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Moon

Earth's Moon is a Rarity 202

Posted by Zonk from the lucky-to-have-you-luna-old-sod dept.
Smivs writes "Scientists have concluded that moons like the Earth's are actually quite rare. Only 5-10% of planetary systems are likely to contain moons formed by planetary collisions. 'By the time the Earth's moon formed, when the Sun was 30 million years old, the planet formation process in our Solar System should have been approaching its end. In the latest study, Dr Gorlova's team looked at the heat signature of stars using the infrared. This allows astronomers to predict how much of that heat comes from the star itself and how much is re-emitted by dusty material encircling it.'"
Handhelds

Trolltech GPLs Qtopia Phone Edition 78

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-the-cool-kids-are-doing-it dept.
Provataki writes "Trolltech has announced that they are releasing the new version of Qtopia Phone Edition under the GPL along with a port on the FIC Neo1973 smartphone. Trolltech also continues to support Greenphone as a reference platform for mobile development within the company and through its partners. Benoit Schillings, CTO of Trolltech (also of BeOS fame as one of the original Be, Inc. engineers) commented on the news."
Space

Ancient Star Found, Estimated at 13.2 Billion Years Old 377

Posted by Zonk from the insert-your-mom-joke-here dept.
raguirre writes "An article on Physorg.org reports that a newly found star may be as old as the universe itself. Recent studies have concluded that the Big Bang occurred somewhere in the neighborhood of 13.7 Billion years ago. The star, a heavy-elements laden fossil labeled HE 1523-0901 on charts was probably born right around the same time; approximately 13.2 Billion years ago. 'Today, astronomer Anna Frebel of the the University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory and her colleagues have deduced the star's age based on the amounts of radioactive elements it contains compared to certain other "anchor" elements, specifically europium, osmium and iridium.'"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Battlestar Galactica To Continue

Submitted by turboflux
turboflux writes: According to executive producer David Eick, Battlestar Galactica is still an open-ended adventure and it will not be ending after the 4th season as previously reported. Evidently Edward James Olmos jumped the gun on confirming the show would be ending while attending the Saturn Awards this month. Eick goes on to say that the fourth season would actually be 22 episodes (2 more than prior seasons) rather than the reported 13 episode order.
NASA

Submission + - World Wind Java SDK Released

Submitted by AnswerIs42
AnswerIs42 writes: NASA World Wind Java which debut at JavaOne this week and was demoed in a lab yesterday is now officially released as a Early Access release 0.2.0 SDK, this is NOT a full blown application but an API that can be used in other applications. There are demos in the SDK zip file and there is a link for a WWJava demo that is launched from the web page. For more information you can check the World Wind Central wiki page for WWJava, and the forums. A video of the live presentation opening day of JavaOne can be found here and these two blogs have multiple posts on the WWJava release.
Media

Submission + - Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An editor from Wired writes on his blog that Wikipedia sucks for science stories — not because they are inaccurate, but because of what he calls the "tragedy of the uncommon": Too many experts writing about subjects in ways that no non-expert can understand. Would this be the dumbing-down of Wikipedia — or would it be a better resource for everyone?
Science

Ceiling Height May Affect Problem-Solving Skills 279

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the how-low-can-you-go dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention that a recent University of Minnesota study suggests that ceiling height may affect problem-solving skills. "'When people are in a room with a high ceiling, they activate the idea of freedom. In a low-ceilinged room, they activate more constrained, confined concepts.' Either can be good. The concept of freedom promotes information processing that encourages greater variation in the kinds of thoughts one has, said Meyers-Levy, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota. The concept of confinement promotes more detail-oriented processing."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Optimizing Daily Habits

Submitted by Anonymous Westley
Anonymous Westley writes: Mike Elgan shows you how to Save 5 Hours a Day, the Geek Way. For example:

If you read news magazines and newspapers, and also exercise, you can combine them to gain at least an hour in your day. The secret is to replace current-events reading with podcasts, and listen while you're walking or jogging or lifting weights. Chances are, the publications you read have podcast versions. Also, try BBC programs, major TV and radio news channels offerings, as well as Slate and other online zines. By switching to podcasts, you'll save money, help the environment, and cut time spent reading (because you can listen while you're doing other things).

I've been listening to entire courses for more than a year now (thanks, Teaching Company!), plus all kinds of podcasts and even text-to-speech'ed emails. It makes even jogging almost bearable. How do you optimize your time?
The Almighty Buck

Sun Says, "Compensate OSS Developers" 210

Posted by kdawson from the just-haggling-over-the-price dept.
krelian writes "Talking at Netbeans Day, Rich Green, Sun executive vice president for software, expressed doubts about the current open source model in which developers create free intellectual property only to have others scoop it up and generate huge amounts of revenue. Green said, 'I think in the long term that this is a worrisome scenario [and] not sustainable. We are looking very closely at compensating people for the work that they do.'" Green didn't provide any details about how payments from Sun or others might work.
Security

Submission + - Transportation Security Administration loses hard

Submitted by
w1z4rd
w1z4rd writes: "The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), often regarded as the cornerstone of the United States' homeland security, has lost a hard drive containing information of over 100,000 people.

The hard drive contained data from personnel who were employed by TSA as far back as 2002. The administration has teamed up with the FBI to recover the data."
The Internet

Submission + - Averting Data Center Disasters with the EPO Button

Submitted by
1sockchuck
1sockchuck writes: "Most data centers have an Emergency Power Off (EPO) button that will shut off power to the entire data center floor. Designed for fire prevention, the EPO (often a red button) has also triggered many accidental outages when vendors or cleaning crews have pressed it by accident. On April 15, the EPO figured in an apparent act of sabotage that crashed the data center that controls California's electrical grid. A disgruntled sysadmin was later charged in the incident. At the recent Data Center World conference, a session focused on ways to configure and manage the EPO button to reduce the risk of an accident or sabotage. "People can get killed and lives ruined by data center failures today," said data center designer Richard Sawyer. "The EPO represents a single point of failure. Make it accessible, but don't make it easy.""

Feed Hello, Galileo: European GPS sat sends first navigation data (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: GPS

Although Galileo, the European alternative to GPS, has been beset by endless delays and even the ignominy of having its access system hacked almost immediately, the project continues to make slow progress this week with the transmission of its first navigation message. GIOVE-A, the first of a planned 30 satellites, has been floating overhead since the beginning of last year, but had only been sending "general signals" until the test last week, when the bird sent the data needed to measure the distance between itself and a ground station in Guildford, England. That's a big step, since the system is supposed go live next year and be fully operational by 2011 or so. Here's hoping all goes well -- the American-owned GPS system keeps sending European drivers into the drink.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Communications

Submission + - A good mobile phone with no camera?

Submitted by SuperG
SuperG writes: It seems like every mobile phone out there has a camera on it these days. The only ones without cameras are low-end models with poor battery life, poor reception, and minimal features. And low-end means the cool factor is nonexistent as well. I often visit facilities where phones with cameras are not allowed, so I end up being incommunicado with my current camera phone. Is there a good (in terms of battery life, call quality, build quality, and style points) phone without a camera out there in the US market?

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