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Submission + - The upside of the NASA budget (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by teeks99
teeks99 writes: There's a lot of articles out there today about the changes to the NASA budget, but this is the only one that gets a lot of the details. From what I'm seeing it looks great...cutting off the big, expensive, over-budget stuff and allowing a whole bunch of important and revolutionary programs to get going.

— Commercial space transportation
— Keeping the ISS running (now that we've finally got it up and running)
— Working on orbital propellant storage (so someday we _can_ go off to the far flung places)
— Automated rendezvous and docking (allowing multiple, smaller launches, which then form into one large spacecraft in orbit)


I'm excited :-)
Politics

Submission + - TSA 'Jeopardy' Board in FL ridicules minorities (cnn.com)

Submitted by crazyvas
crazyvas writes: No points for guessing this would happen. From the article:

In a a TSA air marshal field office in Florida, supervisors are alleged to have used a crew assignment board to ridicule and keep score on women, gays and minorities. The board, resembling the TV game show "Jeopardy," includes categories such as "pickle smokers," "our gang" and "creatures," which sources said were names used by managers for gay men, African-Americans and lesbians.

Submission + - Newzbin.com Usenet Indexing Set to Begin Next Week

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Only a few weeks after a jury acquitted Alan Ellis, the owner of the BitTorrent site "OinK's Pink Palace", of copyright infringement, another high profile case for the newsgroup side of things is about to start next week. Slyck news is reporting that the MPA (Motion Picture Association) trial against Newzbin.com, a website that indexes NZB files and content on the newsgroups, is about to begin next week in London. Will lightening strike twice in favor of website indexing?
Space

Submission + - Give space a chance (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by
The Bad Astronomer
The Bad Astronomer writes: "A lot of pundits, scientists, and people who should know better are decrying the demise of NASA, saying that the President's budget cutting the Constellation program and the Ares rockets will sound the death knell of manned space exploration. This simply is not true.The budget will call for a new rocket design, and a lot of money will go toward private space companies, who may be able to launch people into orbit years ahead of Ares being ready anyway."
Apple

Submission + - Tinkering, R.I.P.? 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Having cut his programming teeth on an Apple ][e as a ten-year-old, Mark Pilgrim laments that Apple now seems to be doing everything in their power to stop his kids from finding the sense of wonder he did: 'Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of 'jailbreaks' stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won’t ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won’t be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that's a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn’t even know it yet.' Time for Woz to have a sit-down with Jobs?
Television

Submission + - Japan will start 3D TV programming this summer (eming.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Japan HD TV operator Sky Perfect will start 3D programming this summer with focuses on live events and sports events.
As more Hollywood movies are shot in 3D as well as 3D TVs are expected to come onto the market in the very near futures, Sky Perfect is hoping that people will switch to 3D TV just like people switching from black and white to colors.

How about 3D TV in other countries?
Power

Submission + - Obama to Triple Nuclear Power Loan Guarantees

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "When President Obama said in his State of the Union address on Wednesday that the country should build “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” it was one of the few times he got bipartisan applause. Now the NY Times reports that administration officials have confirmed that their 2011 federal budget request next week will raise potential loan guarantees for nuclear projects to more than $54 billion, from $18.5 billion and a new Energy Department panel will examine a vastly expanded list of options for nuclear waste, including a new kind of nuclear reactor that would use some of it. "I personally think that nuclear power has a place" because "it is carbon-free," US Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters. "We will be able to solve the complete environmental concerns." The Energy Department appears to be getting close to offering its first nuclear loan guarantee. Earlier this week, Southern Co. Chief Executive David Ratcliffe said that the company expects to finalize an application for a loan guarantee "within the next couple months" while Scana Corp. which has also applied, is "a couple months behind Southern" and is "hopeful" of receiving a conditional award "sometime in the next months.""
Hardware

Submission + - Defect scandal at Toyota grows -- without bound. (wsj.com) 2

Submitted by reporter
reporter writes: The latest defect in Toyota cars is quickly developing into the scandal of the 21st century. The problem started when customers of Toyota vehicles began experiencing sudden unexplained acceleration; these incidents began appearing in 2002. Over time, Toyota management claimed that the problem is the floor mat. So, the management issued a recall to replace all the floor mats.

Then, after further studying the problem, the management claimed that the throttle's pedal sometimes becomes stuck due to weather conditions. This new claim lead to the massive global recall of many vehicles sold over the past 3 years.

However, none of these explanations for the sudden acceleration has been satisfactory. Independent investigations leading to an explosion of lawsuits have determined that the problem is the electronic throttle control (ETC) — the so-called drive-by-wire mechanism that links the pedal via some cables to the fuel controller. According to a report by "Businessweek" and another report by the "Wall Street Journal", Toyota is now the defendant in 3 separate class-action lawsuits. The plaintiffs claim that the ETC is defective.

According to a report by the "New York Times" (NYT), "a few years ago, the company sent out a technical bulletin saying some cars accelerate on their own between 38 and 42 mph, and it reprogrammed the electronics with new software codes".

The NYT notes, "John Heywood, director of the Sloan Automotive Lab at MIT, said because Toyota is the only automaker having this problem, it could be something specific to its design, such as the location and integration of the electronics relay sensor."

Further, the Toyota ETC lacks an important safety mechanism: if the customer presses both the throttle pedal and the brake pedal, then the ETC should give priority to the brake. The Toyota ETC gives priority to the throttle. How can Toyota engineers commit such a gross design mistake? Common sense tells us that the brake should receive priority.
News

Submission + - Russian police raid office of environmental group. (wsj.com)

Submitted by reporter
reporter writes: According to a disturbing report issued by the "Wall Street Journal" (WSJ), the world's largest body of fresh water is about to meet its demise. Known as Lake Baikal, this pristine creation of Mother Nature "contains one-fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water and has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site".

Unfortunately for humankind, Lake Baikal is situated near a paper mill now owned by Oleg Deripaska, a wealthy confidant of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The mill had been dumping toxic waste into the lake from 1966 until October 2008. In 2008, a court banned the further discharge of waste into the lake, and Deripaska shutdown the mill.

Then, last week Putin signed a decree that removes "waste discharges in the production of pulp, paper and cardboard from a list of operations banned by environmental legislation in and around" Lake Baikal. This decree legalized the continued dumping of toxic waste into the lake.

Freed from inconvenient environmental rules, Deripaska will soon restart the mill. He claims that he has upgraded the technology of the mill to the point that it will "not do any ecological harm to the lake".

According to a new report just issued by the WSJ, "Russian police this week raided the offices of a prominent environmental group that had protested government plans to reopen [the paper mill owned by Deripaska] on the shores of Siberia's Lake Baikal.." The environmental group is Baikal Ecological Wave. The police justified the raid by claiming that the organization is using unlicensed computer software.

In the past, the Kremlin has used the same tactic to shutdown organizations protesting injustices committed by dictator Vladimir Putin and his henchmen.

Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have issued a statement supporting Baikal Ecological Wave. Though the statement is courageous, it likely cannot rescue the Russian environmentalists from prison sentences based on "evidence" fabricated by the Kremlin.
Businesses

Submission + - The Japanese bullet train hopes to come to America (examiner.com)

Submitted by JoshuaInNippon
JoshuaInNippon writes: Central Japan Rail, the company the controls a vast majority of Japanese train tracks, announced on Jan. 25th that they want to bring their bullet train, known as the Shinkansen, to America. The company is hoping to take advantage of President Obama's call for high-speed rail and the potential for billions of dollars in funding from the federal stimulus package. While JR is looking at over 100 possibilities for tracks around the States, their top first pick so far would be a line in Florida, connecting Tampa, Orlando, and Miami. Other options include a track connect LA and Las Vegas, or a track in Texas. The company is also hoping to sell their MAGLEV technology, which has created some of the fastest test trains in the world (at over 300+ mph/ 500+ kmh). JR mentioned track options for the MAGLEV include a line between Baltimore and Washington D.C, a line between Chattanooga and Atlanta, or a line in Pennsylvania. While there is already steep competition coming from American and European companies with similar ideas, JR is pitching their complete train systems as extremely safe and environmentally efficient.
News

Submission + - India accussed China for Cyber Attack,China denied (technologypress.net)

Submitted by sara.gillani
sara.gillani writes: India has accussed China for cyber attack. The office of India's National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, and other government offices were attacked by hackers which are believed to be from China on 15 dec.China denied the Indian claims of any involvement in cyber attacks.

Submission + - Scott Brown's Skillful Use of Social Media (daniweb.com)

Submitted by rsmiller510
rsmiller510 writes: A little over a year ago Barack Obama surged to victory using social media to drive his energized base to the polls. Tonight in Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown turned the tables and used those same tools to help defeat Democrat Martha Coakley and win the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for almost 50 years.

Submission + - Sound Generator Lethal from 10 Meters (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by penguinrecorder
penguinrecorder writes: The Thunder Generator uses mixture of liquefied petroleum, cooking gas, and air to create explosions, which in return generate shock waves capable of stunning people from 30 to 100 meters away. At that range, the weapon is absolutely harmless, making people run in panic when they feel the sonic blast hitting their bodies. However, at less than ten meters, the Thunder Generator could either cause permanent damage or kill any person.
Google

Submission + - Why China is Making a Mistake with Google

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Daniel Gross has an interesting essay in Slate that explores the question: Can China continue to grow without allowing Google—and the next Googles of the world—free rein in China? For the last 30 years, China has been testing a new model writes Gross: economic development at a breakneck pace while retaining strict limits on personal liberty, a model that has wrenched the nation into the 21st century displacing the United States as the world's largest car market and longtime rival Japan as the second-largest economy. But much of China's extraordinary development has been based on moving peasants into manufacturing while the key to future growth will lie in the services sector. Going forward, it will become more difficult for a services-based economy to prosper with restraints on communication and expression says Gross. China faces a fundamental paradox, adds Damien Ma, an analyst at the Eurasia Group. "It needs to have fairly closed information flow for political stability purposes, but doing so stifles innovation." And that's the problem. "Any type of political system can produce excellent hardware. The Soviet Union, which ruled Russia when Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born there in 1973, managed to produce nuclear weapons and satellites," writes Gross. "But in the 21st century, a country needs great software in order to thrive. It has to have a culture that facilitates the flow of information, not just goods.""
Government

Submission + - The FBI's newest tool: Google Images (fullchannel.net)

Submitted by lee317
lee317 writes: from the This-Guy-Could-Be-Him file:

The FBI recently used a photograph of Spanish politician Gaspar Llamazares as an example of what Osama Bin Laden might look like today. According to Reuters,Special Agent Jason Pack said a forensic artist had been unable to find suitable features from the FBI's database of photographs and used a picture from the Internet instead. That photo turned out to be one of Llamazares who apparently looks strikingly similar to what the FBI thinks Bin Laden would look like with a few extra years on him. "I am stupefied the FBI has used my photo — but it could have been anyone's — to compose a picture of a terrorist. It affects my honor, my own image and also the security of all us," LLamazares said.

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