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Robotics

Submission + - A robotic cable inspection system

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "In a very short article, Popular Science reports that researchers at the University of Washington have built a robotic cable inspection system. This system should help utility companies to maintain their networks of subterranean cables. The robot, dubbed Cruiser, is about 4-feet-long and is designed like a snake. When it detects an anomaly on an underground cable, it sends a message to a human operator via Wi-Fi. The first field tests took place in New Orleans in December 2006. But a commercial version should not be available before 2012. Read more for additional details and pictures of the Cruiser in action."
Displays

Submission + - Bright idea: new LEDs will dazzle handhelds, PC s

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Researchers next week will show off new technology that promises to make PC screens, handheld device readouts and televisions brighter, slimmer and less expensive.UCLA researchers have recently achieved the highest lumens per watt ever recorded for a red phosphorescent LED or light-emitting diodes, using a new combination of plastic, or polymer, infused liquid — and they did it at half the current cost. The LEDs will be presented at the Society for Information Display 2007 conference in Long Beach, Calif., from May 20 through 25, according to UCLA materials science and engineering professor Yang Yang and his graduate researcher Jinsong Huang. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1525 9"
Programming

Submission + - Conversation between two chat-bots

Submitted by Tabernaque86
Tabernaque86 writes: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/i-chat-ther efore-i-am/article_print Apparently programmers left two chat-bots alone in a room. The only intervention was programming a bot to start a conversation with a question, the rest was up to the bots. There is a brief description in the article, followed by a handful of conversations between the two bots, ALICE and jabberwocky.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Game Designer makes Virginia Tech Game

Submitted by
ErikInterlude
ErikInterlude writes: "Here's something interesting: CNET has a small entry on their tech news blog about a game designer that has created a game based on the Virigina Tech shootings. He acknowledges that the game is in bad taste. According to the blog, he'll remove the game if $2000 is donated to him, and he'll apologize if $3000 is donated. The article is very light on further details, but you can find the link is here."
Music

Submission + - Club Owner Has To Pay $40k For 10 Cover Songs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The music industry continues to look to squeeze money out of every possible place. The latest is the story of a club owner in Colorado who was forced to pay $40,000 because a cover band performed at his club and played 10 whole songs. It's true that the club owner in question did not have an ASCAP license, but it's hard to imagine why the club owner should be paying those fees rather than the band, and how it could possibly be fair to pay $40,000 for 10 cover songs that, if anything, probably acted as advertising for the real bands' songs.
Education

Submission + - All of Earth's species to be cataloged on Web

Submitted by
Matt
Matt writes: "In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.

The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish."
Java

Submission + - Sun Introducing JavaFX as an alternative to AJAX

Submitted by r7
r7 writes: Internetnews is reporting Sun's introduction of JavaFX at JavaOne today. Looks like a combination Applet, Flash, Javascript, and AJAX with a friendly programming interface. Does this really spell the end of AJAX? I sure hope so. Nothing built on javascript will ever achieve the security, cross-platform reliability, and programmatic friendliness needed to enabled Web 2.0. Proprietary solutions and vendor lock-in are also dead-ends. This leaves an opportunity that JavaFX has the potential to satisfy even better than did Java over a decade ago. Along with AJAX let's hope JavaF also spells the end to Microsoft's viral Active-X and JScript, AND, perhaps more importantly, that it really is a web scripting language that developers can grok.
Google

Submission + - Robert Love Joins Google

Submitted by
No Love for Novell?
No Love for Novell? writes: "Although it doesn't resolve all the speculation about whether Robert Love left Novell due to the Microsoft deal, we now know where he's going. Mr. Love has announced that he will be joining Google's Open Source Program Office, which works on such things as Google's Summer of Code. Thus far, there have been no new reports of flying chairs in Redmond, WA, so I, for one, wish him well in his new venture."
Data Storage

Submission + - ZFS under GPLv2 already exists

Submitted by
mrcgran
mrcgran writes: "ZFS (the zettabyte filesystem) has been grabbing lots of attention lately, not only because of its technical merits, but also because of conflicts between it and Linux kernel's licensing and architecture. However, an interesting account on how ZFS has already been released under GPLv2 by making its way into GRUB last week has failed to make headlines in slashdot. What incentives can this provide to the official support of ZFS in the Linux kernel?"
IBM

Submission + - Amazon & IBM Settle Dispute

Submitted by
Elenthalion
Elenthalion writes: "The Seattle P.I. is carrying an article about the recent peace-making deal ending the feud between IBM and Amazon over patent infringement. You probably remember the drama from October and December where IBM lead-off with a suit against Amazon for infringing on five of their patents in the way that they recommend products to customers, but Amazon counter-sued that IBM was infringing on five patents of their own.

Under terms of the settlement, both sides will release undisclosed amounts of money and allow the other to use some of their technology."
Democrats

Submission + - Obama's Massive MySpace Martyr

Submitted by DoTheRightThingBarack
DoTheRightThingBarack writes: This is unbelievable. Obama's campaign staff has been successful is killing-off the biggest political fansite on MySpace. The fansite is going to be deleted this morning! 160,000 friends, gone! The crazy thing is, the fansite had been in support of Obama. How smart is that?! For a political candidate to kill-off their biggest fansite?!?! Have any other political campaigns been dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot like this? (mirror link) More info is available on techPresident, Technorati, and Joe Anthony's site.
Data Storage

Submission + - ReiserFS

Submitted by
halo5
halo5 writes: "Reiser Prosecution Jolt: Victim's Ex-Lover Confesses to Eight Killings:

"A former lover of the missing wife of Linux programmer and accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case, prosecutors informed the defense last week.

Sean Sturgeon, a one-time friend of Reiser's, had already been a focus of the defense team's efforts to shift suspicion off Reiser in the disappearance of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser. Sturgeon's alleged confession to a series of unrelated murders will likely complicate the trial, which is set to begin Monday."

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/rei ser"

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