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Science

Water Bottle Fills Itself From the Air 173

Posted by samzenpus from the everything-is-wet dept.
mbstone writes "The Namib Desert Beetle generates water from water vapor via its shell, which has alternating hydrophilic and hydrophobic bumps which channel water droplets into its mouth. Scientists at MIT developed a self-filling water bottle using this technology, and have announced a contest for the best design of a countertop water-from-air generator."
Microsoft

Microsoft Makes Direct X 11.1 a Windows 8 Exclusive 553

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the year-of-the-linux-desktop dept.
BluPhenix316 writes "Microsoft has made Direct X 11.1 a Windows 8 Exclusive. I think this is merely an update to make Direct X more integrated with Windows 8. Is this going to be the trend? To lock you into the OS updates so Windows 7 doesn't last as long as Windows XP has?" The update is pretty minor, but it does add Stereoscopic rendering, and there seemed to be an implication that no new DirectX updates after this will be made for Windows 7.
NASA

Low Quality Alloy Cause of Shuttle Main Tank Issue 118

Posted by Soulskill from the heisenberg-compensators-were-acting-up dept.
BJ_Covert_Action writes "NASA engineers have finally discovered the root cause of the cracks that have been found on space shuttle Discovery's main external tank. The main tank, one of the 'Super Lightweight Tank' models developed by Lockheed-Martin, employs an aluminum-lithium alloy developed by Lockheed-Martin specifically for this application. The new alloy is used in various structural stringers throughout the SLWT design. Unfortunately, the batch of this alloy used in the tank that is currently mated with the Discovery shuttle appears to be of low quality. The alloy used in the stringers has a 'mottled' appearance, compared to the nominal appearance typically used in the main tank stringers (see picture in article). This appearance is indicative of a fracture threshold that is significantly lower than typical. NASA has determined, through testing, that this low grade alloy has only 65% of the fracture strength of the nominal alloy typically used. NASA engineers have devised a potential fix to the problem that they are currently testing to ensure the repair will cause no unintended consequences. NASA plans to have the Discovery shuttle ready to launch again by February 24th, 2011."
Canada

Internet Downloading Costs To Rise In Canada 433

Posted by Soulskill from the all-that-hockey-streaming-gets-expensive dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to CBC News, 'Surfing and downloading from the internet is about to get more expensive for many Canadians as internet companies Shaw and Primus have announced plans to impose new fees and caps on internet usage. Over the past year, the CRTC, Canada's communication regulator, let Bell and Rogers start charging extra for customers who download a lot of data. ... Primus and Shaw have said they will begin passing on higher fees to their customers beginning Feb. 1. Primus, for example, rents bandwidth on Bell's networks and said Bell is inflating the costs for everyone, including them. 'It's an economic disincentive for internet use,' said Matt Stein, vice-president of network services for Primus. 'It's not meant to recover costs. In fact these charges that Bell has levied are many, many, many times what it costs to actually deliver it.'"
Image

Online Poll-Based Party Seeks Election Win 117

Posted by samzenpus from the vote-and-vote-often dept.
schliz writes "Online poll-based political party Senator Online is looking for senate candidates to contest the next Australian Federal Election. The party does not have any policies or an official stance, and promises to conduct online votes on major issues and act in Parliament accordingly. It has already appointed its candidate for the state of New South Wales through an online recruitment campaign in which candidates had to receive a minimum of 100 endorsements — either via its website or Facebook 'fans' — and raise a minimum of $200. This will be Senator Online's second Federal Election. When it contested in 2007, it received between 0.05 and 0.09 percent of each state's votes."

Comment Re:MSDN? Hello? (Score 1) 775

by kflat (#32823182) Attached to: Microsoft Out of Favor With Young, Hip Developers

From my limited research (Texas public universities), most college programs are based on Java coursework. Maybe Microsoft software runs the PCs in the labs, but the only MS-centric field of study I'm aware of is the management information systems track, which is in the business schools.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I rejected Microsoft primarily because it's too easy to write complete garbage code on a MS platform. Anyone who's had to dissect/revise/resurrect/secure/support anything running on Windows machines (and isn't on their third cup of powder blue Kool-Aid) can readily produce horror stories about the nightmare that is Microsoft.

Microsoft is PAIN.

They might not go away in the foreseeable future, but if their products continue to deprive devs, designers, admins, and lowly server monkeys of valuable sleep and sanity, alternatives will continue to be sought, until alternatives dominate the marketplace.

Although the new Windows stuff (7 & 2008) is pretty good. Maybe they'll learn their lesson, and wouldn't that just be delightful?
Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Software

BSA Says 41% of Software On Personal Computers Is Pirated 569

Posted by CmdrTaco from the only-half-of-that-is-any-good dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Individuals are turning to P2P networks and auction sites in staggering numbers to acquire or transfer illegal software and in doing so are harming the economy whilst exposing themselves to malware, identity theft and criminal prosecution, according to a report from the Business Software Alliance. Beyond P2P and auction site piracy, the report also draws correlations between Internet piracy and the spread of malware such as viruses, trojans and spyware, which often exploit vulnerabilities in illegal software that does not benefit from security updates provided by manufacturers. Although the correlation is not universal, geographies with high instances of software piracy suffer from high instances of malware."
Books

New Hitchhiker's Guide Book "Not Very Funny" 410

Posted by timothy from the trying-to-meet-a-high-standard dept.
daria42 writes "An early review of part of the Eoin Colfer-penned sequel to Douglas Adams's Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series has panned the book as not being very funny. If you read Hitchhiker to have a good laugh, maybe you're going to be disappointed," wrote Nicolas Botti, on his Douglas Adams fan site earlier this month."
Security

Cops To Start CrimeTube To Report Offenses 238

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the voluntary-participation-clause-to-be-removed-soon dept.
An anonymous reader writes "UK citizens may soon be able to report crimes by uploading videos taken from their mobile phones. Ian Readhead, director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers, told silicon.com that forces want to build a video reporting portal to allow the public to upload potential evidence. Checking YouTube is now a routine part of many police investigations, he said, and police want to build on the extra functionality that this gives them."
Data Storage

On the State of Linux File Systems 319

Posted by kdawson from the here-hold-this-for-me dept.
kev009 writes to recommend his editorial overview of the past, present and future of Linux file systems: ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, Reiser4, ext4, Btrfs, and Tux3. "In hindsight it seems somewhat tragic that JFS or even XFS didn't gain the traction that ext3 did to pull us through the 'classic' era, but ext3 has proven very reliable and has received consistent care and feeding to keep it performing decently. ... With ext4 coming out in kernel 2.6.28, we should have a nice holdover until Btrfs or Tux3 begin to stabilize. The Btrfs developers have been working on a development sprint and it is likely that the code will be merged into Linus's kernel within the next cycle or two."

Comment Re:Server/customer ratio? (Score 1) 431

by kflat (#23626639) Attached to: Explosion At ThePlanet Datacenter Drops 9,000 Servers
Yay, stereotypes!

Ironically, in 5 years in the Texas (DFW/Houston) hosting industry, the only person I have seen who wore any sort of cowboy wear was a recent California (San Jose) transplant.

The guy was definitely a huge nerd, though, so you nailed that one... but really, do you wrestle with kangaroos and hunt for crocodiles, just like we all wear Stetsons and shitkickers and ride horses to work?

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