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Space

Speed Found to be Key to Galaxy Formation 61

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-just-a-good-idea dept.
QuantumCrypto writes "The All-wavelength Extended Groth strip International Survey (AEGIS), a collaborative effort involving nearly 100 scientists in half a dozen countries, revealed a new principle in the formation of all galaxies, from disk-like spirals, cloud-like ellipticals, and just irregulars. In essence the morphology of the galaxies depends on total mass involved and the internal speed it generates. 'By defining a new speed indicator, their analysis has managed to make sense out of very chaotic-looking objects,' said Sandra Faber, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz."
Java

Oracle Open Sources TopLink Java ORM 41

Posted by CowboyNeal from the have-at-it dept.
Eric^2 writes "Oracle announced on Tuesday that TopLink will now be open source and a full-fledged Eclipse project. TopLink is an object-persistence layer for Java that maps Java objects to a relational database."
Programming

Submission + - Auto-parallelizing compiler from Codeplay

Submitted by
Max Romantschuk
Max Romantschuk writes: "Parallelization of code is a very tricky thing. We've all heard of the challeges with Cell, and with dual and quad core pocessors this is becoming an ever more important issue to deal with. The Inquirer writes about a new auto-parallelizing compiler called Sieve from Codeplay: What Sieve is is a C++ compiler that will take a section of code and parallelize it for you with a minimum hassle. All you really need to do is take the code you want to run across multiple CPUs and put beginning and end tags on the parts you want to run in parallel.

Is this the Silver Bullet of parallelization? There's more info on Sieve on Codeplay's site."
Science

The Blackest Material 299

Posted by kdawson from the reflect-on-this dept.
QuantumCrypto writes "Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created 'the world's first material that reflects virtually no light.' This anti-reflection technology is based on nanomaterial and could lead to the development of more efficient solar cells, brighter LEDs, and 'smarter' light sources. In theory, if a room were to be coated with this material, switching on the lights would only illuminate the items in the room and not the walls, giving a sense of floating free in infinite space."
AMD

Submission + - AMD CEO talks about earnings, future of x86

Submitted by
Jeff Pierce
Jeff Pierce writes: "AMD's CEO, Hector Ruiz, explained today why AMD's revenues won't meet expectations this quarter. According to Ruiz, this is because the company couldn't produce enough chips to meet growing OEM demand. (Funny he didn't mention the price war with Intel.) Also covered in the presentation is Ruiz's vision of what you might call "x86 everywhere." Ruiz thinks that the x86 processor market is by no means "mature," and that x86 will expand into home entertainment devices, appliances, education, and lots of other places where we don't even currently use microprocessors. AMD intends to have a big slice of that growing pie."
Space

Submission + - Scientists Break Speed of Light

Submitted by PreacherTom
PreacherTom writes: Scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, NJ are reporting that they have broken the speed of light. For the experiment, the researchers manipulated a vapor of laser-irradiated atoms, causing a pulse that shoots about 300 times faster than it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum, to the point where the pulse seemed to exit the chamber before even entering it. Apparently, Uncle Albert is still resting comfortably: relativity only states that an object with mass cannot travel faster than light. Still, the results are sufficient to merit publication in the prestigious journal, Nature.
Microsoft

Microsoft Wanted To Drop Mac Office To Hurt Apple 479

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the airing-the-dirty-laundry dept.
Overly Critical Guy writes to mention that more documents in the Iowa antitrust case have come out. This time, it's revealed that Microsoft considered dumping the Mac Office Suite entirely in a move to harm Apple. "The email complains at poor sales of Office, which it attributes to a lack of focus on making such sales among reps at that time. It describes dumping development of the product as: 'The strongest bargaining point we have, as doing so will do a great deal of harm to Apple immediately.' The document also confirms that Microsoft at the time saw Office for the Mac as a chance to test new features in the product before they appeared in Windows, 'because it is so much less critical to our business than Windows.'"
Science

Scientists Predicting Intentions 105

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the science-of-mind-reading dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us German scientists claim to have the means of predicting decisions of high level mental activity. "In the past, experts had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements in advance. But researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity _ in this case, adding versus subtracting."
Education

Paying for Better Math and Science Teachers 660

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the get-what-you-pay-for dept.
Coryoth writes "While California is suffering from critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers, Kentucky is considering two bills that would give explicit financial incentives to math and science students and teachers. The first bill would provide cash incentives to schools to run AP math and science classes, and cash scholarships to students who did well on AP math and science exams. The second bill provides salary bumps for any teachers with degrees in math or science, or who score well in teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics. Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"
Businesses

Submission + - Whatever happened to superconductors?

Submitted by
AltGrendel
AltGrendel writes: "Jonathan Fildes of the BBC wrote that 'In 1987, Ronald Reagan declared that the US was about to enter an incredible new era of technology. Levitating high-speed trains, super-efficient power generators and ultra-powerful supercomputers would become commonplace thanks to a new breed of materials known as high temperature superconductors (HTSC). "The breakthroughs in superconductivity bring us to the threshold of a new age," said the president. "It's our task to herald in that new age with a rush."

But 20 years on, the new world does not seem to have arrived. So what happened?'

He shares what he found in this article."
Book Reviews

Character Design For Mobile Devices 35

Posted by samzenpus from the design-time dept.
Aeonite writes "According to the Introduction, Character Design For Mobile Devices is 'the first book on the designs, the technologies, the issues, and the techniques behind character design for mobile devices and games.' Unfortunately, what could have been an interesting and unique coffee table book suffers from an unclear message, poor design, bad editing, and an authorial voice that is rather too present at times, and too oblique at others." Read below for the rest of Aeonite's review.
Software

Open Source Network Management Beats IBM and HP 100

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the slow-and-steady-going-for-the-win dept.
mjhuot writes "Last week SearchNetworking.com announced their Product Leadership Awards for 2007. It was a pleasant surprise to see an open source project, OpenNMS, win the Gold in their Network and IT Management Platforms category. OpenNMS beat out the established players of Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and IBM's Tivoli. This was based on a user survey of all IT solutions, not just open source; it demonstrates that open source software is indeed making inroads into the enterprise."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Slashdot Easter egg in the Opera browser

Submitted by patro
patro writes: Opera Watch mentions that the Opera browser has a Slashdot easter egg in it. Type a slash and a dot in the address bar, press Enter and look what happens. How cool is that?
Education

Submission + - How the Open Source Movement Is Changing Education

Submitted by
ftblguy
ftblguy writes: "MIT's Open CourseWare program provides a great example of how the open source movement is rapidly changing education. The Online Education Database also lists Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, Linux, Firefox, and Google as some of the other open source in education success stories. Open source and open access resources have changed how colleges, organizations, instructors, and prospective students use software, operating systems and online documents for educational purposes. And, in most cases, each success story also has served as a springboard to create more open source projects."
Democrats

Submission + - Who to thank for the Daylight Savings Time Change

Submitted by steverar
steverar writes: If you're in IT and having "fun" making sure everything's (OS, phone system, patient monitors, Blackberries, etc. ) updated/patched for the new Daylight Saving Time change coming March 11th, please thank Rep. Ed Markey. He sponsored and attached the amendment to the Energy Act of 2005. Read about him here http://markey.house.gov/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=view&id=2624&Itemid=141

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