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Australia

Submission + - Australian government backs OLPC (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "One Laptop Per Child Australia had a win in the recent Australian budget, receiving federal government funding for the first time. OLPC Australia will benefit from $11.7 million of funding, which will be used to purchase 50,000 laptops to distribute to students. The organisation recently launched a new initiative that builds an educational ecosystem around the laptops, to help integrate them into the learning process (Slashdot discussed it not that long ago.)"
Politics

Submission + - GOP blocks Senate debate on Dem student loan bill (usnews.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic bill Tuesday to preserve low interest rates for millions of college students' loans, as the two parties engaged in election-year choreography aimed at showing each is the better protector of families in today's rugged economy."
Science

Submission + - Gamma-Ray Bending Opens New Door for Optics (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Lenses are a part of everyday life—they help us focus words on a page, the light from stars, and the tiniest details of microorganisms. But making a lens for highly energetic light known as gamma rays had been thought impossible. Now, physicists have created such a lens, and they believe it will open up a new field of gamma-ray optics for medical imaging, detecting illicit nuclear material, and getting rid of nuclear waste.

Submission + - A boost for quantum reality (nature.com)

Submitted by Eponymous Hero
Eponymous Hero writes: FTA: "The philosophical status of the wavefunction — the entity that determines the probability of different outcomes of measurements on quantum-mechanical particles — would seem to be an unlikely subject for emotional debate. Yet online discussion of a paper claiming to show mathematically that the wavefunction is real has ranged from ardently star-struck to downright vitriolic since the article was first released as a preprint in November 2011."

Comment Re:how about no (Score 2) 487

by haakondahl (#34805366) Attached to: Obama Eyeing Internet ID For Americans
The comment was not dumb. You are paving over some important terrain here. Solutions for commerce will arise from commerce itself. Any decent e-tailer has a password system which eliminates the problem you describe. Also, they rely heavily upon a presumption of good-enough security in the credit card system. Regulating commerce is not the same as shoe-horning it into slow-moving, inflexible government mandated solutions to problems that go away long before the "solutions" do. We already have a mostly satisfactory system of ID verification in place, negotiated between consumers and suppliers, who both, after all, insist that the thing work. Here's a chestnut: "There's no chance that a centralized database will emerge." Nonsense. That is *exactly* what will emerge. Do not start this project if you do not want to see it finished. Incidentally, if ISPs would block forged headers, many of our current problems would not exist, and as has been pointed out, IPv6 will solve many of the (very) near future problems. hard-coding a person to IP address is not necessary. I'll be happy to be *officially* DHCP to the world, and DynDNS if I want more.
Earth

Building a Miniature Magnetic Earth 150

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-bring-your-laptop-near-there dept.
Doofus writes "There was an interesting story on NPR this morning about a geophysicist who has constructed a miniature earth to model the earth's dynamo effects. Dan Lathrop, a geophysicist at the University of Maryland, has constructed a 10-foot diameter stainless steel sphere. He intends to fill the sphere with molten sodium and spin the sphere to examine the propensity for the system to generate its own magnetic field. The article includes both video, in which Lathrop spins up the sphere, and audio, including the conversion of magnetic wave functions in prior experiments into audible sound: literally the music of the spheres."
Linux Business

Is Ubuntu Selling Out or Growing Up? 345

Posted by CmdrTaco from the six-of-one dept.
AlexGr notes an article by Jeff Gould where he says " Sometimes I wonder whether Ubuntu is really an open source software company any more. Yes, yes, I realize Ubuntu is not a company at all but a free Linux distribution, GPL'd and open source by definition. But still, the Ubuntu distro is sponsored by a traditional for-profit company. The answer that has recently emerged to this question is, "yes and no." Yes, of course, because Ubuntu's web site promises that the distro "will always be free of charge, including enterprise releases and security updates." But Ubuntu the enterprise ecosystem — understood as the collection of desktops and servers running Ubuntu in a given organization — is not."
Privacy

FBI Hid Patriot Act Abuses 243

Posted by Soulskill from the nothing-to-see-here dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Wired is reporting that the FBI hid Patriot Act abuses with retroactive and flawed subpoenas, and used them to illegally acquire phone and credit card records. There were at least 11 retroactive, 'blanket' subpoenas that were signed by top counter-terrorism officials, some of which sought information the FBI is not allowed to have. The FBI's Communication Analysis Unit also had secret contracts with AT&T, Verizon and MCI, and abused National Security Letters by issuing subpoenas based on fake emergencies."
Earth

Alaskan Village Sues Over Global Warming 670

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the quit-pissin-in-our-pool dept.
hightower_40 writes to mention that a small Alaskan village has sued two dozen oil, power, and coal companies, blaming them for contributing to global warming. "Sea ice traditionally protected the community, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But sea ice that forms later and melts sooner because of higher temperatures has left the community unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that lash coastal areas."

Microsoft Trying To Appeal to the Unix Crowd? 468

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-we-are-very-sexy dept.
DigDuality writes "With the news that Windows 2008 (recently discussed on Slashdot) will have GUI-less installs and be fully scriptable, that they've opened up their communication protocols for non-commercial usage and are providing a patent covenant (Redhat Responds), and now finally an interesting rumor floating around that Microsoft will be taking on GNU directly. Has Microsoft totally switched gears in how it is approaching the Unix and FOSS sector for direct competition? According to an anonymous email leaked from a Microsoft employee, it seems Microsoft will be developing a framework that will be completely GNU compatible. Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, said on Friday (23 February) that they are aiming to restore a Unix-like environment to its former proprietary glory, at the same time proving that Microsoft is committed to interoperability. Ballmer emphasized that Microsoft's new strategy is to provide users with a complete package, and this includes users who like Unix environments. According to the supposedly leaked email, UNG, which stands for UNG's not GNU, is set to be released late 2009."
The Media

Getting The Public To Listen To Good Science 419

Posted by kdawson from the i'm-your-doctor-dammit dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "We all know that false or misleading science headlines are all too common these days and that misleading media combined with an apathetic and undereducated public lead to widespread ignorance. But the real question is, how can this trend be reversed? At a session at the recent AAAS meeting, a study was discussed indicating that what matters most is how the information is portrayed. While people are willing to defer to experts on matters of low concern, for things that affect them directly, such as breast cancer or childhood diseases, expertise only counts for as much as giving off a 'sense of honesty and openness,' and that it matters far less than creating a sense of empathy in deciding who people will listen to. In other words, it's not enough to merely report on it as an expert. You need to make sure your report exudes a sense of honesty, openness, empathy, and maybe even a hint of humor."
Microsoft

Yahoo Deal Is Big, but Is It the Next Big Thing? 159

Posted by Soulskill from the keeping-up-with-the-googses dept.
mattsgotredhair brings us a NYTimes article discussing how Microsoft's bid for Yahoo contrasts against one of the core philosophies of Silicon Valley: looking forward. From the Times: "Microsoft may see Yahoo as its last best chance to catch up. But for all its size and ambition, the bid has not been greeted with enthusiasm. That may be because Silicon Valley favors bottom-up innovation instead of growth by acquisition. The region's investment money and brain power are tuned to start-ups that can anticipate the next big thing rather than chase the last one. 'This is the very nature of the Valley,' said Jim Breyer of the venture capital firm Accel Partners. 'After very strong growth, businesses by definition start to slow as competition increases and young creative start-ups begin to attack the incumbents.'"
Education

The Curse of Knowledge Bogs Down Innovation 260

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yay-holiday-sunday-news dept.
Secret of Raising Smart Kids writes ""I have a DVD remote control with 52 buttons on it, and every one of them is there because some engineer along the line knew how to use that button and believed I would want to use it, too," says David Heath, co-author of "Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die." The "curse of knowledge," is the paradox that as our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off because the walls of the box we think inside of thicken along with our experience. An article in the NY Times proposes a solution to the curse: bring outsiders with no experience onto teams to keep creativity and innovation on track. When experts have to slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, "it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems." Another solution is to force yourself to become a beginner again like making yourself shoot basketball left-handed."
Censorship

Submission + - New Jersey bans sex offenders from using internet

Submitted by the_humeister
the_humeister writes: According to the AP, New Jersey has just enacted a new law restricting internet access to sex offenders. Now this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing save for the fact that "sex offender" now covers such a wide range of actions such that getting caught urinating in public can get you such a label.

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