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NASA

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Killed By Ice 113

Posted by Soulskill from the wonder-if-it-will-rise-again dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA officially ended its Phoenix Mars Lander operation today after a new image of the machine showed severe ice damage to its solar panels, and repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft had failed. 'Apparent changes in the shadows cast by the lander are consistent with predictions of how Phoenix could be damaged by harsh winter conditions. It was anticipated that the weight of a carbon-dioxide ice buildup could bend or break the lander's solar panels. [Michael Mellon of the University of Colorado] calculated hundreds of pounds of ice probably coated the lander in mid-winter.'"
Books

Mark Twain To Reveal All After 100 Year Wait 298

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bruce-willis-is-dead dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death. Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's three-volume autobiography. Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted his autobiography kept under wraps for so long, with some believing it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image. 'He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines,' says Shelden. 'He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.' Interestingly enough, Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."
Communications

Revenge of the Cable Customer 397

Posted by timothy from the spindling-jim-carey dept.
crimeandpunishment writes "After years of poor service and poor reception, years of hoping the cable guy shows up sometime within that four-hour window, years of constant price increases ... it may be payback time for cable customers. Cable TV companies are trying to treat customers better. Considering the industry has long had some of the worst customer satsfaction ratings of any industry, it may take a while to overcome that reputation. But they'd better succeed. Cable customers are switching to satellite and phone companies in droves. According to industry research, cable companies lost five million video customers from 2006 to 2009."
PlayStation (Games)

Valve's Newell Thinks PS3 Needs To Be "Open Like a Mac" 348

Posted by Soulskill from the open-like-something dept.
Eraesr writes "Apparently Valve boss Gabe Newell thinks the PS3 needs to be more of an open platform, drawing a comparison to Apple's Mac platform. In an interview with 5BY5.TV, he said he would like to see the PS3 be 'open like a Mac' instead of being 'more closed like a Gamecube.' 'Platform investments, like the Mac, are difficult because you have to be aware of what direction that platform is moving,' Newell said, referring to the firm's recent move onto Macs with its titles and distribution service Steam. 'We need to target platforms that do a better job of looking like where we want to be in a few years.'"

Submission + - U.S. Rejects Demands For ACTA Transparency (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Trade Representative issued a release just prior to the launch of the New Zealand round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations that has left no doubt that the U.S. is the biggest barrier to official release of the ACTA text. Unlike most other ACTA countries that have called for transparency without condition, the U.S. has set conditions that effectively seeks to trade its willingness to release the text for gains on the substance of the text.
Java

C Programming Language Back At Number 1 535

Posted by kdawson from the doin'-what-we-always-did dept.
derrida writes "After more than 4 years C is back at position number 1 in the TIOBE index. The scores for C have been pretty constant through the years, varying between the 15% and 20% market share for almost 10 years. So the main reason for C's number 1 position is not C's uprise, but the decline of its competitor Java. Java has a long-term downward trend. It is losing ground to other languages running on the JVM. An example of such a language is JavaFX, which is now approaching the top 20."
Portables

iPad Jailbroken 624

Posted by kdawson from the let-the-games-begin dept.
A day after the release of Apple's tablet computer, a hacker claims to have gained root access to the iPad. "A well-known hacker of the iPhone, who previously defeated Apple's restrictions on developers, has claimed in a video to have hacked the iPad. Just a day after release, the hacker, who goes by 'MuscleNerd' online, said that he has gained root access to the iPad..."
United Kingdom

First Impressions of the 11th Doctor Who 379

Posted by kdawson from the about-time dept.
Mirk writes "The first episode of Doctor Who's new series 5 has just aired on BBC1 in the UK. This is an important episode for the show because so much has changed: Matt Smith plays the new Doctor, replacing David Tennant, and Karen Gillan portrays a new companion, Amy Pond. Maybe most important, Russell T. Davies is replaced as showrunner by Stephen Moffat, who is known for acclaimed Doctor Who scripts including The Empty Child and Blink. Here is an early review of the new Doctor, companion, showrunner, and series."
Google

Talk of an Apple Search Engine To Thwart Google 276

Posted by kdawson from the don't-want-to-play-in-your-yard dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "eWeek reports that the data Apple collects about users from its iPhone is so valuable that the company may build its own iPhone-centric search engine just to keep Google from gleaning insight from that data. 'The data generated on the iPhone OS platform must become an increasing priority for Apple and we believe the company has the resources to develop its own products in both maps and search in the next five years,' writes analyst Gene Munster. Google is currently the default search engine on the iPhone, but Google has increasingly encroached on Apple's mobile turf, offering the Android operating system and several mobile applications. As the search provider for the iPhone, Google sees what iPhone users are searching for, which can help it tailor software and services for its own mobile smartphones — a competitive advantage that has not gone unnoticed by Apple. Apple lacks the experience and engineering wherewithal to build a large, scalable search engine, but Munster says Apple could buy a search startup with a Web index, such as Cuil or Taptu, and use its index as the seed for its own search engine. 'Apple is in an inside position to tap into the current pent-up demand for better mobile search, and add a new competitive differentiation from other search providers and device makers,' adds IDC analyst Hadley Reynolds."
Math

Help Me Get My Math Back? 467

Posted by kdawson from the we-can-forget-it-for-you-wholesale dept.
nwm writes "I am trying to refresh my math skills back to the point that I can take college-level statistics and calculus courses. I took everything through AP calculus in high school, had my butt kicked by college calculus, and dropped out shortly thereafter. Twenty+ years later, I need to take a few math courses to wrap up a degree. I've dug around some and found a few sites with useful information, but I'm hoping the Slashdot crowd can offer some good resources — sites, books, programs, online tutors, etc. I really don't want to have to take a series of algebra-geometry-trig 'pre-college' level courses (each at full cost and each a semester long) just to warm my brain up; I'd much rather find some resources, review, cram, and take the placement test with some confidence. Any suggestions?"

Comment More than an eReader... (Score 3, Interesting) 617

by nullhero (#31716552) Attached to: iPad Launches, FCC Teardown Leaked
Everyone is clamoring over the iPad calling it a Kindle-Killer but the device is more than an eReader. It's not a replacement of the notebook either. I think it is Apples Netbook, an expensive one in comparison, but a netbook just the same. It has limited functionality but allows the user to access their documents via iWork (Apple is expanding iWork to the cloud, currently in beta) as well as create their own. It gives a user access to their email and then all those iPhone/iPod Touch apps. But what it really does is kind of free the user from the computer, from sitting at a desk and working at their computer, it is easier for her to go to coffee shop and just read the web. She'll then decide to go grocery shopping or do other things neatly tucking the iPad a way. If she has some ideas during the day she can take out her iPad and write up the ideas. As thin and mobile notebook computers are they still are chore to lug around everywhere. I'm not saying carrying a 1.5 pound is easier, but it sure beats having to grab the power cords, put everything in a bag. With the iPad, you just have to unplug it and go. I can't wait to get mine.
Handhelds

iPad Launches, FCC Teardown Leaked 617

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-full-of-magic-elves dept.
Apple's much-awaited iPad officially launched today, and iFixit has gotten their hands on photos from the FCC teardown. They've done an analysis of the internals and provided directions on doing it yourself, if you're so inclined. Predictably, it's a hot topic in the media. Cory Doctorow wrote about why he won't be getting an iPad, complaining about the closed, hacker-unfriendly design and what he calls the "Wal-martization of the software channel." Daring Fireball's John Gruber disagrees, pointing out that enthusiasts — even kids exercising their curiosity — are still quite capable of playing around with the iPad through app creation, and with much more of a chance to compete with big companies than in the Apple ][ days. Similarly, others are referring to it as the "bedtime computer" — technology that has a reasonable shot at expanding into completely new areas of use, like bedtime reading for kids. Such a device was predicted in 1972 by Alan Kay, the PARC scientist credited with the epigram "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." His hypothetical DynaBook bears striking similarity to what Apple finally came up with. So, those of you who have picked up or received an iPad already: how do you like it?
Programming

Microsoft Fuzzing Botnet Finds 1,800 Office Bugs 111

Posted by timothy from the running-through-the-possibilities dept.
CWmike writes "Microsoft uncovered more than 1,800 bugs in Office 2010 by tapping into the unused computing horsepower of idling PCs, a company security engineer said on Wednesday. Office developers found the bugs by running millions of 'fuzzing' tests, a practice employed by both software developers and security researchers, that searches for flaws by inserting data into file format parsers to see where programs fail by crashing. 'We found and fixed about 1,800 bugs in Office 2010's code,' said Tom Gallagher, senior security test lead with Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, who last week co-hosted a presentation on Microsoft's fuzzing efforts at the CanSecWest security conference. 'While a large number, it's important to note that that doesn't mean we found 1,800 security issues. We also want to fix things that are not security concerns.'"

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