Overtone writes "Federal Computer Week is reporting that the U.S. Army will require hardware-based security via the Trusted Platform Module standard in all new PCs. They are a large enough volume buyer that this might kick start an adoption loop."

An anonymous reader asks: "I am a graduate student of Mechanical Engineering at a reputed University in the United States. I have had a lot of fun working towards my PhD. I have published papers and done exciting research. I should be finishing up in the next few months or so, but I would like to continue doing the same kind of work that I am doing now. One option would be to take up a post-doctoral research appointment and find myself a faculty position. I am somehow not attracted to this option because of the tenure and grant pressure. My ideal job would be in something like the Bell Labs of yester-years. Do you know of labs that have that kind of environment? National labs are supposed to have such an atmosphere, but my stint in one of them makes me think otherwise. Google does seem to have such an environment but I am not a CS person. Does Slashdot know of labs where basic research in applied engineering is still done in the US, without the pressure of money and immediate results?"

Austin Sarner writes "Phill Ryu's Fake Leopard Screenshot contest which has been attracting a quite a bit of buzz has just ended and the winners have been announced! While there is a bunch of expected stuff in these screenshots, the entrants did not hold back when it came to trying out crazy stuff — and surprisingly, a good amount of them work great. Ranging from new window styles to a complete rethink of a window based work environment, these are sure to make any UI geek excited. The winners received over $1,000 each in prizes, and were obviously motivated to put out some great stuff. The judges included Wil Shipley, the creator of Delicious Library, David Watanabe, who makes NewsFire and Acquisition, as well as numerous other smaller devs."

According to NASA, the amount of damage to thermal tiles noted on Discovery was significantly lower after the latest mission. According to the report, there was a 33% reduction in the number of dings on the belly of the orbiter and an almost 50% reduction in the number of hits greater than one inch. This would seem to indicate that the new foam is working better. "The vehicle looked very good," Thomas Ford, a member of NASA's ice-debris inspection team at Kennedy Space Center, said Wednesday. "It's definitely gratifying."

ITPhantom wonders: "It is that time again and my supervisor has been coming around and asking what training and conferences I would like to attend in the upcoming year. I have recently been put in charge of the management and security of a few dozen machines in our department, and our internal network (simple as it may be). While most of the machines that I am responsible for are running Windows, there are a few Linux machines in the mix. I am fairly proficient with Windows, but have not had any real experience managing Linux machines, though I have been a casual user for about a year. With all of the options available, from online training to extensive boot camps and seminars, what would you recommend for training in the areas above?"

The Escapist's news feed reports that 2 Million characters have been made in Puzzle Pirates since the launch of the game. From the article: "Three Rings' CEO Daniel James sees 2 million users as confirmation of the micro-currency model. 'We believe that this model represents the future for online entertainment. Our inspiration continues to be the Korean market, where 'free to play, pay for item' is the ubiquitous business model for online games. As the US market matures to meet Korea, we intend to keep leading the way.' In addition, the company recently released the beta version of a new game, Bang! Howdy, a multiplayer online tactical strategy game for the PC, which uses the same payment structure and online distribution model."

thesandbender asks: "I've recently inherited a project to 'simplify' the application environment for a company that has 1600+ service offerings (many of these are product 'foobar' that has options (like 'Alpha', 'Bravo', 'Charlie', and so forth) available. I am trying to map out the applications' dependencies from a technological and a business standpoint. I would like to designate a group of applications as depending on concepts, technologies (like SAN, DB2 and AIX), specific customers (like 'Bravo' and 'Charlie') and legacy applications. Basically, I want to define any number of arbitrary dependencies and then be able to map them out in a graphical format. With those maps I can show the business oriented staff how removing one application will affect other applications, and I can show the technically oriented staff how removing one system will affect other systems or applications. Has anyone in the Slashdot community run across such a tool? If you haven't, have you run across the need for such a tool? What would you want from it so that I can fashion a usable tool that addresses everyone's needs and not just my own?"

garzpacho writes "Doctors at the Virtual Reality Medical Center are using VR video games to treat post-traumatic stress disorder among vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The software behind the treatment incorporates elements from the military training video game Full Spectrum Warrior, and had some input from designers of America's Army. From the article: 'Dr. Dennis Wood takes patients on what some might consider an odd journey. He starts off leading them to a military compound in Fallujah, Iraq. He then guides them through an Iraqi marketplace before they accompany a patrol through Iraqi homes. And if he thinks they're up to it, he may even take them onto a battlefield, in the midst of explosions and aircraft flying overhead.'"

ThinSkin writes "Given its shape and ability to cup your hand, the Zero Tension Mouse can be moved around without bending the wrist or moving the fingers, while also keeping the hand in a vertical position and the arm in a more ergonomic neutral position. ExtremeTech reviews the Zero Tension Mouse and, although acknowledging it as 'funny looking,' concludes that it amounts to a whole lot of worth for those who need it, or those who want to take preventative measures against RSI and related ailments."

thppft! writes "The second discussion draft of the GNU General Public License version 3 was released, along with the first discussion draft of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Along with the text for the licenses , the GPLv3 website also includes an introduction by Eben Moglen along with markup changes to the rationale and the GPL itself."

NewsForge (also owned by OSTG) has word of Google's newest product: an open-source project repository. Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier sat down for a talk with Greg Stein and Chris DiBona, who say that the product is very similar to sites like SourceForge but is not intended to compete with them. From the article: "Instead, Stein says that the goal is to see what Google can do with the Google infrastructure, to provide an alternative for open source projects. DiBona says that it's a 'direct result of Greg concentrating on what open source projects need. Most bugtrackers are informed by what corporations' and large projects need, whereas Google's offering is just about what open source developers need. Stein says that Google's hosting has a 'brand new look' at issue tracking that may be of interest to open source projects, and says 'nobody else out there is doing anything close to it.'"

Grooves writes "Ars Technica has an insightful look at the challenges facing place-shifting. The article talks about new European legislation that could require broadcast licensing for all place-shifting devices, and they review some of the fair use problems in the US and how they could hurt innovation." From the article: "A few cables here, a few networking adjustments there, and you can use a product like the Slingbox or the software-based Orb to watch your TV (or TiVo, or DVD player) from just about anywhere you can get a network connection, be it your office, your hotel room, or the other side of the planet. Yet what makes place-shifting devices so powerful also makes them appear very dangerous to established entertainment and media companies."

DreamWinkle writes "During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn't play Pacman; to others, it highlights what's wrong with Senate hearings. Whether a game is violent or not depends on how you classify violence, and the ESRB has the job of doing just that. They're not regulated by the government, they let the game makers recommend their own ratings, and don't play every game they rate. Is the ESRB to be trusted?"

Yesterday we linked The Times of India's report that India's Ministry of Human Resource Development has rejected implementation of the One Laptop per Child initiative in that country. Readers speculated both on why India rejected the program, and whether it's a good or bad move to have done so. As usual, there are some insightful comments with wildly divergent conclusions; read on for the Backslash summary of the discussion to see a handful of the most interesting ones.