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Submission + - Computer screens makin' you blind? (sciam.com)

Submitted by
Scott R.
Scott R. writes: "From SciAm.com — Ophthalmologists, optometrists and other eye professionals note a seeming link between myopia, also called nearsightedness, and "near work" — visual activities that take place at a distance of about 40 centimeters (16 inches) from the eye — such as reading a book. Staring at a computer screen qualifies as well, though monitors usually are around 50 centimeters (20 inches) away. But only a small — and mysterious — subset of people see myopic progression from near work, whether they are focusing on a computer or accounting books. The fact that near work doesn't lead to myopia in all of us, however, doesn't mean sitting close to a computer screen causes no problems. Though for most it is not permanently damaging, computer near work leads to an uncomfortable, at times debilitating, list of symptoms collectively known as eyestrain."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Chess Boxing: Out of the basement, into the ring

Submitted by AmIAnAi
AmIAnAi writes: BBC News reports on the first ever Chess Boxing World Championship in Berlin, won by 'Anti Terror' Frank Stoldt from Germany. Chess Boxing is described as:

a competition which requires both brains and brawn
The World Chess Boxing Organisation is even looking for new chessboxers. Fancy beating someone with your fists AND brain for a change?
Programming

Submission + - How Should One Form a Tech Workers Union? (iitwu.org)

Submitted by
jmadler
jmadler writes: "With the many horror stories of regular-pay forced overtime before deadlines and permanent temps in order to avoid paying benefits at such large IT corporations as EA, IBM, and Microsoft, Isn't it time that we — the blue collar workers of the 21st century — formed a union? Although there exist a few tech workers, communications workers, or programmers unions, few have large support. What would be necessary to jump start a programmers union?"
The Internet

Submission + - Did 'crowdsourcing' impede Fossett search?

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "The much-publicized participation of 50,000 amateur searchers using Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" project may have been more than futile, it may actually have gotten in the way of professionals trying to find Steve Fossett's airplane, according to an officer in the civil air patrol. "In hindsight, I wish (they) hadn't been there," she says at the very bottom of a Wired story that otherwise focuses on the feelings of the virtual searchers that they may have been wasting their time. Believers in the wisdom of crowds sometimes forget that even the best-intentioned of them can be unruly.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21640"
Censorship

Submission + - Facebook is censoring Ron Paul

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It appears that Facebook is censoring searches for "Ron Paul". Searches for presidential candidate "Ron Paul" in Facebook Groups yield zero results. The reason isn't because there aren't any Ron Paul groups — a search for "Paul" shows hundreds. For some reason, the search is blocked. Other candidate show up just fine. More than 500 groups show up for each of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and others. TechCrunch has the story.
Windows

Submission + - London Stock Exchange Down Due to Glitch

Submitted by mormop
mormop writes: If like me you feel slightly ill when you see the Microsoft get the FUD adverts you may smile a little after reading that the London Stock Exchange that has achieved unprecedented reliability by switching to server 2003 was today shut down for an unprecedented period of time by computer failure. To quote TFA, a stockbroker who did not wish to be named said: "We are paralysed. Nothing like this has happened before. I am extremely annoyed."

How much does several hours lost trading cost? I know you shouldn't mock the afflicted but somehow I just can't stop myself.

Click here for TFA

Feed The Register: Ballmer nails Founder to Windows mast (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
'China', 'rampant piracy', etcetera, etcetera

Founder Technology, China's second biggest PC maker, after Lenovo, is to pre-install Windows Vista on business lines and laptops. Previously, it put Windows only on consumer desktops as a matter of course - about 30 per cent of overall shipments.
Censorship

Submission + - Facebook Censors Ron Paul Groups

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I'm a member of the "Ron Paul NCSU chapter group". Today I noticed a group news update that reads
"Facebook is no longer allowing searches for Ron Paul groups. Please send your friends links to this group if they want to join, since they will not be able to find it otherwise."
After two quick searches that produced the following results:
Displaying 1 — 10 out of over 500 group results for: Hillary Clinton
Displaying 1 — 10 out of over 500 group results for: Barack Obama
I searched for Ron Paul and saw the message.
"I've got nothing for you. Try a new search."
This is particularly interesting considering I am a member of both the national group, and my university's group. I suggest that all facebook members go Here and report this problem to facebook.
Education

Submission + - How Migratory Birds Find Their Way Home (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by
grrlscientist
grrlscientist writes: "Is it possible that migratory birds can actually SEE the Earth's magnetic field and use it to find their way home?

From the article: Every year, millions of birds migrate to their breeding grounds and then back to their wintering grounds again. These birds' journies cover anywhere between several hundred to many thousands of miles, even when the skies are cloudy or dark. How do birds unerringly find their way to their destinations? Thanks to recent research on this topic, part of the answer might be the presence of a special protein in avian eyes that is sensitive to blue light, cryptochrome."
Space

Submission + - Solar Wind Disrupts Planetary Metronome

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Measuring the rotation rate of a planet with no solid surface is no easy task, but it's important in determining how gas giant planets like Saturn form because a planet's rotation rate, along with its gravity field, sheds light on the size of any rocky core it may have. In the 1980s, NASA's Voyager spacecraft measured regular pulses of radio waves coming from Saturn every 10 hours and 39 minutes and postulated that they were due to a "bump" in Saturn's magnetic field carried around with the planet's rotation.The Cassini spacecraft recently showed that the period of the pulses varies by several minutes on a timescale of months and years and since Saturn is too massive for its spin rate to change so quickly, suggested that the pulses are not precisely tied to the planet's rotation rate after all. Now scientists in France have found that the time between pulses tends to increase when the solar wind is slower, and shortens when the solar wind speeds up leading them to suspect that the solar wind causes the spot of intense aurora activity in Saturn's atmosphere to move around leading to fluctuations in the time period between pulses."
Space

Submission + - NASA satellites to prevent infectious diseases (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "NASA and its Applied Sciences Program will be using 14 satellites to watch the Earth's environment and help predict and prevent infectious disease outbreaks around the world. Through orbiting satellites, data is collected daily to monitor environmental changes. That information is then passed on to agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Defense who then apply the data to predict and track disease outbreaks and assist in making public health policy decisions. The use of remote sensing technology helps scientists predict the outbreak of some of the most common and deadly infectious diseases such as Ebola, West Nile virus and Rift Valley Fever. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21654"
Microsoft

Submission + - Excel 2007 Multiplication Bug reverse-engineered

Submitted by finnw
finnw writes: Research scientist Chris Lomont has analyzed in depth the Excel 2007 "65535" bug. Summary from the article:

This note:
  1. details how the bug works,
  2. shows the bug is a rendering bug, not a math error as many reported,
  3. shows how it was likely introduced by comparison to Excel 2002 and Excel 2000 behavior (the bug seems to have been inserted when updating an older 16-bit formatting routine to a 32-bit equivalent),
  4. explains how the just released hotfix corrects the behavior, confirming the analysis of the bug,
  5. and demonstrates why exactly twelve values out of more than 9*10^18 (approx 2^63) possible 64-bit floating-point values suffer from this bug.
One interesting point is that the affected routine appears to be written in x86 assembly language. Fortunately it doesn't appear to have caused a security hole.

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