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Submission + - James Gosling Grades Oracle's Handling of Sun's Tech

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: With the four-year anniversary of Oracle's Sun Microsystems acquisition looming, InfoWorld reached out to Java founder James Gosling to rate how Oracle has done in shepherding Sun technology. Gosling gives Oracle eyebrow-raising grades, lauding Oracle's handling of Java, despite his past acrimony toward Oracle over Java (remember those T-shirts?), and giving Oracle a flat-out failing grade on what has become of Solaris OS.

Submission + - A Spider That Spins an Electric Web (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The garden cross spider, Araneus diadematus, tailors a web containing carefully crafted patterns of water and silk that efficiently conducts electricity, according to new research. The webs cause tiny distortions in Earth’s electric field within a few millimeters of their location. This allows the web to literally spring toward prey as well as small charged particles like pollen and pollutants. According to the authors, such webs could also be used to monitor environmental pollution, as they are as efficient as industrial sensors at detecting and capturing airborne pollutants, such as pesticides.

Submission + - China: The Next Space Superpower (ieee.org)

Submitted by the_newsbeagle
the_newsbeagle writes: "As 2014 dawns, China has the most active and ambitious space program in the world," says this article. While it's true that the Chinese space agency is just now reaching milestones that the U.S. and Russia reached 40 years ago (its first lunar rover landed in December), the Chinese government's strong support for space exploration means that it's catching up fast. On the agenda for the next decade: A space station to rival the ISS, a new spaceport, new heavy-lift rockets, a global satellite navigation system to rival GPS, and China's first space science satellites.

Submission + - Linux Distributions Storing Wi-Fi Passwords in Plain Text

Submitted by Bill Dimm
Bill Dimm writes: An article on Softpedia claims that Linux distributions using NetworkManager are storing Wi-Fi passwords in plain text in /etc by default. The article recommends encrypting the full disk or removing NetworkManager and using a different tool like netctl. Some of the article comments claim the article is FUD. Is this a real problem?

Submission + - Physicist Peter Higgs: No University Would Employ Me Today (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Peter Higgs, the physicist who laid the groundwork for the discovery of the Higgs boson, and winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics, says he doubts any university would give him a job today. Higgs says universities wouldn't consider him productive enough; though the papers he published were important and of high quality, he didn't have the volume necessary for serious consideration in today's competitive employment environment. 'He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964." Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.' His comments highlight the absurdity of the current system for finding researchers in academia. How many researchers of Higgs' caliber have been turned down for similar reasons?

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