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Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

Posted by kdawson from the hot-bits dept.
supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus from the type-A-negative-personality dept.
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
The Military

Aging Nuclear Stockpile Good For Decades To Come 160

Posted by kdawson from the still-go-boom dept.
pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Jason panel, an independent group of scientists advising the federal government on issues of science and technology, has concluded that the program to refurbish aging nuclear arms is sufficient to guarantee their destructiveness for decades to come, obviating a need for a costly new generation of more reliable warheads, as proposed by former President Bush. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and other Republicans have argued that concerns are growing over the reliability of the US's aging nuclear stockpile, and that the possible need for new designs means the nation should retain the right to conduct underground tests of new nuclear weapons. The existing warheads were originally designed for relatively short lifetimes and frequent replacement with better models, but such modernization ended after the US quit testing nuclear arms in 1992. All weapons that remain in the arsenal must now undergo a refurbishment process, known as life extension. The Jason panel found no evidence that the accumulated changes from aging and refurbishment posed any threat to weapon destructiveness, and that the 'lifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss of confidence.' But the panel added that federal indifference could undermine the nuclear refurbishment program (as this report from last May illustrates). Quoting the report (PDF): 'The study team is concerned that this expertise is threatened by lack of program stability, perceived lack of mission importance and degradation of the work environment.'"
Portables

Netbooks Have Higher Failure Rate Than Laptops 264

Posted by kdawson from the get-what-you-pay-for-sometimes dept.
Barence writes "Netbooks are more likely to fail within the first year than their more expensive laptop brethren, according to new research. SquareTrade, an independent US warranty provider, analyzed the failure rates of more than 30,000 laptops covered by its own warranties. It found that 5.8% of netbooks malfunctioned within the first year, compared to 4.7% for regular laptops and 4.2% for premium laptops costing more than $1,000. The research also raises question marks over the legendary reliability of Macs. Three PC manufacturers — Asus, Toshiba, and Sony — boasted better reliability rates than Apple. Macs have a 17.4% malfunction rate over three years, compared to market-leader Asus, which has a 15.6% failure rate. HP was the worst of the nine PC vendors listed, with a malfunction rate of 25.6% over three years."
The Courts

Xbox Live Class Action Being Investigated 453

Posted by kdawson from the modders-unite dept.
eldavojohn writes "Were you negatively affected by the recent ban on Xbox Live for modifying hardware you own? Did you modify yours for homebrew or altering things you paid for and not to engage in piracy? Abington IP would like to hear from you and may be able to help. From that page: 'If you are an Xbox Live subscriber, had your modified Xbox console banned from Xbox Live, were not refunded a prorated sum for the time left on your subscription, or have experienced other problems as a result of being banned, and would like to participate in a class action against Microsoft, please submit your information below.' Someone is finally standing up for the legitimate hobbyists. Should Microsoft worry?"
Patents

Patent Issued For Podcasting 150

Posted by kdawson from the next-a-patent-on-the-eardrum dept.
pickens writes "The EFF is reaching out for help after a company called Volomedia got the Patent Office to grant them exclusive rights to 'a method for providing episodic media' that could threaten the community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. 'It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years,' writes Rebecca Jeschke. 'Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners.' To bust this patent, EFF is looking for additional 'prior art' — evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use (PDF) before November 19, 2003. 'In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes.'"
Space

Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station 507

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lost-in-space dept.
Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."
Windows

Submission + - Creating history for Patch and Server changes

Submitted by
dos2
dos2 writes: "I am trying to find the best approach to keep a history of changes made to servers. This would include any patches installed. Also any services that may have been added or moved (as in our case between the old and new domain). I'd like to have someone that others can reference if something stops working. What methods do other network admins use to keep track?"
Programming

Submission + - P = NP Finally Proved?

Submitted by Yosi
Yosi writes: Ashay Dharwadker claims to have proved that P = NP. In a paper he publishes on his website he claims to have found a polynomial algorithm for finding maximal independent sets in a graph and provides actual source code implementation of the proposed algorithm. If this is indeed true, I guess a lot of professors will start looking for a new job.
Programming

Submission + - An Overview of Parallelism

Submitted by Mortimer.CA
Mortimer.CA writes: Hello,

Tim Bray points out a recently released report from Berkley entitled "The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View from Berkeley".

Generally they conclude that the 'evolutionary approach to parallel hardware and software may work from 2 or 8 processor systems, but is likely to face diminishing returns as 16 and 32 processor systems are realized, just as returns fell with greater instruction-level parallelism.' This assumes things stay "evolutionary" and that programming stays more or less how it has done in previous years (though languages like Erlang can probably help to change this view).

Some of the 'conventional wisdowms', and their replacements, that they list are:
    • Old CW: Power is free, but transistors are expensive.
    • New CW is the "Power wall": Power is expensive, but transistors are "free". That is, we can put more transistors on a chip than we have the power to turn on.
    • Old CW: Monolithic uniprocessors in silicon are reliable internally, with errors occurring only at the pins.
    • New CW: As chips drop below 65 nm feature sizes, they will have high soft and hard error rates.
    • Old CW: Multiply is slow, but load and store is fast.
    • New CW is the "Memory wall" [Wulf and McKee 1995]: Load and store is slow, but multiply is fast. [...]
    • Old CW: Don't bother parallelizing your application, as you can just wait a little while and run it on a much faster sequential computer.
    • New CW: It will be a very long wait for a faster sequential computer (see above).
Space

Submission + - Pluto Probe Snaps Jupiter Pictures

Submitted by
sighted
sighted writes: "The New Horizons probe, on its way to Pluto and beyond, is now speeding toward Jupiter. Today the team released some of the early data and pictures, which are the first close-range shots of the giant planet since the robotic Cassini spacecraft passed that way in 2001."
Television

Submission + - Savage Myth Busted

Submitted by
8g
8g writes: "Mythbusting Adam Savage gave a candid interview about science, safety, and sci-fi. He didn't mince words about his passion and gift for problem-solving and the scientific method, the flattery of Slashdot lovin', and the pre-pubescent power of Legos."
Operating Systems

Submission + - Linux KVM Virtualization Performance

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine is one of the features that will be introduced with the Linux 2.6.20 kernel. KVM (unlike Xen in para-virtualization mode) supports full virtualization on supported Intel and AMD processors so it does not require any modifications to the guest operating system. KVM also supports running Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit "out of the box". Phoronix has taken a look at the Linux virtualization performance as they compare the Kernel-based Virtual Machine to Xen 3.0.3 and QEMU with its binary-only kqemu accelerator.

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Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

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