Cern lab goes 'colder than space'

By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News

Superconducting magnets are cooled down using liquid helium

A vast physics experiment built in a tunnel below the French-Swiss border is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe.

The Large Hadron Collider is entering the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) - colder than deep space.

The LHC has thousands of magnets which will be maintained in this frigid condition using liquid helium.

The magnets are arranged in a ring that runs for 27km through the giant tunnel.

Once the LHC is operational, two particle beams - usually consisting of protons accelerated to high energies - will be fired down pipes running through the magnets.

These beams will then travel in opposite directions around the main ring at close to the speed of light.

At allotted points along the tunnel, the beams will cross paths, smashing into one another with cataclysmic force. Scientists hope to see new particles in the debris of these collisions, revealing fundamental new insights into the nature of the cosmos and how it came into being.

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the LHC will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang.

Currently, six out of the LHC's eight sectors are between 4.5 and 1.9 Kelvin, though all sectors of the machine have been down to 1.9 Kelvin at some stage over the last few months.

By comparison, the temperature in remote regions of outer space is about 2.7 Kelvin (-270C; -454F).

Unrepentant on Facebook? Expect jail time

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) -- Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."

Prosecutors pounced when this party photo of Joshua Lipton in a "Jail Bird" costume appeared on Facebook.

In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.

Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.

"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."

Mount McKinley tour goes green

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- For years, visitors wanting to see Denali National Park's grizzly bears, moose, sheep and caribou have had to ride school buses that polluted the air and spoiled the tranquillity with their noisy, carbon dioxide-spewing diesel engines.

Mount McKinley's west side gleams in the sunlight in Denali National Park.

Now park officials are testing a hybrid bus that promises to run cleaner, cheaper, and quieter.

The 230-horsepower hybrid bus -- white and sporting pictures of Denali on its sides -- went on a drive in the park Thursday. The plan is to test it this summer to determine its potential for replacing the park's 110 diesel buses.

Park managers do not allow visitors to drive their personal cars the length of the park road. Visitors board the buses near the park entrance. The 92-mile road, much of it unpaved, is the only way in and out of the nearly 6 million-acre park, home to Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet the tallest mountain in North America.

The hybrid -- looking a lot like a spiffy school bus -- comes with a diesel engine but also has a hybrid system, said Keith Kladder, marketing manager for IC Bus of Warrenville, Illinois, the manufacturer of the bus.

Production of the hybrid buses began about a year ago, Kladder said.

"The technology is just coming to market," he said.

Why the future is in your hands

By Darren Waters Technology editor, BBC News website

GPS is starting to appear on more handsets

Sales of smartphones are expected to overtake those of laptops in the next 12 to 18 months as the mobile phone completes its transition from voice communications device to multimedia computer.

Convergence has been the Holy Grail for mobile phone makers, software and hardware partners, as well as consumers, for more than a decade.

And for the first time the rhetoric of companies like Nokia, Samsung and Motorola, who have boasted of putting a multimedia computer in your pocket, no longer seems far fetched.

"Converged devices are always with you and always connected," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia chief executive at last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Last year Nokia sold almost 200m camera phones and about 146m music phones, making it the world's biggest seller of digital cameras and MP3 players.

In the coming year the firm predicts it will sell 35 million GPS-enabled phones as personal navigation becomes the latest feature to be assimilated into the mobile phone.

BY-BBC NEWS

E3: The best games on show

By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website, Los Angeles

E3 has shut its doors for another 12 months and it is time to reflect on what was shown and which games emerged as best in show.

A few years ago at E3 publishers were able to match their ambitions for specific games by building ever bigger and more elaborate stands.

But now the show is much more reserved and journalists have more of a chance to play games, meet the developers and get a real sense of what titles will impress.

Gears of War 2, for the Xbox 360, was only available as a sneak peek multiplayer session, and everyone who tried it came away impressed.

The central characters Marcus and Dominic are back fighting the Locust horde, and guess what - this time it is personal.

For developers Epic the question will be whether the graphic dazzle of the first game can be surpassed with the sequel.

Lead designer Cliff Bleszinski told BBC News: "The expectations are really, really high with the sequel. We fully intend on delivering, by delivering a game and ratcheting it all up to 11.

"We have a better story this time around and a far more robust online experience."

He promises more weapons, a better story line and a longer experience playing the campaign mode.

Do not expect Gears of War 2 to make too many changes to the gun and run formula, however.

BY-BBC NEWS

NPD: In June, NintendoTakes Over US Console Market

The latest sales figures released by NPD for the month of June have shown that it doesn’t always take a multiplatform record breaking game (Grand Theft Auto IV) to boost hardware sales, but an exclusive release (Metal Solid Gear 4: Guns of the Patriots for PS3) might just do the trick.

Furthermore, it seems that the U.S. market is not all about the hardcore gamers, as Nintendo’s Wii managed to steal Microsoft’s number one spot with the Xbox 360, reaching 11,008,200 units sold, compared to the 10,465,900 units for the Xbox.

Last month alone, the Xbox lost to both PS3 and Nintendo, but perhaps the recently announced price cuts in the Xbox 360 might do the trick, although the competition remains fierce and lures consumers with similar strategies (Sony introduced an upgraded version of the PS3 for the same price as the old one).

The U.S. video game industry in June totaled $872.6 million in software sales, up 61% compared to the same period last year, $615.1 million in hardware sales, up 54% compared to June 2007, and $202 million in accessories, up 25%. Overall, the U.S. video games industry totaled $1.69 billion, 53% over last year’s figures in the same period.

As NPD Group analyst Anita Frazier noted in an e-mail, “the video games industry continues to perform in the face of an ever-increasingly difficult economic environment as many turn to more in-home entertainment,” adding that “even if growth slows over the back half of 2008, the industry is poised to achieve record-breaking revenues of over $22 billion for the year.”

BY-eFluxMedia

Pwnage jailbreak tool for iPhone OS 2.0 released

By David Chartier | Published: July 19, 2008 - 10:11PM CT

Apple's new iPhone OS and App Store have certainly opened some new doors for iPhones old and new. But has Apple's shiny walled garden not felt quite jailbreaky enough to inspire you to upgrade? Now you can safely make the leap and free your inner iPhone with the much-anticipated release of a jailbreak tool for iPhone OS 2.0.

With a post titled "Thanks for waiting," the infamous iphone-dev team has announced Pwnage 2.0, a new version of its jailbreaking and unlocking software for the iPhone and iPod touch. Pwnage Tool can now jailbreak iPhone OS 2.0 running on an iPhone 3G, iPod touch, and original iPhone. It can unlock original iPhones as well, but not iPhone 3Gs yet. Just to make this absolutely clear: Pwnage 2.0 can jailbreak an iPhone 3G running iPhone OS 2.0, but not unlock it yet.

From preliminary reports and comments at TUAW, it sounds like the jailbreak is working for most people with both original and iPhone 3Gs running iPhone OS 2.0. A few users are reporting random problems, and the iphone-dev team has listed a solution for what is apparently a common error some jailbreakers are running into.

Unlocking the iPhone 3G is obviously on the to-do list, but you'll just have to be happy with the unlocking gift the iphone-dev team gave you for now.

BY-ars technica