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Comment Budget, etc. (Score 5, Informative) 305

by v1x (#30563760) Attached to: Critics Call For NASA TV To "Liven Up"

The network's budget -- $1.5 million a year -- is a pittance even compared with certain programs on National Public Radio, he said, and NASA TV's full-time staff of 18 people, based in Washington, D.C., cannot hope to create the sort of polished productions that grace "Nova" and the Discovery Channel.

That about explains it all for me. Given their budget, does it really surprise anyone that their programming isn't as 'lively' as some of the other networks? In addition, there are people like myself who simply prefer getting the facts, and find more recent programming from networks like Discovery to be somewhat sensational and lightweight in content.
Operating Systems

FreeBSD 8.0 Released 235

Posted by timothy from the to-be-thankful dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 8 stable release. Some of the highlights: Xen DomU support, network stack virtualization, stack-smashing protection, TTY layer rewrite, much improved ZFS v13, a new USB stack, multicast updates including IGMPv3, vimage — a new virtualization container, Fedora 10 Linux binary compatibility to run Linux software such as Flash 10 and others, trusted BSD MAC (Mandatory Access Control), and rewritten NFS client/server introducing NFSv4. Inclusion of improved device mmap() extensions will allow the technical implementation of a 64-bit Nvidia display driver for the x86-64 platform. The GNOME desktop environment has been upgraded to 2.26.3, KDE to 4.3.1, and Firefox to 3.5.5. There is also an in-depth look at the new features and major architectural changes in FreeBSD 8.0, including a screenshot tour, upgrade instructions are posted here. You can grab the latest version from FreeBSD from the mirrors (main ftp server) or via BitTorrent. Please consider making a donation and help us to spread the word by tweeting and blogging about the drive and release."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"
Microsoft

Tag Images With Your Mind 64

Posted by samzenpus from the typing-is-hard dept.
blee37 writes "Researchers at Microsoft have invented a system for tagging images by reading brain scans from an electroencephalograph (EEG). Tagging images is an important task because many images on the web are unlabeled and have no semantic information. This new method allows an appropriate tag to be generated by an AI algorithm interpreting the EEG scan of a person's brain while they view an image. The person need only view the image for as little as 500 ms. Other current methods for generating tags include flat out paying people to do it manually, putting the task on Amazon Mechanical Turk, or using Google Image Labeler."

Comment Re:How the mighty have fallen (Score 2, Insightful) 116

by v1x (#28912237) Attached to: IBM Uses Call-Detail Records To Identify "Friends"

I guess it was a matter of time before "IBM India Research Lab" produced something like this. They certainly haven't been producing any real business machines or providing decent customer service to IBM Global Services customers.

I fail to understand the rationale (if there is one) behind how the geographic location of a research project might make a difference, but even so, it would appear that the corresponding author in the manuscript is from 'University of Maryland, Baltimore County.' Apart from the above statement, I also do not understand the wisdom behind expecting 'customer service' from a 'Research Lab,' simply because it is located in India--apparently IBM has research labs in many other parts of the world, but there isn't an unspoken expectation of 'customer service' from research labs anywhere else in the world.
Education

Duke Demands Proof of Infringement From RIAA 159

Posted by Soulskill from the bluff-called dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report at p2pnet, Duke University has told the RIAA that it will no longer forward the RIAA's 'early settlement' letters to its students unless the RIAA submits 'evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student,' and said that 'if the RIAA can't prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we're not going to comply.' While it is good news that a university is requiring the RIAA to put up or shut up, the forwarding — or not forwarding — of letters is pretty insignificant. What I want to know is this: 'When the RIAA comes knocking with its Star Chamber, ex parte, 'John Doe' litigation to get the students' identities, is the University going to go to bat for the students and fight the litigation on the ground that it's based on zero evidence, and on the ground that the students weren't given prior notice and an opportunity to be heard?' Over 1,000 infringement notices were sent to Duke students in the last year."
Media

Scientists Create Easier Way To Embed Objects Into Video 236

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the advertising-agency-wet-dream dept.
Ashutosh Saxena writes "Stanford artificial intelligence researchers have developed software that makes it easy to reach inside an existing video and place a photo on the wall so realistically that it looks like it was there from the beginning. The photo is not pasted on top of the existing video, but embedded in it. It works for videos as well — you can play a video on a wall inside your video. The technology can cheaply do some of the tricks normally performed by expensive commercial editing systems. The researchers suggest that anyone with a video camera might earn some spending money by agreeing to have unobtrusive corporate logos placed inside their videos before they are posted online."
Unix

(Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks? 2362

Posted by timothy from the sed-is-underrated dept.

So the other day I messaged another admin from the console using the regular old 'write' command (as I've been doing for over 10 years). To my surprise he didn't know how to respond back to me (he had to call me on the phone) and had never even known you could do that. That got me thinking that there's probably lots of things like that, and likely things I've never heard of. What sorts of things do you take for granted as a natural part of Unix that other people are surprised at?
United States

Barack Obama Wins US Presidency 3709

Posted by CmdrTaco from the enough-of-that-now-this dept.
Last night, around 11pm, all the major networks announced that Senator Barack Obama had won the election. Soon after, Senator McCain conceded. There were no crazy partisan court hearings, just a simple election. This is your chance to talk about it and what it means for the future of our nation.
Space

Colliding Galaxies Reveal Colossal Black Holes 134

Posted by CmdrTaco from the duck-and-cover dept.
Matt_dk writes "New observations made with the Submillimeter Array of telescopes in Hawaii suggest that black holes — thought to exist in many, if not all, galaxies — were common even in the early Universe, when galaxies were just beginning to form. Astronomers have found two very different galaxies in the distant Universe, both with colossal black holes at their hearts, involved in a spectacular collision."
Communications

Multitasking Makes You Stupid and Slow 551

Posted by kdawson from the knew-it-all-along dept.
Reverse Gear recommends a long and interesting article over at The Atlantic in which Walter Kirn talks about the scientific results that support his claim and his own experiences with multitasking: that it destroys our ability to focus. "Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires — the constant switching and pivoting — energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we're supposed to be concentrating on... studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy."
Security

OpenSSL Revalidated Following Suspension 51

Posted by Zonk from the can't-keep-a-penguin-down dept.
lisah writes "Despite what looks like an organized effort to prevent it, OpenSSL has been revalidated by an independent testing agency for its ability to securely manage sensitive data and is ready for use by governmental agencies like the Department of Defense. According to the Open Source Software Institute, who has been overseeing the validation process for the last five years (something that typically only takes a few months), it seems that the idea of an open source SSL toolkit didn't sit right with proprietary vendors of similar products. A FUD campaign was launched against OpenSSL that resulted in a temporary suspension of its validation. Developers and volunteers refused to give up the ghost until the validation was reinstated, and Linux.com has the story of the project's long road to success." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Media (Apple)

All Flash iPod Line-up on the Horizon? 183

Posted by Zonk from the they'd-certainly-be-more-throwable dept.
VE3OGG writes "Several news reports are taking note of the opinion of Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora, who seems to think that an all-flash iPod lineup could be coming in the near future. While some point out that this would ultimately super-inflate the cost of iPod production, Tortora rebukes them: '...the late 2005 Nano transition to flash provides a guide as to the point at which the previously mentioned non-cost advantages of flash memory outweigh the cost premium.' He believes that later this year Apple will unveil either a 32GB or 64GB flash-based Video iPod. Of course, like all good analysts, he also throws out some far-fetched claims. These include: the next round of video iPods will also include an iPhone-esque wide touchscreen, WiFi for Apple TV streaming, and GPS functionality. Will this be the start of a super-high-end iPod line, or perhaps a middle-of-the-road iPod Video?"
Security

Submission + - OpenSSL FIPS Validation Delayed by FUD

Submitted by
nile_list
nile_list writes: "Linux.com reports that OpenSSL regained its FIPS 140-2 validation, required for crypto software used by the government to handle sensitive data. It took them over 5 years what usually takes a few months. One of the complications was new testing procedures and the fact that users can compile OpenSSL with different functionality, resulting in needing to test the actual source code instead of just binaries. The other: 'According to John Weathersby, executive director for OSSI, several proprietary software companies with similar products mounted a campaign to delay, if not totally derail, the validation of an open source SSL toolkit.' Among the complaints sent to the testing body was fear of Commie code: 'Apparently, OpenSSL was accused of having "Communist code" in it simply because a developer in Russia had worked on it.'"

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