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An annular solar eclipse will be visible May 20 from eastern Asia, the Pacific Ocean, and much of the North American West Coast.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, casting a shadow that blocks out the sun’s light. But in an annular eclipse, the moon is too far from the Earth and the sun’s light isn’t completely blocked. Instead, a thin ring of glowing fire will be visible around the black circle that is the moon’s shadow.

Above, you can watch a live feed of the event starting at 5:10 p.m. PDT courtesy of the Slooh Space Camera. Slooh will have telescope feeds from Japan, California, Arizona, and New Mexico and their show will include an array of special guests including solar researcher Lucie Green of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, and Bob Berman, contributing editor and monthly columnist for Astronomy Magazine. A livestream of their Google+ Hangout is below.

If you’re looking to get a tip-top view, check out Panasonic’s live feed below, which will be taken from the summit of Japan’s Mt. Fuji. Engineers and mountain guides will be on hand to guide you through the event, starting at 3 p.m. PDT.

Finally, you can catch amateur astronomer Scotty Degenhardt’s live broadcast from spooky Area 51 in Nevada. Will there be some unexplained phenomenon occurring at the same time as the eclipse? Watch to find out.

If you are planning to see the skyward event yourself, it will begin shortly after 3 pm PDT over southern China, quickly sweeping across Japan. Just before 5 p.m. PDT the eclipse will reach its point of greatest occultation over the central Pacific. By 6:30 PDT it will be visible from Northern California and Nevada, eventually reaching as far as Texas. You can check the eclipse time for your local city if you’re in the U.S. with this table (.pdf) or with this one (.pdf) if you’re in Mexico, Canada, or Asia.

Those not directly in the path of the eclipse will still see some strange effects by stepping outside. Shadows cast from trees and bushes will contain thousands of tiny odd crescents, as the spaces between leaves become pinhole cameras.

This eclipse is the first of several spectacular heavenly phenomena this year. A partial lunar eclipse will occur in two weeks on June 4 and, a day later, the rare transit of Venus will take place. On Nov. 13, the Earth will experience a total solar eclipse. Unfortunately, that one will only be visible over a small patch of land in northern Australia. Finally, a penumbral lunar eclipse will take place on Nov. 28.

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/gCKLd6r_yms/

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

What color will your white t-shirt be after you participate in the world’s largest annual food fight?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [world’s youngest ocean] to find that the Atlantic Ocean is the most recent ocean to form on planet Earth. Search for [Atlantic Ocean tides recorded 600 AD] to learn that medieval monks started recording the ocean’s tides in 600 AD on the coastline of England.

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/eQhFNuNhz-M/

In his new Hulu show Spoilers, Kevin Smith will talk movies with 50 other passionate film fans.
Photo courtesy Hulu

Kevin Smith likes to talk. He’ll riff for hours on pretty much anything — comics, farting, hockey, Bruce Willis, the general state of the internet. But mostly he likes to talk about movies. A lot. With people. And with his new series Spoilers, that’s pretty much all he has to do.

The show, which will premiere June 4 on Hulu, will showcase Smith and 50 die-hard movie fans right after they’ve seen a big blockbuster movie on opening night, creating a monster gab-fest full of opinions, fights and — because it’s a Smith endeavor — plenty of gags and a bit of Jason Mewes (the Jay to Smith’s Silent Bob).

The Spoilers audience will consist of fans who sign up through a website, launching Monday, and request the movie they want to see. Filming will take place at Smith’s new SModCo Studios on the Universal Studios CityWalk in Hollywood, where the attendees will watch the movies.

Putting butts in seats is the least of Smith’s worries about the show. “It’s going be easy to fill those slots, but the trick, of course, is filling them with people who have something to say,” the Clerks director said in a phone interview with Wired. “But who doesn’t have something to say in this day and age? Everybody wants a platform — social media is all about, ‘I have an opinion and here it is!’”

Harder than finding an audience for the show and getting them talking, though, will be keeping the ever-verbose Smith and his similarly passionate fans from going on too long and keeping their language in the realm of what can be said on network television (the standard that Hulu shows follow). Zak Knutson, the Chop Shop production company co-founder who will be editing the show, already warned Smith to keep it brief.

“He was like, ‘Look motherfucker. This is not one of those shows you can do for three hours and expect me to cut down to half an hour and deliver it to Hulu in the schedule we’ve got,’” Smith said.

Wired got on the phone with Smith to get the spoilers on Spoilers, which will begin with a 10-episode season and go up each Monday on Hulu and Hulu Plus. In the process, naturally, we got much more than that. Read on to get the geek auteur’s thoughts on Star Wars pen pals, having sway on the internet, and his aspirations for sucking Bill Murray’s dick. (Metaphorically speaking, of course).

Wired: First, congrats on your AMC show Comic Book Men getting renewed.

Kevin Smith: Thank you! That, to me, was such a big win because as much as I love watching those dudes — you gotta realize Bryan and Walter are two of my dearest friends in the world, and I’ve always thought they were hysterically funny — so to be able to fucking turn on not just TV but AMC and see those dudes on TV? For six times I kept telling myself, like, “If they only do it six times, count your blessings, don’t bitch. Even if you don’t go to Season 2, you struck gold.” This never happens — people don’t turn to you and say, “Let’s do a TV show about your friends.” Then when they said, “Hey, we’re going to do Season 2,” I was just like, “Oh my god legitimacy! True legitimacy!” It was really neat, so I appreciate that.

Wired: You’re becoming something of a force in TV now.

Smith: That led to this show [Spoilers]. Because, here’s what I learned doing Comic Book Men: When I pitched it, it was like, “It’s Pawn Stars in a comic book store.” And the spine was always going to be transactions — people coming in with stuff and Walter deciding whether to buy it or not. And what was learned when we aired the shows was the will-he-won’t-he-buy-it? — people didn’t care about that. It didn’t matter. What they loved was just seeing the thing come in and seeing the conversation that it kickstarted. So with Spoilers I was like, “OK, man, let’s take the notion of what we, those of us who really love movies, do online afterward — we go and we chitchat about it on an internet forum. Let’s take it and do it live.”

Being on Talking Dead, man, is a real eye-opener because it was like, “This counts? This TV show just happened and this TV show is about the TV show that just happened? This is amazing!” So, let’s take all this that we’ve learned, or what I did with the Red State tour, or what I’ve been doing for years, which is showing a movie and then having a QA afterward — let’s take all that stuff and put it into Spoilers. The notion is: Watch the movie with everybody, we take them out and pay for them to go see the movie, kick back — on opening day, none of this early bullshit, ain’t doing it like those critics, doing it legit — and then just go down the street, sit down and have a gabfest, man.

I got one of those long stick mics from the ’70s, like a Donahue-type mic, and I’m getting in everyone’s face like, “What did you think?” Instead of co-hosts in a movie-reviews show where you’ve got a fat guy and a skinny guy saying “yes” or “no,” it’s a fat guy and 50 other people. It’s not the normal constant. I was forced to watch Donahue as a kid. My grandmother would be like, “Oh, my Donahue is on.” The first half of it was painful because it was like pundits and windbags talking to each other. But what I loved when I tuned in was when he turned the mic on the audience. Because the whole time he’s up there, you see people in the audience shaking their heads and they’ve gotta get something off their chests, they don’t agree. And when you turn the mic on the audience it’s pure gold.

Wired: Especially movie geeks.

Smith: I figure, if I’m sitting down with movie fans who just watched a movie? These cats are going to be electric. I don’t need a co-host — I’m going to have 50 different co-hosts every week. That’s just for the first half of the show. Then we’ll get into the segments and stuff we do.

Wired: What’s the format? What kind of segments can fans expect from Spoilers?

Smith: We’re going to do a beat called Movie Goon where like I’ll have on my friend Malcolm Ingram, who hates everything. He’s one of these nihilists. If it’s popular, he can’t stand it. He represents the internet. So we’ll bring him on and let him have his say and then we’ll beat him up verbally and tell him why he’s wrong — have a good old-fashioned debate.

We’re going to do a bit called Criterion Corner, where we sit around and geek out over the library and talk about flicks that maybe people don’t know about. There’s so many titles in the Criterion Collection now that people don’t even know them all. We’re doing cartoons as well. We’ll be doing a Hollywood Babble-On cartoon.

Segment four is Icon Interviews, where we sit somebody down in the chair and gush over them. Grab a Stan Lee, or if we’re lucky, get man-of-the-moment Joss Whedon. Plop them down in what we call the “high chair” — it’s like a throne. We modeled it off the Conan throne. We just sit there and I QA with them, and then I turn it over to the audience and let them QA as well.

Then we’ll end with a little Jason Mewes bit as well. He’s excited to be the bit guy. We’ve got this bit we do in the live show called “Let Us Act,” where we pull people from the audience and they do scenes from movies with Mewes, so we’re going to do some of that.

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Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/0P_G8--SrlI/

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

The world’s youngest ocean has tides that were first recorded in 600 AD by men of what profession?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [frown lines muscles] to learn that a frown contracts muscles between your eyebrows called the corrugator and the procerus. Search [corrugator procerus] to find that the corrugator muscles run obliquely, while the procerus muscle runs vertically and is shaped like a small pyramid just above your nose, fanning up into your forehead.

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/eiGA4lVZoB8/

*Gosh, I love wire art. I bet there’s some way to mash-up an app for Calder-style mobiles to a gizmo like this, and go completely nuts.

*That’s really a beautiful example of “cheap complexity” in 3d manufacturing.

The DIWire Bender
by PENSA! 2 weeks 3 days ago

“The DIWire Bender is a rapid prototype machine that bends metal wire to produce 2D or 3D shapes.

“Wire unwinds from a spool, passes through a series of wheels that straighten it, and then feeds through the bending head, which moves around in 3 dimensions to create the desired bends and curves. Vector files (e.g., Adobe Illustrator files), text files of commands (e.g., feed 50 mm, bend 90° to right…) provide DIWire’s instructions.

“It’s essentially a 3D printer that describes lines, instead of volumes, in space, and it could be used for anything from prototypes to customized products.”

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/Qp2zzu1L3vY/

*Given the state of things, it’s a wonder that European “extremists” aren’t a whole lot extremer than the likes of this guy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/18/greek-leftist-leader-alexis-tsipras

“I don’t believe in heroes or saviours,” says Alexis Tsipras, “but I do believe in fighting for rights … no one has the right to reduce a proud people to such a state of wretchedness and indignity.”

“The man who holds the fate of the euro in his hands – as the leader of the Greek party willing to tear up the country’s €130bn (£100bn) bailout agreement – says Greece is on the frontline of a war that is engulfing Europe.

“A long bombardment of “neo-liberal shock” – draconian tax rises and remorseless spending cuts – has left immense collateral damage. “We have never been in such a bad place,” he says, sleeves rolled up, staring hard into the middle distance, from behind the desk that he shares in his small parliamentary office. “After two and a half years of catastrophe, Greeks are on their knees. The social state has collapsed, one in two youngsters is out of work, there are people leaving en masse, the climate psychologically is one of pessimism, depression, mass suicides.”

“But while exhausted and battle weary, the nation at the forefront of Europe’s escalating debt crisis and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy is also hardened. And, increasingly, they are looking towards Tsipras to lead their fight….”

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/6p1WKblwQy4/

Photo: SpaceX

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — This morning’s scheduled launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was scrubbed with less than a second remaining on the countdown clock due to unusually high pressure in one of the engines.

In the pre-dawn darkness at Cape Canaveral in Florida, everything was looking good for a 4:55 a.m. EDT liftoff with all eyes focused on SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40. About 15 minutes before launch, SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced via Twitter the software used for liftoff had “initiated master countdown script ‘Auto Sequence: Yoda.’”

Excitement was building as the countdown made its classic downward progression from 10 seconds and veteran NASA announcer George Diller made it all the way to “T-0 seconds.” With a flash of light emanating from the bottom of the rocket Diller continued with “liftoahhh….” before his voice trailed off as it was clear the rocket was going nowhere.

The ignition sequence for the nine Merlin rocket engines had started, but the pressure in engine five was trending high. Once the limit was hit, launch software took over and aborted the liftoff. In a post abort press conference, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said the problem looked like an actual issue with the engine and was not one of the sensor or software issues that had led to delays in the schedule earlier this year during simulations.

“We can not blame the software guys for this one” Shotwell noted.

The abort actually happened at T-0.5 seconds after all engines had “started nominally” and only engine five was trending high. The problematic engine is located in the center of the engine layout pictured above in the hangar before the launch attempt.

One of launch procedures SpaceX uses is to hold the rocket on the launch pad for a few seconds after ignition to make sure everything is working properly. Shotwell said today’s abort is a perfect example of why the procedure is used. She said it is analogous to an airline pilot lining up on the runway and holding the brakes as the power levers are pushed forward, “we were revving the engines, we were looking at the gauges, we decided not to fly.”

Aborts are nothing new to the rocket launching world. The decision not to launch is considered critical to the safety and capabilities of any launch vehicle. Shotwell emphasized the upstart space company did not suffer a setback other than a few days on the schedule. She says the cause of the problem is not known other than it was likely due to a lack of sufficient fuel in the combustion chamber.

“This is not a failure, we aborted, with purpose”  Shotwell told reporters. “It would be a failure if we had lifted off with an engine trending in this direction.”

Because of orbital mechanics and the path of the International Space Station, the next opportunity for a liftoff will be on Tuesday at 3:44 a.m. EDT. The SpaceX team must wait until ISS is in a proper orbital path to minimize the amount of propellant needed to chase down and get in phase with the station. The team wants to preserve as much fuel as possible for the complex maneuvering that will be needed for the demonstrations required by NASA.

This isn’t the first time engine five on a Falcon 9 has caused a problem. On the first launch of the Falcon 9 in June 2010, engine five experienced a higher pressure as well leading to an initial abort.

Shotwell said initial inspection of the engine this morning showed the necessary valves appeared to be working properly and technicians must now make a more detailed inspection of the engine before determining the root cause of the high pressure.

SpaceX makes its own rocket engines at its Hawthorne, California factory. The company is investigating the possibility of fixing the engine on the rocket, or if needed, swapping out engine five from the Falcon 9 rocket in the adjacent hangar that is slated for the next flight later this year.

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/-pgOQmhttic/

A boat jump from the upcoming 3-D movie about extreme stunt crew Nitro Circus.

The trio of films from the Jackass crew has grossed more than $334 million globally (emphasis on grossed). But they haven’t cornered the global market on smart-stupid stunts. There are plenty of insane clown posses eager for fame. Who’s got the goods? We asked Jackass star Steve-O for his take. (See stunts from these daredevils in the video gallery above.)

• The Dudesons

  Four childhood BFFs from Seinäjoki, Finland
  Signature stunt: The Human Dartboard
  Stateside success: The 2010 MTV series Dudesons in America, produced by Jackass’ Dickhouse Productions
  Steve-O says: “There’s one prank where they set a sleeping guy’s blanket on fire. It was downright immoral, but the receiver loved it.”

• The Misfits Stunt Crew

  A pair of mohawked crazies from Melbourne
  Signature stunt: Hanging a framed photo from a Misfit’s scrotum—using a hammer and nail
  Stateside success: None yet, though they were in the semis of Australia’s Got Talent
  Steve-O says: “What they do seems like just wanton self-mutilation. I don’t see much personality or substance.”

• The Tokyo Shock Boys

  A foursome who met in 1990 as roadies on a Paul McCartney tour
  Signature stunt: Wearing a diaper packed with lit firecrackers
  Stateside success: A 1997 off-Broadway show
  Steve-O says: “I like that they do gnarly stuff, but it’s not overly dark. Thumbs up.”

• Dirty Sanchez

  A quartet of hedonistic Brits named after a gross-out sexual maneuver
  Signature stunt: Rolling around near-naked in stinging nettles
  Stateside success: Their movie screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival
  Steve-O says: “The Dirty Sanchez guys bring too much testosterone. They’re like Slayer; I’m looking for Spinal Tap.”

• Nitro Circus

  A seven-person American crew led by X Games motorsports champ Travis Pastrana
  Signature stunt: Jumping motorbikes into the Grand Canyon and parachuting to safety
  Stateside success: A 2009 MTV reality series produced by Dickhouse; a 3-D theatrical release due out this summer
  Steve-O says: “Travis was the first guy ever to do a double backflip on a motorcycle. That’s a legit stunt—not like the trivial shit that we do.”

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/HQ4qG3j4Jsc/

The mounted Tarbosaurus skeleton slated to be auctioned tomorrow. Image via Heritage Auctions.

Tomorrow, a tyrannosaur will go up for auction in New York City. It shouldn’t. The Tarbosaurus – lot 49315 – was illegally collected and smuggled out of Mongolia.

Fossil theft is a major problem. It can happen anywhere, but dinosaur poaching is especially persistent and pernicious in China and Mongolia. Prime specimens are regularly ripped from the rock to be sold to private individuals elsewhere around the world, all against the heritage laws meant to regulate the responsible collection and curation of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. (In 2009, the United States government returned to China a cache of fossils that had been stolen from that country.) As explained to me by paleontologist and Mongolian Academy of Sciences representative Bolortsetseg Minjin, Mongolia only grants permission for fossil collection to reputable scientific establishments. “Anything against that is illegal,” she said. And excavated fossils either remain in Mongolia, or, with the permission of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, may be studied and displayed elsewhere under temporary loans.

There is no doubt the Tarbosaurus in question came from Mongolia. All the major Tarbosaurus specimens we know of have been found there. And, according to the specimen’s official description, “The dino was discovered within the past decade and has been in storage in England, still in its field jackets, for the last 2-1/2 years.”  Mongolia had fossil collection regulations a decade ago, just as they do today, and the fact that this undocumented specimen went from the field to a private collection outside Mongolia is a sure sign that the specimen was illegally collected and smuggled elsewhere.

The tyrannosaur – as well as a set of several other Mongolian dinosaur specimens – was scheduled for auction several weeks ago. During the past forty eight hours, Mongolian officials and paleontologists have been rallying to stop the auction. Elbegdorj Tsakhia, president of Mongolia, issued a statement yesterday questioning the details of how the Tarbosaurus was collected. If the dinosaur really was discovered in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, the statement noted, “President Elbegdorj Tsakhia said that it was illegal to auction the T-Rex and the fossil must be returned to Mongolia.” And American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Mark Norell, who is an expert on Mongolia’s dinosaurs and has frequently excavated fossils there, wrote a letter to Heritage Auctions affirming that the Mongolian dinosaurs slated for auction were almost certainly excavated illegally:

In the current catalogue Lot 49317 (a skull of Saichania) and Lot 49315 (a mounted Tarbosaurus skeleton) clearly were excavated in Mongolia as this is the only locality in the world where these dinosaurs are known. The copy listed in the catalogue, while not mentioning Mongolia specifically (the locality is listed as Central Asia) repeatedly makes reference to the Gobi Desert and to the fact that other specimens of dinosaurs were collected in Mongolia. As someone who is intimately familiar with these faunas, these specimens were undoubtedly looted from Mongolia. There is no legal mechanism (nor has there been for over 50 years) to remove vertebrate fossil material from Mongolia. These specimens are the patrimony of the Mongolian people and should be in a museum in Mongolia. As a professional paleontologist, am appalled that these illegally collected specimens (with no associated documents regarding provenance) are being sold at auction. [You can see the entire letter at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs.]

Other paleontologists, volunteers, and concerned parties have been adding their signatures to an online petition to stop the auction, created by paleontologist Neil Kelley. These dinosaurs do not belong in someone’s mansion or at a corporate headquarters. They should be returned to their country of origin. “If we can succeed, the best thing for those specimens is to go back to the country. That’s who they belong to,” Minjin said.

But Heritage Auctions may not budge. When I asked Minjin if the auction house showed any sign of cooperating with the Mongolian government, she said that their response “wasn’t really encouraging.” Now that several statements from Heritage Auctions have been published, I can see what she means.

The president of Heritage Auctions, Greg Rohan, wrote a snippy letter in response to the online petition trying to save the dinosaur for science. “You should all be aware that this auction has been publicicized [sic] broadly for 4 weeks,” Rohan wrote “and the Mongolian Governments request issued today less than 48 hours before the auction is unreasonable and inappropriate.” As if the timing of the protest has anything to do with whether the dinosaurs were obtained illegally or not. And, strangely, Rohan claims that the Tarbosaurus was discovered at a different time than what the auction’s official listing states. While the dinosaur’s description is clear that the tyrannosaur was excavated “within the past decade”, Rohan claimed that “Mongolia won its independence in 1921 and this specimen is obviously quite a bit older than that.” That’s quite a discrepancy, and I have no reason to take Rohan’s word for it. Based on what the official documents state – and the fact that no one even knew that tyrannosaurs existed in the Gobi until Tarbosaurus was described in 1955 – the dinosaur in question was undoubtedly collected during a time when Mongolia’s heritage laws were already in place.

Frustratingly, despite the fact that the Mongolian dinosaurs were illegally acquired and transported, other countries do not necessarily have laws forbidding the import or sale of fossils that have been improperly obtained. The excavation of transport of the Tarbosaurus was illegal, but, now that the dinosaur is here, the dinosaur’s sale might be legal. And Heritage Auctions has not been swayed by the appeals of the Mongolian government and the scientific community. In a statement to Dan Vergano’s Science Fair blog at USA Today, lawyer Carl Soller – who represents Heritage Auctions – said that there appeared to be no legal boundaries to the dinosaur’s auction tomorrow. “Our client has no reason to believe that any laws enforced by the United States have been violated,” Soller said, “and we are unaware that Mongolian law would have prevented export from Mongolia.” The auction is still on.

Whether or not the dinosaur was looted seems irrelevant to Heritage Auctions. They want to keep their centerpiece for tomorrow’s auction – a tyrannosaur they expect to go for about a million dollars. And the company seems unmoved by the implication that such sales only fuel the impression that dinosaurs can rake in massive amounts of cash – a perception that gives more impetus to poachers and thieves who trash field sites for specimens which wind up as status symbols for celebrities.

The Tarbosaurus, Saichania, and other Mongolian dinosaur specimens should be pulled from auction. Rohan’s statement that it is “unreasonable and inappropriate” to protest the auction is a loathsome and limp response. The timing of the objection is irrelevant. These fossils were illegally collected, and auctioning them off only fuels additional criminal activity. To put the dinosaurs on the block tomorrow would be a completely reprehensible action by Heritage Auctions, and I don’t believe that it would be all that difficult to pull the controversial specimens from the schedule.

Fossil poaching is a major threat to paleontology, and robs scientifically-significant specimens from everyone. Speak out against the auction. Sign the petition calling for a stop to the dinosaur auctions, and email Heritage Auctions via Bid@HA.com. These dinosaurs are part of Mongolia’s natural history, and that of our planet. They should be treated as such, and not as home decor for the affluent.

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/BWtNICrQVeA/

Microsoft is launching a new infrastructure cloud, whatever that is. Photo: theaucitron/Flickr

The rumor du jour is that Microsoft is just two weeks away from launching a competitor to Amazon’s massively popular EC2 service. This seems like big news, until you consider that Microsoft already offers a competitor to Amazon EC2.

According to Derrick Harris of GigaOm, Microsoft is building an “infrastructure-as-a-service” cloud that provides access to raw virtual servers, and it plans to launch this new service on June 7 at an event in San Francisco. The story provides few details, but it does say that the new service will offer virtual servers running Linux as well as Windows.

But Azure already offers raw virtual servers, much like Amazon does on its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). And Azure has offered these virtual servers for nearly a year and a half. It’s just that right now they only run Windows.

The news, then, appears to be that Microsoft’s Azure cloud will finally offer Linux — though Microsoft may paint this as an entirely new service.

In any event, the move is telling — especially when you consider the introduction of Linux. In recent years, in an effort to attract the new breed of developer who grew up on Linux and other open source tools, Microsoft has slowly warmed to such tools, shedding its well-earned reputation as the enemy of open source, and Azure is at the forefront of this transformation.

That new breed of developer is flocking to Amazon. And Microsoft wants them on Azure, a service that Microsoft has apparently pumped enormous amounts of money into over the past several years.

The news out of GigaOm is confusing, though, because Microsoft has always billed Azure as a “platform cloud.” Unlike an “infrastructure cloud” such as Amazon EC2, a platform cloud lets developers build and host applications without worrying about virtual servers and other raw computing resources. It juggles your infrastructure needs behind the scenes — at least in theory. But long ago, Microsoft started offering raw resources as well, turning Azure into something that operated as both platform cloud and infrastructure cloud.

This distinction is subtle. And the terminology is annoying. But that’s the way it is. Microsoft been dolling up its platform cloud in infrastructure clothing and now the world is starting to catch on.

“The original point of Azure was that you were not supposed as a developer to log in to each individual machine and fiddle around with it. The platform stuff that had build on top was supposed to take care of all that — all the management of the application. But since Azure launched, Microsoft has moved ‘down the stack’ also, so that you have access to the virtual machines. You can configure these machines as you want,” says Michael Friis, who runs a cloud startup called AppHarbor that — in a way — straddles the line between Azure and Amazon EC2.

“In that respect, they moved from doing their own platform, down to what Amazon is doing.”

Microsoft has long told us that it added raw virtual server because customers were asking for them. But at the same time, the company always downplayed this part of Azure, preferring to paint it as a platform cloud — i.e. something different from Amazon.

The trouble is that selling a platform cloud is an uphill battle. Developers have flocked to Amazon — EC2 now runs as much as one percent of the entire internet — and this has happened in part because they could do just about whatever they wanted with those virtual servers. A platform cloud is easier to use — at least in theory — but it’s also more restrictive, and this can scare off some developers. Google has seen the same thing with its platform cloud, Google App Engine.

So Azure is changing. It’s offering virtual servers — and Linux too. Rumors have long indicated that Linux machines were on the way. And this makes sense. Developers also use Amazon because it runs Linux. That’s what they’re familiar with. “When it comes right down to it, many developers don’t want to run this stuff on Windows,” says Friis.

Clearly, Microsoft realizes this. And it’s trying to catch up.

Article source: http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/T0atP1I7WBg/