1) It encourages new members to stay new.

It's been 2 days since the massacre and the gun control debate has been revived again with all the deaf loud people screaming the stuff that no one hears. As important as that might be, I think that the debate that needs to be promoted is how to communicate effectively in an emergency. Although plenty of unfounded rumors were mongered last Monday, the most effective communications among the Virginia Tech Community, the loved ones at home, and the rest of us were by new technologies such as

Thunderbird 2 is out. Linux, Mac and Windows versions are availaible at Mozilla's FTP site.

Jono Bacon argues in his blog that the solution to maintaining quality in open source projects is not to make contributions difficult, but to make sure that the processes exist to handle them effectively.

Aero News Network says that
"A Garuda Indonesia Boeing 747 carrying several hundred passengers last week was forced to turn around when controllers told the pilots a nuclear-capable ballistic missile had been launched in their vicinity."

Tyson Foods, one of the largest meat processors in the United States, is currently making a deal with ConocoPhillips, one of the world's major oil companies. C|Net News reports that Tyson's waste animal fat could be processed into 175 million gallons of biodiesel a year, and that ConocoPhillips plans

For a long time I have been convinced that there wouldn't be a real problem with people using their mobile phones in airplanes. Figuring that wiring ought to properly insulated and frequencies not necessarily interfering between plane and ground communications, I'd have figured we were safe. A discovery that I made yesterday made me not so sure.

When it comes to energy, Brazil is on its way to becoming a "global brand." Although the United States recently outpaced Brazil in ethanol production, Brazil is by far the leader in sugar-based ethanol. Its exports are growing, and it could become a major energy supplier to the world. But what Brazil is particularly known for is its grand conversion-moving almost 40 percent of its automotive fuel from gasoline to ethanol.

The startup R&D organization "Team SmartFish" has come up with a design for a performance aircraft that's inspired by a tuna fish, which is evidently (one of?) the fastest fish in the sea and has been clocked at 85 km/h. Their model-sized prototype is powered by a fuel cell stack with a pusher prop. The full scale version calls for a 900-1000# turbofan in the tail.

SQL-Ledger changed its license away from the GPL to a license that many of us feel meets neither the FSF's definition of Free Software nor the OSI's definition of Open Source. Perhaps the reason is that DWS is afraid of the competition.

Jailed journalist Josh Wolf has been released on a compromise:

Today a French high-speed train known as TGV set a world speed record for conventional trains of 357.2 miles per hour. That is quite impressive. In my view, trains at this kind of speed would be competitive with commuter aircraft for the types of routes that both transportation systems serve. It seems that high speed train systems would work economically in par

The secret hull and keel designs for the America's Cup contenders were revealed today at the race site in Valencia. (Previously, only the defender and the top two challengers had had to "drop their skirts".) While there were no radical new developments, as the International Americas Cup

New site launched, totally new look, new technology. For senior IT folks. http://www.cio.com/

Hello Slashdot community. Shobhan and Clay here to talk about parallel programming this week, a topic that is both interesting and familiar to us. As processors for server, desktop and mobile platforms move from dual to quad core and beyond, software must be parallelized to best benefit from the potential performance gains now possible. Software developers have successfully introduced parallelism to their software through multithreading using Intel resources such as software development tools