torqer - Slashdot User

Submission + - Astronaut Wally Schirra Dies at 84

Submitted by

Billosaur

on Thursday May 03, 2007 @02:10PM

Billosaur writes: "The original Mercury 7 astronauts are now down to 2, with the passing of Wally Schirra. The 5th American to fly into space and the third to orbit the Earth, Schirra joined NASA in April 1959. He was the only Mercury 7 veteran to fly all three of the pioneering NASA space series (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo). He died of natural causes, according to his family; he had been suffering from cancer but it was not immediately clear if this was a contributing factor in his death."

Submission + - More on the Vista speech security "flaw"

Submitted by on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @10:13AM

An anonymous reader writes: MS blogger Long Zheng posts a funny response to recent speech recognition Vista security hole: "Last week, the media went schizophrenic over the Windows Vista speech recognition 'loophole' which allowed anyone with a microphone to have full access over your computer. Granted, you must also be partially-deaf, turned your speaker volume to full, carefully place your microphone next to the speakers, turn on speech recognition and train your speech profile as if you were someone else..."

Submission + - Beyond Mashups: The Future of Photo Mapping

Submitted by Dr_Jones on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @10:11AM

Dr_Jones writes: Since the release of Google Maps, Mashups have become increasingly popular. Web sites like Flickr and Panoramio allow users to associate photos to a point on a map. However, both of these fail to show in which direction each photo was taken, limiting their real-world application. A new Web-based system called Mapwing provides a solution to this problem by enabling users to specify both the location and directional view of an image. Also, users have the option of placing their images on a custom drawn map instead of the traditional Google Map. The result is a birds eye view alongside a first-person walkthrough of a location. Here are several interesting examples to explore on the site: Apple's Campus, Rockefeller Center, and A Beach in France.

Submission + - The Negative Response to Apple's Ads

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @10:06AM

eldavojohn writes: "While a lot of people find the Mac Vs PC commercials to be cute, there is growing negative feedback from the other side about these advertisements. While the ads are making some people irate, others find them to be just plain not working. So, if you're a non-Mac user, how does the recent ad campaign strike you?"

Submission + - More Fatal Windows Vista Exploits Discovered

Submitted by DelawareBoy on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @09:55AM

DelawareBoy writes: Long Zheng is reporting of two new Vista security exploits which have been discovered. After describing the known exploit of the Voice Recognition Flaw, Long proceeds to describe two more flaws, one of which resides within the Oft-praised Visual Studio 2005. If three exploits have been discovered this soon after the release, how many more are out there?

Submission + - Videotron to offer 100 Mbps

Submitted by

Moondoggie

on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @09:42AM

Moondoggie writes: "Sweet eh?

Vidéotron testing faster download system
SIMON AVERY

From Friday's Globe and Mail

Several hundred cable customers in Quebec are about to be able to download a feature-length movie over the Internet in as little as two minutes.

That's five times the speed of the fastest commercial residential service available today and 1,785 times as fast as the dial-up service most connected Canadians were using just a few years ago.

Vidéotron Ltée, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quebecor Media Inc., has been field-testing technology that delivers content at blistering speed since December. On Thursday, the company said that in the next few months, it expects download rates to reach 100 megabits a second, which would be the fastest Internet access of any cable company in Canada.

Vidéotron sells a 20Mbs service today for $80 a month, but most Canadians who are online mainly for e-mailing and Web surfing aren't opting for such a high-end service.

"This is a new era," said Pierre Roy, vice-president of engineering and IP technology at Vidéotron.

The most attractive feature of the service for the Montreal-based cable operator is that the technology uses the existing network of cable wires that already connects its 726,000 customers and doesn't require a major investment.

Vidéotron is testing technology developed by Cisco Systems Inc. that includes a special router and software at the cable operator's end to aggregate multiple channels into a single fat delivery pipe. At the consumer's end, a wideband modem receives the transmission.

For Cisco, of San Jose, Calif., the trial is a chance to showcase a platform it wants to use to dominate digital entertainment in the home. In the last few years, Cisco spent $7-billion (U.S.) to buy set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta, and $500-million to acquire Linksys, which makes wireless routers for homes.

If Cisco's new technology can perform as well with millions of users as it does with a few hundred, almost any major cable company could adopt it to compete with the super-high-speed fibre-optics networks that some phone companies are rolling out into residential neighbourhoods.

Internet service providers face pressure to increase speeds as consumers use new applications that hog bandwidth, such as watching movies and TV shows, downloading songs and playing online games.

"Vidéotron obviously wants to embrace the latest and greatest and take the bar to the next level," said Jon Arnold, principal with J Arnold & Associates, a consulting firm in Toronto. "The big question is, if you build it, will they come?

"I can't imagine the mass market is going to run to this," Mr. Arnold said. "But it's a pretty bold step to really prove the technology. It could really be breakthrough."

In particular, the much larger U.S. cable operators will be watching Vidéotron's results to see if it is technology that they can adopt.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20070201.gtrvideotron02/BNStory/Technology/home"

Journal Journal: Astronaut charged with kidnapping

Journal by 140Mandak262Jamuna on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @09:25AM

Well, here is the bizarre story of an astronaut, a married mother of three no less, getting a crush on fellow astronaut and doing crazy things. But what caught my eye was that "emails" were discovered along with some physical artefacts. Are emails and their print outs one and the same? Do we need a course on Eastern Relgions to understand when the emails and their physical representations coalesce to become "one with the universe"?

Submission + - Love Triangle Plays Out Among NASA Elite

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @09:12AM

An anonymous reader writes: Astronaut Lisa Nowak, 43, was arrested Monday for attempted kidnapping in an scheme to confront a rival for the affections of Cmdr. William Oefelein. According to authorities, Nowak donned a wig and diapers, hopped in her car, and drove 900 miles to confront Coleen Shipman. Nowak flew to the International Space Station on STS-121 last July.

25 Games Tested in Vista 102

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @06:00AM from the games-for-working dept.

mikemuch writes "Jason Cross at ExtremeTech has installed more than 25 PC Games in Windows Vista and reports back with his experiences with each. For the most part, the OS handled games with aplomb, but on the whole ran them slightly slower than XP, and some required logging in as administrator to install them. These and other minor issues were the result of immature drivers. It was hit or miss whether games would appear in the Games Explorer correctly with box art, and GameTap doesn't work yet at all."

Submission + - Firefox popup blocker can allow access to local FS

Submitted by cj on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:21AM

cj writes: Whitedust has an interesting article where it appears that Michal Zalewski has unearthed a potentially dangerous vulnerability in the stock behaviour of Firefox's popup blocking element — when used in conjunction with another 'little trick' the vulnerability can apparently allow a malicious user to read files from an effected system and potentially gain access to sensitive information there on.

Submission + - Job satisfaction of coders - how to improve?

Submitted by

tsrkoodari

on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @05:03AM

tsrkoodari writes: "We've just started a new research project that aims at finding out how to improve the job satisfaction of coders. Our project is done in collaboration with Nokia. Our research questions include:

which work methods improve job satisfaction of coders?

which factors contribute to the flow experience of a coder?

how multinationality affects job satisfaction?

Our research group would like to ask all developers (whose job mainly consists of coding) reading Slashdot for opinions on these matters. Which work methods improve your job satisfaction as a coder? Have you experienced flow (defined as the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment) in your work? How do you feel about agile methods vs. traditional methods? Do they aim solely at productivity? And finally, how does multinationality/globalization in development teams affect your job satisfaction?"

Submission + - Chip-and-pin not invulnerable

Submitted by on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @04:56AM

An anonymous reader writes: Cambridge University researchers, in an investigation for BBC Television's Watchdog programme, have demonstrated a man-in-the-middle attack for the chip-and-pin credit card security system used throughout the UK and Europe. In the attack, the card is inserted into a card-reader that has been tampered with, and the information transmitted in real-time to an accomplice who uses a specially modified card to make a higher-value purchase elsewhere. The modified card-reader shows only the expected amount, but the larger amount is deducted from the victim's bank account. It would not be easy to use this method in practise because the two transactions must be made simultaneously. The same team recently demonstrated a hacked chip-and-pin terminal playing Tetris.

Submission + - Amazon Patents Showing You Books You Own

Submitted by

theodp

on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @04:28AM

theodp writes: "Thanks to the patent the USPTO granted to Amazon Tuesday for a Method and system for access to electronic images of text based on user ownership of corresponding physical text, showing you images of pages in a book you own may trigger a patent infringement lawsuit."

Submission + - Help search for Jim Gray

Submitted by

serutan

on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @03:59AM

serutan writes: "Last week, noted computer scientist Jim Gray's small sailboat was reported missing at sea. At the Amazon.com Mechanical Turk you can help search for his boat using hi-res satellite images of the area where he disappeared. It's a long shot, but by spending a few minutes looking at these pictures you might save his life."

Submission + - A Diamond is a scientist's best friend

Submitted by

jd

on Tuesday February 06, 2007 @02:36AM

jd writes: "The Diamond Light Source synchrotron ring opened Feb. 5th for operation. The largest scientific facility to be built in the UK for over 30 years, it is the size of five full-sized soccer stadia and boasts a three GeV synchrotron ring hooked up to two booster accelerators. For those who prefer more normal units, the circumference is 562.6 meters. By no means as large as the Large Hadron Collider being built through the Alps, this is still considered the best medium-energy synchrotron ring anywhere in the world — according to their publicists. Their press release states that this ring is to replace the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, which is due to close at the end of 2008."

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