Nov
23
2008
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Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere |
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 |
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IHateEverybody writes "Scientists have found evidence that the solar wind is ripping off chunks of the Martian atmosphere, which could possibly explain why Mars has such a thin atmosphere today. The chunks are being ripped up along 'magnetic umbrellas,' which are bubbles of magnetic fields which rise from the ground and extend above the Martian atmosphere. This is surprising because scientists previously thought that these magnetic umbrellas protected the Martian atmosphere. Now it looks like exactly the opposite might be true." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
23
2008
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Google Turns On User-Tweakable Search Wiki |
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 |
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Barence writes "Google has launched a new service that allows users to tailor to their own search results. Called SearchWiki, the service allows Google account holders to move results up or off the rankings, or even add their own choice of site to the top of the search results. Google claims that any changes a user makes will only affect their results, and not those of fellow surfers, although it's difficult to believe that some of the feedback generated from the SearchWiki won't be used to fine tune the Google search algorithm. Is this a cunning way to encourage people to sign in while they search, thus providing Google with a richer set of data that can be mapped to specific user accounts?" 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
23
2008
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NVIDIA's $10K Tesla GPU-Based Personal Supercomputer |
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 |
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gupg writes "NVIDIA announced a new category of supercomputers — the Tesla Personal Supercomputer — a 4 Teraflop desktop for under $10,000. This desktop machine has 4 of the Tesla C1060 GPU computing processors. These GPUs have no graphics out and are used only for computing. Each Tesla GPU has 240 cores and delivers about 1 Teraflop single precision and about 80 Gigaflops double-precision floating point performance. The CPU + GPU is programmed using C with added keywords using a parallel programming model called CUDA. The CUDA C compiler/development toolchain is free to download. There are tons of applications ported to CUDA including Mathematica, LabView, ANSYS Mechanical, and tons of scientific codes from molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry, and electromagnetics; they're listed on CUDA Zone." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
23
2008
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Zimbra Desktop Vulnerable to Man-in-the-Middle Attack |
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 |
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tiffanydanica writes "For all the flack Mozilla gets about its new security warnings for https sites, at least it warns the user when a mismatch occurs. Sadly the new Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop (released in part to fix some security issues), doesn't bother validating the SSL certificate on the other side before sending along the username and password, making it vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack. This is certainly a step up from transmitting the information in the clear, since the attacker must switch from being passive to active, but with all of the DNS security problems, it would be fairly trivial for a malicious attacker to grab a large number of Yahoo! accounts (be it for phishing or spaming). Hopefully this issue will get fixed shortly, but for now Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop users may wish to use the webmail interface." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
22
2008
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Scientists Add Emotions To Robotic Head |
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Sunday, 23 November 2008 |
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DeviceGuru writes "Claiming that service-class robots will one day be pervasive, researchers at the University of the West of England's Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) have begun investigating ways to make robots seem more human. As part of a project to enhance robot/human relationships, BRL has created a robotic head that can exhibit emotions, based on both verbal and non-verbal queues. Check out the videos in the article — especially the slightly creepy one in which the robot contemplates its purpose and its relationship to its environment." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
22
2008
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How to Deal With an Aging Brain? |
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 |
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An anonymous reader writes "I'm sure this is something all older Slashdotters are aware of: as I get older my once-sharp brain is, well, getting worse. In particular, I'm not able to remember things as well as I once did. As a geek my capacity in this area was always what defined me as a geek. Nowadays things seem to go in OK, but then leak out. A few weeks later I've mostly forgotten. So, I ask Slashdot: how do you cope with your mind getting older? What's your trick? Fish-oil? Brain Training on the DS? Exercise? Or just trying harder to remember things?" 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
22
2008
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Trim Your Budget by Reclaiming the Special Treats [Frugality] |
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 |
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 What happens when something that was once a special treat, slowly becomes an expected part of your daily routine? Trent, over at frugality blog The Simple Dollar, noticed that things he had previously done as a treat of sorts had become necessary components of his day much to the determent of his wallet. Describing how his enjoyment of the a local coffee shop had changed:
Eventually, the experience became routine. It was no longer a treat, it was just a standard part of my weekday. $5 in the morning, $5 many afternoons, all for something completely routine. It added up, too. $100 a month for my morning drinks. Perhaps $50 a month for my evening coffee. That?s $150 a month given over to a treat that had become routine.
After going cold turkey on his morning coffee shop stops, he realized it wasn't so much the coffee that he enjoyed it was the familiarity of the routine. Replacing expensive routines with cheaper or free routines allowed him to both save money and increase his enjoyment of the pricier coffee shop when he did stop by. The shift away from the coffee shop wasn't really about the coffee though, it was about finding patterns of unnecessary spending and moving away from them. Most people don't break their budget every month with pricey splurges at upscale stores after all, they whittle it away with a hundred little insubstantial purchases. What treats-turned-routines do you have hiding in your own budget? Photo by journeycoffee.
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Nov
22
2008
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Google to Track TV Viewers More Closely |
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 |
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GalacticNoob writes "According to this post, Google is about to launch a TV advertising program that will let advertisers target audiences based on demographics including their household income. A satellite TV company called Echostar is working with credit-reporting company Equifax to cross-reference shows watched with income and buying habits (based on using Equifax's data)." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Nov
22
2008
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Taking a Look at Nexenta's Blend of Solaris and Ubuntu |
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Saturday, 22 November 2008 |
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Ahmed Kamal writes "What happens when you take a solid system such as Ubuntu Hardy, unplug its Linux kernel, and plug in a replacement OpenSolaris kernel? Then you marry Debian's apt-get to Solaris' zfs file-system? What you get is Nexenta Core Platform OS. Let's take Nexenta for a quick spin, installing and configuring this young but promising system." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Sure you could probably pick up a pleather case for nearly any electronic device you own, courtesy of eBay and healthy international trade routes, but it would lack the charm of a hand crafted leather case. There is an excellent tutorial over at the DIY blog Instructables on how to make a molded leather case. The tutorial details how to make the case for an iPod, but the molding technique is valid for anything you'd like to mold a case for. The required tools are minimal and inexpensive, for their sample they bought leather scraps off eBay and made their mold out of dense chipboard and tape. For other interesting DIY case ideas, check out 
Over at design blog Web Design Ledger, they've rounded up over two dozen tutorials to teach you how to add impressive lighting effects to your photos. Whether you want to inject some sparkles, motion trails, sun flares, fire, star bursts or luminescence into your image, there is a tutorial for you. Completely new to Photoshop? 
TeachStreet is a combination social network and class review web site. Users can search for classes in their area or list themselves as a teacher to become visible to potential students. There are currently 120,000 listings across 500 US cities although— to the dismay of budding Flaminco dancers in Pembino, North Dakota— the highest concentration of listings are in major metropolitan areas. Users can search for new classes, review classes they have taken, and network with other users who share common interests. For another way to search out an instructor, check out 
