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Earth

Submission + - What if the earth stood still

Submitted by crus0e
crus0e writes: As the german weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT reports [Google-translated link to the article], the german computer-scientist and expert for geographical information systems, Witold Fraczek, simulated how a total slowdown of the earth rotation would affect the shape and the appearance of mother earth. Though he does not claim his simulation to be perfectly correct, it seems to be a nice intellectual game to play.
Games

Submission + - Pay what you want: a sustainable business model?

Submitted by revealingheart
revealingheart writes: As the 2010 comes to a close, this could be remembered as the year that pay-what-you-want pricing reached the mainstream. Along with the two Humble Indie Bundles, YAWMA offer a game and music bundle, and Rock, Paper and Shotgun reports on the curiously named Bundle of Wrong, made to help fund a developer who contracted pneumonia.

More examples include Reddit briefly offered their users to choose what to pay when they were in financial difficulties; the Indie Music Cancer Drive launched Songs for the Cure for cancer research; and Mavaru launched an online store where users can buy albums for any amount. Can pay-what-you-want become a sustainable mainstream business model? — or destined to be a continued experiment for smaller groups?
Education

Submission + - Is it just us, or are kids getting really stupid? (phillymag.com)

Submitted by krou
krou writes: A feature at phillymag.com asks whether or not our kids are getting really stupid, arguing that the large cognitive load of constant data is making it harder to process information to any depth. 'Technology was supposed to set us free, to liberate us from mundane, time-consuming tasks so we could do great things, think great thoughts, solve humanity’s most pressing problems. Instead, our kids have been liberated to perform even more mundane, time-consuming tasks'. However, Elliot Weinbaum, a professor at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, and others argue that people are worrying unduly about illiteracy, or that kids don't know the days of the week. They also argue that computer activities such as gaming are providing valuable business skills: 'Over so many hours, [gamers have] learned how to master an incredibly complex system. These multi-person games that involve intra-functional teams — "guilds," they call them — organize their entrants the way some workplaces do. These are skills that corporate employers are very interested in.' The article is fairly long (nine pages in total) and ultimately concludes with the author's concern that 'we’re not just failing to engage with one another; we’re less and less willing to engage the world at large' and, ultimately, losing opportunities to develop '"our inwardness, our self-reflectiveness, our orientation to the unknown." In other words: a soul.'
Science

Submission + - Scientifically, You Are Likely In The Slowest Line (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "As you wait in the checkout line for the holidays, your observation is most likely correct. That other line IS moving faster than yours. That's what Bill Hammack (the Engineer Guy), from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois — Urbana proves in this video. Ironically, the most efficient set-up is to have one line feed into several cashiers. This is because if any one line slows because of an issue, the entry queue continues to have customers reach check-out optimally. However, this is also perceived by customers as the least efficient, psychologically."

Submission + - Do Supernova Explosions Impact Earth Every Few Hun (dailygalaxy.com)

Submitted by
Phoghat
Phoghat writes: "A University of Kansas research team is exploring the energy of cosmic rays and a possible link to massive prehistoric extinction events. Fossils and cosmic rays appear to have nothing in common. . But Adrian Melott, a professor at the University of Kansas, is doing work with high energy cosmic rays to investigate the possibility that one may be linked to the other."
GUI

10 Dos and Don'ts To Make Sysadmins' Lives Easier 246

Posted by timothy from the sorry-dave-can't-let-you-do-that dept.
CowboyRobot writes "Tom Limoncelli has a piece in 'Queue' summarizing the Computer-Human Interaction for Management of Information Technology's list of how to make software that is easy to install, maintain, and upgrade. FTA: '#2. DON'T make the administrative interface a GUI. System administrators need a command-line tool for constructing repeatable processes. Procedures are best documented by providing commands that we can copy and paste from the procedure document to the command line.'"

Submission + - Skype Slowly Restores Service To Users (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Skype continues to slowly recover after an outage caused by problems with its peer-to-peer interconnection system. The latest estimates say that 10 million users are now online, according to a blog post. Skype's outage began on Wednesday. Skype continues to slowly recover after an outage caused by problems with its peer-to-peer interconnection system. The latest estimates say that 10 million users are now online, according to a blog post. Skype's outage began on Wednesday.
Technology

Submission + - FCC Chair Seeks Comcast-NBC Merger Conditions (huffingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by Anarki2004
Anarki2004 writes: From the article: The head of the Federal Communications Commission proposed regulatory conditions Thursday to ensure that cable giant Comcast Corp. cannot stifle video competition once it takes control of NBC Universal. Comcast is seeking government approval to buy a 51 percent stake in NBC Universal from General Electric Co. for $13.8 billion in cash and assets. The deal would create a media powerhouse that both produces and distributes content.
Patents

Submission + - Will Patent Make NCAA Football Playoffs Impossible

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mark Cuban recently announced plans to create a college football playoff system, which many people (including President Obama) have been claiming has been needed for years. However, after doing so, Cuban received an odd emails, claiming that he'd better watch out, because a college football playoff system is patented and anything he did would likely infringe. The patent wasn't named, but Techdirt believes it has found the patent in question, along with another pending patent application (which has some amusing errors in it — such as an abstract that says it's about a boat fender, rather than a sports playoff system). So is it really true that some random guy in Arizona is the only person who can legally set up such a college football playoff system?
Technology

Submission + - Aerial Video Footage of New York Taken By RC Plane (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner
kkleiner writes: Expert remote control pilot Raphael “Trappy” Pirker recently took his 54 inch Zephyr model plane on a harrowing tour of Manhattan and the surrounding area. The best part: his RC vehicle was fitted with a camera that wirelessly transmitted an amazing recording of everything it saw – Pirker was piloting his craft with this visual feed. As you can see in the video, the results were spectacular. The plane looks to be flying within a few feet of buildings and whizzing past bridges with ease. You have to check out around 2:01 when he starts to buzz right by the Statute of Liberty. Phenomenal! Could the new era of personal video recording be spreading to the sky?
Music

Submission + - Canadian court deciding on music-preview royalties (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by phorm
phorm writes: The Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada is suing various telecommunications companies across Canada over the use of music "previews" (up to 30 seconds) for use as ringtones.

The CBC article is a bit short, but many questions could arise from the lawsuit. While the current lawsuit seems mainly targeted at ringtones, it could perhaps have a broader impact against sites which allow short previews of music, and what would the impact upon self-created ringtones (perhaps clipped from legally purchased music) be?

Submission + - Telecoms Competition 100 Years Ago (eugenegill.com)

Submitted by Tokolosh
Tokolosh writes: With all the discussion of net neutrality, regulation, competition and government involvement, a review of the situation 100 years ago is instructive. Read the "Twentieth Century Magazine" from 1910. This was a "progressive" and "socialist" publication, and its opinions are not always what you might expect.

The most interesting part are the roles of government and the courts — there are none at all. Barriers to entry for competitors are low: no regulations, no taxes, no licenses, no patents, no franchises, no "last mile", no court injunctions, no lobbying. Imagine what we could do in such an environment! What have we gained or lost in 100 years? How should things be different, or the same?

The same publication has a lot to say on the subject of the government involvement in healthcare. Hint: They think it is a bad idea.

Submission + - Skype Down (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Skype seems to be having major issues. Skype wrote in an e-mail this morning that it's "assessing the matter now and its extent. We apologize for the inconvenience caused to our users."
Maybe they were collecting funds for Wikileaks?
Microsoft

Submission + - MS service changes update settings without your OK (infoworld.com)

Submitted by GMGruman
GMGruman writes: InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard reports that the new Microsoft Security Essentials 2.0 will change your Windows Update settings to automatically update everything — and not tell you. This may be a bug — an earlier version of MSE did the same thing until it was patched — but whatever the cause, be warned to check your updater settings if you install this anti-malware tool.

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