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NASA

NASA To Cryogenically Freeze Satellite Mirrors 47

Posted by Soulskill from the ain't-it-cool dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA said it will soon move some of the larger (46 lb) mirror segments of its future James Webb Space Telescope into a cryogenic test facility that will freeze the mirrors to -414 degrees Fahrenheit (~25 K). Specifically, NASA will freeze six of the 18 Webb telescope mirror segments at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, or XRCF, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in a test to ensure the critical mirrors can withstand the extreme space environments. All 18 segments will eventually be tested at the site. The test chamber takes approximately five days to cool a mirror segment to cryogenic temperatures."
Classic Games (Games)

M.U.L.E. Is Back 110

Posted by Soulskill from the not-for-the-red-wings dept.
jmp_nyc writes "The developers at Turborilla have remade the 1983 classic game M.U.L.E. The game is free, and has slightly updated graphics, but more or less the same gameplay as the original version. As with the original game, up to four players can play against each other (or fewer than four with AI players taking the other spots). Unlike the original version, the four players can play against each other online. For those of you not familiar with M.U.L.E., it was one of the earliest economic simulation games, revolving around the colonization of the fictitious planet Irata (Atari spelled backwards). I have fond memories of spending what seemed like days at a time playing the game, as it's quite addictive, with the gameplay seeming simpler than it turns out to be. I'm sure I'm not the only Slashdotter who had a nasty M.U.L.E. addiction back in the day and would like a dose of nostalgia every now and then."
Biotech

Scientists Deliver Bee Toxin To Tumors Via "Nanobees" 98

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the stop-calling-everything-nano dept.
ScienceDaily is reporting that Washington University School of Medicine researchers have found a way to deliver bee toxin to tumors using nano-spheres they call "nanobees." The results in mice showed a cessation of growth or even shrinkage of tumors while the surrounding tissue was protected from the toxin. "The core of the nanobees is composed of perfluorocarbon, an inert compound used in artificial blood. The research group developed perfluorocarbon nanoparticles several years ago and have been studying their use in various medical applications, including diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis and cancer. About six millionths of an inch in diameter, the nanoparticles are large enough to carry thousands of active compounds, yet small enough to pass readily through the bloodstream and to attach to cell membranes."
Government

Network Neutrality Back In Congress For 3rd Time 248

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the moving-at-the-speed-of-government dept.
suraj.sun writes "Ed Markey has introduced his plan to legislate network neutrality into a third consecutive Congress, and he has a message for ISPs: upgrade your infrastructure and don't even think about blocking or degrading traffic. The war over network neutrality has been fought in the last two Congresses, and last week's introduction of the 'Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009' [PDF] means that legislators will duke it out a third time. Should the bill pass, Internet service providers will not be able to 'block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade' access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device. Rulemaking and enforcement of network neutrality would be given to the Federal Communications Commission, which would also be given the unenviable job of hashing out what constitutes 'reasonable network management' — something explicitly allowed by the bill. Neutrality would also not apply to the access and transfer of unlawful information, including 'theft of content,' so a mythical deep packet inspection device that could block illegal P2P transfers with 100 percent accuracy would still be allowed. If enacted, the bill would allow any US Internet user to file a neutrality complaint with the FCC and receive a ruling within 90 days."
Databases

Submission + - Potential database breakthrough

Submitted by
DuckDodgers
DuckDodgers writes: "The database company Ingres announced a partnership with research firm Vectorwise to bring to market an efficiency breakthrough in databases. They assert that most complex queries run by a database engine can run over 100 times slower than a C++ program hand coded to get the same information from the files on disk. They're working on a database engine that closes the gap dramatically by using several methods, like batching tuples for processing in sizes that fit in the processor on-chip cache, other methods for minimizing back and forth between RAM and processor cache, and structuring the data to be processed in a way to make best use of CPU branch prediction. Their example in the whitepaper (unfortunately, it requires registration) is a moderate complexity aggregate query against 6 million rows of data that takes 16 seconds in the regular database engine, 0.04 seconds with a C++ application built to do the same thing, and about 0.2 seconds with their optimized database engine. The press release is here, and some of the technical details are discussed on this blog (no, not mine): Next Big Future. Is this impossible, impractical, or well within the realm of possibility? If it can be done, why haven't we seen it before?"
Supercomputing

Submission + - Cray's Comeback and the Future of Supercomputing

Submitted by
Greg Huang
Greg Huang writes: "In the 1970s and 80s, Cray was synonymous with supercomputing. But the company fell on hard times after getting bought by Silicon Graphics in 1996 and then merging with Tera Computer in 2000. What has happened to Cray since then? Xconomy has an in-depth profile of the "new Cray" as it makes its way back to the top of the supercomputing world, including its strategy for gaining customers and advancing its technology in the perpetual race to build the world's fastest, most powerful machine."
Intel

Submission + - Why do we have F2XM1? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by QuietObserver
QuietObserver writes: I was researching the Intel Floating Point instructions while working on a project, and I first came across F2XM1. I immediately wondered what the need was for an instruction that does 2 ^ x — 1 but has an input range of -1 to 1. I've tried researching the subject online, but all I've come up with is a reference from someone else who has the exact same question.


Quoted from http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-do-we-have-f2xm1.html?showComment=1249084660633#c6336764748095052620

F2XM1 is a floating point assembler instruction for Intel CPUs. It is one of several which seem to be there to allow the calculation of several of the common "higher" functions, like pow(x, y) or log(x). However, I am always confused why it subtracts one after finding the power of 2 and why its limited from -1 to 1, since it doesn't seem to help anything much at all...

If anyone has any comments or suggestions about what use F2XM1 might have, and why Intel's FPU architecture also lacks an instruction to perform 2^x without subtracting anything (I know of at least one other FPU instruction set that does, and has no input range limitations).
Idle

Submission + - Facebooking Judge Catches Lawyer in Lie (abajournal.com) 2

Submitted by
edadams
edadams writes: "A Galveston, Texas lawyer asked for a continuance because of the death of her father. But the judge she was asking knew the lawyer had earlier posted a string of status updates on Facebook, detailing her week of drinking, going out and partying."
The Internet

Submission + - OpenBitTorrent, a DMCA-Resistant Torrent Tracker (openbittorrent.com)

Submitted by
rm
rm writes: "There seemed to be no open, independent and stable BitTorrent trackers out there, so some hackers decided to create OpenBitTorrent, a free for anyone to use and (supposedly) a stable tracker. As a nice bonus, since the new tracker does not know or care what it is tracking, it is very likely to be completely immune to DMCA takedown requests: the authors make it very clear that they do not host or index for searching the content or any torrent files, do not keep logs of downloaders' IP addresses and can not block any files from being distributed using their tracker. Also, it looks like ThePirateBay has recently started to use OpenBitTorrent as a secondary tracker for all its torrents."
Programming

Open Source Languages Rumble At OSCON 197

Posted by kdawson from the fairest-of-them-all dept.
blackbearnh writes "Everybody knows what the best programming language is, it's whatever one you like the most. But is there a best language overall? Or even a best language for a given purpose? This question has been debated since the first time there were two languages to choose from. The argument is still going on, of course, but maybe a little light will be shed on the issue this week at OSCON. On Wednesday night at 7PM Pacific, representatives of the 5 major open source languages (perl, PHP, Python, Java and Ruby), as arbitrarily decided by O'Reilly, will meet to debate the merits of their various languages. If you're not going to be at OSCON, you can watch it live on a webcast and pose questions or comments to the participants. The representatives are: Python: Alex Martelli, Google; Ruby: Brian Ford, Engine Yard; PHP: Laura Thomson, Mozilla; Perl: Jim Brandt, Perl Foundation; Java: Rod Johnson, SpringSource."
Upgrades

New Binary Diffing Algorithm Announced By Google 192

Posted by timothy from the smartness-and-light dept.
bheer writes "Today Google's Open-Source Chromium project announced a new compression technique called Courgette geared towards distributing really small updates. Courgette achieves smaller diffs (about 9x in one example) than standard binary-diffing algorithms like bsdiff by disassembling the code and sending the assembler diffs over the wire. This, the Chromium devs say, will allow them to send smaller, more frequent updates, making users more secure. Since this will be released as open source, it should make distributing updates a lot easier for the open-source community."
Social Networks

Analyst, 15, Creates Storm After Trashing Twitter 381

Posted by CmdrTaco from the twitter-is-for-old-people dept.
Barence writes "A 15-year-old schoolboy has become an overnight sensation after writing a report on teenagers' media habits for analysts Morgan Stanley. Intern Matthew Robson was asked to write a report about his friends' use of technology during his work experience stint with the firm's media analysts. The report was so good the firm decided to publish it, and it generated 'five or six' times more interest than Morgan Stanley's regular reports. The schoolboy poured scorn on Twitter, claiming that teenagers 'realize that no one is viewing their profile, so their tweets are pointless.' He also claimed games consoles are replacing mobile phones as the way to chat with friends."

Comment Re:Correctly? (Score 1) 895

by Paolone (#28604421) Attached to: Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him

How is teleporting people in front of NPC bots designed to enforce a safe zone instead of beating someone up yourself "playing correctly?"

It is since the zone is not flagged as "non-teleport", like we used to do with '80s technology in MUDs. The guy is playing by the rules and he's on infringing the EULA/whatever they have (else he would have been banned).

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