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Submission + - Via Unveils 1-Watt x86 CPU

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: Taiwanese chip and board vendor Via Technologies has introduced a new ultra-low voltage (ULV) processor aimed at industrial, commercial, and ultra-mobile applications. Touted as the world's most power-efficient x86-compatible CPU, the 500MHz 'Eden ULV 500' processor debuted at an Embedded Systems Conference in Taipei this week. Via says its chip draws a minimum of 0.1 Watts, when idle, and a maximum of 1 Watt, making it a great candidate for consumer electronics devices such as UMPCs, PVRs, and such.
Patents

Submission + - Wordlogic Patented Predictive Interface 1

Submitted by
Packetl055
Packetl055 writes: "Have any of you heard anything about this new high tech company (Wordlogic) with a soon to be granted/issued patent with 117 claims for predictability software? They recently received the patent approval/allowance letter from the U.S. Patent Office see link. Their patent application was submitted in March 2000. If I read this correctly any software that gives you any prediction after you type something is infringing on their patent (e.g. vehicle navigation systems, cellular telephones, PDA's, Google with their "Did You Mean" when using Google for a search, the new Apple I-Phone, Blackberry, Sony Playstation-3, etc. etc.). If true, this is going to be huge. Lawsuits after lawsuits because of infringements."
Space

Submission + - Astronomers find huge hole in the Universe

Submitted by
realwx
realwx writes: "Astronomers are surprised by a recent discovery of a space hole that is nearly a billion light years across. "Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota. Rudnick's colleague Liliya R. Williams also had not anticipated this finding. "What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe," said Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.""
Programming

Submission + - Programming Erlang Book

Submitted by
gnalre
gnalre writes: "Every day it seems there is a new publication of a book on perl/python/ruby. Some languages however do not seem to get that sort of attention. One of those under-represented languages is Erlang, however for the first time in 10 years a new Erlang book has been published!

As someone who had a brief flirtation with Erlang long ago, I was interested to see how the language had evolved in the intervening decade. I was also curious to re-evaluate Erlang to see what solutions it offered to the present day issues of writing reliable distributed applications.

Programming Erlang — Software For A Concurrent World (ISBN 10193435600X) is part of the pragmatic programmer series. As with all the books in this series, it is available in paperback or for a reduced cost you can directly download it in PDF format (which is always useful if you spend a lot of time on the move and you do not like carrying around a dead tree with you). The books format and layout as with all the books of this series are clear and logical.

The book is written by Joe Armstrong, who co-authored the first Erlang book a decade ago. He was also one of the originators of the Erlang language and has been directly connected to its development ever since. We can therefore be assured about the author's knowledge and insight into the language, if not his impartiality.

The book itself can be roughly split into three main sections.
  1. Getting started and Sequential programming
  2. Concurrent Programming
  3. Erlang libraries and advanced Erlang techniques.


In Chapter 1 the author sets out his stall of why Erlang is worthy of your attention. It's clear from this chapter that the author feels Erlang's strength lies in applications requiring an element concurrency and fault tolerance. Another emphasis is made of running Erlang on modern multi-core processors, something that was only a glint in a hardware designer's eye 10 years ago, but is rapidly becoming an issue in all areas of programming. From this chapter you also get a feel on how the author approaches his programming in that he states that he wants the reader to have fun with the language, which is a refreshing change to some language text books whose main purpose appears to be as a cure for insomnia.

Chapter 2 goes through installing Erlang and the Erlang shell (a command line environment similar to ones with languages such as perl). The chapter also starts us into the strange world of functional programming, where variables can only be given a value once (e.g you cannot do i=i+1), recursion replace loops and pattern matching replaces assignments. Fortunately the Erlang language is remarkably concise. For example there are only 4 data types. However to those coming from a purely procedural programming background the learning curve could be a steep one. Saying that the Author does a good job of leading you through the languages intricacies with examples being compared to code from languages such as Java to help keep your feet on solid programming ground.

The next 3 chapters move on to writing simple Erlang programs. As a quick aside, for anyone new to Erlang it is well worth examining the quicksort implementation described in chapter 3. Its conciseness and simplicity was one of the reasons the language won me over when I first met the language.

These chapters also cover error detection and handling. It's worth noting that Erlang has a philosophy of ensuring programs fail hard, so that bugs can be weeded out at an early stage. This idea very much defines how Erlang error handling is defined.

One criticism of the first section is Chapter 6 which describes compiling and running an Erlang program. I would have preferred that this information be covered earlier in the book or be placed in an appendix because it is probably an area you will want to reference repeatedly.

Chapter 7 is where things really get interesting and the true power of Erlang starts to come to the fore. This is where Erlang's concurrency credentials are explained. This chapter begins by providing some useful metaphors of the Erlang concurrent model, but chapter 8 is where the fun begins by describing the Erlang concurrency primitives that allow the creation of processes and the process communication methods. The author here highlights one of the language features, the Erlang light weight process. These are true processes (not threads) but take up very little in the way of resources. Indeed it is not unusual to have 1000's of such processes running in an application.

The next few chapters expand on the available concurrency primitives and how to move from concurrency on your local processor to concurrency utilising the resources of multiple machines either on a local network or across the web. It finishes the section off by showing the example of a simple IRC application.

Chapter 12 starts the next section by looking at how to interact with the world outside the Erlang environment. First it examines how to interface an Erlang program to applications written in other languages such as C. It then goes onto to look at file and socket handling in Erlang. Chapter 15 looks at two important Erlang storage primitives ETS and DETS before we get to the OTP Erlang libraries in Chapter 16.

The OTP libraries are the standard Erlang libraries and tools. In fact the OTP libraries are worthy of a book in itself. The author highlights the section on the generic Server module as the most important section in the whole book and one to be reread until its importance has sunk in. This is because here are encapsulated many of the lessons learned in writing industrial fault-tolerant applications, such the updating of a running applications code without causing that application to miss a beat. The section is finished off by describing the Erlang distributed database (humorously named Mnesia) and then finishing it off with the example of a simple server application.

The book finishes off by looking at Erlang on multicore systems including its support for SMP. As the author states this is the leading edge of present day Erlang and is still under development.

Conclusion

Firstly I would like to thank the pragmatic programmers for publishing this book. Erlang's profile has been in need of highlighting for many years and hopefully this book will help. The book definitely provides a great starting point for anyone who wants to get to grips with the language and takes them to the point where they can start writing useful applications. This book is a worthy successor to the last book published and does a good job of both updating the material and explaining some of the later developments such as SMP. Anyone who has a need for writing fault tolerant applications should at least look at this book. If nothing else you will never be afraid of dealing with recursion ever again.

In many ways the book cuts off just when things are getting interesting. There are hints in the book about real world Erlang's applications and it would have been good if some of these experiences could have been expanded. Hopefully however this book is the start of increased exposure for Erlang. If so then someone may get around to writing another Erlang book describing some of the advanced issues about generating robust applications. I just hope it won't take another 10 years this time.

Tony Pedley is a senior engineer specialising in real-time embedded systems. In his spare time he likes to tease windows programmers and confuse managers by telling them it would be a lot easier if we wrote it in Erlang."
Space

Submission + - Crew ends 100 day long Mars simulation in Arctic (wired.com)

Submitted by
Paul server guy
Paul server guy writes: "According to Wired Science http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/08/four-mo nth-mars.html and MSNBC "Cosmic Log" http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/08/20/ 325220.aspx the seven person F-XI LDM crew that has been stationed at the Mars Society's FMARS station has completed their unprecedented 100 day simulation. (it is actually 101 days, because for 37 they lived on "Mars time" adding 39 minutes to each day and losing a day to the rest of us.) According to the mission's remote science principal investigator Chris McKay, of NASA Ames. "Their pioneering simulation of crew operations on Mars time is by far the best work on this topic ever done. It sets the standard for future Mars mission simulations."
Crew Commander Melissa Battler, a Canadian geologist, commented in her blog that one of the biggest challenges of shifting to Martian time was not when to fall asleep (which they had no trouble with) but when to eat! "Several of us were hungry very frequently during our first 10 days of Mars Time, but our bodies seem to be adjusting now." Melissa adds that the extra 39 minutes does make a difference, "[you] feel like [you're] getting more work done."
Several "MarsEd" events took place where the crew would send a video presentation and then hold Q&A sessions with various Children's classes. For a major send off, as part of a MarsEd event the today the crew spoke to the NASA Ames Academy, and on the 22nd, the "Foxi" LDM Crew will be 'meeting' with Astronaut Clay Anderson, who is currently in orbit aboard ISS!
Following the mission, the crew will mothball the FMARS (Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station) hab and travel to the International Mars Society's annual conference in LA Aug 30 — Sept 2. This and more information can be found at http://www.marssociety.org/portal
My Summary? It was a fantastic mission, doing world class ground breaking science in extremely hostile conditions, and every one came through it in high spirits. A complete mission success. You should look at http://www.fmars2007.org/ to see all of the details."
Patents

Submission + - Can DARPA predict what you'll do next? (newscientist.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Not yet, but not for lack of trying. New Scientist is reporting a DARPA-funded patent which attempts to determine your inner state by analysing your past behaviour. It then uses this to predict what you'll do next. And it already works in some military war game scenarios, says the patent.
Movies

Submission + - NYTimes confirms that Paramount was paid $150m 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: NYTimes has confirmed the story that Paramount and DreamWorks Animation were paid $150 million for an exclusive HD-DVD deal that will last 18 months. "Paramount and DreamWorks Animation declined to comment. Microsoft, the most prominent technology company supporting HD DVDs, said it could not rule out payment but said it wrote no checks. "We provided no financial incentives to Paramount or DreamWorks whatsoever," said Amir Majidimehr, the head of Microsoft's consumer media technology group."
Television

Submission + - Uri Geller Accused of Bending Copyright Law (foxnews.com)

Submitted by
JagsLive
JagsLive writes: "FoxNews reports, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288665,00.html " Geller's tireless attempts to silence his detractors have extended to the popular video-sharing site YouTube , landing him squarely in the center of a raging digital-age debate over controlling copyrights amid the massive volume of video and music clips flowing freely online. "All it takes is a single e-mail to completely censor someone on the Internet," said Jason Schultz, a lawyer for the online civil rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing Geller over an unflattering clip posted on YouTube for which he claimed a copyright ownership. ""
Privacy

Submission + - Newly Declassified Window Film Keeps Out Hackers, (sciam.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A newly declassified window film from CPFilms Inc. (Solutia Inc.) will give war drivers a run for their money. As printed in a recent issue of Scientific American: Once manufactured under an exclusive contract with the U.S. government, this recently declassified window film is now available to the public. But don't expect to see it on store shelves anytime soon. Currently, it's only available directly from the manufacturer, and at prices that will likely make it prohibitive for all but the wealthiest home owners. The two-millimeter-thick coating can block Wi-Fi signals, cell phone transmissions, even the near-infrared, yet is almost transparent, making it no more intrusive than conventional window treatments. It can keep signals in (preventing attempts to spy on electronic communications) or out, minimizing radio interference and even the fabled electronics-destroying electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by a nuclear blast.
The Internet

Submission + - A reprieve for Internet radio?

Submitted by
westlake
westlake writes: "In the wake of Internet Radio's Day of Silence, SoundExchange has proposed a temporary $2500 cap on advance payments "per channel/per station." The Digital Music Association responded immediately in its own press release that it would agree to this, but only if the term for the new arrangement were extended to 2010 — or, preferably, forever. SoundExchange and DiMA Negotiating New Minimum Online Radio Fees On another front, SoundExchange seems aware in its PR that it will have to concede something more to the non-profit webcaster, if it is to avoid Congressional action."
Space

Submission + - What happened before the Big Bang? (badastronomy.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "A recent Slashdot story about cosmology is timely, indeed: a new press release was just issued about an advance in Loop Quantum Gravity theory which appears to allow the mathematics of cosmology to be extended to the time before the Universe underwent the Big Bang. The press release itself is a little, um, opaque, so I wrote up a more user-friendly version on my blog."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Pentagon developed 'laughing bullets'

Submitted by plasmadroid
plasmadroid writes: It might sound like a joke, but documents unearthed by New Scientist show that the Pentagon actually funded research into 'non-lethal' bullets that would also hit a target with a dose of laughing gas. That way, they'd not only be stunned but incapacitated by fits of giggles. Another idea was to put stink bombs inside rubber bullets. I guess it would work, but the idea of crowds of rioters giggling uncontrollably while being pelted with rubber bullets is truly bizarre...
Displays

Submission + - Tangible display makes 3D touchable 2

Submitted by moon_monkey
moon_monkey writes: Researchers in Japan have developed a display that makes 3D objects solid enough to grasp. The system, created by engineers at Japan's NTT, combines a 3D display with a haptic glove, making 3D items that look real but also feel solid to touch. Two cameras are used to image an object, to make the 3D image. A computer also uses this to render a solid representation. It could be used to inspect products remotely, or even to shake hands with someone on the other side of the world, the researchers say
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista is watching you!

Submitted by greengrass
greengrass writes: Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company.

more a Softpedia
Media

Submission + - Thousands of rubber ducks to finally end journey (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by
Bert de Jong
Bert de Jong writes: "From the I-WANT-one-of-those! dept. The Daily Mail writes to report that thousands of rubber ducks who have traveled the seas of the world since 1992 are about to end their journey. After escaping out of a container fallen off a Chinese freight ship in a storm, scientists have followed them which turned out to be an invaluable source of information for studying ocean currents. Now it seems inevitable though that they will finally land on the shores of South-West England. Expect to see high bids on E-Bay soon, and beware of phoney ones!"

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Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac (and nobody cares about it). -- Bill Joy 6/21/85

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