MasaMuneCyrus writes "I was surprised to notice an article about Futurama in my latest American Physical Society news. Titled, 'Profiles in Versatility: The Futurama of Physics with David X. Cohen,' Cohen talks a little bit about his life and his love for physics, and he goes on to describe how he regularly injects graduate-level physics jokes into the script of Futurama. He also talks a little bit about the upcoming season of Futurama: 'In the 10th episode of the upcoming season, tentatively entitled "The Prisoner of Benda," a theorem based on group theory was specifically written (and proven!) by staffer/PhD mathematician Ken Keeler to explain a plot twist.'"

shuz writes "Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off today on its STS-132 mission to the International Space Station — the final flight for the venerable vehicle. The mission involves three spacewalks over 12 days (PDF), during which the team will replace six batteries on the port truss which store energy from solar panels on that truss, bolt on a spare space-to-ground Ku-band antenna, and attach a new tool platform to Canada's Dextre robotic arm." NASA has video of the historic launch and reader janek78 adds this quote from the mission summary: "Atlantis lifted off on its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985, on mission 51-J. Later missions included the launch of the Magellan probe to Venus on STS-30 in May 1989, Galileo interplanetary probe to Jupiter on STS-34 in October 1989, the first shuttle docking to the Mir Space Station on STS-71 in June1995, and the final Hubble servicing mission on STS-125 in May 2009."

Pickens writes "The San Francisco Chronicle reports that video game industry revenue fell by 26 percent in April, adding more concerns about the health of the industry in the worst year-over-year decline since July 2009. But the big news is that the decline in portable sales makes up 61 percent of the overall monthly decline, suggesting that the Nintendo DS platform is losing steam but also reflecting the growing clout of the iPhone platform as the iPhone and iPod Touch continue to draw in more casual gamers, the iPad offers a bigger screen experience, and Apple announces the 'Game Center' — a social gaming hub with console-like online gaming features. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata is understood to have told his senior executives recently to regard the battle with Sony as a victory already won and to treat Apple, and its iPhone and iPad devices, as the 'enemy of the future.' 'If Nintendo's future mobile platforms are to be any kind of success, the company will have to figure out how to take on the ease of use afforded by the App Store,' writes Nicholas Deleon. A large part of Nintendo's faith in reviving its efforts hinge on the 3DS, which may ship in the fall, the first truly major handheld introduction for Nintendo since the original DS in 2004. He adds, 'Maybe Nintendo should just release a phone?'"

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "The Hulu website briefly commented the other day about why they would not be implementing HTML5 video for their service: 'We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn't yet meet all of our customers' needs. Our player doesn't just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren't necessarily visible to the end user.' They plan to release a dedicated application for the iPad and iPhone instead, likely a paid subscription service. Perhaps this is a good sign for Web-based television, as it will move more users away from the single, locked down channel from the networks and to more diverse options less interested in extracting subscription fees (like YouTube)."

Barence writes "Acer is preparing to launch devices based on Google's Chrome OS at next month's Computex trade show, according to reports. Multiple sources have apparently told VentureBeat that the company will show off devices at the Taipei show at the beginning of June. It doesn't specify what the devices are, although given that Chrome OS is primarily designed for low-powered laptops and Acer's status as the world's second biggest PC maker, it seems inconceivable that the devices won't be netbooks. Meanwhile, Google is considering implementing a Coverflow interface into Chrome OS. One design adheres fairly closely to Apple's template, and allows users to flip through applications and web pages with 'hotkeys and swiping gestures.' Favicons will be displayed beneath the pages, allowing users to click these and head straight to the application."

The AP reports on a growing sense among policy wonks that too many Americans are going to four-year colleges, to the detriment of society as a whole: "The more money states spend on higher education, the less the economy grows." "The notion that a four-year degree is essential for real success is being challenged by a growing number of economists, policy analysts, and academics. They say more Americans should consider other options, such as technical training or two-year schools, which have been embraced in Europe for decades. As evidence, experts cite rising student debt, stagnant graduation rates, and a struggling job market flooded with overqualified degree-holders. ... The average student debt load in 2008 was $23,200 — a nearly $5,000 increase over five years. Two-thirds of students graduating from four-year schools owe money on student loans. ... [A university economist said,] 'If people want to go out and get a master's degree in history and then cut down trees for a living, that's fine. But I don't think the public should be subsidizing it.'"

An anonymous reader writes "An Argentinian politician who introduced a law to send plagiarists to jail for three to eight years appears to have plagiarized the explanation of his bill directly from Wikipedia. The bulk of his explanation is three paragraphs that are taken, verbatim, from Wikipedia, without acknowledgment."

medcalf writes "Ars Technica has an opinion piece by Sarah Rotman Epps on the iPad and other potential tablets as a new paradigm that they are calling 'curated computing,' where third parties make a lot of choices to simplify things for the end user, reducing user choice but improving reliability and efficiency for a defined set of tasks. The idea is that this does not replace, but supplements, general-purpose computers. It's possible — if the common denominator between iPads, Android and/or Chrome tablets, WebOS tablets, and the like is a more server-centric web experience — that they could be right, and that a more competitive computing market could be the result. But I wonder, too: would that then provide an incentive for manufacturers to try to lock down the personal computing desktop experience as well?" And even if not, an emphasis on "curated computing" could rob resources from old-skool computer development, as is already evident at Apple.

GMGruman writes "Neil McAllister was helping out a friend whose web developer disappeared. Neil's journey into his friend's website ended up being an archaeological dig through unstable remains, as layers of code in different languages easily broke when touched. Neil realized in that experience that the ever-growing jumble of standards, frameworks, and tools makes web application development harder than it needs to be. Although the Web is all about open standards where anyone can create variations for their specific needs and wants, Neil's experience reminded him that a tightly controlled ecosystem backed by a major vendor does make it easier to define best practices, set development targets, and deliver results with a minimum of chaos. There's something to be said for that."

kriston writes in about a new development with the Cherrypal mini laptop, which we discussed last December. "The Cherrypal Asia laptop is now shipping with Google Android installed (product page). This replaces the older Cherrypal Asia mini laptops that were running either Windows CE or a custom Linux. The $148 version has a 1024x600 screen while the sub-$100 model runs 800x480. Both laptops run the ARM9-based VIA 8505 SoIC platform at 533 MHz with 256 megabytes of RAM and 2 gigabytes of NAND flash. I'm looking forward to seeing how Android can squeeze more throughput out of the VIA 8505, since Windows CE didn't do such a great job on the original Cherrypal Asia."

An anonymous reader writes "NIST announced the publishing of the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions reference text (967 pp), also available in digital form at the Digital Library of Mathematical Functions. Access it with a MathML-enabled browser (Firefox or IE+plugin) to view equations as scalable text rather than bitmaps; the 3-D graphs can also be viewed with a VRML plugin for local rotating / zooming." The original Handbook of Mathematical Functions was published 46 years ago; the revision has been in the works for a decade.

alphadogg writes "University researchers have taken a close look at the computer systems used to run today's cars and discovered new ways to hack into them, sometimes with frightening results. In a paper set to be presented at a security conference in Oakland, California, next week, the researchers say that by connecting to a standard diagnostic computer port included in late-model cars, they were able to do some nasty things, such as turning off the brakes, changing the speedometer reading, blasting hot air or music on the radio, and locking passengers in the car. The point of the research isn't to scare a nation of drivers, already made nervous by stories of software glitches, faulty brakes, and massive automotive recalls. It's to warn the car industry that it needs to keep security in mind as it develops more sophisticated automotive computer systems. Other experts describe the real-world risk of any of the described attacks as low." Here is the researchers' site, and an image that could stand as a summary of the work.

An anonymous reader writes "This is incredible. This guy has built a music notation engraver entirely in JavaScript, allowing for real-time music editing right in the browser. Here's a demo. The library has no external dependencies, and all the glyphs, scores, beams, ties, etc. are positioned and rendered entirely in JavaScript."