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Power

Submission + - The Whole House-Off Switch 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wouldn't it be convenient if you had just one switch to power-off the whole house? Something like what you have at hotels, but over there it's your room key that does the trick. For homes its better to fit the Whole House-Off Switch by designer Jack Godfrey Wood. The idea behind the concept is to turn off of the unnecessary power in the house when you step out, with a single switch. The Whole House-Off Switch was designed to make "the green way the most convenient way," and was part of a larger project to "encourage 'green' action among the environmentally disenfranchised."
Communications

Submission + - DirecTV to Offer Internet Over Power Lines (seekingalpha.com)

Submitted by
sonsonete
sonsonete writes: "Satellite-television provider DirecTV has plans to offer high-speed Internet service carried over electric power lines.

According to the Wall Street Journal under the agreement, which is expected to be signed today, DirecTV will market a bundled package of Current's broadband and VOIP services under the DirecTV brand.... According to the report, DirecTV has yet to determine pricing, but says TV, Internet and phone services packages will be competitive with those offered by phone companies.
"
NASA

Images of Endeavour's Damaged Tiles 331

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-sure-doesn't-look-good dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Neptec Design Group, a Canadian company and a NASA prime contractor for 25 space missions, was kind enough to send me exclusive images of Endeavour's damaged tiles during its last take-off. So here are some of these pictures" The pictures are pretty amazing and make the urgency of this whole thing much more amazing.
Google

Submission + - Google, Sun to finally take on Microsoft?

Submitted by Trion
Trion writes: Nearly two years after they were expected to announce a Microsoft Office killer (or is it even likely?), Sun Microsystems and Google may finally be planning to do it. Or not. Mary Jo Foley, in her ZDNet blog, has reported that she got confirmation from a Sun representative that the company plans to make a StarOffice-related announcement on Wednesday that will have a "significant impact in the industry about the adoption of Open Document Format and availability of free MS Office-compatible comprehensive office suite". Google had also secretly added Sun's StarOffice software suite to its Google Pack of recommended applications. StarOffice is integrated with Google Search and Google Desktop.
Displays

Submission + - 3D Animations in Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japanese boffins are now making animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. They could be used as street signs, advertising or to create giant plasma monsters to destroy entire cities. Maybe.
Programming

Submission + - Red Hat Developer Studio first contact (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
juanignaciosl
juanignaciosl writes: "First beta of Red Hat Developer Studio has just been published. This IDE is a bunch of Eclipse plugins which comes out from JBoss IDE and Exadel Studio fusion. The main advantages it offers are: JSF development improved, specially integrating RichFaces and Ajax4JSF libraries; Seam (next J2EE middleware standard?) integration; it also includes plugins for JBoss, Hibernate...

RHDS seems promising. Is finally the time Java development meets Visual Whatever integration?

If anybody wants to read on first impressions you can check my software engineering blog post on Red Hat Developer Studio installation."
Music

Submission + - Unforgiven: Metallica sues Red Octane, Activision, (qj.net) 1

Submitted by antek9
antek9 writes: Remember Metallica? Those hairy guys that wanted to sue everyone who obtained their music minus an appropriate license? They're at it again, suing even those video game makers who legitimately licensed their music for music-centered franchises.

From the article: "[...] the counsel for Red Octane and Activision had this to say:
Our company paid a licensing fee to feature the track 'One' by Metallica in Guitar Hero III. We don't understand why Metallica would turn around and sue us, unless they've gone from insane to completely batshit insane since 2001, but we're confident that the law and our contracts will be enough to have this thrown out.

Metallica's counsel, on the other hand, explained that the band is fearful that album sales will decline because consumers can easily get hold of their songs just by purchasing video game titles. The lawyer added, "The band learned its lesson the hard way with file sharing in the late 90s. This time they want to do a pre-emptive strike before the music gets out there"."

Any lawyer using the expression 'batshit insane' is a good lawyer by default, so this should be fun.
Robotics

Submission + - Humorous 'Robot' (uc.edu)

Submitted by
allengineering
allengineering writes: "There does not exist yet but American researchers already carried out an able this software — to a certain extent — to detect the puns.


"That I lay? What do I lay?" "The last word which was useful to you was: I lay." "Terry towel! Perfect..."

This small dialogue has what to make bugger a software of analysis of text. The program developed at the university of Cincinnati by Julia Taylor and Lawrence Mazlack, to determine that it is about a pun.

Taylor had the distinct task of "training" the computer by providing it with information relative to American English at a child's level. They developed an extensive list of knock-knock jokes that turn on people's names, particularly.

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Dawn
Dawn who?
Dawn by the station, early in the morning

Knock, Knock
Who is there?
Wendy
Wendy who?
Wendy last time you took a bath?

All bad jokes aside, their research represents a step forward in computers reaching the capability of a human mind."
Biotech

Journal Journal: Team finds way to create cancer stem cells 124

Journal by stemceller
MIT scientists and colleagues have found a way to create in the lab large amounts of cancer stem cells, or cells that can initiate tumors. The work, reported in the August 13 issue of Cancer Cell, could be a boon to researchers who study these elusive cells. Labs could easily grow them for use in experiments.
Operating Systems

Submission + - The $2,500 Question - A New Computer 2

Submitted by mdrebelx
mdrebelx writes: For the first time in almost 30 years of computer use I am completely stymied about my next computer purchase. This will be a personal home computer and I am prepared to spend around $2,500 for my rig. Right now I am currently using a dual-boot computer with Windows XP and Kubuntu Linux. I use the computer to Web surf, listen to music, photo-editing, create music, some light word processing and spreadsheets, finances, taxes, and playing World of Warcraft or Half-Life 2 mods. Were it not for the games my decision would be so much easier. So my choices as I see it are: Kubuntu only, using Wine for the games. I got the games to run on my current system but the load times were excessive (2-3 minutes) and my framerates were pitiful. I am hoping this is only a limitation of my current computer but I have to say the games run well when I boot XP. Kubuntu/XP dual booting. I already have that and it gets bothersome to switch back and forth. Microsoft XP only. Yes it works and has the fewest hassles but I was hoping for an experience that says this is 2007. Also this OS has been marked for elimination and that just doesn't seem like a good place to start. Microsoft Vita. Everything tells me this would be a bad choice. Mac OS X. This is the system I know the least about but I am the most intrigued by. Mac has a positive spin. It is sleek and sexy and the recent Unix certification gives it a good pedigree. But will I be satisfied, because this choice has the largest degree of lock-in or commitment as it costs the most and it seems silly to wipe the drive for another OS if I'm unsatisfied. If someone would just make a virtual machine that could be allowed full access to the video card this would be a no-brainer. Opinions? Suggestions? Alternatives I might have missed?
KDE

Submission + - KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released 1

Submitted by
mernil
mernil writes: "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications."
Editorial

Submission + - But Mom! The other 61-year-olds get an allowance! (reuters.com)

Submitted by
deweycheetham
deweycheetham writes: "ROME (Reuters) — A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son's house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idU SL0288587220070802 The article goes on to say "Most Italian men still live at home late into their 30s, enjoying their "mamma's" cooking, washing and ironing.". Well Pack my bags, I am moving to Italy."
Education

Journal Journal: Teaching Programming to Kids? 2

Journal by PresidentEnder
I'm an undergrad Math/CS student. One of my cousins, an exceptionally bright 11-year-old, is interested in learning to program. I'd like to give him some kind of direction; at least, more than I got: to teach him to avoid bad habits, use design patterns (OO vs procedural, especially) properly, and make sure that he stays interested. I'd like to see what Slashdot thinks: what are appropriate resources to use? Which language should I try to teach him? Are there any good books out there?
Windows

Submission + - Windows Vista fixes leaked to net

Submitted by warpwhistle
warpwhistle writes: Microsoft's upcoming Performance and Compatibility packs for Windows Vista have been leaked to the Internet two weeks before their expected release. While it isn't the Service Pack 1 release that Vista users were hoping for, it does take some steps to correct some of the mass-reported performance issues, and adds some extra functionality as well. According to AeroXperience, the service packs fix the serious file transfer slowdowns that occurred in previous revisions of Vista. The site claims that the new fixes improve transfer times by 120%.
Security

Submission + - Fingerprints at School 2

Submitted by
Inda
Inda writes: "My daughter, 7, is about to start at a new school that likes to think they excel in technology. They use an interesting system for checking out library books using a single thumb print. When I first heard this, alarm bells rang. The way I understand it, once a fingerprint is compromised, it is compromised forever.

I'm told the children enjoy using the fingerprint system and I would not want to single my daughter out as being different. The alternative to fingerprints are library cards, with barcodes, that are scanned manually.

I am not confident that the school's security is up to scratch. Their website is poorly written in FrontPage by the headmaster, all the staff use the Comic Sans MS font; I'm sure you get the picture. At the end of the day, they're teachers, not security experts. Security is not my field of expertise either.

Should I be concerned? Have I been reading Slashdot too long? Should I put the tinfoil hat down?"

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