Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Operating Systems

Submission + - Japanese Government to Move to OSS

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: linuxworld has an article on Japanese government's plan to reduce its reliance on a single IT vendor by moving to open source softwares.

Oracle, NEC, IBM, HP, Hitachi and Dell are among 10 IT equipment and software vendors that are forming a consortium to develop and sell Linux-based servers and computers for the Japanese market. The move by the vendors to collaborate on Linux in Japan comes from a edict from the country's government to make Linux and open source a priority for all IT procurements, starting this July.
Specifically, it looks to reduce Windows as the server OS.

The government has said explicitly it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform.
Power

Submission + - SHPEGS: DIY Solar/Geothermal Electricity

Submitted by
rohar
rohar writes: "SHPEGS is an open design not-for-profit project to design and prototype a base load renewable electrical generation system suitable for moderate climates and built from common materials. The design centers around creating a local geothermal source with an efficient solar thermal water heater system and can be scaled from the single residence to the mega-project. The project was recently featured in an in-depth The Future of Things article. The heliostat system used in Europe's First Solar Thermal Plant could be used in a scaled down SHPEGS system with Practical Solar's small scale heliostats."
Biotech

3-D Model of Breast Cancer in the Lab 71

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-add-water dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to BBC News, U.K. researchers have built a 3-D version of breast cancer in a test tube. Their model contains cells from normal and cancerous breast tissue. The researchers used a collagen gel to form 3-D structures to create structures similar to the ones found in a woman's breast. So far, they focused on a common pre-cancerous condition known as 'ductal carcinoma in situ' (DCIS). With this model, they hope to reduce experiments done on animals such as mice. In fact, these experiments are not always useful because similarities can be poor between mice and humans. Now it remains to be seen if this model will be endorsed by the scientific community."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Building will repair itself during an earthquake

Submitted by Kate Seamer
Kate Seamer writes: A US$18.6 million "self-healing" house will be able to resist earthquakes by sealing cracks in its walls and monitoring seismic vibrations. The walls of the house contain nano-polymer particles designed to convert into liquid when under pressure, flow into cracks, and solidify. This would theoretically stabilize the structure after severe seismic trauma. Funded by the European Union, and using technology from Leed University's NanoManufacturing Institute, the house is to be constructed in Greece by 2010.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Slashdot in a sci-fi book

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I was reading 'Century Rain' by Alastair Reynolds and was very surprised to see Slashdot mentioned there. Apparently a powerful, technologically advanced human society in the future will be founded by Slashdotters. From the book: "It's all right," Niagara said. "I won't be the least bit offended if you call me a Slasher. You probably regard the term as an insult." "Isn't it?" Auger asked, surprised. "Only if you want it to be." Niagara made a careful gesture, like some religious benediction: a diagonal slice across his chest and a stab to the heart. "A slash and a dot," he said. "I doubt it means anything to you, but this was once the mark of an alliance of progressive thinkers linked together by one of the very first computer networks. The Federation of Polities can trace its existence right back to that fragile collective, in the early decades of the Void Century. It's less a stigma than a mark of community."
Google

Submission + - Gmail let's you get mail from other POP3 accounts.

Submitted by
snower1313
snower1313 writes: "Gmail has just added a new feature for a limited number of users that allows 3rd party POP3 account emails to be retrieved into your Gmail Inbox. "You can retrieve your mail (new and old) from up to five other email accounts and have them all in Gmail. Then you can even create a customized 'From:' address, which lets you send messages from Gmail, but have them look like they were sent from another one of your email accounts.""
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia bureaucrat with bogus PhD

Submitted by keyero
keyero writes: The New Yorker has posted an Editor's note, correcting for a story they published in July about Wikipedia and expertise. In the article, they quoted User:Essjay who is a a bureaucrat, arbitrator, and other roles including checkuser. He was described as "a tenured professor of religion at a private university" with "a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law." Turns out, he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. Nonetheless, Jimmy Wales has brushed this aside and recently appointed Essjay to the Arbitration committee. He also hired Essjay to serve as "Community Manager" on Wikia.
Media

Submission + - RIAA Prepares to Sue 400 College Students

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The RIAA sent out "pre-litigation settlement notices" to 400 network users at 13 U.S. universities today, continuing a PR blitz that began last week with a much-publicized list of the 25 most notified universities for copyright infringement. Once again, Ohio University tops the list, with one out of every eight notifications. From the press release: "The RIAA will request that universities forward those letters to the appropriate network user. Under this new approach, a student (or other network user) can settle the record company claims against him or her at a discounted rate before a lawsuit is ever filed."
Bug

Submission + - Daylight Savings Time the Next Y2K?

Submitted by turnitover
turnitover writes: It happens a few thousand times more frequently, but according to an eWEEK.com article, this year's change to Daylight Savings Time could be a bigger IT headache than the much-ballyhooed Y2K. From TFA: ""We are likely to see more issues than we did with Y2K because there is no visibility at the board and the CEO level, yet it's a similar risk to the business," said Tim Howes, CTO at data center provisioning provider Opsware in Sunnyvale, CA." This is despite numerous Windows and Mac and Linux patches... . How about you? Are you ready?
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Boston Bomb-Squad Strikes Again

Submitted by Brian
Brian writes: Boston Police discover (and destroy) the latest pseudo-threat. This time it's not an animated LED sign, but something far, far more nasty — A Traffic Counter. You know, the little boxes that the city (!) places on a roadside to measure the number of cars that pass in a given amount of time. Wow.

Link
via BoingBoing.
Music

Submission + - Best practices for a lossless music archive

Submitted by Sparagmei
Sparagmei writes: I'm a big music fan, and I like listening to the music I own on various pieces of digital gear. Right now my library's at about 20,000 tracks, ripped from CDs to MP3 at 256kbps (enough that I can't tell the difference on my low-end playback gear).

However, with the MP3 judgment rippling through the world, I'm interested in perhaps moving to a different compression standard. Before I do that, I'd like to ask a question: what lossless format would you recommend for making a digital "master library", which could be (relatively) easily downsampled to a compressed format? Important factors would be true losslessness, filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice), embedded metadata (id3v2-like), existence of automated ripper software, and (to a lesser extent) open-source implementation of such software. Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me; the lossless library would likely be burnt to archival DVD media and stored after being downsampling with the chosen compressor.

The reason I ask is this: I've got a 20,000-track re-ripping job ahead of me. I'd like to do that just once, lossless, so that years from now, when I decide to jump from Vorbis to "komprezzor_2039_1337" or whatever, I don't need to drag out the old plastic discs. Thanks!
Announcements

Submission + - Truth in Video Game Rating Act Reintroduced

Submitted by
njkid1
njkid1 writes: "The "Truth in Video Game Rating Act" was reintroduced today in the U.S. Senate. This move was spearheaded by Senator Sam Brownback who originally authored the bill in September 2006. The act would require the ESRB to assess all of a game's content before issuing a rating, rather than relying upon demonstrations provided by the developers and publishers. It would also prohibit the witholding of playable content from the ESRB. http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/news/?id=15248&n cid=AOLGAM000500000000014"

Slashdot Top Deals

A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.

Close