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Submission + - Stevens' (R-Tubes) Website Says Visitors==Aliens?

Submitted by
Series of Tubes
Series of Tubes writes: "Apparently Sen. Stevens (R-Alaska) has been trying to get a bit more computer savvy after his infamous "series of tubes" speech, but he's found a really strange way to do it. According to the Washington Post's blog, if you enter the wrong password when trying to visit Stevens' official reelection website, you get told that "Through a series of highly sophisticated and complex algorithms, this system has determined that you are not presently authorized to use this system function. It could be that you simply mistyped a password, or, it could be that you are some sort of interplanetary alien-being that has no hands and, thus, cannot type." And the 401 Unauthorized error message only gets weirder..."
Spam

Submission + - Verizon wins injunction against TXT spammer

Submitted by
bulled
bulled writes: "cnet.com is running a story about a suit Verizon Wireless recently won against a company that was delivering spam text messages. Specialized Programming and Marketing and Henderson was ordered to pay more than $200,000 in damages to Verizon Wireless."
Bug

Submission + - Vanishing Honeybees will affect future crops

Submitted by
daninbusiness
daninbusiness writes: "Across the US, beekeepers are finding that their bees are disappearing — not returning while searching for nectar and pollen. This could have a major impact on the food industry in the United States, where as much as 14 billion dollars' worth of agriculture business depends on bees for crop pollination. Reasons for this problem, dubbed "colony collapse disorder" are still unknown. Theories include viruses, some type of fungus, poor bee nutrition, and pesticides. TFA is in the New York Times (login may be required)."
Biotech

Submission + - Honeybees Vanishing from Beekeepers' Orchards

Submitted by azakem
azakem writes: An article at the NYT describes how honeybees nationwide are failing to return from their winter break, raising concerns about the ability of commercial beekeepers to meet the pollination needs of farmers. As always, ridiculously painful registration required.
Space

Submission + - Northern Lights choreographer revealed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently four spacecraft, part of the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, provided a behind-the-scenes look at what choreographs the auroras or Northern Lights (at the South Pole they're called Southern Lights). Researchers have known that relative static electric fields, which hover parallel to Earth's magnetic fields, play an important role in the acceleration of electrons that causes the auroras to shine. From the Space.com article: In the recent study, one of the spacecraft crossed the auroral arc at high altitude in the Earth's magnetotail. As expected, it detected the U-shaped structure when crossing the boundary within the plasma sheet. Just 16 minutes later another Cluster spacecraft crossed the same boundary and revealed an asymmetric S-shaped structure, which was a surprise since the S-shape was thought to arise at the polar cap boundary. Within that 16-minute period, the plasma density and associated electric currents plummeted at the plasma boundary. So the boundary ended up resembling the steep drop-off in particle density between the aurora edge and the polar cap." This fits with the theory set forth in 2004 by Göran Marklund from the Alfvén Laboratory, that U-shaped circuits form at a plasma boundary between a region within the magnetotail at equatorial latitudes and one at higher latitudes and the S-shapes occur at the boundary between the plasma sheet (at the inner edge of the auroral oval) and the polar cap.

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