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PlayStation (Games)

USAF Unveils Supercomputer Made of 1,760 PS3s 163

Posted by Soulskill from the going-for-the-gusto dept.
digitaldc writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra: "The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has connected 1,760 PlayStation 3 systems together to create what the organization is calling the fastest interactive computer in the entire Defense Department. The Condor Cluster, as the group of systems is known, also includes 168 separate graphical processing units and 84 coordinating servers in a parallel array capable of performing 500 trillion floating point operations per second (500 TFLOPS), according to AFRL Director of High Power Computing Mark Barnell."

Submission + - The End of the Dr. Demento Show on radio. (drdemento.com) 1

Submitted by damnbunni
damnbunni writes: Dr. Demento has announced that his long-running comedy radio show will be ending. Modern 'format' radio has been less and less friendly to oddball and offbeat programming, and after years of declining station membership the Doctor announced on June 6th that his radio show will be no more. He will still stream shows from his web site, drdemento.com. While I'm very sad to see the show go, 30 years is a pretty good run.
Science

Invisibility Cloak Created In 3-D 113

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-see-me-now dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have created the first device to render an object invisible in three dimensions. The 'cloak,' described in the journal Science (abstract; full text requires login), hid an object from detection using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans. Previous devices have been able to hide objects from light travelling in only one direction; viewed from any other angle, the object would remain visible. This is a very early but significant step towards a true invisibility cloak." The "object" hidden in this work was a bump one micrometer high. The light used was just longer than the wavelengths our eyes detect. To get a visible-light cloak, the features of the cloaking metamaterial would need to be reduced in size from 300 nm to 10 nm.
Space

Nearby Star Forecast To Skirt Solar System 135

Posted by Soulskill from the we're-doomed dept.
PipianJ writes "A recent preprint posted on arXiv by Vadim Bobylev presents some startling new numbers about a future close pass of one of our stellar neighbors. Based on studies of the Hipparcos catalog, Bobylev suggests that the nearby orange dwarf Gliese 710 has an 86% chance of skirting the outer bounds of the Solar System and the hypothesized Oort Cloud in the next 1.5 million years. As the Oort Cloud is thought to be the source of many long-period comets, the gravitational effects of Gliese's passing could send a shower of comets into the inner Solar System, threatening Earth. This news about Gliese 710 isn't exactly new, but it's one of the first times the probability of this near-miss has been quantified."
Space

Submission + - 'Solar Stormwatch' Needs You to Look at the Sun

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that if you can spare a few minutes of your day defending the Earth from imminent solar attack, then the Royal Observatory's "Solar Stormwatch" needs you to help scientists spot Sun storms — known as coronal mass ejections — before they cause damage on Earth. "When you look up at the Sun obviously it's too bright to look at properly," says Dr Marek Kukula of the Royal Observatory, but "with special instruments and telescopes you can see there's all sorts of stuff going on." Nasa already monitors the Sun using two 'Stereo' spacecraft that produce 3D images of earth's nearest star which can show the trajectory of these explosions. However, the sheer amount of data means Nasa's scientists are unable to analyse the data as closely as they need — which is where the world's internet population comes in. After a brief tutorial, users get access to the actual 3-D images taken by the Stereo spacecraft. If a user believes they have spotted the beginnings of a solar storm, they can bring it to the attention of scientists. "Every little bit counts," says Kukula. "I've spoken to the scientists involved and they all agree that even if you log-on and just do it for a few hours, get bored and never touch it again it's all really useful — and helps them to do their work.""
The Courts

Court Rules Photo of Memorial Violates Copyright 426

Posted by kdawson from the stamp-of-disapproval dept.
WhatDoIKnow sends in a story about an appeals court ruling in a singular case that might have the effect of narrowing "fair use" rights for transformative uses of artworks. "The sculptor who designed the Korean War memorial [in Washington DC] brought suit against the Postal Service after a photograph of his work was used on a postage stamp. Though first ruled protected by 'fair use,' on appeal the court ruled in favor (PDF) of the sculptor, Frank Gaylord, now 85."

Submission + - Victorian Postal Service Resembled E-mail (nytimes.com)

Submitted by goombah99
goombah99 writes: Written mail in Victorian London was delivered and picked up 12 times in a 12 hour day. It also resembled e-mail in the way it was used. Messages often sought replies by the next postal pickup. And even the lazy practice of sharing links rather than writing a thoughtful letter became commonplace as people would send copies of previously read newspapers instead of writing. Like now, newspapers saw their circulations plummet as their content was shared freely this way. And as the price of mail droppped to negligible, junk mail was invented along with the 409 solicitations from strangers. All in all it seems like a good evidence that charging more for e-mail delivery would arguably cure its worst tendencies.

Comment Adapting Coax to Twisted Pairs (Score 1) 608

by veektor (#31187456) Attached to: Suggestions For a Coax-To-Ethernet Solution?
You have more problems than just selecting 4 wires. Each pair of wires from the 100 megabit Ethernet is a balanced pair, and coax is unbalanced. Also, the coax impedance is probably 75 ohms (if I remember correctly) and the twisted pair is around 120 ohms. So you would need a transformer for each pair to match the impedances and handle the balanced to unbalanced conversion. Finally, these transformers would need to be small and broadband to avoid unintentional impedance mismatches. Like the others have suggested, just use the coax as a pull wire for Cat 5e.
Space

Astronomers Discover the Coolest Known Sub-Stellar Body 60

Posted by Soulskill from the miles-davis's-home-planet dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Science Daily reports that using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered what may be the coolest sub-stellar body ever found outside our own solar system. Too small to be stars and with insufficient mass to maintain hydrogen-burning nuclear fusion reactions in their cores, 'brown dwarfs' have masses smaller than stars but larger than gas giant planets like Jupiter, with an upper limit in between 75 and 80 Jupiter masses. 'This looks like the fourth time in three years that the UKIRT has made a record breaking discovery of the coolest known brown dwarf, with an estimated temperature not far above 200 degrees Celsius,' says Dr. Philip Lucas at the University of Hertfordshire. Due to their low temperature these objects are very faint in visible light, and are detected by their glow at infrared wavelengths. The object known as SDSS1416+13B is in a wide orbit around a somewhat brighter and warmer brown dwarf, SDSS1416+13A, and the pair is located between 15 and 50 light years from the solar system, which is quite close in astronomical terms."
Technology

Using EMP To Punch Holes In Steel 165

Posted by timothy from the you'll-need-some-big-batteries dept.
angrytuna writes "The Economist is running a story about a group of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology in Chemnitz, Germany, who've found a way to use an EMP device to shape and punch holes through steel. The process enjoys advantages over both lasers, which take more time to bore the hole (0.2 vs. 1.4 seconds), and by metal presses, which can leave burrs that must be removed by hand."
Mars

Mars Images Reveal Evidence of Ancient Lakes 128

Posted by timothy from the older-I-get-the-wetter-mars-was dept.
Matt_dk writes "Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology. Earlier research had suggested that Mars had a warm and wet early history but that between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, before the Hesperian Epoch, the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became cold and dry. In the new study, the researchers analysed detailed images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the red planet, and concluded that there were later episodes where Mars experienced warm and wet periods."
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-a-big-star dept.
davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."
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.'"

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