a ground station in Guildford, England. That's a big step, since the system is supposed go live next year and be fully operational by 2011 or so. Here's hoping all goes well -- the American-owned GPS system keeps sending European drivers into the drink.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Communications

Submission + - A good mobile phone with no camera?

Submitted by SuperG
SuperG writes: It seems like every mobile phone out there has a camera on it these days. The only ones without cameras are low-end models with poor battery life, poor reception, and minimal features. And low-end means the cool factor is nonexistent as well. I often visit facilities where phones with cameras are not allowed, so I end up being incommunicado with my current camera phone. Is there a good (in terms of battery life, call quality, build quality, and style points) phone without a camera out there in the US market?
Robotics

Submission + - South Korea developing robot code of ethics

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: A 12-member task force, consisting of top lawyers, doctors and scientists, has been set up by the South Korean Commerce Ministry to develop a code of ethics for robots by the end of the year, according to TECH.BLORGE.com.

"We expect the day will soon come when intellectual robots can act upon their own decisions. So we are presenting this as an ethical guideline on the role and ability of robots," said South Korea's Commerce Ministry.
Privacy

Submission + - Last Day to STOP REAL ID

Submitted by
groschke
groschke writes: "I'm a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. There are just about 24 hours left for the public to submit comments against REAL ID. A coalition is urging individuals to speak up. They have links to portals that accept comments online, and sample comments like:

"The plan will create a massive national identification system without adequate privacy and security safeguards. It will also make it more difficult for people to get driver's licenses. And it will make it too easy for identity thieves, stalkers, and corrupt government officials to get access to such personal information as a home address, age, and Social Security number."

Slashdotters should offer their perspective. REAL ID was approved without Congressional Hearings, and this is the last 24 hours for the public to comment on this proposal!"

Summer of Code Student Application Deadline Looms 33

Posted by Zonk from the pencils-down-class dept.
chrisd writes "Hi everyone, just wanted to do one last shake of the old tree...the Summer of Code student application deadline is coming up on the 26th. We've got some great applications but I'd love to see more. We're accepting 800 students this year into the program and we have 131 open source organizations who'd love to see you apply. Anyone can talk about open source but you could be coding some with some of the best developmers out there. Apply today." Just a note: the 26th is an extension of the previous deadline. If you thought you wouldn't have time, you now have until next Monday. Get crackin'.
Education

Ocean Floor Crust Wound to Be Explored 148

Posted by Zonk from the journey-to-the-top-of-the-earth dept.
eldavojohn writes "A group of scientists are disembarking right now to study an open gash in the ocean floor where earth's mantle lays exposed without any crust covering it. The scientists describe this as the result of the mantle moving too quickly for the crust to keep up. Either that, or the mantle was never covered by the crust and just has always been like this. From the article, 'Regardless of how they formed, the exposed mantle provides scientists with a rare opportunity to study the Earth's rocky innards. Many attempts to drill deep into the planet barely get past the crust.'"
Robotics

First Dynamically Balancing Biped Robot 155

Posted by kdawson from the mister-rossum-on-line-1 dept.
damg writes "Anybots, which is three guys led by Trevor Blackwell, has developed the first robot that walks like we do, by dynamically balancing itself rather than being pre-programmed for walking like Asimo. The video shows the robot walking and being pushed by another 'bully' robot to demonstrate that it can't easily be pushed over."
Windows

Vista Followup Already in the Works 482

Posted by Zonk from the let-the-corpse-of-xp-cool-first dept.
DesertBlade passed us an InfoWorld article, which has the news that Microsoft is already hard at work on the next version of Windows ... and we may see it as early as 2009. Possibly codenamed Vienna, the next Windows iteration will be coming a brief two and a half years after Vista's launch. This is the same timeframe Microsoft claims it would have utilized for Vista, had they not put Longhorn 'on the back burner' to deal with security issues in XP. Corporate Vice President of Development Ben Fathi is already discussing features for the next OS: "We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is ... Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers. It's too early for me to talk about it ... But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

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