sun

SUNSPOT, N.M.--Back in 1950, an order was placed for a grain bin from the Sears Catalog. That bin was delivered up to the far reaches of the Sacramento Mountains in New Mexico, and after some modifications, it became the first solar telescope in Sunspot.

Sunspot may be the geekiest town in America. It's an unincorporated community full of scientists and support staff for the National Solar Observatory. The road leading into town is State Highway 6563, named for a hydrogen emission line wavelength used in stellar astronomy. … Read more

The Oracle v. Google trial continued on day five with more detailed dissection of Java and APIs and the difference, or similarities, between Android and Java. 

Google's lawyers framed their questions to elicit responses to make the case that the Java language is free and open, and the 37 applications programming interfaces that Oracle contends Google violated are not subject to copyright. Oracle's lawyers relentlessly pursued the line that Google knowingly ripped off restricted elements of Java to create Android.

In today's testimony, Google's attempts to license Java from Sun over several years was discussed. … Read more

Sun Microsystems' years-long effort to profit from Java has come to this: the chief executives of two of tech's most powerful companies, Oracle and Google, being grilled in court.

Scrapping over copyrights, patents, and licensing deals is an ignominious outcome for a technology that a decade and a half ago spooked Microsoft and seemed poised to inject dynamism into a largely static Web. Back when it debuted, Java was a brand that carried impressive power.

Though Java has been technologically influential, its brand clout with the average person has diminished as other software such as Apple's iOS and … Read more

Last updated: 11:50 a.m. PT 

The scene of the Oracle-Google trial today was more like a computer science classroom than a courtroom as the witnesses explained the inner workings of Java and APIs.

Mark Reinhold, Oracle Java Platform Group chief architect, gave a tutorial on Java as part of his testimony. He spent nearly 14 years at Sun as principal engineer for Java SE & OpenJDK before Oracle acquired Sun.

The questioning mostly focused on the 37 Java APIs at the center of the lawsuit. Reinhold, dressed in a dark jacket and red tie as Oracle CEO … Read more

Facebook is thinking ahead as it prepares to cash in with its IPO. It has plans of expanding the headquarters, hiring thousands more employees, and adding a new campus. Besides bankers, venture capitalists, early investors, and some employees getting rich, the town of Menlo Park, Calif., is also looking to share the wealth.

The expansion plans for the 57-acre, nine-building campus are the result of a negotiated deal between the social networking company and Menlo Park's government officials. And yesterday, Menlo Park's City Council unanimously approved the plans, according to the Palo Alto Daily News.

As part of … Read more

Among the highlights emanating from U.S. District Court in San Francisco courtroom 8 today was Oracle CEO Larry Ellison's response to a question regarding the status of the Java programming language, which his company acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in 2010.

Asked by Google's lead attorney, Robert Van Nest, if the Java language is free, Ellison was slow to respond. Judge William Alsup pushed Ellison to answer with a yes or no. As ZDNet reporter Rachel King observed in the courtroom, Ellison resisted and huffed, "I don't know."

In other words, it's … Read more

Sometimes we need to see to believe. I remember understanding on an intellectual level, from a young age, that smoking was bad, but I didn't really get it on a visceral level until I saw a smoker's blackened lungs. The effect was so profound that, to this day, I go so far as to hold my breath when walking past people smoking.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to peer inside our own bodies and check out the health of our lungs. It's also difficult to see the effects sun exposure is having on our skin, especially when … Read more

Stig's Sky Calendar is a free program that provides the aspiring astronomer, or those who just want to know about the skies above them, information on events concerning the sun, the moon, the planets, and other celestial bodies. Any user interested in our solar system will like this fun little app.

Sky Calendar has an attractive, colorful, easy-to-use interface that offers a lot of information at a glance. Once your location is selected, the software will provide information such as the rising and setting times, as well as relative position in the sky, of the sun and moon. You … Read more

A massive solar storm is hurtling toward Earth, threatening to disrupt communications, GPS, power grids, and airline flights.

A solar flare last night (see video below) created a coronal mass ejection, or the release of a burst of charged particles, from the sun's atmosphere. The storm--the largest in five years--is expected to rain a torrent of charged particles on the Earth early tomorrow morning, mostly in northern areas, according to forecasters at the federal government's Space Weather Prediction Center.

The storm, which has produced a radiation event that rated an S3, or strong, designation on the NOAA's … Read more