Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses

Submission + - 10 Great Tech Flops Of 2010

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: The past year saw the introduction of the iPad, a new generation of iPhone, and the continued dominance of Facebook. But it's also worth looking at some of the biggest failures of the year, when companies made decisions that were sometimes inexplicable and often just plain wrong.
Apple

Submission + - Apple Engineer Builds Ancient Computer With Legos

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: Legos are not just for kids' toys: an engineer at Apple has proven they can be used for a technological history lesson. Andrew Carol, an engineer at Apple, recently used his spare time to build the Antikythera Mechanism out of Lego bricks. The Antikythera Mechanism is an Ancient Greek mechanical computer used to calculate astronomical positions. It is his second major lego project after building a Babbage Difference Engine, the 19th century automatic, mechanical calculator used to tabulate polynomial functions.
Science

Submission + - Fusion Power Comes A Step Closer

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: One of the holy grails of energy is fusion — the same source of power that makes stars shine. Humans may now be a step closer to harnessing that energy. Dennis Whyte, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the co-author on several papers detailing experiments with a new way of running a small fusion reactor. His team has discovered how to find a kind of "goldilocks mode" that allows hot plasma to undergo fusion without the instabilities that make containing it such a problem.
Crime

Submission + - Wikileaks founder arrested by British police

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was arrested on Tuesday in relation to a Swedish sex-crime case, the London Metropolitan Police said. Interpol, the international police agency, had issued a 'red notice' last week for Assange, who had been hiding out in an undisclosed location till recently. The notice is not equivalent of an arrest warrant, but he was charged with sex crimes and was put on the 'wanted' list.
NASA

Submission + - US top secret space shuttle to return to Earth

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: The U.S. Airforce's top secret unmanned space shuttle is set to return to earth next week, after spending seven months in the space. X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle, which was built by Boeing Co.'s advanced research lab, Phantom Works, is an American unmanned spaceplane. It is operated by the U.S. Air Force for orbital spaceflight missions intended to demonstrate reusable space technologies.
Patents

Submission + - Google to translate European Patents 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Internet search company Google Inc on Tuesday said it has signed a deal with the European Patent Office (EPO) to use the company’s technology to translate patents into 29 European languages that will pave the way for a simplified European patent system. Google’s deal, which comes after years of infighting, is expected to make it easier for inventors and scientists from across the continent to access information on patents with the EPO that has 38 member countries.
Medicine

Submission + - Plasmonic biosensor developed to detect live virus

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers in the United States have developed a new biosensor from plasmonic nanohole arrays to detect dangerous viruses like Ebola and Marburg. The tool could be used in developing nations, airports and other places where natural or man-made outbreaks could erupt.The new biosensor is the first to detect intact viruses by exploiting plasmonic nanohole arrays, or arrays of apertures with diameters of about 200 to 350 nanometers on metallic films that transmit light more strongly at certain wavelengths.
Technology

Submission + - US heats up supercomputer battle with China

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: After being dethroned by China as the world's fastest supercomputer maker, US has upped the ante and is creating two 20-petaflop supercomputers to reclaim the top position for the most powerful supercomputer.
Medicine

Submission + - DOJ: Genes Are Not Patentable

Submitted by oxide7
oxide7 writes: In a strike against patenting genes, the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that says genes are part of nature, and therefore not patentable. The brief is a reversal of a longstanding policy, and could bring the U.S. in closer agreement with countries such as Brazil, that do not allow gene patents.
Software

Submission + - The Complications Of Owning Software

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: When someone buys something at a store, they assume they own it. A recent court ruling says that isn't so with software — and that means that unlike a used car, you can't resell it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Vernor v. Autodesk that an individual who purchases and then resells secondhand software is not the "owner" of that copy of the software. Therefore, that person cannot resell it if the license agreement accompanying the software restricts such resale. "What if you have a Honda Accord with software running the navigation and radio systems? If Honda were to put in a software licensing agreement, what's the difference between that and regular software? It would mean you wouldn't be able to resell the Honda Accord. You could do this with anything that runs software — microwaves, TVs, cell phones,et cetera," Halpern said.
Technology

Submission + - China makes World's fastest supercomputer 1

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: China has replaced United States as the maker of the world's fastest supercomputer. A Chinese research center has made the world's faster super computer — named as Tianhe-1A, which was released at a national conference on high-performance computers (HPC) in China. Made at a cost of over $88 million, Tianhe-1A is theoretically able to do more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop) at peak speed. Tianhe-1A 's peak performance reaches 1.206 petaflops, and it runs at 563.1 teraflops (1,000 teraflops is equal to one petaflop) on the Linpack benchmark.

Submission + - Researchers Find a 'Liberal Gene'

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Liberals may owe their political outlook partly to their genetic make-up, according to new research from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called DRD4. The study's authors say this is the first research to identify a specific gene that predisposes people to certain political views.
Software

Submission + - Software Finds Plagiarism In Research

Submitted by shmG
shmG writes: Researchers from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute have created a seek-and-destroy program — for plagiarism. Called ET Blast, it's designed to find plagiarism in scientific papers, It does a full-text analysis, and then looks for similar publications in several databases. "We have better literature," Garner said. "There are abstracts and full papers, and a database called Crisp, where you compare stuff to every grant the NIH gets. It's compared to any research that's been funded."
Transportation

Submission + - US Gov. unleashes funds for high-speed rail

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Transportation Department has notified lawmakers of the release of hundreds of millions of dollars for proposed high-speed rail projects in various states. California, which has been in the forefront of national efforts to build high-speed train network which would wean the people away from the deeply-entrenched automobile culture, will get the biggest share of the new federal aid. The report said the department will make a formal announcement about the funding on Thursday, days before crucial mid-term elections.
Technology

Submission + - Lasers A Step Closer To Replacing Wire

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Telephone calls long ago moved to fiber optic cables because they can carry thousands of times as much information as a copper wire. But computer components still use metal wires to talk to each other. That is likely to change. A team has built a set of tiny lasers on silicon chips. The lasers are laid on a silicon substrate, just like ordinary microchip components. A layer of a polymer is laid down on top, and that acts as a waveguide for the laser light. At the other end is a photodetector.

Slashdot Top Deals

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

Close