AbsoluteZero writes to tell us Space.com is reporting that a new spacesuit prototype being designed for Mars exploration is currently being tested in North Dakota. From the article: "The Mars spacesuit is the culmination of 14 months of work by faculty and students with the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium, which received $100,000 from NASA to develop the prototype. The local public is invited to view the Mars spacesuit in action on Sat. May 6, weather permitting, at its North Dakota test site."

Andy Updegrove writes "Last week, the Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD) issued a Request for Information (RFI) on any plugins that might be under development to assist it in migrating from a MS Office environment to one based upon software that supports ODF. The RFI acknowledges the fact that it may be necessary or advantageous to see some of the code in Office in order to enable the types of features that the ITD is looking for. Conveniently, Jason Matusow, Microsoft's Director of Standards Affairs, had this to say on the occasion of ODF's approval by the members of ISO and the IEC: "The ODF format is limited to the features and performance of OpenOffice and StarOffice and would not satisfy most of our Microsoft Office customers today. Yet we will support interoperability with ODF documents as they start to appear and will not oppose its standardization or use by any organization. The richness of competitive choices in the market is good for our customers and for the industry as a whole." Presumably such support will include helping the plug-in developers that will assist Massachusetts migrate from a MS Office environment to one based upon ODF-compliant office productivity software."

SilentBob4 writes to tell us that MadPenguin has a look at an open alternative to Microsoft's Origami, the Pepper Pad. From the article: "The Pepper Pad, like Origami, is a mid-point form factor PC that is bigger and more powerful than a PDA, but smaller and less optimized for traditional desktop PC tasks than a notebook computer or a desktop PC. The Pepper Pad is a good buy for people who would like to have a light-weight, dirt-simple, point-and-click open source device for watching videos, listening to music, reading e-books, and doing simple web surfing with a view screen that is actually easy to read. If you want do more than that, you are really better off getting a small Linux notebook, unless you are willing to get under the hood (which you can do with the Pepper Pad!) and start compiling for yourself."

$hecky asks: "I teach several sections of a first-year writing course at a small, private college where most of the students are, or plan to be, some flavor of engineer. Right now, I'm planning next year's courses and wondering what has (and hasn't) helped Slashdot readers become better writers. Also, I'm wondering which writing skills you, in your roles as workers and teachers, would most like to see emphasized in first year writing courses. Put another way, where do you see people who have completed first-year writing courses screwing up their writing, and which experiences, practices, and pressures you think have made you a better writer?"

OnBeyondBeing asks: "A few of my friends and I are taking a class at a local university called 'Internet and Society' and we have to do a 'Technology Tour' on innovations that have social aspects or uses (like Google Maps, Kiko (an Internet-based calendar), LiveJournal and Frappr). We chose to do our presentation on BitTorrent. As part of our presentation, we have to do a lab in which the students and teachers use BitTorrent in some way. I was thinking of having people join some BitTorrent community that interests them and join a torrent, but most of these communities contain material that is not suited for an academic presentation. Aside from places like CommonBits and Etree (and others that were mentioned in a previous Slashdot post), what sites have you found that use BitTorrent as the basis of a community that are clean and legal enough for a class presentation? Alternatively, what other interesting, legal uses of BitTorrent have you found?"

An anonymous reader writes "If HDMI, DVI and UDI weren't enough for you, several major PC manufacturers have announced a joint alliance to come up with another display adapter, creatively named Displayport. The new method is backwards compatible with DVI, but offers double the bandwidth."

darrint writes "In some obscure corner of the Earth, has someone developed a human handwritten language which can be easily read by a machine? Why is the visual divide between what can be written by a human and what can be read by a machine so wide? At one extreme is the bar code, which I certainly cannot hand write. Machines can read it easily. Bank checks have a human readable account and routing numbers printed in special ink running along their bottom margins. These numbers can be read by a machine and are clearly legible to a human, but I doubt I could write them for input to a machine. My old Palm handheld could read something like handwriting in its little box. OCR exists but I've never thought of it as reliable. I would like to dash off little notes on stickies or in a tiny spiral notebook and be able to suck them into vim, a browser text-input box, and so forth. Perhaps I'd have to learn some kind of machine readable 'shorthand.' Has it been done?"

Alec T asks: "Seeing how E3 is fast approaching, I was wondering where Slashdot readers go for their E3 fix? Gamespot, IGN and 1UP all provide free low quality streams and downloads, however we are reduced to having to pay to access high quality trailers and press conference screenings. Why is this? Is there a site out there which caters to our high definition needs? If bandwidth is such a concern, maybe BitTorrent would be the best distribution method, particularly for the console press conferences?"

VL writes to tell us that they recently got a chance to review the latest external water cooling kit from Corsair. It seems that in addition to the performance boost it was also extremely easy to use. From the review: "As you can see above, the Nautilus500 was significantly quicker to install than the other two kits. The reason for this is that the motherboard needs to be removed before installation for both the EXOS and Aquagate, but not for the Nautilus500. Keep in mind that we're very familiar with the Aquagate Mini and Koolance EXOS, so those times are about as low as they get (for us anyway). We think we can maybe shave another minute for the Nautilus, but either way, a liquid system installed under 10 minutes is pretty impressive."

bheer writes "Apple has sent a threatening letter to SomethingAwful about a post in its forums that describes how to fix the overheating in some MacBook Pros by applying thermal paste properly, according to a post on Gizmodo. The post includes a brief excerpt from Apple's Service Source Manual which Apple wants removed. Gizmodo continues: 'the real problem [is] that the image shows the extremely sloppy manufacturing process that is causing the MacBook Pro to run at temperatures as high as a 95 degrees Celcius under full load.'"

Khamura writes "As E3 draws near, those of us who have been following Will Wright's newest brainchild, Spore, are abuzz with expectation. And lo! Someone posted to YouTube a video that shows 'unedited footage of Spore that will be going to TV networks covering E3 next week'. It includes a look at the overhauled creature editor, a first glimpse of the texturing tools, and various other exciting things that had not been shown this clearly in the early prototype seen at the 2005 GDC. One of them is the ambient music when the UFO visits different planets." It certainly looks like the game we saw last year, but take with a grain of salt just the same.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Duluth News Tribune wrote last week about a communication device which could be a lifesaver for miners. This invention is the brainchild of David Reagor, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). His prototype radio works at depths of 500 feet and is based on very low frequency electromagnetic radiation and digital signal processors. A commercial version is in the works and could be used not only by workers trapped in a mine, but also by firefighters and other emergency workers to communicate with people in collapsed buildings or subways."

Labyrrinth writes "'As the development process is ongoing and constantly shifting, it became clear that MGS and Sigil had varying visions and direction for the title's development,' said Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online. 'In the best interest of Vanguard, it was decided that we would buy back the publishing rights from Microsoft.'" They've hooked up with Sony Online Entertainment, publishers of EQ and EQII, and Brad McQuaid's old employer. Aggro Me has commentary on this union.

Pichu0102 writes "According to WebProNews, Bearshare has been shut down by the RIAA." From the article: " Online file-sharing service BearShare, along with operators Free Peers Inc., is packing it up due to a $30 million settlement with the recording industry. The conditions of the settlement were agreed to by the P2P company to avoid further copyright infringement litigation."

Techdirt has an amusing new disclaimer for the internet penned by lawyer David Canton is response to Rob Hyndman's recent discovery of an impressive disclaimer for a rock preserve. From the disclaimer: "Business is unpredictable and unsafe. The Internet is dangerous. Many blogs have been written about these dangers, and there's no way we can list them all here. Read the blogs. The Internet is covered in slippery slopes with loose, slippery and unpredictable footing. The RIAA can make matters worse. Patent trolls are everywhere. You may fall, be spammed or suffer a DOS attack. There are hidden viruses and worms. You could break your computer. There is wild code, which may be vicious, poisonous or carriers of dread malware. These include viruses and worms. E-mail can be poisonous as well. We don't do anything to protect you from any of this. We do not inspect, supervise or maintain the Internet, blogosphere, ISP's or other features, natural or otherwise."