Monkey - Slashdot User

2012 Mayan Calendar 'Doomsday' Date Might Be Wrong 144

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday October 19, 2010 @01:46PM from the 60-day-reprieve dept.

astroengine writes "A UC Santa Barbara associate professor is disputing the accuracy of the mesoamerican 'Long Count' calendar after highlighting several astronomical flaws in a correlation factor used to synchronize the ancient Mayan calendar with our modern Gregorian calendar. If proven to be correct, Gerardo Aldana may have nudged the infamous December 21, 2012 'End of the World' date out by at least 60 days. Unfortunately, even if the apocalypse is rescheduled, doomsday theorists will unlikely take note."

Comment Re:Can't you simulate a chemistry set with softwar (Score 1) 446

by Monkey on Thursday September 30, 2010 @01:38PM (#33749652) Attached to: Safety Commission To Rule On Safety of Rulers In Science Kits

Especially if he's the infamous Little Johnny.

PS3 Jailbreaks Galore Released 167

Posted by timothy on Sunday September 26, 2010 @12:42PM from the they'll-need-a-lot-of-dogs dept.

YokimaSun writes "Following up on yesterday's story about the PS3 being hacked by one of its own official controllers, there's now a guide in English that details how to mod a Sixaxxis controller. But thanks to the very latest releases, if you don't like soldering you can now use an iPod, a Pandora console or even a Dingoo console. Finally, Jaicrab has released a USB firmware loader which will come in handy once the first custom firmware for the PS3 is released. Maybe then we will get region-free Blu-ray, PS1 and PS2 games."

Opossums Overrun Brooklyn, Fail To Eliminate Rats 343

Posted by samzenpus on Monday September 20, 2010 @02:23PM from the urban-opossum-blight dept.

__roo writes "In a bizarre case of life imitates the Simpsons, New York City officials introduced a population of opossums into Brooklyn parks and under the boardwalk at Coney Island, apparently convinced that the opossums would eat all of the rats in the borough and then conveniently die of starvation. Several years later, the opossums have not only failed to eliminate the rat epidemic from New York City, but they have thrived, turning into a sharp-toothed, foul-odored epidemic of their own."

Comment Re:The Best-Selling Video Game of All Time... (Score 3, Interesting) 190

by Monkey on Monday September 13, 2010 @05:32PM (#33566052) Attached to: 25 Years of Super Mario Bros.

Not counting console bundled games like #1 Wii Sports (41.65m) #2 SMB (40.24m),and #4 Tetris ( bundled with original Gameboy, 30.26m), #5 Duck Hunt (included in the NES bundle that came with the orange gun, 28.31m), you might be surprised to find out that Pokemon games are the top contenders with the #3 overall spot held by Pokémon Red, Green, and Blue (31.38m) and #6 Pokémon Gold and Silver (23.11m).

Some other titles are #7 Nintendogs (21.60m), #8 Super Mario World (bundled with the SNES, 20.61m) and #9 Wii Play (20.30m).

Comment The Best-Selling Video Game of All Time... (Score 4, Informative) 190

by Monkey on Monday September 13, 2010 @04:26PM (#33565344) Attached to: 25 Years of Super Mario Bros.

For anyone wondering, the "best-selling video game of all time" is Wii Sports.

Comment Re:The list (Score 1) 385

by Monkey on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @02:34PM (#26436911) Attached to: Tech Companies That Won't Survive 2009

Probably because, other than the listing of the CVS tree, this claim has been completely unsubstantiated to date.

Submission + - DNA Pioneers says Blacks make poor employees (yahoo.com)

Submitted by on Thursday October 18, 2007 @04:04PM

An anonymous reader writes: London's Science Museum canceled a Friday talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the co-discoverer of DNA's structure told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.

James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

Submission + - Travel Back in Time Not Possible

Submitted by anthemaniac on Wednesday March 07, 2007 @01:18PM

anthemaniac writes: Time travel has long been one of those "theoretically possible" things that makes Sci-Fi thrive. But while going forward in time is still perhaps possible, going back has been all but ruled out, according to an article (and accompanying videos) at LiveScience. Chiming in are four scientists who think about this a lot: Brian Greene, Charles Liu, Michio Kaku and J. Richard Gott. Liu flatly states: "It is not possible for you and me to travel backward in time."

Are There Images of the Lunar Landers from Orbit? 88

Posted by Cliff on Friday January 26, 2007 @02:12PM from the a-scavenger-hunt-on-the-net dept.

banditski asks: "We have pictures of Mars rovers from taken from orbit, like this photo of Opportunity, but I could not find any of the lunar landers from 60's and 70's? If they do exist, where are they?" More interesting photos from the MRO can be found in an October entry of the Bad Astronomer weblog, and interestingly enough this sentiment was repeated by a couple of posters, there. It won't be until 2008 until we get a fresh pair of 'eyes' on the Moon, but that doesn't mean that there aren't earlier, and just as interesting images buried somewhere on the net. Where can you find interesting orbital photos of the Moon, particularly ones that contain the LEMs, or other photogenic aspects of Tranquility Base?

RIAA Arrests Pro Artist for Making Mixtapes 426

Posted by Zonk on Thursday January 18, 2007 @04:23PM from the you-are-doing-this-all-wrong dept.

Maximum Prophet writes "The RIAA is now going after mixtapes; specifically, the well-known mixtapes of rap artist DJ Drama. From the article: 'On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for.' The story goes on to say that many of the artists featured on the mixtapes would never have had the exposure and thus sales they had if DJ Drama had not featured them on a mix. Nowhere is a specific artist mentioned who claims to have been wronged by him. Additionally, the article states that mixtapes such as those made by DJ Drama are an accepted and integral part of rap music culture. His arrest is confusing on several levels."

Submission + - PHP apps: security's low-hanging fruit

Submitted by

somersault

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @01:00PM

somersault writes: "There have been a lot of people on /. making jokes at the expense of PHP recently, but how many common security flaws in PHP are the fault of the language, and how many the fault of the developer? A recent Security Focus article (this version is from El Reg, the layout is better) has a brief discussion which suggests that PHP is no less secure than any other scripting language, and that it is the users of the language themselves who need to be educated. The other side of the story is that the developers of PHP themselves work on tightening up the language to make it more 'idiot proof' by default. Should the team developing PHP take a more active role in controlling the use of their language? What will it take to ensure that users of the language learn to use it securely, short of defacing every vulnerable website out there?"

Submission + - Black diamonds come from space

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:56PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "Two teams of U.S. researchers have found that carbonados — or black diamonds — come from outer space. Helped with funds from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they discovered nitrogen and hydrogen in these porous black diamonds found only in Brazil and the Central African Republic. And these elements are not found in conventional diamonds extracted from mines from volcanic rocks. They think these carbonados were part of asteroids which landed on Earth about 3 billion years ago. Read more for additional explanations and a picture of such a not-so-pretty diamond."

Submission + - South Park World of Warcraft Becomes Reality

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday January 11, 2007 @12:39PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "At least on the Dunemaul World of Warcraft server, the new character, Highlord Kruul, introduced by the patch on Tuesday (January 9, 2007) attacked Ironforge early in the morning on Wednesday (January 10, 2007). No one was prepared for him. No character could defeat him. Several raid groups were formed, but none could bring him down. You can't get in or out. He was there nearly all day long. This is a hilarious video, showing the ground piled with skeletons and it also shows dozens of characters getting killed. Check it out here. If only we had the Sword of a Thousand Truths (guess we'll just have to wait for the expansion)."

Submission + - Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook

Submitted by sochdot on Wednesday January 10, 2007 @06:40PM

sochdot writes: It seems Microsoft has decided to use Word as the HTML engine in their upcoming Outlook 2007 email client. From the piece [sitepoint.com]: "At the risk of turning this newsletter into a biweekly Microsoft bash, Redmond has done it again. While the IE team was soothing the tortured souls of web developers everywhere with the new, more compliant Internet Explorer 7, the Office team pulled a fast one, ripping out the IE-based rendering engine that Outlook has always used for email, and replacing it with ... drum roll please ... Microsoft Word."

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