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Submission + - Trekkies detect Spock's Vulcan homeworld ORBITING PLUTO (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by
iComp
iComp writes: "Trekkies have seized a poll in which the public voted on names for two of Pluto's moons — ensuring a winning moniker is Vulcan.

With William Shatner on the case, it was perhaps a foregone conclusion that Vulcan would be the clear winner in the contest, with 174,062 votes. Runner-up mythical hound Cerberus (aka Fluffy in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), which got 99,432 nods, will be the name of the second moon.

Captain Kirk was pleased with the results, which he orchestrated by suggesting Vulcan and Romulus as possible names to his 1.3 million Twitter followers"
Media

Submission + - Xiph Episode 2: Digital Show & Tell (xiph.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Continuing a firehose tradition of maximum information density, Xiph.Org's second video on digital media explores multiple facets of digital audio signals and how they really behave in the real world. Demonstrations of sampling, quantization, bit-depth, and dither explore digital audio behavior on real audio equipment using both modern digital analysis and vintage analog bench equipment... just in case we can't trust those newfangled digital gizmos. You can also download the source code for each demo and try it all for yourself!
Science

Submission + - For Sale - Nobel Prize for Discovery of DNA

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "UPI reports that for the first time in the history of Nobel Prize, one of the Nobel Prize medals along with the diploma presented by the Nobel committee is on auction with an opening bid of $250,000. Awarded to Francis Crick, who along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962 "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material," the medal will be auctioned off in New York City, by Heritage Auctions. The medal has been kept in a safe deposit box in California since Crick's widow passed away in 2007 and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Francis Crick Institute of disease research scheduled to open in London in 2015. ""By auctioning his Nobel it will finally be made available for public display and be well looked after. Our hope is that, by having it available for display, it can be an inspiration to the next generation of scientists," says Crick's granddaughter, Kindra Check. ""My granddad was honored to have received the Nobel Prize, but he was not the type to display his awards; his office walls contained a large chalkboard, artwork and a portrait of Charles Darwin.""
Hardware

Submission + - MYO Armband Delivers One-Armed Gesture Control (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Over the last five years, the touchscreen has supplanted the mouse and keyboard as the primary way that many of us interact with computers. But will multitouch enjoy a 30-year reign like its predecessor? Or will a newcomer swoop in and steal its crown? One up-and-comer, Thalmic Labs, hopes that the next ruler will be 3D gesture control. Like Microsoft Kinect and the upcoming Leap Motion, MYO lets you control a computer with Minority Report-like gestures. But unlike those devices, which rely on optical sensors, MYO employs a combination of motion sensing and muscular activity.

Submission + - Future fighter planes won't have ejection seats (nationalgeographic.com) 1

Submitted by
Dr. Tom
Dr. Tom writes: "The U.S. has deployed more than 11,000 military drones, up from fewer than 200 in 2002. They carry out a wide variety of missions while saving money and American lives. Within a generation they could replace most manned military aircraft, says John Pike, a defense expert at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org. Pike suspects that the F-35 Lightning II, now under development by Lockheed Martin, might be “the last fighter with an ejector seat, and might get converted into a drone itself.”

The weakest link is the pilot. A jet could pull 15 g's, out-turning any conventional aircraft, except it would kill the pilot. Is it time to stop spending billions on obsolete aircraft?"

Submission + - Identity Under Attack 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It appears that two weeks ago my email address got into the wrong database. Since that time there have been continuing attempts to access my accounts and create new accounts in my name. I have received emails asking me to click the link below to confirm I want to create an account with twitter, facebook, apple games center, facebook mobile account, and numerous pornographic sites. I have not attempted to create accounts on any of these services. I have also received 16 notices from Apple about how to reset my Apple Id. I am guessing these notices are being automatically generated in response to too many failed login attempts. At this point I have no reason to believe any of my accounts have been compromised but I see no good response. Thanks for your throughts!
The Internet

Submission + - Pirate Bay quits Sweden to relieve pressure on bandwidth provider (itworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Pirate Bay has opened two new gateways to its internal network in order to shield its current Internet provider, the Swedish Pirate Party, which had been threatened with legal action if it did not stop providing Internet access to the torrent search site by Tuesday.

The Swedish Pirate Party had provided bandwidth to The Pirate Bay for about three years because it was hard for the site to find anyone else who would do so. But last Tuesday the Rights Alliance, an organization that represents the film industry, gave it an ultimatum: The Pirate Party had to cut off Internet access to the torrent search site or face legal action.

The Pirate Bay's administrators said in a post on Facebook that, because of the legal threat and the potential cost of fighting it, "We've taken the decision to move on to Norway and Spain."

Submission + - Terminator Sparrows? (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by AstroPhilosopher
AstroPhilosopher writes: In a move not far removed from the model T-101, US researchers have succeeded in re-animating a dead sparrow. Duke scientists were studying male behavior aggression amongst sparrows. So they cleverly decided to insert miniaturized robotics into an empty sparrow carcass and operate it like a puppet. It worked; they noticed wing movements were a primary sign of aggression. Fortunately the living won out this time. The experiment stopped after the real sparrows tore off the robosparrow's head. But there's always a newer model on the assembly-line. Good luck sparrows.
Science

Submission + - Blood Test To Determine Whether People Are Suicidal (popsci.com)

Submitted by
rtoz
rtoz writes: "Scientists Are Developing A Blood Test To Determine Whether People Are Suicidal.

Last year, researchers in Sweden published a study linking suicide attempts to higher-than-usual levels of quinolinic acid, a neurotransmitter associated with inflammation.

Now, a team of scientists in Australia is using that finding to develop a blood test to measure levels of quinolinic acid in the blood.

The test would function as a diagnostic tool to help doctors gauge a depressed person's mental state--the higher the levels of the chemical, the more likely a patient is to attempt suicide."
United Kingdom

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: IPTV service in the UK? 1

Submitted by OlivierB
OlivierB writes: Dear Slashdotters,
I am moving to a new house in the UK. The house will have very fast broadband but there is only one TV/Cable aerial to plug into which is also very inconveniently located in the property. The Cable TV provider can move it for a high fee, but the biggest issue is that there channel packages are just too expensive and not appealing to me. Ideally I would like access to the UK Freeview channels, and maybe a few extras such as Discovery Channel, Eurosport etc. All of this content would be available via IPTV which I could watch from a HTPC or simple set-top boxes. Do any slashdotters have any ideas they can share with me?
Television

Submission + - Millions Said to Be Wasted on Public U.S. Broadband Expansion (blogspot.pt)

Submitted by
quantr
quantr writes: "Programs dedicating $7 billion from the 2009 U.S. stimulus plan to spread high-speed Internet service have wasted millions of dollars and unfairly competed with private companies, a lawmaker with oversight of the program said.

“The government has spent millions on equipment it did not need and on stringing fiber to areas that already had fiber,” Representative Greg Walden, of Oregon, said in an e-mail yesterday.
Walden is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce panel’s communications subcommittee, which is to hold a hearing tomorrow on the spending. The hearing is scheduled as Republicans and Democrats argue over across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect March 1 unless there’s an agreement.
“At a time when government is considering cutting meat inspectors and FAA traffic controllers to address the federal spending problem, we need to be careful how we use taxpayer dollars,” Walden said."
China

Submission + - Bi9 Says 32 Malicious Program Whitelisted In Recent Hack (securityledger.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "The security firm Bit9 released a more detailed analysis of the hack of its corporate network was part of a larger operation that was aimed a firms in a “very narrow market space” and intended to gather information from the firms. The analysis, posted on Monday on Bit9s blog is the most detailed to date of a hack that was first reported on February 8 by the blog Krebsonsecurity.com, but that began in July, 2012. In the analysis, by Bit9 Chief Technology Officer Harry Sverdlove said 32 separate malware files and malicious scripts were whitelisted in the hack. Bit9 declined to name the three customers affected by the breach, or the industry segment that was targeted, but denied that it was a government agency or a provider of critical infrastructure such as energy, utilities or banking.
The small list of targets — just three — and the fact that one malware program was communicating with a system involved in a recent "sinkholing operation" raises the specter that the hack of Bit9 may have played a part in the recent attacks on Facebook, Twitter and Apple, though Bit9 declined to name the firms or the market they serve."
Space

Submission + - Smallest-ever astronomical satellite launched

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: At the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, this morning (Feb. 25), the smallest astronomical satellite ever built was launched into orbit aboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C20 rocket. In fact, it wasn’t just one satellite, but two – each of the twin BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) spacecraft take the form of a cube that measures just 20 cm (7.8 inches) per side, and weighs in at under seven kilograms (15.4 lbs). The BRITEs were designed at the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies. One of the two nano-satellites launched today, known as UniBRITE, was assembled at SFL and funded by the University of Vienna. The other, called BRITE-Austria, was assembled in Austria and funded by that country’s Technical University of Graz – it is being promoted as “Austria’s First Satellite.”
Google

Submission + - Bypassing Google Two-Factor Authentication (duosecurity.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The team at Duo Security figured out how to bypass Google's two-factor authentication, abusing Google's application-specific passwords. Curiously, this means that application-specific passwords are actually more powerful than users' regular passwords, as they can be used to disable the second factor entirely to gain control of an account. Duo released this today after Google fixed this last week — 7 months after initially replying that this was expected behavior!

Submission + - How do you improve your general System Admin skills?

Submitted by ccktech
ccktech writes: I am wondering what are the best ways for system admins to improve their general system admin skills such as scripting, troubleshooting, communication, documentation after they have been working for a few years. My wife, a nurse, has the requirement for so many training hours a year and there are many opportunities for her ranging from 4 hour sessions at work, online training, to weekend long seminars. Most of these are not specific to a vendor, but general nursing skills. For system admins it seems we have expensive ($5000/week) vendor training or conferences, slightly less expensive online versions of the vendor training, or weekend training at some smaller conferences such as LOPSA-East, Cascadia IT, or SCALE. Do you know of other ways for system admins to improve their general skills? What do you do to improve your general system admin skills?
Science

Submission + - Bacteria and global warming

Submitted by fustakrakich
fustakrakich writes: Like we do, most bacteria respire, that is they convert carbon containing compounds, into carbon dioxide and water, and as an outcome of this process generate cellular energy. Unfortunately, for us there are far more bacteria on the planet that there are people and as a consequence bacteria produce rather a lot of carbon dioxide. In fact the microbes that break down plant matter in soil release 55 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere, which represents around eight times the amount that humans are putting into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. As the temperature of our planet increases, we will inevitably alter the activity of planet’s microbes and through this fundamentally their impact on the Earth’s climate

Submission + - New Technology Produces Cheaper Tantalum and Titanium (economist.com)

Submitted by Billy the Mountain
Billy the Mountain writes: A small UK company is bringing new technology online that could reduce the prices of tantalum and titanium ten-fold. According to this piece in The Economist: A tantalising prospect, the key is a technique similar to smelting aluminum with a new twist: The metallic oxides are not melted as with aluminum but blended in powder form with a molten salt that serves as a medium and electrolyte. This technology is known as the FFC Cambridge Process. Other metals include Neodymium, Tungsten and Vanadium

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