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Software

Open Source Project Licenses Trending Toward Open Rather than Free 369

Posted by timothy
from the for-some-values-of-open-or-free dept.
bonch writes "An analysis of software licenses shows usage of GPL and other copyleft licenses declining at an accelerating rate. In their place, developers are choosing permissive licenses such as BSD, MIT, and ASL. One theory for the decline is that GPL usage was primarily driven by vendor-led projects, and with the shift to community-led projects, permissive licenses are becoming more common."

Comment: Re:They should learn (Score 2) 239

by Arabani (#38247292) Attached to: Genome Researchers Have Too Much Data

At BGI they have 180 machines... each run from a machine is approximately 3 TB of raw data. A single run takes one week. That is 77 TB per day of data being produced. And that is only BGI.. there are at least 180 machines outside of BGI scattered across the world. So imagine 140TB per day.

CERN is nothing compared to Genomic data.

When LHC is running at full luminosity, it produces roughly a megabyte per event per detector (for CMS and ATLAS at least). Of course, the events are happening at ~40MHz, so 288 TB of raw data per hour. That's why they have to trigger, and hence throw out 99% of the data.

Genomic data is nothing compared to elementary particles.

Comment: Re:Bill Clinton did not say that first (Score 3) 722

by NeoSkink (#36803980) Attached to: Bill Clinton Says 'Paint Your Roofs White'
And Chu got it from Rosefeld, who was saying it back when Chu ran LBL. From the linked WSJ piece: “There’s a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Art Rosenfeld, who’s pushing very hard for a geo-engineering we all believe will be completely benign, and that’s when you have a flat-top roof building, make it white. “Now, you smile, but he’s done a calculation, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly . . . it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years.”
Ubuntu

Ask Slashdot: Easiest Linux Distro For a Newbie 622

Posted by samzenpus
from the low-difficulty dept.
anymooseposter writes "My mom is taking a computer class at the local Community College. she asks: 'I need to download a Linux OS and try it out for class. The assignment is to use an OS different from what you normally use. Well, since I use Windows and OS X, the assignment suggests Linux. But, my question is, what is the easiest version based on Linux for me to put on CD and try? I saw several on the web. Any thoughts off the top of your head?' What Linux Disto would be easiest to set up without having to resort to dual booting and/or driver issues?"
Education

Wikipedia Wants More Contributions From Academics 385

Posted by samzenpus
from the professor-pitch-in dept.
holy_calamity writes "University professors don't feel their role as intellectuals working for the public good extends to contributing to the world's largest encyclopedia, the Guardian reports. Wikimedia foundation is currently surveying academics as part of a search for ways to encourage them to pitch in alongside anonymous civilians and raise quality. The main problem seems to be the academic ego: papers, talks and grant proposals build reputation but Wikipedia edits do not."
Ubuntu

Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go? 778

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the why-can't-we-all-get-along dept.
inkscapee writes "Used to be Ubuntu was the big Linux hero, the shining knight that would drive Linux onto every desktop and kick bad old Windows to the curb. But now Ubuntu is the Bad Linux. What's going on, is it typical fanboy fickleness, or is Canonical more into serving their own interests than creating a great Linux distro?"
Hardware Hacking

New PS3 Firmware Contains Backdoor 491

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the i'm-your-backdoor-ram dept.
Vectormatic noted the rumor floating around that the most recent PS3 patch has a backdoor, and "Sony can now remotely execute code on the PS3 as soon as you connect. This can do whatever Sony wants it to do, such as verifying system files or searching for homebrew. Sony can change the code and add new detection methods without any firmware updates."
The Internet

Example.com Has Changed 109

Posted by timothy
from the foo-baz-is-now-frum-burz dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The familiar example.com domain, reserved for private testing, has been updated. Visiting the domain in a web browser no longer displays any content; instead, visitors are redirected to an explanatory page on IANA's website at iana.org/domains/example/. Other example domains such as example.net are also affected. Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?"
Hardware Hacking

All-Analog DIY Segway Project 141

Posted by Soulskill
from the take-out-some-cliff-insurance-buddy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "One of the zany hacker-makers here at MIT just finished this DIY Segway project (video). Difference from the others: it's all analog. The controller is built without a microprocessor or even digital logic. It does use a gyroscope like the real Segway. The functionality looks fairly basic, but the fact that the controller works at all is amazing. The guy has a ton of other projects on his site too. Definitely worth a read for people who enjoy building things."
Earth

MIT Unveils Portable, Solar-Powered Water Desalination System 117

Posted by Soulskill
from the water-the-chances dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Field and Space Robotic Laboratory has designed a new solar-powered water desalination system to provide drinking water to disaster zones and disadvantaged parts of the planet. Desalination systems often require a lot of energy and a large infrastructure to support them, but MIT's compact system is able to cope due to its ingenious design. The system's photovoltaic panel is able to generate power for the pump, which in turn pushes undrinkable seawater through a permeable membrane. MIT's prototype can reportedly produce 80 gallons of drinking water per day, depending on weather conditions."

Brain off-line, please wait.