Anonymous Coward writes "This is a shameless plug, but I thought Slashdot readers might be interested in the hurricane simulator system the company I work for (Cambridge Consultants) helped develop for the University of Western Ontario. The BBC article is light on the kind of technical details Slashdot readers enjoy, so here are some titbits. The servomotors for the 100+ valves are controlled over an IPv4, gigabit Ethernet network connected to an Athlon dual-core AMD64 PC. The entire real-time control system runs on this machine, utilizing well above 90% of each processor core, and roughly 30% of the network capacity. The sampling frequency of the control system places a huge demand on the machine, with about 70,000 context switches taking place every second. Yes, it runs Linux. "

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a few years, telesurgery performed by multi-armed robots remotely controlled by real surgeons located hundreds or thousands of kilometers away will become commonplace. Today, Canadian doctors from the Centre for Minimal Access Surgery (CMAS) are developing the technology for NASA. Their goal is to build a portable robotic unit that would be used in space missions, war zones and remote areas within five years. So far, the experiments already done in Canada and for NASA are extremely encouraging. But read more for additional details and pictures of a real surgeon controlling such a robot."

Vin Daryl writes "ZDNet reports on Microsoft's love-hate relationship with open-source software." From the article: "The interoperability lab focuses on getting products from open-source ISVs such as JBoss, to work on the Microsoft platform, he said. 'For example, we often collaborate with JBoss, but in certain areas we might compete with them. It's competition and cooperation,' Hilf explained. 'Over time, as you see the open-source marketplace maturing and becoming more commercial, I think you'll see more of that kind of dynamics. It's not something that's unique to Microsoft,' he said, adding that IBM and Oracle also compete, and at the same time, cooperate with open-source vendors. "

Eurogamer reports on claims by George Harrison (NoA's Senior VP for Marketing) that the Revolution will feature extensive third-party support in the coming years. From the article: "'One of the lessons we tried to learn from GameCube was that we kept things too close. And so as we got ready to launch, we had some of our own great games but third parties were kind of behind the eight ball in terms of being able to have games ready,' Harrison stated. In terms of early support for the Revolution, which launches this year alongside Sony's PS3, third party software ought to be available in abundance, Harrison confirming 'We've got more than 1,000 developer kits including the controller kits, out, so there should be plenty there.'"

Jeff "Hemos" Bates, who you all know and love here on Slashdot, celebrated his 30th Birthday last Monday. The only way to properly celebrate would be to send him belated e-congratulations to hemos at slashdot.org. Show the love. He'd do it for you. No I'm not kidding.

Our marketing department has done extensive research over the last 3 quarters and discovered that our audience is strangely disproportionately skewed towards males. Like, 98.3% males to be precise. To correct this oversight, we have decided to subtly tweak Slashdot's design and content to widen our appeal to these less active demographics. Don't worry! We'll still continue to serve our core audience, but we hope you'll work with us as we try to find a balance that will work for all.

Gary Mullins writes "GameApex has a nice article up meant to inform other gamers about the presence of cheating in online games. The article covers the types of cheats to be aware of, the type of person the average cheater is, and even includes plenty of information from anti-cheat experts from PunksBusted, United Admins, and The Cheat Police." From the article: "If recording a demo is not an option then you can always use screenshots. While these are not as effective they do work. Once reviewed by you, if you do suspect the player is cheating, forward the information to the server admin. This information is always in the listing of the server or even in scrolling messages on the server in-game. Speaking as someone who has been a server admin, when you have a player who you suspect is too good to be true make sure you check them out before immediately kick or ban them. Sometimes it is better to err on the side of caution and presume the player is skilled, than to assume they are cheating. If they really are cheating it will be proven sooner or later anyway."

An anonymous reader writes "According to an interview with Steve Ballmer in Forbes, Microsoft is open to the possibility of filing patent suits against Linux in the interest of their shareholders. Ballmer said: 'Well, I think there are experts who claim Linux violates our intellectual property. I'm not going to comment. But to the degree that that's the case, of course we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy.' Microsoft filed more than 3000 new applications for software patents in 2005 and already owns more than 4000 patents, including many patents on fundamental, but trivial technologies, like double clicks."