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Censorship

Modern Warfare 2 Not Recalled In Russia After All 94

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-the-thought-that-counts dept.
thief21 writes "After claims that console versions Modern Warfare 2 had been recalled in Russia due to complaints from politicians and the gaming public over the infamous airport slaughter scene, it turns out the stories were completely untrue. Activision never released a console version of the game in Russia." Instead, they simply edited the notorious scene out of the PC version. They did this of their own volition, since Russia doesn't have a formal ratings committee.
Silicon Graphics

Submission + - How It All Went Wrong for SGI in HPC (hpcwire.com)

Submitted by
dwal
dwal writes: "Interesting remarks from Addison Snell at Tabor Research about what's the saddest part is of Rackable's attempt to acquire SGI's assets out of bankruptcy for a paltry $25 million in cash"
Power

Submission + - Building your own Solar Panel in your Garage (olino.org)

Submitted by
jeroen8
jeroen8 writes: "A Dutch guy was able to build his own solar panel in his garage which is 3 times less expensive than mass produced solar panels currently available on European market. He bought his solar cells on eBay and created his own solar panel. His cost price is only 1.20 euro per Watt Peak (Wp). This makes you wonder if we are not paying too much for mass produced solar panels, which should in theory be a lot less expensive than something you create in your garage. What do you think? Are we paying to much?"
Microsoft

Submission + - TomTom Sues Microsoft For Patent Infringement (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "GPS device maker TomTom has shot back at Microsoft with a claim of patent infringement, after the software giant raised concerns in the Linux community with a recent lawsuit against TomTom. In a suit filed earlier this week, TomTom alleges that Microsoft infringes on four patents in mapping software Microsoft Streets and Trips. TomTom is asking for triple damages for willful infringement, since it says it had notified Microsoft about its alleged infringement. Microsoft said it was reviewing TomTom's filing and that it remains committed to a licensing solution and has been for more than a year."
Biotech

Submission + - Turning Sugar Water into Biofuel (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by bihoy
bihoy writes: It seems that a company bt the name of Virent has come up with a process to turn sugars directly into fuel rather than an ethanol additive.

Virent CEO Lee Edwards talks about the technology in an online vidoe stating that their patented catalysts turn biomass sugars directly into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, not ethanol, so it has a high energy content that can be dropped in to existing infrastructure, says .

There is also an article where he is quoted as saying "I believe we're at the bottom-end of the cycle on crude oil and that in the long-run crude oil will become more expensive," Edwards said in an interview with MarketWatch. "Virent's got a really unique technology that's able to transform sugars from biomass directly into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. In our view that's the right path to take."

Apparently, compared to water-based ethanol, the fuel contains more energy and it's easier to transport via pipeline since it doesn't absorb water and corrode pipes.
Power

Submission + - On-Grid Energy Storage Using Ice

Submitted by
lotho brandybuck
lotho brandybuck writes: "Tuesday I went up to Seattle to browse thru the IEEE Power Systems Conference and Expo.

Energy storage is needed for electrical grid peak loads. There's been a lot of pie in sky stuff out there... flywheels, fuel-cells, battery banks.

It was nice to see someone with a real solution. Ice Energy does HVAC units that freeze water at night, then uses this as an energy sink during the peak electrical load. hours. This works so well because they're taking advantage of the heat-of-fusion (energy needed to melt) of water. A very non-BS thing. In fact, the definition of a ton of HVAC came from the ability to freeze a ton of water in 24 hours.

They had a little booth there with a unit that was slowly melting a 7000lbs tank of ice.. running a little multi-split, keeping their booth-guy a little cooler and a little happier than the other booth people at the show."
Programming

Submission + - Collaborative Academic Writing?

Submitted by Thomas M Hughes
Thomas M Hughes writes: Despite its learning curve, LaTeX is pretty much the standard in academic writing. By abstracting out the substance from the content, it becomes possible to focus heavily on the writing, and then deal with formatting later. However, LaTeX is starting to show it's age, specifically when it comes to collaborative work. One solution to this is to simply pair up LaTeX with version control software (such as Subversion) to allow multiple collaborators to work on the same document at one time. But adding subversion to the mix only seems to increase the learning curve. Is there a way to combine the power of LaTeX with the power of Subversion without scaring off a non-technical writer? The closest I can approximate would be to have something like Lyx (to hide the learning curve of LaTeX) with integrated svn (to hide the learning curve of svn). However, this doesn't seem available. Google Docs is popular right now, but Docs has no support for LaTeX, citation management, or anything remotely resembling decent formatting options. Are there other choices out there?
Space

First Image of a Planet Orbiting a Sun-Like Star 131

Posted by kdawson from the cold-jupiter dept.
Several readers including houbou and DigitumDei sent links to what may be the first-ever image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star (research paper). The giant planet, the mass of 8 Jupiters, orbits its star at 330 AU, or 11 times the distance to Neptune's orbit. If the imaged object does turn out to be a planet — and it's not certain it is — then theories of planet formation may have to be adjusted. "The bulk of the material from which planets might form is significantly closer to the parent star... The outermost parts of such disks wouldn't contain enough material to assemble a Jupiter-mass planet at the distance from the star... at which the Toronto team found the faint object."
Medicine

India Launches Open Source Drug Discovery 30

Posted by timothy from the with-enough-eyes-all-bugs-are-shallow dept.
sas-dot writes "India today launched a unique collaborative programme to discover drugs for infectious diseases common to the developing countries. The 'Open Source Drug Discovery' (OSDD) programme, launched by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), aims to build a consortium of global researchers and bypass the patent regime, which makes drugs expensive." Of course, all those pesky research, development and liability costs help, too.

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