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Education

Submission + - Liberal Arts: Lost Tools of Wisdom? (tirnasaor.com) 2

Submitted by
TirNaSaor
TirNaSaor writes: "The trivium and quadrivium comprise the seven liberal arts which are the very tools for effective critical thinking. These tools can then be applied to the study of any subject in a systematic manner and are therefore essential for discovering the very nature of reality itself."
China

Submission + - China to Build World's Tallest Tower in 90 Days (broad.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Even since the current world’s tallest builing – the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – was completed, there has been a constant battle to build the world’s next tallest building. The current record holder stands tall at 828 meters and took five years to build, but a Chinese company called Broad Sustainable Building (BSB) aims to smash that record by building the 838 meter Sky City tower, in Changsa, China in a mere 90 days. BSB plans to use prefab building techniques to construct the tower in record time.
Government

Submission + - US government spending $19 million to assign contractors a number (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Sparticus789
Sparticus789 writes: A GAO report shows that "The government handles more than $1 trillion a year in contracts and grants. Washington needs to assign a unique number to each one of them, to track all the businesses and other entities it deals with. For more than three decades, it has turned to one company — Dun & Bradstreet — for its numbering needs." The article goes on to say "the government is now spending roughly $19 million a year on the system that cost just $1 million annually one decade ago."

The database only contains 625,000 entries, how many better ways are there to store this same amount of data?

Submission + - Scientific literacy vs. climate change belief (nature.com)

Submitted by gmfeier
gmfeier writes: An interesting study reported in Nature Climate Change indicated that concern over climate change did not correlate with scientific literacy nearly as much as with cultural polarization.
Science

Submission + - Armed extremists targeting nuclear and nanotech workershttp://slashdot.org/ (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists.

A group calling itself the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front has claimed responsibility for the non-fatal shooting of a nuclear-engineering executive on 7 May in Genoa. The same group sent a letter bomb to a Swiss pro-nuclear lobby group in 2011; attempted to bomb IBM’s nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland in 2010; and has ties with a group responsible for at least four bomb attacks on nanotechnology facilities in Mexico.

Another branch of the group attacked railway signals in Bristol, UK, last week in an attempt to disrupt employees of nearby defence technology firms (no word on whether anyone noticed the difference between an anarchist attack and a normal Wednesday on the UK's railways).

A report by Swiss intelligence says such loosely affiliated groups are increasingly working together.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Find a job in China for non-native speaker 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: My fiancée has recently been accepted into a Chinese university into their phd program, and I've been looking at jobs in China (specifically the Beijing area) and not having any success. I'm a developer with 8 years of experience (java), mostly on the server side, so I'm not lacking in the general experience, but the problem is I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese. I am a native English speaker from Canada though. The only jobs I've had any responses from were teaching positions for simple English which isn't exactly my first choice. Has anyone had any experience or success as a programmer finding a job in China, without being able to speak the native language? Any websites I should be focusing on?
Android

Submission + - The end of Android as we know it (infoworld.com) 2

Submitted by eetc
eetc writes: Android, which now ships on about half of all smartphones, is clearly a huge success. But as Galen Gruman writes on InfoWorld.com, "a growing number of signs indicates that Android has peaked as a platform and will do a slow fade into either irrelevance or the kind of anonymity the operating systems powering 'regular' cellphones have long known." What signs? Evidence from the Oracle lawsuit over Android's Java base, and estimates of search revenues by platform, suggest that Android isn't critical to Google's mobile search advertising growth. This explains why Google's commitment to Android often seems half-hearted, and why Google's partners aren't solidly behind Android either. But the main reason Android will fade, Gruman argues, is that Oracle will win the lawsuit.
Politics

Submission + - US Small-scale Nuclear Reactor Industry Gains Traction in Missouri (stltoday.com)

Submitted by trichard
trichard writes: From this article on STLtoday.com:

"Ameren Missouri is vying to be the first utility in the country to seek a construction and operating license for a small-scale nuclear reactor, a technology that’s appealing to utilities because of the smaller upfront costs and shorter development lead times.

The small reactors, about a fourth or less the capacity of full-size nuclear units, are appealing to the nuclear industry because they could be manufactured at a central plant and shipped around the world. By contrast, building nuclear reactors today is a more cumbersome process that must be done largely on site and takes years."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Posts Record Revenue, Promises Many New Products (mashable.com)

Submitted by jamesbrx
jamesbrx writes: Microsoft has just reported record revenues of $17.41 billion for the past quarter, despite PC sales being sluggish due to hard-disk shortage caused by Thailand flooding. Most of the rise in revenue came from increase in business and server sales, as enterprises are increasingly using Microsoft's business-oriented products like Office 365, Lync and SharePoint. Microsoft took largest hit in their Xbox division because of lack of new games and as rumors about the upcoming successor for the Xbox360 spread. Microsoft also noted that the upcoming months will see a large amount of new offerings from the company, as Nokia prepares to publish their array of smartphones and tablets.
Cellphones

Submission + - New Research Could Mean Cellphones That Can See Through Walls (utdallas.edu)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Comic book hero superpowers may be one step closer to reality after the latest technological feats made by researchers at UT Dallas. They have designed an imager chip that could turn mobile phones into devices that can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects. The team’s research linked two scientific advances. One involves tapping into an unused range in the electromagnetic spectrum. The other is a new microchip technology. “We’ve created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications,” said Dr. Kenneth O, professor of electrical engineering at UT Dallas and director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence(TxACE). “The terahertz range is full of unlimited potential that could benefit us all.”

Using the new approach, images can be created with signals operating in the terahertz (THz) range without having to use several lenses inside a device which could reduce overall size and cost. “CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips,” Dr. O said. “The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects.”
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8 Enterprise SKU to feature Windows To Go and side-load Metro-style apps (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: In addition to Monday's announcement of three Windows 8 SKUs, on Wednesday Microsoft introduced Windows 8 Enterprise, which will include a number of features not found in Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, the ARM-oriented Windows RT. These Enterprise edition exclusive features include the ability to create Windows To Go portable USB installations, DirectAccess VPN-less remote access to corporate networks, BrancheCache cached access to remote fileservers, AppLocker software restrictions, enhanced 3D, USB, and touch performance in VDI deployments, and the ability to side-load internal, Windows 8 Metro style apps.

To make full use of these features, Software Assurance usage rights are changing too. Any employee with a company PC with a Software Assurance license will also have a corresponding Windows To Go license, so that they can boot a secure, corporate-controlled environment on their home PCs. This can be extended further with Companion Device licenses (for extra cost), allowing employees to access corporate environments through either Windows To Go or VDI on up to four personally-owned systems.
Earth

Submission + - In Poll, Many Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
mdsolar
mdsolar writes: ""Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming — but the public, it seems, is already there.

A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually warm winter, last year’s blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.

The survey, the most detailed to date on the public response to weather extremes, comes atop other polling showing a recent uptick in concern about climate change. Read together, the polls suggest that direct experience of erratic weather may be convincing some people that the problem is no longer just a vague and distant threat."

Poll results: http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Climate-Preparedness.pdf"
Networking

Submission + - Iraq Emerges From Isolation as Telecommunications Hub (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
jamaicaplain
jamaicaplain writes: "Iraq, cut off from decades of technological progress because of dictatorship, sanctions and wars, recently took a big step out of isolation and into the digital world when its telecommunications system was linked to a vast new undersea cable system serving the Gulf countries. Gulf Bridge International's ring-shaped cable system connects all of the gulf countries. The engineers who designed and installed the cable that made shore in Al-Faw, near Basra, had to deal with an unusual number of challenges."
Chrome

Submission + - Google Chrome: The New Web Platform? (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "The Chrome dev team is working toward a vision of Web apps that offers a clean break from traditional websites, writes Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister, in response to Google's new Field Guide for Web Applications. 'When you add it up, it starts to look as though, for all the noise Google makes about Web standards, Chrome is moving further and further apart from competing browsers, just by virtue of its technological advantages. In that sense, maybe Chrome isn't just a Web browser; maybe Chrome itself is the platform — or is becoming one.'"
Facebook

Submission + - Does DHS really need to monitor YouTube, Facebook, Twitter? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The idea that any number of federal institutions are watching your every move on social networks like Facebook, Twitter is unnerving at best. The Department of Homeland Security is one of those agencies and today it testified before a House subcommittee to define and defend its role in social media monitoring. Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.), the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence subcommittee's chairman, opened the hearing by saying it was reported that DHS had instituted a program to produce short reports about threats and hazards"

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