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Transportation

The Second Age of Airships 363

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-smoking-please dept.
The Telegraph has a story about a new generation of airships. It says "It's a new vehicle. It's a hybrid because we're combining helium lift, aerodynamic lift, a hovercraft landing system, and vectored thrust... If you can get beyond the word airship — because that has a lot of history — people think about them differently."

Comment Re:File swapping destroys SSDs (Score 5, Informative) 600

by palumbor (#24300387) Attached to: Next Generation SSDs Delayed Due To Vista
Seriously can we put this statement to bed yet? It has been several years (think, five or so) since this statement has even been slightly accurate. Yes, many writes can destroy a drive, but the number is in the (upper) hundreds of millions - performed on one single sector.

Today flash hard drives levy on technology used in older embedded devices that relied on flash, called "wear leveling".

Because each write is spread out throughout the entire disk, you don't physically write to the same sector X thousands of times when updating a cache file or whatnot.

Even if you had something thrashing the SSD continuously, you would not destroy the drive within the reasonable lifespan of a comparable rotating media drive.
Google

Google Releases 'Testing on the Toilet' 192

Posted by CowboyNeal from the logging-off dept.
JasonK writes "Here's a type of Google launch you don't see every day: Testing on the Toilet. This is a service that has been apparently been running internally for several months and teaching developers about testing during their 'down time,' so to speak. Due to the wild success of the program inside of Google, they decided to start a blog where they will post these weekly episodes so that the rest of us can print them out and have our own reading on the can. Is this a step towards Google becoming more open about their development practices?"

Lack of Innovation in IT Holding Companies Back? 205

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the phb-minus-minus dept.
bednarz writes to mention that Google's Dave Girouard, manager of enterprise business, is blaming a "crisis" in IT and the "insane complexity" of technology, among other things, for the lack of innovation that could allow businesses to grow. "A lot of things that people think of as core IT functions need to disappear into the ether so that the IT organization can properly focus on the value-added [activities]," he said. "Information security, as critical as it is, needs to be taken care of by organizations who live and die by it, who invest the money, time, resources and staff. Why should every company in the world have to build up their own expertise and have to maintain servers and provide security?"

Exploding Robots May Scout Hazardous Asteroids 120

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the things-that-asplode dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention NewScientist is reporting that a small force of robots designed to explode could help reveal an asteroid's inner structure. This could in turn allow scientists a better understanding of how to divert a rogue asteroid on a collision course with Earth. From the article: "The main spacecraft would stay a few dozen kilometers away, perhaps nudging the probes towards the asteroid using springs. Once on the surface, the protective spherical shell of each probe would open to allow the probe to scan the surface nearby. To reduce complexity and costs, the probes lack solar panels and run on battery power, limiting their lifetime to a few days. But each probe could still cover a lot of ground in that time, as they could be fitted with small thrusters to let them hop across the surface. Eventually the probes could detonate onboard explosives, sacrificing themselves for science one by one. Probes that had not yet detonated would listen for any seismic waves sent rippling out from the explosion, and the main spacecraft could observe the craters left behind. That would tell scientists about the asteroid's strength and internal structure."
Operating Systems

FreeBSD 6.2 Released To Mirrors 168

Posted by kdawson from the come-and-get-it dept.
AlanS2002 writes "FreeBSD 6.2 has been released to mirrors. The release notes for your specific platform are also available. FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98, and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development."
Education

Global Warming Only a Theory, Says School Board 1089

Posted by Zonk from the i'd-think-seattle-would-know-about-rain dept.
BendingSpoons writes "A Seattle school board has placed a moratorium on screenings of 'An Inconvenient Truth', having found its subject matter too controversial. Echoing the language of the evolution debate, the school board found that students must be told that global warming is only a theory and presented with an opposing viewpoint. The ban was prompted by the complaints of a parent: '"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."'"
The Almighty Buck

Knockoff Tech Selling Better Than the Original 321

Posted by Zonk from the that's-gotta-hurt dept.
An anonymous reader writes to mention an IT Wire story about the industrious Chinese industry centered around reproducing commercial products. These individuals have become so adept at forging based on the original that by the time the developer of the technology comes to market, the 'original' is seen as 'fake' by consumers. Other products, such as shoes, CDs, DVDs, and even expensive cars are available for much lower prices in certain Chinese markets. From the article: "Sell these products do, especially in Asia where the prices are low, few questions are asked and in many cases, the quality is actually pretty good. Samsung is said to have been so concerned by seeing its phones copied on the Chinese market that it tracked the distribution channels back to the source and discovered the electronics guys responsible for copying their latest products. After offering them a job with Samsung and a chance to go legitimate, they are reported to have declined the offer, saying that they were able to make more money by simply continuing in their pirate ways. What Samsung did next is not known."

Triple-Shape Plastics for Surgery 27

Posted by Zonk from the just-think-of-the-toy-possibilities dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In Plastics' Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable 'stents' and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. The Emerging Tech ZDNet blog has additional references and pictures of these morphing plastics."
Open Source

Sun Open Sources Java Under GPL 535

Posted by Zonk from the it-really-happened dept.
prostoalex writes "The embargo is off, and Associated Press is reporting on Sun releasing Java under GPL. Sun is hoping that this step will attract more developers, as well as extend the lifespan of Java. The article notes that this is 'one of the largest additions of computer code to the open-source community', and that Java is currently being run on something like 3.8 Billion devices worldwide." From the article: "Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the company hopes to turn more developers into Java programmers, who may then create additional software to support Sun products. 'The open-sourcing of this really means more — more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use,' Green said. 'The platform itself will become a place for innovation.' All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007, Green said. The move covers all Java technology, which includes software that runs on handheld devices, personal computers and servers."

Zune Profits Go To Record Label 155

Posted by kdawson from the how-to-bleed-the-iPod dept.
genegeek writes, "The New York Times reports that Microsoft has a new deal with Universal to share profits from Zune player sales. David Geffen, the media omniboss, is quoted: 'Each of these devices is used to store unpaid-for material...' The new business rationale is that stolen music should be paid for by profit sharing of newly sold Zune music players. Does that mean if you are not stealing music, you should get a discount on the players? Universal expects a similar deal from Apple when their current contract expires." Reader Gallenod adds, "Microsoft appears willing to spend millions and defer any potential profitability of the Zune simply to weaken Apple's bargaining power with recording companies and set a precedent for hardware manufacturers paying music companies."

Bar Performer Arrested For Copyright Violations 282

Posted by kdawson from the sieze-his-harmonica dept.
Edis Krad writes, "An elderly Japanese bar manager and performer has been arrested for playing copyrighted songs on his harmonica. From the article: 'Investigators accuse Toyoda of illegally performing 33 songs such as the Beatles' songs "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Yesterday," whose copyrights are managed by the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers. He allegedly performed the songs on the harmonica with a female pianist at the bar he operated between August and September this year.' This is for all those kids who are learning chords on their guitars — be ready to pay fees for practicing 'Smoke On The Water.' This story seems to be legit, though it reads like an Onion piece. It's only being reported in the Mainichi Daily News via MSN.

Chinese GPS System To Be Offered Free 131

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the maker-of-rules-dealing-with-fools dept.
MattSparkes writes, "The Chinese GPS system, Beidou, is apparently to be opened up for free access within China, worrying European investors on the €2.5 billion competing project, Galileo. Initially, China had declared that access to their system would be restricted to the military, and Europe had planned to recoup some of the cost of their system by selling licenses to China. Michael Shaw, from the US government's National Space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Coordination Office in Washington DC, said, 'Frankly, China's behavior towards Europe is not so different to how Europe behaved with us when GPS was the only game in town a decade ago.'"

Information Technology and Voting 128

Posted by kdawson from the matter-of-trust dept.
ChelleChelle writes, "In an interview in ACM Queue, Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann attempt to answer the question: Does technology help or hinder election integrity?" From the article: "Work in this area is as politically loaded as work on evolution or stem cells. Merely claiming that research into election integrity is needed is seen by many politicians as challenging the legitimacy of their elections... One of the problems in public discussions of voting-system integrity is that the different participants tend to point to different threats. Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."

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