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Music

Grateful Dead Percussionist Makes Music From Supernovas 57

Posted by kdawson from the music-of-the-exploding-spheres dept.
At the "Cosmology At the Beach" conference earlier this month, Grammy-award winning percussionist Mickey Hart performed a composition inspired by the eruptions of supernovae. "Keith Jackson, a Berkeley Lab computer scientist who is also a musician, lent his talents to the project, starting with gathering data from astrophysicists like those at the Berkeley Lab’s Nearby Supernova Factory, which collects data from telescopes in space and on earth to quickly detect and analyze short-lived supernovas. 'If you think about it, it's all electromagnetic data — but with a very high frequency,' Jackson said of the raw data. "What we did is turn it into sound by slowing down the frequency and "stretching" it into an audio form. Both light and sound are all wave forms — just at different frequencies. Our goal was to turn the electromagnetic data into audio data while still preserving the science.'"
Education

Submission + - Online schools vulnerable to Financial Aid fraud (chronicle.com)

Submitted by Math.sqrt(-1)
Math.sqrt(-1) writes: Math.sqrt(-1) writes "Verification of student identity in online courses is a major challenge for many colleges and universities. In Arizona, Trenda Halton was able to defraud the federal government of over half a million dollars in financial aid. Halton involved dozens of people who she recruited at "straw" students. Using data collected from her accomplices, Halton would submit admission and financial aid information to Rio Salado College and the U.S. Dept of Education. Then she'd log in to the online courses as the fake student so that the college would see that she had "participated" in class. The college would then process the financial aid request, deduct college expenses and send the remaining balance to the straw students, who would in turn, fork over a chunk to Halton..

This isn't new, and it's not unique. The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 requires schools to provide some means of verifying the identity of online students, but the bill failed to disclose what methods are to be used for said verification. As such, many schools have little or no identity verification procedures in place and a more susceptible to fraud that we'd like to believe."

Comment Re:Better Then CGI (Score 1) 271

by Math.sqrt(-1) (#30146796) Attached to: 1977 Star Wars Computer Graphics
Totally agreeing with you there. The thing that made the original Star Wars Trilogy so spectacular was not the special effects, but the story. Sure, the special effects were incredible for the time (and are still pretty damned impressive these 30 years later), but a lot of movies using "state of the art" special effects failed to achieve anything near that status and acclaim of any of the original Trilogy films (think Tron). But now it's worse than ever. These days, with the advent of relatively inexpensive CGI effects, directors and producers can focus more on creating dazzling eye candy without paying much attention to the quality of the script. I'm starting to sound somewhat curmudgeonly now, aren't I?
Sci-Fi

Submission + - 1977 Star Wars computer graphics (toplessrobot.com)

Submitted by Noryungi
Noryungi writes: The interestingly named "Topless Robot" has a real trip down memory lane: how the computer graphics of the original Star Wars movie were made. The article points to thisYouTube video of a short documentary made by Larry Cuba, the original artist, explains how he did it. In 1977. Computer graphics and Star Wars: what could be better?

Comment Re:Actually (Score 2, Interesting) 467

by Math.sqrt(-1) (#30045394) Attached to: Attack of the PowerPoint-Wielding Professors
I work as a technology specialist for distance learning in a community college, and when instructors want to put their courses online, a good number of them will simply ask us to convert their PPT presentations to a web-ready format, and they'll do a voice-over which consists of little more than a reading of the slides. Then, they'll post an announcement at the beginning of each week saying, "Read Chapter x, watch the PPT, and take the quiz" and think they're done. This happens with some of our finest instructors. What they fail to understand is that a PowerPoint does not a lesson make. While it was once an innovative tool which could be used to enhance a presentation, PowerPoint has turned into a crutch for those who are too lazy to explore new alternatives. Of course, in education, we also find that many of the instructors are Luddites who are reluctant to use PowerPoint in the first place. But once they start using it, it's a real hard sell to get them to use any alternatives.
Earth

Save the Planet, Eat Your Dog 942

Posted by timothy from the children-too-stringy dept.
R3d M3rcury writes "New Zealand's Dominion Post reports on a new book just released, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living. In this book, they compare the environmental footprint of our housepets to other things that we own. Like that German Shepherd? It consumes more resources than two Toyota SUVs. Cats are a little less than a Volkswagen Golf. Two hamsters are about the same as a plasma TV. Their suggestions? Chickens, rabbits, and pigs. But only if you eat them."
The Internet

Bringing Convenience and Open Source Methods To Higher Education 165

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-have-a-mcdegree-and-a-diet-coke dept.
Business Week has a piece discussing the effects internet-based technology and open sharing are having on the standards of higher education. The author says every product's success or failure depends on its fidelity — the overall quality of experience — and convenience. Since the internet has made the sharing of even expert-level knowledge convenient, he wonders how long it will be until some school or company raises the fidelity enough to have their degrees accepted alongside those of professional-grade colleges. Quoting: "Once in a while, a market gets completely out of balance. Forces conspire to prevent either a high-fidelity or high-convenience player from emerging. All the offerings crowd around one end or the other. Eventually, someone nails a disruptive approach. Customers and competitors rush in and the marketplace wonders why that great idea didn't come sooner. The higher education market is a lot like that. For centuries the university model dominated because nothing else worked. No technology existed that might deliver an interactive, engaging educational experience without gathering students and teachers in the same physical space. ... These days broadband Internet, video games, social networks, and other developments could combine to create an online, inexpensive, super-convenient model for higher education. You wouldn't get the sights and sounds of a campus, personal contact with professors, or beer-soaked frat parties, but you'd end up with the knowledge you need and the degree to prove it."
The Internet

AVG Backs Down From Flooding the Internet 297

Posted by timothy from the time-off-for-good-behavior dept.
Simon Wright writes "As a website that is featured heavily in many Google Australia search results, Whirlpool (Australia's largest technology forum) has been particularly affected by AVG's LinkScanner. We've seen a traffic increase as much as 12 hits per second from these bots. So we've actively and loudly campaigned against this move by AVG, encouraging all users of AVG 8.0 to uninstall the product. The discussion starts here. And AVG's backing down is posted here." From that URL:"'As promised, I am letting you know that the latest update for AVG Free edition has addressed and rectified the issue that [Whirlpool] have brought to our attention. This update has now been released to users and has also been built into the latest installation package for AVG Free.' — Peter Cameron, Managing Director, AVG Australia."

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