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Government

China's Influence Widens Nobel Peace Prize Boycott 360

Posted by timothy from the friends-of-un-friends dept.
c0lo writes "Not only did China decline to attend the upcoming Nobel peace prize ceremony, but urged diplomats in Oslo to stay away from the event warning of 'consequences' if they go. Possibly as a result of this (or on their own decisions), 18 other countries turned down the invitation: Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco. Reuters seems to think the 'consequences' are of an economic nature, pointing out that half of the countries with economies that gained global influence during recent times are boycotting the ceremony (with Brazil and India still attending)."
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."
Science

Morphing Metals 121

Posted by samzenpus from the forge-ahead dept.
aarondubrow writes "Imagine a metal that 'remembers' its original, cold-forged shape, and can return to that shape when exposed to heat or a magnetic pulse. Like magic out of a Harry Potter novel, such a metal could contract on command, or swing back and forth like a pendulum. Believe it or not, such metals already exist. First discovered in 1931, they belong to a class of materials called 'shape memory alloys (SMA),' whose unique atomic make-up allows them to return to their initial form, or alternate between forms through a phase change."
Image

The White House Listed On Real Estate Website 123

Posted by samzenpus from the been-for-sale-for-years dept.
Forget visiting the White House, if you have $10 million you can own it. At least that is the price for the president's home on the real estate website Redfin. From the article: "Obviously this is an error. It looks like Redfin software pulled an example listing from the website Owners.com by mistake. That example listing was the White House. We have e-mailed Redfin for comment." I know it's historic but it still looks a bit on the high side according to the comparables in the area.
Image

Political Affiliation Can Be Differentiated By Appearance 262

Posted by samzenpus from the if-it-looks-like-a-liberal-and-quacks-like-a-liberal dept.
quaith writes "It's not the way they dress, but the appearance of their face. A study published in PLoS One by Nicholas O. Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University used closely cropped greyscale photos of people's faces, standardized for size. Undergrads were asked to categorize each person as either a Democrat or Republican. In the first study, students were able to differentiate Republican from Democrat senate candidates. In the second, students were able to differentiate the political affiliation of other college students. Accuracy in both studies was about 60% — not perfect, but way better than chance."
PlayStation (Games)

PS3 Hacked? 296

Posted by Soulskill from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
Several readers have sent word that George Hotz (a.k.a. geohot), the hacker best known for unlocking Apple's iPhone, says he has now hacked the PlayStation 3. From his blog post: "I have read/write access to the entire system memory, and HV level access to the processor. In other words, I have hacked the PS3. The rest is just software. And reversing. I have a lot of reversing ahead of me, as I now have dumps of LV0 and LV1. I've also dumped the NAND without removing it or a modchip. 3 years, 2 months, 11 days...that's a pretty secure system. ... As far as the exploit goes, I'm not revealing it yet. The theory isn't really patchable, but they can make implementations much harder. Also, for obvious reasons I can't post dumps. I'm hoping to find the decryption keys and post them, but they may be embedded in hardware. Hopefully keys are setup like the iPhone's KBAG."
Image

Living In Tokyo's Capsule Hotels 269

Posted by samzenpus from the living-in-the-hive dept.
afabbro writes "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 once offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now with Japan enduring its worst recession since World War II, it is becoming an affordable option for people with nowhere else to go. The Hotel 510’s capsules are only 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide. Guests must keep possessions, like shirts and shaving cream, in lockers outside of the capsules. Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas says, 'It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep. You get used to it.'”
Programming

An Open Source Compiler From CUDA To X86-Multicore 71

Posted by timothy from the abstraction-gains-a-layer dept.
Gregory Diamos writes "An open source project, Ocelot, has recently released a just-in-time compiler for CUDA, allowing the same programs to be run on NVIDIA GPUs or x86 CPUs and providing an alternative to OpenCL. A description of the compiler was recently posted on the NVIDIA forums. The compiler works by translating GPU instructions to LLVM and then generating native code for any LLVM target. It has been validated against over 100 CUDA applications. All of the code is available under the New BSD license."
Security

Doom-Like Video Surveillance For Ports In Development 56

Posted by Soulskill from the hurt-me-plenty dept.
oranghutan writes "A research and development group down under is working to develop an advanced video surveillance system for ports around the world that uses video superimposed onto a 3D map. With 16-megapixel high-definition cameras on a distributed (cabled) network and a proprietary system written in a variety of languages (C++, Python, SQL, etc.), the group from NICTA is aiming to allow security teams at the Port of Brisbane — which is 110km long — to monitor shipping movements, cargo and people. By scrolling along a 3D map, the security teams can click on a location and then get a real-time video feed superimposed onto the map. Authorities from around the world with the right permissions can then access the same system. The main difference from regular surveillance systems is the ability to switch views without having to know camera numbers/locations and the one screen view."

Comment Re:As soon as you mentioned "Group Health"... (Score 1) 430

by ljaszcza (#29780885) Attached to: On the Efficacy of Flu Vaccine
Group health is a business. I would guess that if their analysts show that spending $X on vaccines leads to savings of $Y when people are not admitted to the hospital or visit the ER with influenza and $Y>$X then they are likely to pay for the vaccine. If $X>$Y than it is not worth it to them. I can't see any businessman/underwriter doing anything different.

Comment Re:It's all in the educational system (Score 2, Insightful) 899

by ljaszcza (#29416881) Attached to: How To Make Science Popular Again?
I'll go along with the above. The US educational system needs some changes. I suppose that a part of our science Zeitgeist is reflected in the banning of one of my favorite books: "The Golden Book of Chemistry". When I was a little kid, science was alive! If I wasn't outside wading in a pond, mixing stuff together or (later in life) coding, I was busy thinking of what to do next... My kids live in a different world. The Golden Book of Chemistry is dangerous knowledge. Banned by people that know better than I (I suppose). Students take ecology classes "on line". Science ed has managed to take the marvel and discovery from science and replace it with regurgitation of numbers and tables. Thinking sceptically and critically has been replaced with "thinking in a way that agrees with the current authorities". I do know that at least a few teachers still have the right ideas and fire and fire up and educate their students. My hat is off to you few teachers. You have made a difference in my life (and my three children) by opening our minds to endless possibilities.

Comment Re:Punishment (Score 1) 276

by ljaszcza (#29351021) Attached to: Copyright Troubles For Sony
Yeah, it is flimsy. I was being tongue in cheek rather than making a legal case. I don't know what is in the contract, the wording there (or lack thereof) will determine whether there is a case or not. My purpose for submitting this story is to bring attention to Sony's handling of a artist who chose to go with a different studio. And the fact that a individual caught printing 6000 unauthorized CDs is treated differently than a mutinational corp. that does the same. Will the Sony Mexico CEO or local manager face a suit for personal liability and face jail time and a huge verdict? Will RIAA go after Sony on behalf of the recording artist? Will the exRIAA riddled Justice department come out in support a $1,000,000,000 judgment against Sony? Would the same Minnesota jury award the same damages against Sony as it did J. Thomas. Now I understand this will be tried in Mexico, not the USA, but... We'll see how the Mexican legal system will handle a big multinational in comparison the the Land of the Free's legal system handling of individuals... Whatever that proves...
Sony

Submission + - Copyright troubles for Sony. (dailytech.com) 1

Submitted by ljaszcza
ljaszcza writes: Daily Tech brings us a story about Sony. It seems that the Mexican Police raided Sony's offices and seized over 6000 music CDs after a protest from the artist, Alejandro Fernandez. It seems that Fernandez signed a seven album deal with Sony Music then left for Universal. During the time with Sony, he recorded other songs that did not make it into the agreed upon seven albums, Sony Music took it upon themselves to collect that material and release it as a eight album. Fernandez disagrees claiming that he fulfilled the contract with Sony and residual material is his. Hmm. Using precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case, we have $80,000/song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum was $22,500/song. So, as a commenter points out 6397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51176 infringing, songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straight-forward to me. Any comments on what Sony is likely to face? Other than a slap on the wrist from our RIAA controlled judiciary and Justice dept.? Here is another link: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i418c5bc24c7b68c55ff2356aef63ae05

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