nucal - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hawking goes to space!

Submitted by oxide7 on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @09:59AM

oxide7 writes: Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has been confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, expects weightlessness to feel like "bliss" when he goes on a "zero-gravity" flight Thursday aboard a refitted jet. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20070425/hawking-f light.htm

Submission + - Is the US Suffering an Innovation 'Brain Drain'?

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @08:51AM

eldavojohn writes: "A recent article I read was looking for answers in the United States' drop in broadband rankings and proposed an 'innovation brain drain' as one of the reasons. Being an ego-centric American, I initially dismissed the idea but thought more about it and now am more curious as to what everyone else thinks. Do you think that the US is suffering from lack of innovation? If so, what's causing it? What's so different today from a period renowned for innovation? Poor schooling or grade inflation? Governing laws, regulations or patents? Economy? Growing difference in pay? A sense that everything is 'good enough' or lack of necessity? Political & military problems? I know I've read posters warning that the US is falling behind in several fields but I'd like to hear ideas why that is."

Submission + - Google Groups broken for over a day

Submitted by nucal on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @08:17AM

nucal writes: It appears that Google Groups posting and archiving of Usenet has not been working too well and Google has not formally acknowledged the problem. This raises some questions about whether Google in general is a good platform for critical applications.

Submission + - Revolution OS -the award winning documentary

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @06:07AM

An anonymous reader writes: This article calls Revolution OS the finest documentaries created which traces the path taken by GNU, Free Software, Open Source and Linux. The whole documentary all of 1 hour and 10 minutes long consists of bits and pieces of conversation with various leaders of the community which of course includes Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Richard M Stallman, Bruce Perens and many others.

In the documentary, Linus Torvalds calls RMS the great philosopher of the movement and himself the engineer.

The documentary produced by J.T.S Moore also shows snippets of publicity the movement received in the main stream media such as in CNBC and The New York Times. Some prominent people from Slashdot also make their appearances in the documentary. The article goads you to watch and enjoy it and as a follow up buy the DVD to support the cause.

When the Earth Was Purple 278

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday April 25, 2007 @04:38AM from the how-violet-was-my-valley dept.

Ollabelle writes "It's always been a bit of a mystery why plants absorb red and blue light, reflecting green, when the sun emits the peak energy of the visible spectrum in the green. A new theory offers one possible answer: that the first chlorophyll-utilizing microbes evolved to exploit the red-and-blue light that older green-absorbing microbes didn't use, eventually out-competing them through greater efficiency and the rise of oxygen."

Submission + - Memory Infinite, USB Storage

Submitted by

zola89

on Saturday January 13, 2007 @07:42AM

zola89 writes: "Memory Infinite has a USB male connector at one end and a female connector at the other, providing an "add up" concept for USB finger discs. By connecting one Memory Infinite with another to add up the storage capacity, the user won't waste the old storage capacity when getting a larger one."

Submission + - Wikipedia Used for Artificial Intelligence

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Sunday January 07, 2007 @11:13AM

eldavojohn writes: "It may be no surprise but Wikipedia is now being used in the field of artificial intelligence. The applications for this may be endless. For instance, the front of spam fighting is a tough one and it looks as though researchers are now turning towards an ontology or taxonomy based solution to fight spammers. The concept is also on the forefront of artificial intelligence and progress towards an application passing the Turing Test and creating semantically aware applications. The article comments on uses of Wikipedia in this manner:
"... spam filters block all messages containing the word 'vitamin,' but fail to block messages containing the word 'B12.' If the program never saw 'B12' before, it's just a word without any meaning. But you would know it's a vitamin," Markovitch said. "With our methodology, however, the computer will use its Wikipedia-based knowledge base to infer that 'B12' is strongly associated with the concept of vitamins, and will correctly identify the message as spam," he added.
"

Submission + - Open Project to Develop Renewable Energy System

Submitted by

rohar

on Sunday January 07, 2007 @11:02AM

rohar writes: "We have been working on a system that combines some existing indirect solar technologies to build a location independant, renewable, reliable and economically feasible indirect solar electrical power generation system. The idea is to "roll-your-own" geothermal source by capturing heat from the ambient air with a solar powered absorption heat pump, store it underground and generate electricity from the air cooling convection. When the air is cooler the stored heat is then used in a reverse process to generate electricity by transferring the heat back to the air when it is cooler (at night or seasonal). There are many additional benefits including clean water capture from the "dehumidifier" effect of the air cooling, construction from common materials and thermal storage that may be incorporated into dwelling heat systems."

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