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Microsoft

MS Clearflow To Help Drivers Avoid Traffic Jams 243

Posted by kdawson from the get-me-outa-this dept.
Pioneer Woman writes "Microsoft announced plans to introduce a Web-based service for driving directions that incorporates complex software models to help users avoid traffic jams. The system is intended to reflect the complex traffic interactions that occur as traffic backs up on freeways and spills over onto city streets and will be freely available as part of the company's Live.com site for 72 cities in the US. Microsoft researchers designed algorithms that modeled traffic behavior by collecting trip data from Microsoft employees who volunteered to carry GPS units in their cars. In the end they were able to build a model for predicting traffic based on four years of data, effectively creating individual 'personalities' for over 800,000 road segments in the Seattle region. In all the system tracks about 60 million road segments in the US."
Space

Space Elevators Face Wobble Problem 244

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the all-part-of-the-ride dept.
NewScientist is reporting that while the strength of the tether has long been considered the main problem in building a space elevator, a new study suggests that a dangerous wobbling problem may also be a serious obstacle. "Previous studies have noted that gravitational tugs from the Moon and Sun, as well as pressure from gusts of solar wind, would shake the tether. That could potentially make it veer into space traffic, including satellites and bits of space debris. A collision could cut the tether and wreck the space elevator."
Music

Copyright Cutback Proposed As RIAA Solution 709

Posted by CmdrTaco from the things-that-would-help-but-are-impossible dept.
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe proposes a novel solution to the ongoing spate of RIAA lawsuits over alleged music copying. He suggests legislation which cuts back corporate copyrights from 120 years to 5 years. 'We should do what we do to children who misbehave,' he writes. 'Take away their privileges.' Wolfe says this is regardless of the misunderstanding surrounding the latest case, which apparently isn't about ripping CDs to one's own computer. As to those who say copyrights are a right: "That's simply a misunderstanding of their purpose. Copyrights, like patents, weren't implemented to protect their owners in perpetuity. They are part of a dance which attempts to balance off societal benefits against incentives for writers and inventors. You want to incentivize people to push the state of the creative and technical arts, but you don't want give those folks such overbearing protections that future advances by other innovators are stifled." What do you think; is it time to cut off the record industry?"
Books

The Home Library Problem Solved 328

Posted by kdawson from the ask-and-it-is-given dept.
Zack Grossbart writes "About 18 months ago I posted the following question to Ask Slashdot: 'How do you organize a home library with 3,500 books?' I have read all the responses, reviewed most of the available software, and come up with a good solution described in the article The Library Problem. This article discusses various cataloging schemes, reviews cheap barcode scanners, and outlines a complete solution for organizing your home library. Now you can see an Ask Slashdot question with a definitive answer."
The Internet

Do Tiny URL Services Weaken Net Architecture? 270

Posted by CmdrTaco from the huge-gigantic-massive-insignificant-concerns dept.
Indus Khaitan writes "Thanks to twitter, SMS, and mobile web, a lot of people are using the url minimizers like tinyurl.com, urltea.com. However, now I see a lot of people using it on their regular webpages. This could be a big problem if billions of different links are unreachable at a given time. What if a service starts sending a pop-up ad along with the redirect. What if the masked target links to a page with an exploit instead of linking to the new photos of Jessica Alba. Are services like tinyurl, urltea etc. taking the WWW towards a single point of failure? Is it a huge step backward? Or I'm just crying wolf here?"
Space

The Story of Baikonur, Russia's Space City 237

Posted by Zonk from the you're-the-rocket-man dept.
eldavojohn writes "There's an article up on Physorg about Russian space launch city Baikonur, rented by Russia from Kazakhstan. Although it is essentially the same as it was in the 60's and 70's, it is amazingly efficient and still operational. 'Even the technology hasn't changed much. The Soyuz spacecraft designed in the mid-1960s is still in service, somewhat modified. It can only be used once, but costs just $25 million. The newest Endeavor space shuttle cost $2 billion, but is reusable. Life and work in Baikonur and its cosmodrome are also pretty much what they were in the Soviet era. The town of 70,000 - unbearably hot in summer, freezing cold in winter and dusty year round - is isolated by hundreds of miles of scrubland.'" We last discussed Baikonur back in 2005.
The Almighty Buck

Nasdaq to Delist SCO Sep 27 269

Posted by samzenpus from the please-let-this-be-the-end dept.
symbolset writes "The Nasdaq Staff has decided to delist SCO at open of business on September 27, 2007 under their discretionary authority and as a result of SCO filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. SCO can get a hearing but "There can be no assurance that the panel will grant the Company's request for continued listing.""
The Courts

SCO Blames Linux For Bankruptcy Filing 321

Posted by Zonk from the comment-write-themselves dept.
Stony Stevenson writes "SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is now claiming that competition from Linux was behind the company's filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 'In a court filing in support of SCO's bankruptcy petition, McBride noted that SCO's sales of Unix-based products "have been declining over the past several years." The slump, McBride said, "has been primarily attributable to significant competition from alternative operating systems, including Linux." McBride listed IBM, Red Hat, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems as distributors of Linux or other software that is "aggressively taking market share away from Unix.""
GNU is Not Unix

Richard Stallman Proclaims Don't Follow Linus Torvalds 965

Posted by CmdrTaco from the was-he-wearing-the-hat-at-the-time dept.
StonyandCher writes "Here is an interview with Richard Stallman about a range of free software topics including GPLv3 and comment on the Microsoft patent issue. Stallman has a go at Linus Torvalds even suggesting that if people want to keep their freedom they better not follow Torvalds. From the interview 'Stallman: The fact that Torvalds says "open source" instead of "free software" shows where he is coming from. I wrote the GNU GPL to defend freedom for all users of all versions of a program. I developed version 3 to do that job better and protect against new threats. Torvalds says he rejects this goal; that's probably why he doesn't appreciate GPL version 3. I respect his right to express his views, even though I think they are foolish. However, if you don't want to lose your freedom, you had better not follow him.'"
Power

New Legislation Proposed For Nuclear Safety 144

Posted by kdawson from the did-you-say-springfield-vermont dept.
mdsolar writes "Recent problems at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have spurred Congresspeople from Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire to introduce legislation that would allow State governors to request independent safety reviews of nuclear power plants. The reviews would exclude NRC employees who usually work on that plant and include non-NRC reviewers. This review model is based on one that found problems at Maine Yankee before it closed. Problems at Vermont Yankee have included a cooling tower collapse, a SCRAM caused by an un-greased valve, and failure of a safety system during the SCRAM. The plant is coming off of heightened review after shipping nuclear material with insufficient shielding. The plant's application for a 20 year license extension is also currently under review."
Data Storage

Submission + - 48GigaBYTE flash chip (pennnet.com)

Submitted by Hal_Porter
Hal_Porter writes: Hynix have stacked 24 16 gigabit (2 gigabyte) NAND flash chips in a 1.4mm thick package, giving 48 gigabytes of storage. It's not clear if it's possible to write to them in parallel — if so the device should be pretty damn fast. The usual objection to NAND flash as a hard drive replacement is lifetime. NAND sectors can only be written 100,000 times or so before they wear out, but wear levelling can be done to spread writes evenly over at least each chip. I worked out that the lifetime should be much longer than a typical magnetic hard disk. There's no information on costs yet frankly and it sounds like an expensive proof of concept, but it shows you the sort of device that will take over from small hard disks in the next few years.
Businesses

Submission + - Citrix co-founder gets FAA OK to rev up airline (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "DayJet , the brainchild of Citrix co-founder Ed Iacobucci, said Wednesday that the Federal Aviation Administration has approved its use of six-seat jets in a proposed on-demand air service that for now would link five Florida cities. In the planning stages for over five years, DayJet's jet aircraft will be furnished by another ex-techie bigwig, Vern Raburn who used to work for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Earlier this year Raburn's Eclipse Aviation got the FAA greenlight to begin full-scale production of its Eclipse 500 Very Light Jets (VLJ) , over 300 of which are slated to go to Iacobucci's DayJet, in the next two years. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/19093"
Power

Submission + - ConEd to end DC power service in Manhattan (nypost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Daily News reports that ConEd has received approval to end its DC power service in New York City:

The utility has won state permission to switch off its direct current service, which Thomas Edison powered up in Manhattan 125 years ago yesterday. It now provides DC power to just five customers in Manhattan. The Public Service Commission order is the last gasp of a century-old war between Edison, a direct-current proponent, and Nikola Tesla, who invented alternating current.
Google

Does Google Own Your Content? 160

Posted by Zonk from the err-i-have-to-go-make-some-copies dept.
mjasay writes "ZDNet is reporting that Google has a potentially worrisome clause in its User Agreement for Google Apps. Namely, that any content put into the system and 'intended to be available to the members of the public' is free game for Google, reserving the right for Google 'to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any service offered by Google.' Google may not be evil, but giving it these (and other) rights to one's data should be ringing alarm bells in the Google Apps user base."

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