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Science

Submission + - The Shifting Tides of International Science (economist.com)

Submitted by
explosivejared
explosivejared writes: "The Economist has a story on the increasing scientific productivity countries like China, India, and Brazil relative to the field's old guards in America, Europe, and Japan. Scientific productivity in this sense includes percent of GDP spent on R&D and the overall numbers of researchers, scholarly articles, and patents that a country produces. The article sees this as a natural side effect of the buoying economic prospects of these countries. Perhaps the most positive piece of the story is the fact that a full 35% of scholarly scientific articles in leading journals are now the product of international collaboration. From the article: "[M]ore than 35% of articles in leading journals are now the product of international collaboration. That is up from 25% 15 years ago—something the old regime and the new alike can celebrate.""
Linux

Submission + - Kernel Tracing with LTTng on Ubuntu Maverick (blogspot.com)

Submitted by francis-giraldeau
francis-giraldeau writes: Linux Tracing Toolkit (LTTng) provides high performance kernel tracing for Linux. This is the killer app for system level debugging and performance tuning. It's now easier to install than ever with packages released for Ubuntu Maverick. The short introduction to kernel tracing shows how to interpret a simple kernel trace and relate it to strace. I would like to ask slashdot readers about what they would expect as features for kernel tracing analysis tool, because I'm starting my PhD on this topic and looking for ideas. Also, I wonder why LTTng is not mainline yet, despite the fact that it's highly valuable. Will Linus Torvalds see the light for 2011?
Censorship

Submission + - UK Twitter Users Declare "I'm Spartacus" (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tweeters have joined forces to support Paul Chambers, the man convicted and fined for a Twitter message threatening to blow up an airport. A so-called "I'm Spartacus" campaign encouraging users to "re-tweet" his words has also become a huge hit. The hashtag #IAmSpartacus is currently the number one trending topic on Twitter in the UK, with #twitterjoketrial in second place. Chambers is believed to be the first person convicted in the UK for posting an offensive tweet. After the hearing, actor and Twitter fan Stephen Fry tweeted that he would pay Chambers' fine. Comedian Dara O'Briain tweeted that the verdict was "ludicrous" while Peep Show actor David Mitchell said it was "punishment for flippancy".
Google

Submission + - 80% of Daily YouTube Videos Now in WebM (osnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: OSNews has an update on the WebM project from a presentation given by Google's John Luther and Matt Frost at the Streaming Media West conference. OSNews writes, 'Earlier this year, Google finally did what many of us hoped it would do: release the VP8 codec as open source. It became part of the WebM project, which combines VP8 video with Vorbis audio in a Matroshka container. The product manager for the WebM project, John Luther, gave an update on the status of the project — and it's doing great.'
The Courts

Submission + - Dismissal of Malicious Prosecution Claim Upheld (cgstock.com) 1

Submitted by Christoph
Christoph writes: I'm the Slashdot user who was sued for defamation (and six other claims) by a corporation over negative statements on my website. I prevailed (pro-se) in 2008. The court found the other side forged evidence and lied. In 2009, I sued the other party's lawyers for malicious prosecution/abuse of process (the corporation itself is dissolved/broke). One defendant had stated in writing their client was lying, but the trial court dismissed my claim for lack of evidence. I appealed, and this Tuesday the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, completely ignoring the defendant's written admission (and other evidence). They further found it was not an abuse of process to sue to "stop the publication of negative information and opinion".
Linux

Submission + - cde: Making Linux Portability Easy (stanford.edu)

Submitted by ihaque
ihaque writes: A Stanford researcher, Philip Guo, has developed a tool called cde to automatically package up a Linux program and all its dependencies (including system-level libraries, fonts, etc!) so that it can be run out of the box on another Linux machine without a lot of complicated work setting up libraries and program versions or dealing with dependency version hell. He's got binaries, source code, and a screencast up. Looks to be really useful for large cluster/cloud deployments as well as program sharing. Says Guo,

CDE is a tool that automatically packages up the Code, Data, and Environment involved in running any Linux command so that it can execute identically on another computer without any installation or configuration. The only requirement is that the other computer have the same hardware architecture (e.g., x86) and major kernel version (e.g., 2.6.X) as yours. CDE allows you to easily run programs without the dependency hell that inevitably occurs when attempting to install software or libraries. You can use CDE to allow your colleagues to reproduce and build upon your computational experiments, to quickly deploy prototype software to a compute cluster, and to submit executable bug reports.
Education

Submission + - Fight Begins To Secure Turing Papers For UK Museum (justgiving.com)

Submitted by Blacklaw
Blacklaw writes: Auction house Christie's is planning to sell offprints of Alan Turing's early work for an estimated £500,000 — and the fight has begun to raise the money so UK codebreaking museum and charity Bletchley Park can house the documents in the building where Turing performed his war-winning work and birthed the concept of a modern 'universal computer.'
If the money isn't raised, the papers could disappear into a private archive, never to be seen again.
IT

Hot Aisle Or Cold Aisle For Containment? 181

Posted by kdawson from the contain-this dept.
1sockchuck writes "Separating the hot and cold air in a data center is one of the keys to improving energy efficiency. But containment systems don't have to be fancy or expensive, as Google showed in a presentation Thursday, which discussed the use of clear vinyl curtains in isolating hot and cold aisles. Containment systems have been in use at least since 2004, but there's an ongoing debate about whether it is best to contain the hot aisle or cold aisle. Leading vendors are split as well, as APC advances hot aisle containment while Emerson/Liebert champions a cold aisle approach. What say Slashdot readers? Do you use containment in your data center? If so, do you contain the hot aisle or cold aisle?"
Robotics

Lego Robot Solves Bigger and Harder Rubik's Cubes 63

Posted by samzenpus from the version-2.0 dept.
kkleiner writes "It was only two months ago that we saw Mike Dobson's Cube Stormer Lego robot that could solve any 3x3 Rubik's cube in less than 12 seconds. You would think that there was only one person in the world crazy enough and talented enough to pull this off, but now we have found someone else that is just as amazing. The latest Rubik's cube-solving Lego monstrosity is called the MultiCuber, and although it's constructed out of nothing but Mindstorms components and a laptop, it can solve 2×2, 3×3, 4×4, and 5×5 cubes all in the same build! As if that weren't enough, a larger version solves the dreaded 6×6 Rubik's. We discovered the MultiCuber when its creator, David Gilday (IAssemble), wrote us an email to brag about its puzzle-solving might. Consider us impressed, sir."
NASA

Lawmakers Want a Space Shuttle In New York City 246

Posted by timothy from the eternal-city-or-500-years-whichever-comes-first dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Bloomberg reports that New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and a bipartisan delegation of 17 US representatives from New York and New Jersey have sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden calling for the agency to place a shuttle aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City. A former aircraft carrier, Intrepid served as one of NASA's recovery vehicles for early space flights. Intrepid officials have gathered almost 57,000 signatures on a petition to bring an orbiter to New York, and NASA is weighing 21 bids from visitors' centers, science museums and educational institutions eager to host one of the three aging space shuttles that will be retired this year. 'These are going to be like the Mona Lisa,' says space historian John Logsdon, referring to Leonardo da Vinci's iconic 1506 portrait of a woman in Florence that remains on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. 'The primary criteria for the shuttles' location will be the stability of the site and whether the chosen institutions can exhibit them for the next 500 years.'"
Censorship

Google Enumerates Government Requests 216

Posted by kdawson from the you-asked-we-told dept.
D H NG writes "In the aftermath of Google's exit from mainland China, it had sought to be more open about what it censors. Google has launched a new tool to track the number of government requests targeted at Google and YouTube. These include both requests for data and requests to take down data. A quick look at the tool shows that Brazil is the top country in both categories (largely because Orkut is popular there), and information for China cannot be disclosed because 'Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets.' As part of its four-part plan, Google hopes to change the behavior of repressive governments, establish guiding principles for dealing with issues of free expression, build support online to protest repression, and better provide resources and support for developing technology designed to combat and circumvent Internet censorship."
Cellphones

This Is Apple's Next iPhone 492

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-so-they-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes "There has been some speculation about it. Not anymore: 'This is Apple's next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it. We disassembled it. It's the real thing, and here are all the details.' Judging by Gizmodo's reaction, it looks like a winner."
NASA

NASA Summoned To Fix Prius Problems 380

Posted by CmdrTaco from the tang-is-not-always-the-answer dept.
coondoggie writes "If you want to solve a major engineering mystery, why not bring in some of the world's best engineers? The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today said it was doing just that by bringing in NASA engineers with expertise in areas such as computer controlled electronic systems, electromagnetic interference, and software integrity to help tackle the issue of unintended vehicle acceleration in Toyotas. The NHTSA review of the electronic throttle control systems in Toyotas is to be completed by late summer." We're really in trouble when NASA has no choice but to call Bruce Willis.
Games

Haptic Gaming Vest Simulates Punches, Shots, Stabbing 110

Posted by Soulskill from the thumpity-thump-thump dept.
An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that University of Pennsylvania researchers have developed a Tactile Gaming Vest that smacks and vibrates as players get shot in a game based on Half-Life 2. Four solenoid actuators in the chest and shoulders in front and two solenoids in the back give you the feeling of a simulated gunshot. In addition, vibrating eccentric-mass motors clustered against the shoulder blades make you feel a slashing effect as you get stabbed from behind. If this kind of vest could be linked to a movie while you watch it, the experience would be that much more exciting. Or as one of the creators put it, 'every time Bruce Willis gets shot, you feel it.'"

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