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Space

Submission + - NIACs last hurrah: 1000 km space bubble structures

Submitted by
nanotrends
nanotrends writes: "The last Nasa Institute for Advanced Studies projects are being presented now at the NIAC site.

Some of the last NIAC studies are a system for making massive bubbles in space and then making them rigid after inflation and roving lunar RVs that carry an inflatable connection for a base camp. A single bubble can be 1 meter in earth gravity, 100 kilometer in low earth orbit or 1000 kilometers in deep space. Foams made of many bubbles could be far larger in size. Metal can be evaporated to coat the inside of the bubble for reflective sails and telescopes. Large structures can make telescopes that are millions of times more powerful than the Hubble Space telescope and solar sails that are light weight and fast."
Media

Submission + - Creative Labs False Advertising

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Creative Labs 2GB MuVo V100 portable mp3 players are advertised as being USB 2.0 capable devices, but are in fact USB 1.1 devices. Creative labs own message forums, as well as other places document this clearly, and a quick google search yields many more results. I verified it myself on two different platforms, a MacBook Pro, and an nforce2 based mainboard with onboard USB 2.0. I have emailed creative asking how to get usb 2.0 speeds out of this product and have been ignored, like most people. This really sounds like class action lawsuit material. Creative Labs are doing absolutely nothing to address this, and you can still find this product on store shelves advertised as being a USB 2.0 device when it clearly is not. It takes over an HOUR to copy 2gb of data to/from this device. What is a consumer to do?
Input Devices

Submission + - QWERTY Keyboard Layout: Are We Stuck Forever?

Submitted by
techie
techie writes: "CoolTechZone.com author Gundeep Hora asks the question, "QWERTY Keyboard Layout: Are We Stuck Forever?" Sure, DVORAK may be gaining some traction between developers, but will it ever be mainstream. The article states, "Personally, for a new keyboard layout to get adopted, the entire technology industry would have to form an association with contributing member companies to come up with a new standard. Once they have come up with a new layout, they would then have to release their respective models at the same time to saturate the market and leave us with no choice. After all, if we have a choice, then we would obviously opt for the layout that's familiar to us. Ethical or not, that's what would happen."
Google

Submission + - Google aquires Doubleclick

Submitted by
darcsorrows
darcsorrows writes: "On April 13th, Google bought the Internet Advertising giant Doubleclick. Many adverts seen on websites all over the Internet are served up by Doubleclick, so it will be interesting to see which direction Google takes the company. This story was posted on the Google Company Blog on April 13th.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/next-step-i n-google-advertising.html"
United States

Submission + - CS programs changing to attract women students

Submitted by Magnifico
Magnifico writes: In today's The New York Times, there is a story about American universities are actively recruiting women to be Computer Science students and changing CS courses to do so. The story, "Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold", explains that the number of women in CS is shrinking: "Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor's degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation." One of the largest barriers to recruiting women to the field is the "nerd factor". To attract women students to the CS field, "Moving emphasis away from programming proficiency was a key to the success of programs Dr. Blum and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon instituted to draw more women into computer science." Changes at CMU increased women students in the CS program from 8 percent to nearly 40 percent.
OS X

Submission + - file system editors

Submitted by bobm
bobm writes: I have a large amount of files to rename and basically cleanup and it occurred to me that a 'file system editor' would be very handy. Something where I could just enter regular expressions and treat the directory like a file.

example /^beta/s//alpha/g

would change any file starting with beta to alpha.

I would like to have this on OS X but could manage in XP if needed.

thanks
Robotics

Submission + - MIT Humanoid to Help Around the House

Submitted by siiidooo
siiidooo writes: Technology Review is reporting on advancements in robotics that could someday lead to humanoids in our homes, helping us with chores. "For more than a decade, roboticists have worked on systems for the elderly, hoping to extend the amount of time that seniors can live at home and improve their quality of life. Now MIT researchers have built a humanoid robot with a special motion-tracking system and spring-loaded actuators that make it better equipped to deal with household chores. The robot, named Domo, can size up an object by shaking it in its hand and then put it away in a cupboard."

Feed 'Large Is Smart' When It Comes To Cities (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
A team of researchers have studied the growth of cities in different parts of the world and have come up with general equations that can foretell their consumption of resources and their contributions to society. The work has debunked the notion that cities act like biological organisms, that once they start they grow, and consume and contribute at predictable linear rates.
Networking

Submission + - Office Web Sharing

Submitted by
John Steel
John Steel writes: "download center on Internet or in an office. Your users, customers and partners can download/upload files easily through a web browser (such as IE, Netscape, Firefox, or Opera). Each login user has his sharing folder, his private folder and his network places. Office Web Sharing also provides a web address book and a Bulletin Board System (Forum). You can import contacts from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express to web address book. Office Web Sharing doesn't depend on any additional software or services; it doesn't even require additional HTML page design. It only needs to be installed and it is easy, simple."
Power

Journal Journal: Ethanol And Brazil: The New Global Energy Brand?

Journal by blue234
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.

Feed Docs Point to E-Voting Bug in Contested Race (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed
Symptoms consistent with a known software flaw in a popular electronic voting machine surfaced widely in a controversial election in Sarasota County, Florida, last November, despite county officials' claims that a bug played no role in the election results.


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