Comment Re:Yes but... (Score 1) 174
Woosh!!!
An Open Source Coffee Machine 99
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Source Coffee Machine [video link] is a recycled coffee machine, controlled by a PC running Beremiz, and using some MicroMod CANopen I/O nodes from Peak-System. This machine have been prepared by Peak-System and Lolitech for SCS-Paris-08 exhibition. It served free coffee during four days at Peak-System's booth, and has been donated to IUT of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France, so that students can have fun practicing automation."
Comment Re:Vim tips (Score 1) 702
Physics Elevator
4
This one stops at all the theoretical floors.
Bye Bye Bananas — the Return of Panama Disease 519
Ant sends in a disturbing report in The Scientist on an imminent threat to worldwide banana production. "The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... [Now] Panama disease — or Fusarium wilt of banana — is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions..."
The Squid's Beak May Revolutionize Engineering 79
Ace905 writes "For years the razor-sharp beak that squid use to eat their prey has posed a puzzle to scientists. Squid are soft and fragile, but have a beak as dense as rock and sharp enough to break through hard shells. Scientists have long wondered why the beak doesn't injure the squid itself as is uses it. New research has just been published in the the journal Science that explains the phenomenon. One of the researchers described the squid beak as 'like placing an X-Acto blade in a block of fairly firm Jell-O and then trying to use it to chop celery.' Careful examination shows that the beak is formed in a gradient of density, becoming harder towards the tip end. Understanding how to make such hardness gradients could revolutionize engineering anywhere that 'interfaces between soft and hard materials [are required].' One of the first applications researchers envision is prosthetic limbs."
Tivo Tries, Cancels PayPerPost Ad Strategy 62
Tivo tries out PayPerPost- essentially pseudo viral marketing where you pay people for creating advertising for you and getting it out on the net. Unsurprisingly, when this all came out, people complained and they killed the program and tried to pull the videos when they realized that they were looking like tools.
Hans Reiser Interview from Prison 611
JLester writes "Wired Magazine has an interview this month with Hans Reiser (of the ReiserFS journaling file system for Linux) from prison. It contains more details about the murder case against him. Some of the questions still go unanswered though."
Search for Higgs "God Particle" Gets Interesing 392
holy_calamity writes "The Large Hadron Collider is in trouble again. It will start work sometime in spring 2008, not November this year as planned. The delay has been blamed on an 'accumulation of minor setbacks,' and comes on top of a 'design fault' that saw breakdown of magnets supplied by the competing Fermilab. Yesterday Slate nicely rounded up increasingly loud rumors among physicists that Fermilab may already have seen the Higgs particle, the 'holy grail of particle physics' the LHC was build to find."
Ext3cow Versioning File System Released For 2.6 241
Zachary Peterson writes "Ext3cow, an open-source versioning file system based on ext3, has been released for the 2.6 Linux kernel. Ext3cow allows users to view their file system as it appeared at any point in time through a natural, time-shifting interface. This is can be very useful for revision control, intrusion detection, preventing data loss, and meeting the requirements of data retention legislation. See the link for kernel patches and details."
Feed Review: Photoshop CS3 (macworld.com)
Feed NASA, DoD in underwater astronaut doc-bot trial (theregister.com)
IP-controlled surgery may give new meaning to the term 'hacker'
American surgeons will carry out a realistic simulation of zero-gee robotic surgery next month, the Associated Press reports.
Submission + - The Slashdot effect
Emmanuel Cecchet writes: "The LabOS and DSLab research groups at EPFL are studying the Slashdot effect . They are interested in people who would like to share experiences or traces of Slashdot/Digg/Fark effects on their systems to complement the model and impact analysis.
There is also a Slashdot distributed load generator in the works for those who would like to test if their website can handle a Slashdot effect."
There is also a Slashdot distributed load generator in the works for those who would like to test if their website can handle a Slashdot effect."
Submission + - Easy-to-make material scratches diamond
holy_calamity writes: A material tough enough to scratch diamond that can be made without resorting to massive pressure has been developed at UCLA. A regular furnace and a zap of current is enough to meld boron with the metal rhenium.
What MSN, Google, Yahoo and AOL Know About You 169
hotgist writes "America's top four Internet companies, Google, Yahoo,
AOL and Microsoft's MSN, promise they will protect the personal information of
people who use their online services to search, shop and socialize. But a close
read of their privacy policies reveals as much exposure as protection. The
massive amounts of data these companies collect, which can include records of
the searches you make, the health problems you research and the investments you
monitor, can be requested by government investigators and subpoenaed by your
legal adversaries. But this same information is generally not available to you."
