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Linux

Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest 460

Posted by CmdrTaco from the get-yer-edit-on dept.
prourl writes "The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the 2010 'We're Linux' video contest. The contest seeks to find the best user-generated videos that demonstrate what Linux means to those who use it and inspire others to try it." Sadly, the winner will almost certainly be edited in Final Cut Pro on a Mac ;)
Australia

Hackers Attack AU Websites To Protest Censorship 334

Posted by CmdrTaco from the and-it-has-a-funny-name-too dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A band of cyber-attackers has taken down the Australian Parliament House website and hacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's website in coordinated protests against government plans to filter the Internet. The group responsible, called Anonymous, is known for coordinated Internet attacks against Scientology and other groups in the past. It recently turned its attention against the AU government after it said in December that it would block access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse."
Apple

Opera For iPhone To Test Apple's Resolve 292

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-not-gonna-work dept.
Barence writes "Opera is launching a version of its Mini browser for the iPhone in what could prove a landmark decision for Apple's app gatekeepers. Apple has been traditionally hostile to rival browsers, with Mozilla claiming that Apple made it 'too hard' for its rivals to develop a browser for the iPhone. However, Opera remains bullishly confident that its app will be approved. 'We have not submitted Opera Mini to the Apple App store,' an Opera spokesperson told PC Pro. 'However, we hope that Apple will not deny their users a choice in web browsing experience.'" I can't imagine what would motivate them to do that.
Medicine

Hearts Actually Can Break 136

Posted by kdawson from the tako-tsubo dept.
DesScorp writes "It seems that there's a grain of truth to one old wives' tale; it turns out that you really can die of a broken heart, especially if you're a post-menopausal woman. The Wall Street Journal reports on a phenomena called 'broken-heart syndrome,' which often occurs after great emotional distress. Quoting: 'In a conventional heart attack, an obstructed artery starves the heart muscle of oxygenated blood, quickly resulting in the death of tissue and potentially permanently compromising heart function. In contrast, the heart muscle in broken-heart-syndrome patients is stunned in the adrenaline surge and appears to go into hibernation. Little tissue is lost.' In the article a doctor notes, 'The cells are alive, but mechanically or electrically disabled.' Documented cases track heart attacks in people with seemingly healthy hearts after the grief of the death of a loved one. Intense feelings can cause the heart actually to change shape. Doctors call this 'tako-tsubo,' after the Japanese phrase for 'octopus trap,' so called because the syndrome was first identified by a Japanese doctor who noticed the strange shape in the left ventricle. Doctors note that while strong emotions like grief are usually associated with the syndrome, stress or a migraine can also trigger such heart attacks."
Programming

Submission + - SPAM: How Do You Accurately Estimate Programming Time?

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: It can take a fairly stable team of programmers as long as 6 months to get to a point where they're estimating programming time fairly close to actuals, says Suvro Upadhyaya, a Senior Software Engineer at Oracle. Accurately estimating programming time is a process of defining limitations, says Upadhyaya. The programmers' experience, domain knowledge, speed vs. quality all come into play and it is highly dependent upon the culture of the team/organization. Upadhyaya uses scrum to estimate programming time. How do you do it?
Link to Original Source

Comment Games introduce new worlds... a molecular world (Score 1) 44

by DrStegman (#31072846) Attached to: Improving Education Through Social Gaming
We use Immune Attack to introduce the Molecular World. Students need details about the world to win the game. Another way to use video games to teach is to have kids create their own games about molecular processes. The kids I was talking about in the story above were busy programming prototypes of "Immune Attack 3.0 The Neuron" using Game Maker.

Games can make abstract concepts and microscopic objects understandable. Games can teach more, Game enhance education, Games cannot replace a teacher, but a teacher can use games to introduce concepts that take years to comprehend through words alone. Why should affinity and diffusion and Michaelis-Menton kinetcs be something that only bio graduate students understand? Doesn't everyone deserve to understand why drugs are addictive and how hormones affect our minds? Shouldn't teenagers have an understanding of emotions and how depression can come and also go...

Of course, these concepts are confusing in lectures... but in game format they are just are strategic tools to winning the next level.... students eat them up just like... like... like a video game!

Check us out at ImmuneAttack.org. Donate to our cause. Or wait for Immune Attack 2.0 in July and then donate!
And let us know what you think!

Melanie Stegman, Ph.D.

Director, Educational Technologies
Federation of American Scientists
FAS.org
ImmuneAttack.org
Software

Submission + - Windows 7 eclipses Vista on Steam (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Jan
Jan writes: We already know that Windows 7 is growing faster than Vista was when it was released, but how fast are gamers adopting it? Pretty darn quickly, according to January 2010 data from Steam, the leader of the digital distribution market. Last month, the percentage of users on Windows 7 eclipsed the number of users on Windows Vista. Windows XP is still leading the pack, but it is under the 50 percent mark.

Data source: SteamIt's also worth noting that Windows 7 is the first version of Windows where gamers are adopting 64-bit faster than 32-bit. In fact, there are more users on Windows 7 64-bit than any other flavor of Windows, except for Windows XP 32-bit. Overall, XP dropped 2.63 percent from the previous month, Vista dropped 2.8 percent, and Windows 7 gained 5.47 percent. At this rate, we would expect Windows 7 to take the crown before the end of the year.
Programming

Call For Scientific Research Code To Be Released 505

Posted by Soulskill from the but-then-people-will-see-how-awful-it-is dept.
Pentagram writes "Professor Ince, writing in the Guardian, has issued a call for scientists to make the code they use in the course of their research publicly available. He focuses specifically on the topical controversies in climate science, and concludes with the view that researchers who are able but unwilling to release programs they use should not be regarded as scientists. Quoting: 'There is enough evidence for us to regard a lot of scientific software with worry. For example Professor Les Hatton, an international expert in software testing resident in the Universities of Kent and Kingston, carried out an extensive analysis of several million lines of scientific code. He showed that the software had an unacceptably high level of detectable inconsistencies. For example, interface inconsistencies between software modules which pass data from one part of a program to another occurred at the rate of one in every seven interfaces on average in the programming language Fortran, and one in every 37 interfaces in the language C. This is hugely worrying when you realise that just one error — just one — will usually invalidate a computer program. What he also discovered, even more worryingly, is that the accuracy of results declined from six significant figures to one significant figure during the running of programs.'"
Software

GIMP 2.8 Will Sport a Redesigned UI 401

Posted by kdawson from the rethinking-it dept.
ceswiedler writes "Ars Technica's Ryan Paul previews the upcoming release of the GIMP. It will include a single-window mode where the user can dock toolbar windows and switch between images via tabs. There are other improvements as well, including docking support in multi-window mode and improvements to the text tool." To get this early preview, Paul compiled version 2.7.1 from the active development branch, along with its dependencies.
Education

Improving Education Through Social Gaming 44

Posted by Soulskill from the i'd-play-a-number-munchers-mmo dept.
A piece up at Mashable explores how some schools and universities are finding success at integrating social gaming into their education curriculum. Various game-related programs are getting assistance these days from sources like the government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "For the less well-to-do educator, the Federation of American Scientists has developed a first-person shooter-inspired cellular biology curriculum. Gamers explore the fully-interactive 3D world of an ill patient and assist the immune system in fighting back a bacterial infection. Dr. Melanie Ann Stegman has been evaluating the educational impacts of the game and is optimistic about her preliminary findings. 'The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing. Their questions were insightful. I felt like I was having a discussion with scientist colleagues,' said Stegman. Perhaps more importantly, the video game excites students about science. Motivating more youngsters to adopt a science-related career track has became a major education initiative of the Obama administration. So desperate to find a solution that motivates students to become scientists, the government has even enlisted Darpa, the Department of Defense’s 'mad scientist' research organization, to figure out a solution."
Cellphones

Google Reduces Its Nexus One Termination Fee 56

Posted by kdawson from the get-out-for-less dept.
CWmike writes "The only smartphone Linus Torvalds doesn't hate is that much less unlikable now that Google has quietly chopped $200 off its early termination fee on the Nexus One. Customers who cancel the service had been on the hook for $550, including a $350 Google cancellation charge. Google has reduced their fee to $150 — but users are still liable for a $200 ETF from T-Mobile. Users have a 14-day grace period during which they do not have to pay either charge, although they may be hit with a restocking fee. The $350 total fee matches one of the highest in the industry, charged by Verizon. Google did not announce the change but simply altered its online terms-of-service document." The price cut could add momentum to a phone that, by one reckoning, costs only $49 unlocked.

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