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NASA

+ - Political Pressure Pushes NASA Technical Reports Offline

Submitted by
Trepidity
Trepidity writes "The extensive NASA Technical Report Archive was just taken offline, following pressure from members of U.S. Congress, worried that Chinese researchers could be reading the reports. U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) demanded that "NASA should immediately take down all publicly available technical data sources until all documents that have not been subjected to export control review have received such a review", and NASA appears to have complied. Although all reports are in the public domain, there doesn't appear to be a third-party mirror available (some university libraries do have subsets on microfiche)."
Businesses

+ - Visas for high-skilled workers could double under bipartisan Senate plan->

Submitted by
walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes "A Senate immigration plan would dramatically increase the number of high-skilled foreign workers allowed into the country and give permanent legal status to an unlimited number of students who earn graduate degrees from U.S. universities in science, technology, engineering or math, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

The agreement would be a major victory for the tech industry, which has backed an intense lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill in recent months arguing that Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other companies are having trouble finding qualified workers because of visa limits."
Link to Original Source
Ubuntu

+ - Chinese open source community is brought into the global Ubuntu community->

Submitted by GovCheese
GovCheese writes "Canonical, the software company that manages and funds Ubuntu, announced that the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will base their national reference architecture for standard operating systems on Ubuntu, and they will call it Kylin. Arguably China is the largest desktop market and the announcement has important implications. Shuttleworth's phrasing of, “The release of Ubuntu Kylin brings the Chinese open source community into the global Ubuntu community,” will irk many who already feel Shuttleworth controversial, but the partnership further cements Ubuntu as an open-source influencer. This is a win for Ubuntu. Is it a win for the open-source community?"
Link to Original Source
Technology

+ - Electrostatic Contamination in Your Devices->

Submitted by
interval1066
interval1066 writes "I noticed earlier my Vizio lcd monitor output suddenly getting brighter, then dimming back down to "normal" after a second. I've generally made it a practice to blow the dust out of my devices 1) when I remember to do so 2) after about 3 or so years of use 3) when I can get inside the case. My monitor is very thin and difficult to open. When I did finally crack it open I didn't really notice a whole lot of dust, but I blew the thing out anyway and put it back together, and its doing ok, as far as I can tell.

I'd be interested in knowing other slashdotter's experience with maintaining their devices in this way and where possible. And I actually extending the life of my devices, or am I just wasting my time?"
Link to Original Source
Announcements

+ - Gandalf/Magneto To Officiate At Picard/Professor X Wedding->

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes "On the Jonathan Ross Show, Sir Ian McKellen, best known to SciFi fans as Magneto and/or Gandalf, revealed that he will be officiating at the wedding of his long time friend and fellow actor, Patrick Stewart, who will soon be marrying his jazz-singer fiance Sunny Ozell. Quipped McKellen: 'I’m going to marry Patrick...' 'How else do you put that? I’m going to officiate at his wedding.'"
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:If you sleep with a dog, you get fleas (Score 1) 213

by Alien54 (#42607545) Attached to: <em>The Atlantic</em>'s Scientology Advertorial
Part of this is that everyone who participated in the 2008 protests thought that Scientology was dead and buried.
Suddenly here they are, bigger than ever, and vying for space in main stream media publications.
Most of the controversy is because it's THEM.
The statements that they make in the advertorial seem to be conservative positive reports about facilities they have opened, etc. This sort of thing is all verifiable, as well as the conclusion that this means something for their leadership.
Because it's THEM, this upsets everyone who thought they had killed Scientology.
It's like being in a bad horror movie, and the boss of the movie that you think you kicked butt on shows up again with only minor scratches.

Comment: Re:Headline misleading (Score 1) 437

by Alien54 (#34706838) Attached to: Cheaters Exposed Analyzing Statistical Anomalies
I personally think that the whole cheating thing can be avoided by having a test bank of questions that is open to everyone, and which is sufficiently large that it is less effort to actually learn the principles, etc, rather than memorize the answers to 100,000+ questions for a specific course.

Let everyone download it.
With modern technology, you should be able to generate unique tests for each student, with each question identified by numeric code. Dump it into the scanner for a score.
If it is still an issue increase the number of test questions to 250,000 or more.
obviously the test bank could be inspected for grading the tests in situations where you are not doing multiple choice.

Unix

+ - Just $699.99 for the rights to that code!->

Submitted by yorugua
yorugua writes "Oh no!!. But yes... Surely you felt something was missing all this time, don't you? Something you checked every day on. Something that could came back to haunt you. Now it is real!. SCO has appealed. I don't speak much legalese, so here are some words from Groklaw: "Plaintiff, The SCO Group, Inc., hereby appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from the Jury Verdict entered in this action on March 30, 2010, the district court’s evidentiary rulings at trial, Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law dated June 10, 2010, Memorandum Decision and Order Denying SCO’s Renewed Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law or, in the alternative, for a New Trial dated June 10, 2010, and the Final Judgment entered on June 10, 2010." . So according to IBM's ^H^H^H Goklaw's PJ, "They're appealing everything, in short, or they'd like a new trial. Because three trials isn't enough when you're not having fun. Speaking of which, I confess. I'm so sick of SCO I could spit.". So, if you got hooked up by FIFA's World Cup and were wondering what to focus your attention on, then get those $699 ready to buy your rights to that code! Or are they just buying more time?"
Link to Original Source
Iphone

+ - Adobe to sue Apple over Flash cross-compiler ban->

Submitted by
sopssa
sopssa writes "IT World reports that Adobe intends to sue Apple "within a few weeks," citing sources close to Adobe. Not only did the recent iPhone and iPad licensing change ban Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone cross-compiler, but also Novell's MonoTouch which lets you compile C# and .NET apps to the iPhone. "Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs". Lee Brimelow notes in his blog post that "What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D."."
Link to Original Source
Medicine

+ - DNA cancer codes cracked by international effort-> 1

Submitted by Enigma23
Enigma23 writes "As reported on news.com.au, scientists from the International Cancer Genome Consortium of 12 institutes around the world will today release the first DNA profiles of some of the most prevalent types of tumours. While the story asserts that "A new era of cancer treatment has dawned" I'm a bit more sceptical, given that gene therapy and immunotherapy are still very much in their infancy at the current time."
Link to Original Source

+ - Library of Congress to Archive All Tweets->

Submitted by
mjn
mjn writes "Continuing their recent push to archive more digital content, the U.S. Library of Congress announced a deal with Twitter to archive all public tweets, dating back to Twitter's inception in March 2006. More details at their blog. No word yet on precisely what will be done with the collection, but besides entering your friends' important updates on the quality of breakfast into the permanent archival record, the deal may improve access for researchers wanting to analyze and mine Twitter's giant database."
Link to Original Source
Earth

Officials Sue Couple Who Removed Their Lawn 819

Posted by kdawson
from the revenge-of-the-lawn dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The LA Times reports that Orange County officials are locked in a legal battle with a couple accused of violating city ordinances for replacing the grass on their lawn with wood chips and drought-tolerant plants, reducing their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009. The dispute began two years ago, when Quan and Angelina Ha tore out the grass in their front yard. In drought-plagued Southern California, the couple said, the lush grass had been soaking up tens of thousands of gallons of water — and hundreds of dollars — each year. 'We've got a newborn, so we want to start worrying about her future,' said Quan Ha, an information technology manager for Kelley Blue Book. But city officials told the Has they were violating several city laws that require that 40% of residential yards to be landscaped predominantly with live plants. Last summer, the couple tried to appease the city by building a fence around the yard and planting drought-tolerant greenery — lavender, rosemary, horsetail, and pittosporum, among others. But according to the city, their landscaping still did not comply with city standards. At the end of January, the Has received a letter saying they had been charged with a misdemeanor violation and must appear in court. The couple could face a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for their grass-free, eco-friendly landscaping scheme. 'It's just funny that we pay our taxes to the city and the city is now prosecuting us with our own money,' says Quan Ha."

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