17796944
submission
eonlabs writes:
Torrent users being blamed for illegally downloading Farcry are fighting back. In a 96 page lawsuit, the lawyers at Dunlap, Grubb, and Weaver are being accused of 'extortion, fraudulent omissions, mail fraud, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, racketeering, fraud upon the court, abuse of process, fraud on the Copyright Office, copyright misuse, unjust enrichment, and consumer protection violations.'
5401739
submission
eonlabs writes:
Discovery has an article about a new technique published in Science Magazine for extracting structures that have been etched into silicon. The technique is non-destructive, allowing the template to be reused multiple times. Nano-structures such as pyramids and ripples produced with the technique could be used to improve optical computing. The article focuses on the technique's unique ability to reproduce the structures efficiently (30 uses per template), while previous techniques required the template be dissolved away.
2154761
submission
eonlabs writes:
A burst of cosmic rays has been detected from the direction of the Orion nebula.
Cosmically speaking, this is very close to home. The rays are of significant interest
because they typically arrive at Earth uniformly from all directions. The origins of
cosmic rays are still not entirely clear, although there are a few candidates for that.
This burst may shed some new light on how they actually can be formed.
839747
submission
eonlabs writes:
The BBC has an article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7574255.stm on the formation of stars in close proximity to a super massive black hole.
Their formation has not been well understood until now, but with the help of a year of supercomputer time, scientists have been able to model the interstellar processes needed to produce them. The results not only match up well with observations, but provide clues as to how their formation is remotely possible.
For those who want some background on the type of black hole involved, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_blackhole
FTA:
The simulations...followed the evolution of two separate giant gas clouds up to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, as they fell towards the supermassive black hole. ...
The disrupted clouds form into spiral patterns as they orbit the black hole....In these conditions, only high mass stars are able to form and these stars inherit the eccentric orbits from the elliptical disc.
An interesting read!
765749
submission
eonlabs writes:
With the emergence of Ubuntu and its derivatives, as well as MS's release of Vista and diminishing support of XP, switching operating systems is becoming much more appealing http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/09/1227225. However, as much as I would like to convert over to linux full time, the OSes/Windowing Systems that I've tried (Gentoo, Debian, *buntu/KDE, Gnome) still seem to lack the polish that you can find when trying to run Microsoft Word 2003 on Microsoft Windows XP. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/05/2335228 http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/18/034234
For a while, people were shouting about how great an idea it was to have someone use their girlfriend as a usability tester. Slashdot readers come from all blends of society, and have a wide array of tastes in OS and GUI preferences. Linux is seeing a lot of attention as of late thanks to clear improvements in these, and there are a number of UI and OS developments in progress http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/15/2124229.
For the sake of leveling the playing field, what do YOU find lacking about the OSes/Windowing Systems you use?
What features do you find most useful?
To open discussion, my favorite issues are the lack of cancel buttons in preferences for most apps (even bundled) on (U/Ku)buntu, rare support for global keyboard shortcut customization, and the likelihood of lost files when a system looses power (The power in my new apartment is fairly unstable, but I won't be here long enough to make buying a UPS worthwhile. I end up with files in the lost+found folder fairly regularly.)
