Slashdot

Researchers have developed innovative fluid special effects software that can pour a most realistic-looking stein of beer. Fluids researchers say the physics of bubble creation in carbonated drinks like beer is complex. “As you pour beer into a glass, you see bubbles appearing on what are called nucleation sites, where the glass isn’t quite smooth,” the developer said.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070803091010.htm

jbrodkin writes "The same IBM processors in your Xbox 360, PS3, the car you drive and some of the world's fastest supercomputers are leaving for Mars today to support a NASA mission searching for extraterrestrial life. And this is no mere coincidence. Lessons learned from the incredible video throughput of the PlayStation 3 and the extreme scalability and reliability of mainframes factor into the processors being used on the Phoenix Mars Lander. Similarly, the experience building processors that make the most efficient use of energy on a spacecraft is helping IBM make data centers on Earth more efficient in a time when limitations of space and power are increasingly important. "This is the onboard machine that runs all of the functions that will have to be performed somewhat autonomously on Mars when it lands," explains Dave McQueeney, chief technology officer for IBM's federal contracting business. "These are the computers inside the spacecraft that are responsible for the navigation, control, scientific instruments, power management ... the things that are the brains of the Lander itself.""
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/080307-ibm-mars-power-architecture.html

WerewolfOfVulcan writes "Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some very interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images broadcast in the mass media. Analysis shows that they're heavily manipulated, a discussion meant to illustrate a new technique that can spot forgery in digital media. 'Krawetz was ... able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners ... were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says.'"

What, in all my years of hacking, is my favorite application of all? What is the one program I would like to have with me on a desert island? Brace yourself...

The catch is it has to be a single file and no dependencies other than what the OS of its day provided by default. I am sick of OSes today shipping with hundreds of thousands of files, on install DVDs. I am looking for the most useful yet tiniest ever. Small is indeed beautiful (and this program's chief architect should be President).

My choice: Microsoft Word for DOS. Specifically, version 5.0a, 622,428 bytes. [Version 5.5, patched for Y2K, is available from MS for free].

Some of the reasons I love Word.exe? Ran native on OS/2, had a shallow mouse-and-keyboard accessible menu tree (that negated the need for obscure WP-like macros or keyboard templates, although it had one of the best keytemps ever), integrated support for a powerful yet readable macro language, RTF support, embeddable images, CR or CR-LF text file support, changeable screen resolutions (including a half readable graphics mode), first DOS application with native mouse support. And practical things like a hefty 8MB file size limit, auto-created backup files, auto-generated "DOC" file extension, automatic on-screen pagination and absolute 100.0% stability. Pity that XP broke the clipboard access...

At one point I worked at a 500 person engineering firm that was still running Word.exe right into the Windows 98 era. I've written applications that depended on automated calls to Word.exe. Low tech, high age friends of mine use Word.exe to write, manage contact lists and convert documents -- for almost 20 years now [Word timeline]. They bought a new printer 6 or 7 years ago and the dealer installed Windows to install the printer drivers. On their next trip to British Columbia, on route to Hawaii, I was called upon to put it back to "just DOS + Word" for them. Word.exe keeps on ticking.

If we allow more than a single file but still limit things to what shipped with the core application, then Word.exe gets even better because of: postscript support (30KB), superb help file (105KB), the most complete spell check database at that time -- that allowed user and global add-on dictionaries (180KB), full thesaurus (320KB), excellent tutorial system for mouse and keyboard (900KB)]. Heck, if you excluded the thesaurus & tutorials you could be fit it all on a single bootable 3.5" floppy.

Word.exe. I don't leave home without it.

Ellis D. Tripp writes "An Australian court has ruled that an eBay seller cannot back out of an auction sale once it is successfully completed. The court has ordered a seller to hand over a vintage airplane to an eBayer who bid just over the reserve price of $128,000, despite a subsequent non-eBay offer of over $200,000. More details here:

http://www.comcast.net/news/technology/index.jsp?c at=TECHNOLOGY&fn=/2007/08/03/730424.html"

jg21 writes "According to this article in Social Computing Magazine, the increasingly widely used label Enterprise 2.0 signifies, above all, software enabling collaboration — what TFA calls "a many-to-many communication medium that creates interaction" – and therefore does *NOT* really include email, which the author characterizes as a "one-to-one communication medium ... more about instruction." What are the realistic chances that actual collaboration will become the number one form of communication in the enterprise, displacing email?"
http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=333

Astute blogger and part time programmer RMS found an interesting summary of John McCain's technical blunders from May 30th. While most people jumped all over McCain's wrong headed view of the network neutrality issue, few noticed his infuriating love for Microsoft.

In another move that was sure to infuriate many geeks, the 70 year old presidential hopeful also said that he would ask Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to serve on his cabinet to deal with technology issues if elected. He did not however say what position Ballmer might be hired in, but did joke that he might consider him for a diplomatic position...

Now there's a knowing wink that backfired and a widening generation gap.

Davemania writes "I am working for a research group that requires to do a large amount of data analysis (each of these files could be up to 1 gig in size). We're planning on buying up to 10 pc with linux on them to do these scientific processing (matlab, etc ) but what would be the best configuration for these 10 linux boxes ? Preferably, we would like to maintain all the data on one server and send it out to the Linux box for processing automatically. What approach would be the best, clustering ? OpenMosix, Rock Cluster ? or just simply drop files into the share folder and remote desktop in ?"

Soft writes "`Did you hear the one about (...) the astronaut who became so despondent after his orbital experiment failed that his colleagues feared he would blow the hatch on the space shuttle?' Jon Clark, a former NASA flight surgeon, tells Alan Boyle's cosmic log about a number of horror stories which happened in space over the course of the space program. (To ward off predictable jokes, there are none with diapers; that didn't happen in space, anyway.)"
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/05/31/210084.aspx

Ant writes "San Francisco Chroncile says Stanford researcher, Caitlin O'Connell, discovered that elephants can hear with their feet. They are specialists in seismic communication, relying upon sound waves that travel within the surface of the ground instead of through the air. Seen on Neatorama."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/19/BAGPNPTMPG56.DTL