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Space

Submission + - Astronomers find planet collision (tsuniv.edu)

thered2001 writes: From the article:

"It's as if Earth and Venus collided with each other," said Benjamin Zuckerman, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and a co-author on the paper. "Astronomers have never seen anything like this before; apparently major, catastrophic, collisions can take place in a fully mature planetary system."

"If any life was present on either planet, the massive collision would have wiped out everything in a matter of minutes: the ultimate extinction event," said coauthor Gregory Henry, an astronomer at Tennessee State University. "A massive disk of infrared-emitting dust circling the star provides silent testimony to this sad fate," said Henry.

IBM

IBM Threatens To Leave ISO Over OOXML Brouhaha 200

barnackle writes "In addition to threatening to leave certain standards organizations over the OOXML shenanigans, IBM created new guidelines for its own participation in those organizations in an attempt to pressure the ISO and ECMA to be more fair in their approval procedures."
Privacy

Homeland Security Department Testing "Pre-Crime" Detector 580

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Homeland Security recently tested something called Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST) — a battery of sensors that determine whether someone is a security threat from a distance. Sensors look at facial expressions, body heat and can measure pulse and breathing rate from a distance. In trials using 140 volunteers those told to act suspicious were detected with 'about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception,' says a DHS spokesman."

Comment Re:Weird....there are TWO FA's.. (Score 1) 961

Actually, urine can be lethal now-a-days. Urine can contain AIDS or Herpes both of which are not curable. Considering that the next potential President and Vice-President of the United States were in the area at any given moment. It's stupid to have these things around. While the objects may be legal, it's what you intend to do with them that counts--otherwise you'd have to wait for someone to try and murder someone before they arrest someone. Other stories on the internet say that these groups had been infiltrated by informants. I know this little fact may have been overlooked by those of you who are, shall we say, overly zealous to say Bush and, the evil Republicans, are trying to take away you rights. In fact the ones taking away you rights would be the Democrats. The current issue, the freedom of speech. The Democrats want to reinstate the fairness doctrine because all their attempts to create their own talk radio media outlets have fail, so they want to silence conservative talk radio and Christian radio. Take Barak Obama, if you mention his record of supporting infantacide (the only Democrat to do that in the Illinois Legislature), he wines and says it's off limits and unfair. In fact, Barak Obama is really scary in civil rights if you happen to disagree with him and/or point of his record,. Obama's thugs have tried to intimidate media outlets that even just interview people who are trying to point out Obama's history. They are now trying to get the Justice Department to look into it now. This will get even scarier if he becomes President. Think dictatorship squelching the voices of those who disagree...especially those with facts. I am just wondering what Obama will try next. You people are scared of legitimate police action, but you ignore the guy with the knife, who you call friend, that's trying to kill you. An Obama presidency will be a scary one. Obama has more skeletons in his closet than the Kennedy's do, and it appears he will do anything to keep people ignorant of them.
Google

Submission + - Forget iPhone, the Gphone is here (rediff.com)

gambit3 writes: "Google, the nearly $13.5 billion search engine major, is believed to be a fortnight away from the worldwide launch of its much-awaited Google Phone (Gphone) and has started talks with service providers in India for an exclusive launch on one of their networks. One big obstacle to the gPhone: the name has already been applied for as a trademark, and not by Google. Micro-g LaCoste, Inc., a company in Lafayette, Colorado, applied back on March 5 for a gPhone trademark, according to Realtechnews.com."

Feed Science Daily: Social Parasites Of The Smaller Kind (sciencedaily.com)

Cooperation is widespread in the natural world but so too are cheats -- mutants that reap the benefits of others' cooperative efforts. In evolutionary terms, cheats should prosper, so how cooperation persists is puzzling. New research reveals that some cheats orchestrate their own downfall. The pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa cooperates to scavenge iron, but cheats steal the iron supplies. Cultures with fewer cheats thrived, to the benefit of the few cheats. Cultures with many cheats grew poorly.
Microsoft

Submission + - Implementing OOXML: One Developer's Nightmare (arstdesign.com)

Just Some Nobody writes: "While Microsoft likes to play up just how well-documented the 6,000+ page OOXML specification is, the independent developers implementing it don't have things so easy. Stéphane Rodriguez, one of the top non-Microsoft experts on the binary Excel file format, has been documenting the difficulties in working with the new OOXML format for Excel. It seems that one of the biggest difficulties is that Excel-produced documents don't even conform to Microsoft's own OOXML standard, ECMA 376."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Making a inertial navigation system?

An anonymous reader writes: Hi guys, I am interested in making an inertial navigation system using the now common embedded accelerometers. The problem is, I can't find any specs on what the sensitivity or accuracy of those sensors are. What kind of accuracy should I expect out of one of the laptop embedded accelerometers, and how much out of one of the embedded systems like Gumstix that cost a few hundred dollars? I will probably be using it in a car, if you need to know the operating enviroment. Horizontal X and Y axis required, vertical axis optional.
Space

Submission + - Gamma Ray Anomaly Could Test String Theory (sciam.com)

exploder writes: String theory is notorious for its lack of testable predictions. But if the MAGIC gamma-ray telescope team's interpretation is correct, then a delay in the arrival of higher-energy gamma rays could point to a breakdown of relativity theory. A type of "quantum lensing effect" is postulated to cause the delay, which is approximateley four minutes over a half-billion year journey.
Power

Generating Nano Oscillatory Motion 70

KentuckyFC sends us to arxivblog.com, where he summarizes (in prose that is somewhat more twee than we usually encounter in writing about physics) the conversion of a constant force into oscillatory motion on the nano scale. Here is the article preprint. A research group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made mushroom-shaped nano-pillars that oscillate in a constant DC field, like metronomes.
Software

Submission + - Latest US OOXML Vote on OOXML is Yes - And More (consortiuminfo.org) 3

Andy Updegrove writes: "The latest step in the US voting on OOXML was to circulate two ballots — one to approve, with comments, and one to abstain, with comments. Those votes are now back in, with the approval vote getting enough to pass (12), plus three "nos" and one abstention. The ballot to abstain with comments came back unanimously approved. A "resolution meeting" will be held on August 29, at which the approval vote may stand, or one or more votes may switch. Meantime, as votes (yes and no) begin to be announced around the world, there has been a sudden, last minute influx of countries that have suddenly decided that they want to upgrade their status within ISO/IEC JTC1 in order to be be able to vote on specifications — such as OOXML. Six so far, in fact: Cypress, Ecuador, Pakistan, Trinidad/Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela, with perhaps more on the way. Under the rules, they will be able to exercise their new rights immediately. Coincidence? http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/articl e.php?story=2007082413463944"
Windows

Submission + - Windows Vista Home Makes Hidden File Backups

Overly Critical Guy writes: "Previous Versions" is a feature of Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate that uses Shadow Copy to allow users to restore past versions of a file like Apple's Time Machine. It turns out Vista Home also makes file backups but does not allow the user to access them. This means you automatically lose 15 percent of your drive to backups you can't access until you upgrade to Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate. Worse yet, disabling the "Previous Versions" service also disables System Restore and removes all restore points.
The Gimp

Submission + - Gimp VS Photoshop - Bloody battle of the giants

Rea Maor writes: "Do you want to edit bitmap images on the home desktop? It's surprising, but really the choice of image editing applications comes down to just two: Gimp and Photoshop. And therein lies a dilemma.

Photoshop costs around $600 these days, and Gimp is free, so of course if cost is a factor you're going to swerve towards Gimp. But — and you knew there was a 'but' coming — it's not that simple. Photoshop has two leads over Gimp: (1) patented features, and (2) the interface that everyone is used to. Most especially, Gimp is out of the running for professional print shop editing, thanks to the patent lock on industrial features such as color correction and CMYK. Gimp can emulate these features with work-arounds, or it can get sued, and that's all there is to it.

A common misconception is that Gimp lacks many more features that Photoshop has. In fact, with the exception of features that depend on patented algorithms, Gimp is 99% on par with Photoshop in capabilities. It's just that Photoshop users try Gimp, are immediately lost in the baroque interface, and leave in terror. Having the features doesn't do you much good if you can't find them!

That's the real hanger is the user interface. Unlike other professions which happen to take place on a computer, graphics artists are almost never geeks. Geeks explore an interface, practice with it, read the manual on it, and when they discover the scripting language buried within (Gimp has scheme), they're bowled over at how cool it is. Graphics artists aren't like that. They're right-brained all the way; they're here to draw, not write programs. And when they learn one way to make the computer do what they want, that's a sacrifice of time which they can never again be asked to do. Learning a new interface is painful for anybody, but it seems to be simply unacceptable for the graphics artist.

For instance, let's say you want to draw a beard on a face. In both Photoshop and Gimp it is straight-forward enough to create a custom brush shaped like a few hair follicles. But to draw the beard on and have it come out looking like natural hair, in Photoshop you would open the brush dialog and change the shape and color dynamics, tweaking switches and knobs in each and setting them to randomize. In Gimp, however, you would create a layered brush (called an "image pipe") which is similar to how you would do an animated gif, then just tell it to use the brush layers in random order. You could manually set up the brush layers to be lighter, darker, and rotated and resized — in effect giving yourself more control over the final effect. It is possible to get the exact same effect in both programs, with even some room to argue that one result looks better than the other.

But what good is that going to do if you're used to the Photoshop interface? Nothing. In a nutshell, Photoshop is for linear thinkers, and Gimp is for lateral thinkers. Both of them can arrive at very nearly the same result, so close that it's a neck and neck race. Bottom line, for website graphics and simple editing jobs it's almost insane to spend the money to use Photoshop. And Gimp is likewise inadequate for the needs of a professional print shop.

Unless, of course, you're already a geek. Then it won't matter, because you learn new programs just for fun anyway. The only problem with that is... have you ever met a geek with good artistic skills?"

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