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Submission + - The Unsung Heroes of Astronomy

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: While theorists and observers get all the fame in astronomy, they couldn't have done it alone. Would astronomy ever have become the incredible science it is without telescopes, spectrographs, cameras, and all the other technology components that go into an advanced system today? Of course not.

As the greatest telescope ever constructed nears completion, take a detailed look at the major instruments going into the James Webb Space Telescope and what they'll do. And next time you see an amazing NASA/ESA image, think of the instrumentalists: the unsung heroes of astronomy.

Submission + - Richard III to Get His Genome Sequenced (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: What color were Richard III's eyes and hair? Was he lactose intolerant? Did he have a high risk of diabetes or heart disease? All these questions and more may be answered after researchers sequence the entire genome of the deceased king of England, whose skeleton was recently unearthed. If successful, Richard III—who reigned during the 15th century—will become the first famous historical figure whose remains have undergone a complete genetic analysis. The study is expected to last about a year and a half and cost more than $160,000.

Submission + - Colorado Department of Transportation in secret deals with private corporations.

Submitted by telkis
telkis writes: It appears that not just the federal government can make secret deals. The
Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is attempting to push through a 50
year privatization deal of a federal highway with Goldman Sachs and an
Australian toll road company called the Plenary Group.
http://drivesunshine.org/cdot-...

Additional details at
http://www.thedenverchannel.co...

Just my opinion but will our taxes provide no services for the average citizen?

Submission + - What Are Use Cases For JavaScript MVC Frameworks? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Starting a new web application project gave Matt Mombrea the opportunity to research Javascript MVC Frameworks. He ultimately settled on Angular — which turned out to be meaningless because he realized that it made no sense for his application: 'The primary reason for this is that my application would be build using .NET MVC. That would mean I would have been applying the MVC pattern to my MVC pattern. MVCMVC as it were. Why would I introduce a routing procedure and view controllers in JavaScript when I already have these things taken care of by .NET MVC?' In fact, the more he dug into this question, the more he wondered when a JavaScript MVC framework might make sense to use at all. 'For every web application that takes any real amount of work we almost universally employ the MVC pattern. What are the scenarios when you would do this on the client side rather than the server side?'

Submission + - Google Maps Hides Offline Map Mode Under Glass-Esque Command (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The iOS and Android Google Maps mode used to have an easily accessed tool for saving the current mode in an offline view — useful for when you're in a wireless dead spot. In a recent app update, that option seemed to have vanished, but as blogger Keving Purdy notes, it's still there, but has to be invoked with the command "OK Maps". Purdy doesn't draw the connection to Google Glass, but it does seem oddly close to the "OK Glass" prompt that gadget uses, doesn't it?

Submission + - Voting machine changes Obama vote to Romney (msnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: And so it starts. An MSNBC news report shows a video of a voting machine changing an Obama vote into a Romney vote. The user who originally reported the issues says: "I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’."
Politics

Submission + - How will we vote on Election Day -- 2020? (foxnews.com) 1

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: With its telephone-based polls of homemakers, politicians stumping on the campaign trail, and the looming threat of hanging chads from paper ballots, the 2012 rumble between Romney and Obama felt almost archaic. That’s all about to change, however. Futurists, technology visionaries and science fiction authors posit some tremendous change, such that the election of 2020 — just eight short years off — will be largely unlike today’s. From campaigning to polling to the process of voting itself, the election 2020 will be different. No, we won’t have mind-controlled ballots or eyeball scanners for security. But we could have Facebook. “Everyday, cheap technologies—digital cameras—could form the basis for a relatively inexpensive system of voter identification,” wrote Charles Stewart III, a political scientist with MIT and a member of the Caltech / MIT Voting Technology Project. A Facebook of sorts, in other words, with the actual faces of voters and maintained by individual states to verify a person’s identity.

Comment Re:Better than Vancouver's party (Score 2) 47

St. Petersburg is the second largest city in the metro area, which is called Tampa Bay

From Wikipedia: "The Census Bureau currently estimates the population for the CMSA at 4,228,855 as of 2010 during consolidation.[3] as of July 1, 2008, making it the second most populous metropolitan area in Florida and fourth in the Southeast."

Comment Re:Meetup? (Score 1) 47

You should come to one of the SLUG meetings or hacking sessions. We have talks ranging from programming languages (especially new/interesting ones), robotics, war stories, etc. We have had some guest speakers in the past, including the first person to setup a webserver in North America. Disclosure: I've been a member for the last decade; and I'm also the president and meeting coordinator for the Pinellas meetings.

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