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Earth

Google Wants to Map Indoors, Too 174

Posted by timothy from the where's-the-good-silverware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google maps are getting extended indoors next month with a new app called Micello that takes over where conventional navigators leave off — mapping your route inside of buildings, malls, convention centers and other points of interest. You don't get a 'you are here' blinking dot yet — but they do promise to add one next year using WiFi triangulation. At the introduction next month, Micello will only work in California, but they plan to expand to other major US cities during 2010."

SKA Telescope To Provide a Billion PCs Worth of Processing 186

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the scaling-up-scalability dept.
Sharky2009 writes "IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day)."

Comment Re:One implication (Score 1) 368

by swebster (#28630345) Attached to: Human Sperm Produced In the Laboratory
The sexual orientation is irrelevant. What is perhaps interesting is two people of the same sex conceiving a child. It would be similarly interesting if two heterosexual people of the same sex conceived a child this way (could just be friends or something). I'm not sure if this qualifies as opening a can of worms though. I also don't know much about genetics and the ramifications there...
Education

350,000 Linux (Virtual) Desktops Land In Brazil 109

Posted by timothy from the rip-helio-gracie dept.
xufem writes "Millions of Brazilian schoolchildren will soon be 'brought up right' running Linux on over 350,000 seats each using PC sharing hardware and software from Userful and KDE. This is world's largest virtual desktop deployment and probably also the world's largest Linux deployment, and seems to have been selected over OLPC by Brazil. Definitely a moment to celebrate — and just in time for Brazilian Carnival which starts tomorrow!"
The Media

Time Warner/Viacom Rift Healed, Pending Details 75

Posted by timothy from the idiot-boxers-hit-the-showers dept.
jwilcox154 writes "Yesterday a dispute over fee hikes had threatened a damaging blackout at a minute past midnight Thursday that would have prevented TWC subscribers from watching their favorite shows such as 'SpongeBob SquarePants' and 'The Colbert Report.' The two sides reached an agreement on Thursday, the first of January 2009. The companies stated the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Details must still be finalized over the next few days."
Debian

Debian Lenny Installer RC1 Arrives 81

Posted by timothy from the not-lenny-from-of-mice-and-men dept.
nerdyH writes "It appears that Debian 5.0 (aka "Lenny") will soon take its big binocular eyes out into the wider world. Only two months later than expected, the Debian project has completed the first release candidate of Lenny's installer. Featuring much faster installation from "live" CDs, and expanded support for ARM-based devices such as NAS servers, Lenny has gestated for 19 months, compared to 21 months for the previous "Etch" release. Lookout, world, Debian releases are picking up speed! The download is here."
Earth

Alternatives to Daylight Saving Time? 755

Posted by timothy from the even-ben-franklin-made-some-whoppers dept.
Wellington Grey writes "Daylight saving time almost upon us. The arguments about its possible benefits and drawbacks come up twice every year. Does it save energy or lives? Possibly, but it does definitely cause a great deal of inconvenience. My question is this: what do you think would be the best possible system to replace DST with? What is the best way for humans to deal with the inconsistent amount of light over the year and still foster coordination over disparate time zones?"
Cellphones

Is Anyone Buying T-Mobile's Googlephone? 454

Posted by timothy from the maybe-one-day dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Laura Holson writes in the NY Times that she 'wandered down to the T-Mobile store at Ninth Ave. and 43rd St. in New York City to see what kind of crowds — if any — were lining up to buy the new T-Mobile G1 which went on sale Wednesday' and saw no lines out the door, no crowding at the counter, and a complete lack of crowds. The iPhone appears to still be the gold standard and Etan Horowitz writes that the G1 'doesn't do a great job showcasing its potential. It isn't as intuitive as the iPhone, and it may take average users a while to figure out basic and advanced shortcuts and features' and 'may appeal more to techies who value open-source products and don't mind a somewhat steep learning curve.' Part of the reason for slow interest may also be that T-Mobile's 3G high-speed data network won't be up and running in many cities until the end of the year."
Transportation

Qantas Blames Wireless For Aircraft Incidents 773

Posted by CmdrTaco from the lotta-finger-pointing dept.
musther writes "An Australian airline Qantas Airbus A330-300, suffered 'a sudden change of altitude' on Tuesday. "The mid-air incident resulted in injuries to 74 people, with 51 of them treated by three hospitals in Perth for fractures, lacerations and suspected spinal injuries when the flight bound from Singapore to Perth had a dramatic drop in altitude that hurled passengers around the cabin." Now it seems Qantas is seeking to blame interference from passenger electronics, and it's not the first time; 'In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course.' Is there any precedent for wireless electronics interfering with aircraft systems? Interfering with navigation instruments is one thing, but causing changes in the 'elevator control system' — I would be quite worried if I thought the aircraft could be flown with a bluetooth mouse."
Transportation

Ford To Introduce Restrictive Car Keys For Parents 1224

Posted by kdawson from the no-you-cannot-borrow-my-keys dept.
thesandbender writes "Ford is set to release a management system that will restrict certain aspects of a car's performance based on which key is in the ignition. The speed is limited to 80, you can't turn off traction control, and you can't turn the stereo up to eleven. It's targeted at parents of teenagers and seems like a generally good idea, especially if you get a break on your insurance." The keys will be introduced with the 2010 Focus coupe and will quickly spread to Ford's entire lineup.
The Media

Malaysian Blogger On Trial For Sedition 183

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the because-creating-martyrs-is-good-for-civil-obedience dept.
neonsignal writes "Raja Petra Kamarudin, a Malaysian blogger, is in court under the Internal Security Act, under which he can be detained indefinitely. He is well known for his commentary on the Malaysian government, and was arrested after a piece on the murder of a Mongolian woman, who was allegedly killed by two policeman and an associate of the deputy prime minister."
Social Networks

Facebook Blocks Users From Mentioning BugMeNot.com 448

Posted by CmdrTaco from the sorry-charlie dept.
ThinkingInBinary writes "The other day, I was trying to mention bugmenot.com in my Facebook status, and I discovered to my horror that Facebook blocks the phrase 'bugmenot.com' as "abusive" in status updates, messages, and presumably any other communications on the site. Facebook isn't even listed on BugMeNot, as they requested that logins for Facebook be blocked. This is pretty ridiculous, as I can't even send my friends a message mentioning bugmenot.com!"
Power

The Power Grid Can't Handle Wind Farms 681

Posted by samzenpus from the gone-with-the-wind dept.
DesScorp writes "The Times reports on the problems of adding wind farms to the power grid. Because of the grid's old design, it can't handle the various spikes that wind farms sometimes have, and there's no efficient way to currently move massive amounts of that power from one section of the country to the other. Further complicating things is the fact that under current laws, power grid regulation is a state matter, and the Federal government has comparatively little authority over it right now. Critics are calling for federal authority over the grid, and massive new construction of 'superhighways' to share the wind power wealth nationally. Quoting the article, 'The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.'"
Privacy

Olympic Tickets Contain Microchip With Your Data 254

Posted by kdawson from the what-has-identity-to-do-with-intent dept.
OMNIpotusCOM writes "Tickets to the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies will contain a microchip with information about the ticket holder, including a photograph, passport details, addresses, e-mail, and telephone numbers. The stated intent is to keep troublemakers out of the 91,000-seat National Stadium so that they cannot cause disruptions while China is on world-wide television, but it brings up serious concerns for privacy and identity theft."

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