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Submission + - Hawaii Supreme Court rules in favor of Thirty Meter Telescope's construction (hawaiinewsnow.com)

Submitted by Applehu Akbar
Applehu Akbar writes: After years of legal wrangling and protests, the Thirty Meter Telescope got a green light Tuesday from the state Supreme Court.

In a 4-to-1 decision, the state’s highest court ruled in favor of the telescope’s construction atop Mauna Kea, effectively ending all legal avenues for contesting the controversial project unless the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case.

In a statement, TMT International Observatory Board of Governors Chairman Henry Yang said the body is “grateful” for the ruling and “committed to being good stewards on the mountain.”

Green anti-science organizations, such as Deep Green Resistance and Sierra Club, have been trying to stop TMT construction for years, in an expanded version of an earlier campaign to halt the construction of large research telescopes in southeastern Arizona. As in Arizona, their excuse was at first endangered species on the construction site, and subsequently native rights.

Submission + - US Indicts Chinese Hacker-Spies In Conspiracy To Steal Aerospace Secrets (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Justice Department has charged two Chinese intelligence officers, six hackers, and two aerospace company insiders in a sweeping conspiracy to steal confidential aerospace technology from U.S. and French companies. For more than five years, two Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) spies are said to have run a team of hackers focusing on the theft of designs for a turbofan engine used in U.S. and European commercial airliners, according to an unsealed indictment dated October 25. In a statement, the DOJ said a Chinese state-owned aerospace company was simultaneously working to develop a comparable engine.

The MSS officers involved were identified as Zha Rong, a division director in the Jiangsu Province regional department (JSSD), and Chai Meng, a JSSD section chief. At the direction of the MSS officers, the hackers allegedly infiltrated a number of U.S.-based aerospace companies, including California-based Capstone Turbine, among others in Arizona, Massachusetts, and Oregon, the DOJ said. The officers are also said to have recruited at least two Chinese employees of a French aerospace manufacturer—insiders who allegedly aided the conspiracy by, among other acts, installing Sakula, a remote access trojan, onto company computers.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What's the fastest, cheapest way to get a Bachelor's degree? 2

Submitted by AnOminusCowHerd
AnOminusCowHerd writes: I have an Associates degree in programming and systems analysis, and over a decade of experience in the field. I work primarily as a contractor, so I'm finding a new job/contract every year or two. And every year, it gets harder to convince potential employers/clients that 10-12 years of hands-on experience doing what they need done, trumps an additional 2 years of general IT education.

So, I'd like to get a Bachelor's degree (preferably IT-related, ideally CS, accredited of course). If I can actually learn something interesting and useful in the process, that would be a perk, but mainly, I just want a BSCS to add to my resume. I would gladly consider something like the new GA Tech MOOC-based MSCS degree program — in fact, I applied there, and was turned down. After the initial offering, they rewrote the admissions requirements to spell out the fact that only people with a completed 4-year degree would be considered, work experience notwithstanding.

Submission + - DirectX 12 promises lower-level hardware access on multiple platforms

Submitted by crookedvulture
crookedvulture writes: Microsoft formally introduced its DirectX 12 API at the Game Developers Conference this morning. This next-gen programming interface will extend across multiple platforms, from PCs to consoles to mobile devices. Like AMD's Mantle API, it promises reduced CPU overhead and lower-level access to graphics hardware. But DirectX 12 won't be limited to one vendor's hardware. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm have all pledged to support the API, which will apparently work on a lot of existing systems. Intel's Haswell CPUs are compatible with DirectX 12, as are multiple generations of existing AMD and Nvidia GPUs. A DirectX 12 update is also coming to the Xbox One. The first games to support the API won't arrive until the holiday season of 2015, though. A preview release is scheduled for this year.

Submission + - Mathematician Teaches How to Win $1 Billion on NCAA Basketball

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Jake Simpson reports at The Atlantic that Mathematician Tim Chartier, a Davidson College professor who specializes in ranking methods, teaches a math-heavy form of bracketology — the science of predicting the annual NCAA college basketball tournament at Davidson College in North Carolina. Chartier’s academic research is in ranking methods where he looks at things like the page-ranking algorithms of Google. "In 2009, my collaborator Amy Langville said: “You know what? ESPN has this huge online bracket tournament. Let’s create brackets with our ranking methods, just to see if it’s creating meaningful information.” Chartier’s formula, an evolving code-based matrix that ranks each of the 68 tournament teams, has helped several Davidson students score in the 96th percentile (or higher) in ESPN’s bracket challenge and this year, Chartier’s goal is to help someone win the $1 billion prize offered by Warren Buffett to anyone who correctly predicts all 63 games of the men’s tournament. Chartier uses two methods. One is the Colley Method, named after astrophysicist Wesley Colley who developed a method used by the BCS for college football (PDF). His basketball method only counts wins and losses, not margin of victory. The other method is the Massey method created by sports statistician Kenneth Massey (PDF), which does integrate scores. Chartier has not been banned from any office pools — at least none that he knows of. But as a result of coming pretty darn close to filling out a perfect bracket just by crunching the numbers, brackets have become a labor of love. "Now that the brackets are actually out, I've had students in and out of my office all week, sharing new ideas," says Chartier. "For me, that's more fun than filling out a bracket. They will all be filling out brackets, so it's like I'm doing parallel processing. I know what might work, but watching them figure out the odds, is a thrill."

Submission + - Massive Open Online Calculus! (osu.edu) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Professors at the Ohio State University are embracing MOOC's with a Massive Open Online Calculus Course (https://mooculus.osu.edu/) — it is completely opensource — everything is on github: https://github.com/ASCTech/mooculus

There is are free videos, free online assessment system, and a free textbook!

Submission + - Microsoft and Google Challenge US Government Gag Orders (informationweek.com)

Submitted by ace37
ace37 writes: Microsoft says it plans to move ahead with a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government in June to affirm the right of businesses to disclose limited information about government demands for data made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

In separate legal filings, Microsoft and Google challenged the gag order that typically accompanies FISA demands for customer data. The two companies asserted that they have a First Amendment right to publish the total number of FISA requests received and the total number of user accounts covered by such requests.

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