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The Almighty Buck

British Government Slashes Scientific Research 168

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the no-soup-for-you dept.
asobala writes "The British Government has slashed the funding of scientific Research Councils by £68 million. The Research Councils most affected by this include the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, which has been hit by a £29 million reduction in funding, and the Medical Research Council, which is seeing a £10.7 million reduction in funding. The response of the BBSRC biological research council announces that the council will have to cut 20 new grants and reduce expenditure on new equipment."
Announcements

Submission + - Ebook Reader

Submitted by
Andrew1963
Andrew1963 writes: "Sony's new ebook-reader is crippled by Digital Restriction Management and restricted in the supported formats. NAEB is a new company providing ebook readers free of DRM which can use any format the user wishes. Check out NAEB and sign up now."
Data Storage

Submission + - Why we hate lawyers in IT: Reason No. 1,997

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: How many laws affect IT? Steve Duplessie says zillions. Most are about record retention, and they were a boon to the storage industry. The lawyers on the good side put tough laws in place to say, "Thou shalt keep stuff, electronic or other, so that we can see it when we think you're a lying dirtbag." The lawyers on the bad side then started making money, first by trying to show their clients how to skirt the issue, and then by showing them how to comply. But now retention isn't enough. You have to also find the stuff. There are numerous approaches to the problem, but they seem to be lumped into these basic categories: 1. Let someone else deal with it; 2. Categorize and classify things up front; 3. Index stuff in the backup stream; 4. Internal search technologies.
Announcements

Submission + - International Polar Year beginning

Submitted by VENONA
VENONA writes: While officially beginning on March 1st, various preliminary things (blogs, etc.) are up at ipy.org. From the press release:

"26 February, 2007 International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008 officially gets underway on 1 March, 2007. IPY, which is a programme of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), will be the largest internationally coordinated scientific research effort in 50 years."

"During the course of IPY, thousands of scientists, from over 60 countries and a wide range of research disciplines, will carry out 220 science and outreach projects under six major themes..."
Biotech

Submission + - Fuel Cell Car and Experiment Kit

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Kids can't help but get excited about saving the planet when they see their own model car zoom across the floor powered by nothing but water! Fuel-cell technology is the environmentally friendly wave of the future. The water becomes fuel before kids' eyes as electrolysis (powered by a solar cell) breaks it into its separate components of hydrogen and oxygen, creating a gas that is then stored for use by the fuel cell when it's time for the car to get going. During the building process, children from age twelve can use the included 96-page Experiment Manual as a guide to performing thirty experiments on such subjects as the effects of direct and indirect radiation, the characteristics of a solar module, constructing and loading a reversible fuel cell, and decomposition of water in the fuel cell, plus they can design experiments of their own. The kit contains everything children need to build and experiment with their fuel cell and car (except 1 quart of distilled water)."
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - The ghost of the Newton haunts Apple's iPhone

Submitted by
PetManimal
PetManimal writes: "David Haskin has looked back at why the Newton failed to succeed in the early PDA market, and warns that Apple may be setting itself up for a similar failure with the iPhone. The iPhone appears to have a revolutionary interface, and the product has generated tons of interest from the Mac community — just like the Newton did, back in the 1990s. But the iPhone also shares with the Newton a hefty starting price — $500 for the iPhone, vs. $700 (in 1993 dollars) for the Newton. And Joe Public may not be so keen on the cost, as recent survey data suggests (see Slashdot discussion). Moreover, Haskin notes that the iPhone will have to deal with two additional factors that were not issues for the Newton: Competition, and wireless service providers: 'Besides overcharging for iPhone, Apple faces significant competition, something it didn't face in 1993 when it launched Newton. And you can bet that competition from the likes of Samsung and LG will both be good (although probably not as good as iPhone) and most assuredly cheaper. It's also becoming clear that Apple may be suffering from excessive hubris. That is evident by its strong demands on its partner in the U.S., Cingular/AT&T. The demands, including a slice of the cellular revenues and control of the sales channel, were so strong that Verizon Wireless turned the deal down. I'm more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular. If Apple doesn't respond quickly by lowering the price and making nice to AT&T, which surely will be ticked off, iPhone may well become Apple's next Newton. Remember that two years after Newton was introduced, a smaller, cheaper PDA appeared — the Palm Pilot — which truly did rock the world.'"
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - New Job Board Has Really Cool & Unique Technol

Submitted by
Carl Williams
Carl Williams writes: "I recently discovered a new IT job board called Odinjobs. It is for IT professionals, but what is different about it is the technology. They claim to have an in-house developed technology that "reads" your resumes for context much more accurately than keywords. This technology allows job seekers to save valuable time by prioritizing relevant job opportunities. There is also a RSS feed available that will only bring the most relevant jobs to job seekers."
Businesses

Submission + - A justification for better IT

Submitted by
Thede
Thede writes: "Computerworld has an article about productivity research by Marshall Van Allstyne, Sinan Aral, and Erik Brynjolfssonto that ought to be a boon IT. From the article: "In the past decade, studies have shown that IT leads to increased corporate productivity, but until recently, no one had measured how it affects work at the individual desktop level." (Until now)

They actually measured the flow of email from individuals then analyzed each person's activity relative to the network. "Among the surprises, IT didn't necessarily make projects faster but it did dramatically increase productivity by facilitating multitasking. They also found that IT-supported social networks predicted productivity better than experience. Now you can tell your boss the project's late but your productivity is up, and beers with the buddies really matter!"

The data (including 125,000 email messages) was collected over 5 years in several professional services firms.

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command =viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=14&articleId=281734&i ntsrc=hm_topic

The original papers are online:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=887406
http://ssrn.com/abstract=942310"
Privacy

Surveillance Cameras Get Smarter 186

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the walk-without-rhythm-and-you-won't-attract-the-one dept.
kog777 writes to mention that the IB Times is taking a look at where surveillance camera technology is headed. Soon researchers tell us that cameras will be available that not only record, but are able to interpret what they see. "The advancements have already been put to work. For example, cameras in Chicago and Washington can detect gunshots and alert police. Baltimore installed cameras that can play a recorded message and snap pictures of graffiti sprayers or illegal dumpers. In the commercial market, the gaming industry uses camera systems that can detect facial features, according to Bordes. Casinos use their vast banks of security cameras to hunt cheating gamblers who have been flagged before."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Welcome to garage door opener hell

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Washington Post has an interesting story of military abuse today: abuse of garage door openers. Seems a large number of folks living near the Quantico Marine base in eastern Virginia have found their garage door openers being rendered useless by a wireless signal coming from the base. And they aren't the first, the story says. Garage door openers have been zapped in other towns near military operations for a couple years now experts say. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1184 7"
Security

Submission + - Modern Day Witch-Hunt in Connecticut

Submitted by zhenya00
zhenya00 writes: USAToday is reporting on a story most of us are already familiar with; the case of Julie Amero, a 40 year old Norwich, Connecticut substitute teacher who has been convicted of four counts of risk of injury to a minor when the un-patched Windows 98 computer she had used to check her email began to display a flurry of pornographic pop-ups to the students in her classroom. She faces up to 40 years in prison when she is sentenced this Friday March 2.
From the article:

"Julie Amero was a victim of a school that couldn't be bothered to protect its computers, of a prosecutor without the technology background to understand what he was doing, a police "expert" who was not, and a jury misled by all of them. "Miscarriage of justice" doesn't begin to describe it."
Can this country really allow something like this to happen? Why isn't there general outrage on the front page of every newspaper? Why aren't those responsible being flooded with calls and emails from angry citizens?
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - FreedroidRPG 0.10.1 is out!

Submitted by
FreedroidRPG development team
FreedroidRPG development team writes: "Version 0.10.1 of FreedroidRPG, the open-source isometric role playing game featuring Tux, has been released on Sunday, Februar 25th.
This new release brings lots of small improvements, mostly in the form of bug fixes and new UI features:

# Dozens of bugs fixed
# Performance improvements, especially on load/save operations.
# A few tweaks to dialogs
# Started implementing magical items
# An alpha-stage translation support for dialogs has been written. German version included.
# Gameplay slightly adjusted — items don't wear out as fast as before"

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