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NASA

Submission + - Astronomers Find The Coldest Star Ever (ibtimes.com) 3

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: Astronomers may have found the coldest star in the universe, a brown dwarf 75 light years from Earth.

Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, Kevin Luhman and John Bochanski of Penn State University and Adam Burgasser of the University of California, San Diego, discovered what looks like a faint companion to a white dwarf star called WD 0806-661. The companion orbits at a distance of 2,500 astronomical units, or about 374 billion kilometers, far enough that light takes a full 11 days to get between them.

The scientists looked at the age of the white dwarf, and came up with a figure of about 1.5 billion years. They then estimated the mass of the companion, and used the data from Spitzer, which sees in the infrared part of the spectrum. From that, they got a temperature of about 300 degrees Kelvin, or 27 degrees C.
Books

Submission + - Book Review: Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been reading Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook by Sarath Lakshman, published by Packt, for a while. While most people I know learn shell scripts themselves, I was looking to refresh my concepts a little as well as have a reference lying around on the table for fast access. Here is my review of the book.

First of all, let me remark by saying that shell scripting is something learned more on a need basis than as a tool to solve the main problem. People would seldom write shell scripts as standalone programs (exceptions exist). However, what makes shell scripting invaluable to know is the fact that knowing some tricks can save several minutes, or hours, of work by automating and simplifying certain tasks, generally (but not restricted to) file management and data processing. Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook does go quite far in pursuing this goal, and is appropriate for both beginners who are looking to gain dexterity in shell scripting, as well as intermediate users who wish to polish their skills. The book also can double up as a quick reference, though I would argue that the "Advanced Bash Scripting Guide" would suit that more.

At the outset, the author clarifies that the focus will be on Bash. This, people may or may not like, but the fact that bash has become ubiquitous in terms of the available shells on Unix-like systems today, starting out with bash is not a bad thing to do. Besides, learning other shell scripting languages while knowing bash isn't too hard, since the paradigm remains the same.

Let's go through the books from the aspects I found most relevant.

Organization

The book is organized into chapters based more on utility than scripting concepts themselves, although the language aspects are brought onto the reader gradually. For instance, the examples in the first chapter focus more on the basic data elements (variables, arrays, functions etc.) as well as operators (for numbers, files etc.), and all the examples demonstrate simple usage of these concepts, and he further chapters build upon these in a gradual manner.

At the same time, if he reader has some familiarity with shell scripting and needs to only refresh or learn a certain concept, he/she needs to just read the relevant chapter. It is not too difficult to grasp the examples of the later chapters, provided some basic shell knowledge is assumed.

Content and Presentation

A positive trait in the presentation of this book is that it is all based on practical everyday examples which, with minor adaptation, can be used by many for their own daily tasks. For instance, there are several examples which describe searching for and processing files, which, I'd imagine, many users would want to do on a regular basis. Thus, providing realistic examples allows the book to double its utility. The language and approach used is simple and conversational, and the presentation is very clear, with each idea being described as a problem statement followed by a "How to do it" section with the actual code, and ending with a discussion of the nitty-gritties of the code. It is easy to go for a quick scan for those in a hurry, while those who with to read in more detail will not be disappointed either.

The book also covers a wide array of applications. For instance, there are examples on automating fetching web pages and processing them, demonstrations of parsing and simplifying and even some queries around databases wrapped around in shell. It also spans to utilities and tasks connected to statistics, backups, compression, version control and many more.

Breadth and Depth

The book goes into a fair amount of detail in terms of describing the shell scripting concept under consideration. The examples used go into a fair amount of detail in order to describe to the user all the aspects involved in the method or command being used. The concepts described are fairly complete, and would be sufficient for the reader to use immediately or with just a little bit of fine tuning. In terms of breadth, the book covers most of the features of shell scripting while also describing the various facilities the shell provides access to in a Unix-like environment. Thus, the book does not disappoint in this front either.

In summary...

In summary, probably the only thing I'd have liked to see more of is some emphasis on how to write more efficient shell scripts. Granted, most of the shell scripts described in the book are very simple and succinct, but a some words on how loops can be made better, or how to spot situations where pipes are not needed to solve a problem etc. might have been a nice addition. Some explanation of differences with dash, tcsh, zsh etc. might also have been nice, since a lot of users have different default shells. But all this isn't going to prevent me from giving this book a high rating, since it delivers quite well on the promises it makes at the beginning.

This is definitely a good book to have near your desk, and kudos to the author for having taken the effort to put it together. I would highly recommend it to the beginner and occasional shell user for a thorough read, and to an intermediate to have on his/her desk for borrowing the cool scripting ideas and applications the author has written in this book.
Security

Submission + - Does RSA SecurID have a US authorized back door? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Does the RSA SecurID two-token authentication system include a back door that was built in at the request of the U.S. government in exchange for letting RSA export SecurID? Does the RSA SecurID two-token authentication system include a back door that was built in at the request of the U.S. government in exchange for letting RSA export SecurID?"
Firefox

Submission + - What To Expect In Firefox 5 & Firefox 6? (digitizor.com) 1

Submitted by
dkd903
dkd903 writes: "Firefox 5 will have features such as a better Account Manager, Simple Sharing UI, Animation & support for 64 Bit Windows. Whereas Firefox 6 will have Support for built in Web Applications, FasterCache, Apple Macintosh OSX 10.7 System integration and Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet integration!"
AMD

Submission + - Does AMD's Wolfe Hiring Indicate A Smartphone Push (thinq.co.uk)

Submitted by Blacklaw
Blacklaw writes: AMD has announced that it has chosen Mike Wolfe to be the company's new chief information officer, possibly indicating the company's desire to join Intel in an assault on ARM. Wolfe, named as the CIO by interim chief executive Thomas Seifert today, comes to AMD from Motorola and Freescale Semiconductor — both companies heavily involved in the mobile and tablet markets, and both heavy users of intellectual property licensed from British low-power chip design giant ARM.
Music

Submission + - Did You Know there was a Fork of MPlayer? (ostatic.com)

Submitted by Thinkcloud
Thinkcloud writes: One of the inherent advantages of Open Source software is the ability to modify the original source as you see fit. This sometimes results in forks and derivatives. Some of the more commonly known are Mageia and LibreOffice. But one you may not have heard of is mplayer2.
The mplayer2 Website says, "mplayer2 is an advanced general-purpose video player. A fork of the original MPlayer project, it contains significant further development and supports a number of features not available in other Unix players." But no reason was found to indicate why a fork was desired. Perhaps a hint or two can be gleaned by the difference.
Some improvements to MPlayer include:
  Better pause handling — mplayer2 allows adjustments of settings, seeking, or running of files without unpausing the player.
  Easy to use multithreading support — easier multithreading inclusion, could provide performance boost.
  Better Matroska support — adds ordered chapter and editions and other improvements to the Matroska file handling
Intel

Submission + - Intel Unveils Next Gen Itanium Processor (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "This week, at ISSCC Intel unveiled its next-generation Itanium processor, codenamed Poulson. This new design is easily the most significant update to Itanium Intel has ever built and could upset the current balance of power at the highest-end of the server / mainframe market. It may also be the Itanium that fully redeems the brand name and sheds the last vestiges of negativity that have dogged the chip since it launched ten years ago. Poulson incorporates a number of advances in its record-breaking 3.1 Billion transistors. It's socket-compatible with the older Tukwila processors and offers up to eight cores and 54MB of on-die memory."
Classic Games (Games)

Where Are the Joysticks For Retro Gaming? 262

Posted by Soulskill from the ch-flightstick-pro-was-aces-for-x-wing dept.
Doctor O writes "With all those nice emulators for classic gaming around (such as MAME, VICE or Stella) I want to establish monthly retro gaming evenings with some friends. The problem is I can't find any good joysticks for that purpose. There's a new version of the legendary Competition Pro, but judging from the many one-star reviews on Amazon, it's terrible. I found the USB version of the classic Atari Joystick, but it doesn't seem to be available and would have prohibitive shipping costs to Germany anyway. So, Slashdot to the rescue — where are the suitable USB joysticks for retro gaming?"
Earth

Aral Sea May Recover; Dead Sea Needs a Lifeline 131

Posted by timothy from the just-needs-feng-shui-adjustment dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's a tale of two seas. The drying up of the Aral Sea is considered one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history, but the northern sector of the sea, at least, is showing signs of life. A dam completed in 2005 has increased the North Aral's span by 20 percent, and birds, fish, and people are all returning to the area. Meanwhile, the Dead Sea is still in the midst of precipitous decline, since too much water is being drawn out of the Jordan River for thirsty populations and crops. To keep the sea from shrinking more, scientists are pushing an ambitious scheme called the 'Red-Dead conduit,' which would channel huge amounts of water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. However, the environmental consequences of such a project may be troubling."
Emulation (Games)

Emulation For Preservation of Digital Artifacts 81

Posted by Soulskill from the sitting-at-his-virtual-desk dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Author Salman Rushdie donated his papers and notes to Emory University a while ago. Not surprisingly, many of Rushdie's original notes, drafts, and correspondence existed in electronic form. Rather than printing them out or converting them to other formats, archivists at the university created an emulated image of Rushdie's old computer, complete with old software. Researchers visiting the archive can read his email in Eudora and his Stickies notes, or read drafts of his books in ClarisWorks. When you leave your legacy to future generations, would you like a virtualized copy of your personal system to be included?"

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