Energy.gov: Where information goes to die. We live in an Information Age. Never before have we had so much data at our fingertips, thanks to digitization and the Internet. But information is only useful if it is accessible, searchable, and intelligible. Last August, the US Energy Department proudly announced a “comprehensive website reform, making Energy.gov a cutting-edge, interactive information platform and saving taxpayers more than $10 million annually.”
In short, the government eliminated 12 separate department program sites and merged them into one (with plans to add many more), upgraded the content-management system, and streamlined information into the cloud. In theory, Energy.gov is now the “cutting-edge” go-to site for information on everything from home weatherization to nuclear research. In practice, however, it’s more often a black hole. Wait a minute — 22 results? It was the same story with the second result, which led to Volume 3 of the 1998 assessment. If Everyone Knew | 5 facts that everyone should know. The Consumerist.
LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf (application/pdf Object) Science News: Nanoguitar. Photo by D. Carr and H. Craighead, Cornell. The world's smallest guitar is 10 micrometers long -- about the size of a single cell -- with six strings each about 50 nanometers, or 100 atoms, wide. Made by Cornell University researchers from crystalline silicon, it demonstrates a new technology for a new generation of electromechanical devices. The world's smallest guitar -- carved out of crystalline silicon and no larger than a single cell -- has been made at Cornell University to demonstrate a new technology that could have a variety of uses in fiber optics, displays, sensors and electronics. The "nanoguitar" -- made for fun to illustrate the technology -- is just one of several structures that Cornell researchers believe are the world's smallest silicon mechanical devices. "We have a new technology for building the smallest mechanical devices," said Harold G. The guitar has six strings, each string about 50 nanometers wide, the width of about 100 atoms.
Photo by D. Photo by D. Square Pixel Inventor Tries to Smooth Things Out | Wired Science. Russell Kirsch says he’s sorry. More than 50 years ago, Kirsch took a picture of his infant son and scanned it into a computer. It was the first digital image: a grainy, black-and-white baby picture that literally changed the way we view the world. With it, the smoothness of images captured on film was shattered to bits. The square pixel became the norm, thanks in part to Kirsch, and the world got a little bit rougher around the edges. As a scientist at the National Bureau of Standards in the 1950s, Kirsch worked with the only programmable computer in the United States. Kirsch and his colleagues couldn’t possibly know the answer to that question. Kirsch made that first digital image using an apparatus that transformed his picture into the binary language of computers, a regular grid of zeros and ones.
Yet science is still grappling with the limits set by the square pixel. “Squares was the logical thing to do,” Kirsch says. But images taken from real life never look like that, Brady says. 15 Words You Won't Believe They Added to the Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary is constantly updating, adding new words to reflect the vibrant changes in language and culture. Of course, that also means that as said culture spirals toward a frightening and retarded oblivion, the good people at Oxford have to be there to chronicle it. Here are some recent additions that make us fear for our future. n. In the fiction of J.K. Rowling: a person who possesses no magical powers. Hence in allusive and extended uses: a person who lacks a particular skill or skills, or who is regarded as inferior in some way. The people at the Oxford English Dictionary acknowledge that the work of an author entering the dictionary is rare, but the use of "muggle" had become so widespread they had to include it, ensuring that the future will remember us for standing in line at Borders in wizard costumes.
Wait, does this mean if we invent a new word right now they'll be forced to include it in a few years, as long as enough readers use it? N. "We're so witty! N. Off Our Chests | Expose Your Self | Off Our Chests. Microsoft confirms UEFI fears, locks down ARM devices - SFLC Blog - Software Freedom Law Center. At the beginning of December, we warned the Copyright Office that operating system vendors would use UEFI secure boot anticompetitively, by colluding with hardware partners to exclude alternative operating systems.
As Glyn Moody points out, Microsoft has wasted no time in revising its Windows Hardware Certification Requirements to effectively ban most alternative operating systems on ARM-based devices that ship with Windows 8. The Certification Requirements define (on page 116) a "custom" secure boot mode, in which a physically present user can add signatures for alternative operating systems to the system's signature database, allowing the system to boot those operating systems. But for ARM devices, Custom Mode is prohibited: "On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enable. " While UEFI secure boot is ostensibly about protecting user security, these non-standard restrictions have nothing to do with security.
Other SFLC blog entries... Library in fight with US corporation - national. Last updated 07:16 23/11/2011 A small New Zealand library is fighting to keep its trademark free software from the clutches of a United States corporation. The Horowhenua Library trust designed the Koha system 12 years ago to manage catalogues and lending information. It was the first free open source software of its kind and has been sponsored by libraries and volunteers around the world. However, the trust says an American company named LibLime has hijacked the system and wants to use it for its own private client base.
The company has also been granted provisional rights to the name Koha by the Ministry of Economic Development. "We did something really good and we gave it away to the world and it's been a glorious thing globally for 12 years," the trust's head of libraries, Joann Ransom, told Radio New Zealand. "And now this American corporate wants to take it. " Ransom said she was astounded an international company could trademark a Maori word. - © Fairfax NZ News. Plea for help from Horowhenua Library Trust | Koha Library Software Community. Update (by Liz Rea on behalf of the community): There has been a lot of news in the last 24 hours – much of it has been collected in this Zotero group.
Coverage of the story includes three radio stories, one TV clip, blog posts, tweets, Facebook and G+ updates. We are overwhelmed by the support we are getting from around the world – thank you so much for your time, money, tweets, and attention to our plight. We learned a few hours ago of a press release and statement from a LibLime/PTFS staff member that states their intention to transfer the TM to the Horowhenua Library Trust. However, as of this writing there has been no official communication between LibLime/PTFS and HLT that I am aware of. We will update this post again when we have more information, and thank you again (and again) for your support. Original Post Horowhenua Library Trust is the birth place of Koha and the longest serving member of the Koha community. Help the cause – contribute to our legal challenge fund: 10 Words For Things You Didn't Know Have Names.
Ars Technica. Yoga Chickie. A Basic Mistake That Trashed a JSTARS. Imagine flying, along with 20 or so fellow aircrew, in an Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System (JSTARS) jet for a mission to track down insurgents planting roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. You’ve just taken off from your base in Qatar but before you can go scan the ground for bad guys with the plane’s powerful AN/APY-7 radar, you’ve got to refuel from a waiting KC-135 tanker since the E-8’s ancient Pratt & Whitney JT3D engines burned way too much gas taking off on a hot Middle Eastern day. The E-8 you’re flying in is a converted Boeing 707 passenger jet that was built in 1967 and flew in airline service for decades before being purchased by the Air Force and refurbished for military use in the 1990s.
Approaching the tanker, all is going smoothly until the two planes hook up and fuel starts flowing into the JSTARS. You hear a “loud bang throughout the midsection of the aircraft.” The pilot immediately brings the jet back to its base in Qatar. Psychologist Explains Teens' Risky Decision-making Behavior. Meg Gerrard will be the first to admit that unraveling the adolescent mind is not an easy thing. Like most parents, she's even asked her teen daughters, "What were you thinking? " after one of them was caught in a risky behavior. But now it's Gerrard -- an Iowa State University psychology professor -- who has tried to answer that question scientifically through analysis of research from the last 12 years on adolescent risk-taking.
She was invited by the Association of Psychological Science to deliver a presentation titled "A Dual Process Approach to Adolescent Decision-Making: Applications to Cancer Risk and Prevention" at its annual convention last week in Washington, D.C. Her analysis included research she conducted with ISU colleagues on more than 10,000 youths from across the country regarding such things as smoking, use of alcohol and/or drugs, or practicing unsafe sex.
"Parents ask kids, 'What were you thinking? ' Topic Galleries - Preserving Cabrini-Green's images In the sharp sun of an April afternoon, Nate Lanthrum walks through the remains of Cabrini-Green giving away what he has taken. He looks out of place, a white guy carrying a $1,500 Nikon D700 camera, but the residents are used to him by now and greet... Blackhawks thrilled to have Brent Seabrook back Starting with Game 6 Sunday, Brent Seabrook's timeout will be over and the defenseman will be back on the ice — so long as he promises to play nice. The Blackhawks have done pretty well in Seabrook's absence, winning all three games the NHL... NFL draft preview: Defensive ends As the NFL draft nears — it takes place May 8-10 — we're taking an 11-day, position-by-position look at what's out there and what the Bears need.
In May 1974, Tribune delivered 2 Watergate bombshells Obama denounces racist comments reportedly made by NBA owner Cubs can't take advantage of Brewers' injuries Northwestern women win at Wrigley Blackhawks thrilled to have Brent Seabrook back. Project Censored. The Consumerist: Google Archives.
The Principality of Sealand - Become a Lord, Lady, Baron or Baroness. Off Our Chests | Expose Your Self | Off Our Chests. Science. Pearltrees videos.