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Transportation

$2500 Tata Nano Car Unveiled in India 625

Posted by CmdrTaco from the powered-entirely-by-curry dept.
theodp writes "After months of rumors and tantalizing leaks, Tata Motors has finally unveiled the Tata Nano, its already legendary $2,500 car that promises to change the face of not only the Indian car market, but the global auto industry. The tiny car is a four-door, five-seat hatch, powered by a 30 hp engine that gets 54 miles per gallon."
Science

Scientists Examine Dinosaur Skin 96

Posted by samzenpus from the beyond-wrinkled dept.
jd writes "Fossilized skin from a dinosaur in China is allowing paleontologists a better understanding of what dinosaur skin was like. A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen. Other than the multitude of layers, this is very similar in nature to modern shark skin. The gash caused by a predator allowed the skin and the soft interior to be fossilized along with the bones. This is not the same dinosaur that had been reported previously on Slashdot, which was found in South Dakota, although the process and extent of fossilization is very similar."
IT

The Trouble with Virtualization - Cranky IT Staffs 251

Posted by Zonk from the p-e-b-k-a-c dept.
lgmac writes "A new survey on the results of Enterprise use of virtualization shows that the process is seeing wide and appreciative use. Technical hurdles are obviously the biggest problem facing corporate IT shops. Just the same, political squabbles among IT staffers fighting for turf after being forced to work together in new ways seems to be a going concern as well. 'Technical woes rank higher--to be expected when CIOs deploy a new technology such as virtualization. However, the politics pain many of you. Remember, virtualization not only asks people to cede some control over their physical server kingdoms, but also asks IT experts from different realms to work more closely together.'"

Microsoft Re-Brands PlaysForSure 194

Posted by Zonk from the always-a-pleasure-doing-business dept.
mikesd81 writes "Information Week writes about a licensing change intended to 'beat Apple at their own game'. They're going to use a combination of branding and DRM, and replace the "PlaysForSure" logo with a "Certified for Windows Vista" tag.'The certification is used to guarantee compatibility with Microsoft's copyright-protection software and is the same logo used for the company's Zune player. The problem, however, is that music and video bought from the online Zune Marketplace won't play in their native format on other devices, including those that will carry the new logo.'"
Cellphones

Exploding Cell Phone Battery Kills 287

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
LingNoi writes "A man in Korea was found dead at his workplace Wednesday morning and his mobile phone battery was melted in his shirt pocket. No one knows for sure yet but a doctor who examined the body said, "He sustained an injury that is similar to a burn in the left chest and his ribs and spine were broken" We have heard of other dangerous battery products here on Slashdot." Update: 11/30 17:34 GMT by Z : Turns out the melted battery was the least of his worries; he was actually hit by a truck.
The Military

The Real Mother of All Bombs, 46 Years Ago 526

Posted by kdawson from the things-that-go-boom dept.
vaporland writes "Tsar Bomba is the Western name for the RDS-220, the largest, most powerful weapon ever detonated. The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961, in an archipelago in the Arctic Sea. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons. Its detonation released energy equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun for 39 nanoseconds of its detonation. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout. The Tsar Bomba qualifies as the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity."
Education

Submission + - Is a CS degree any good for an old guy?

Submitted by mbuckingham
mbuckingham writes: I'm 39 and have been programming for 20 years. By "programming", I'm talking about the usual business applications type of stuff. Easy stuff really. I went to college for a while, but never got my degree. It bugs me that I've never completed my degree, but since I've always had decent jobs, it hasn't really mattered too much. I'm really bored with what I do every day though. Anyway, I'm thinking about going back, getting the degree, because I think it will make it possible to move towards doing some more advanced system-level type stuff. Does this make sense? Would a CS degree or a Computer Engineering degree be better? I know I don't want a MIS degree, because that would be rehashing everything I'm already bored with.

Unpiloted Passenger Jet Tests 243

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we're-going-to-experience-a-little-turbulence-here dept.
spacepingu writes "The UK military recently tested a remote-controlled passenger jet over south-west England. Although the pilot was sitting in the back of the aging BAC 1-11, he controlled it entirely using the 'UAV Command and Control Interface (UAVCCI)'. This also allowed him to operate several virtual UAVs in a simulated attack scenario. The ultimate goal is for a fighter pilot to control a swarm of attack UAVs alongside his own plane. Next March, a Tornado fighter pilot will use the UAVCCI to fly the unpiloted BAC1-11 as well as several simulated UAVs, all from the cockpit of his own jet."

Diebold Disks May Have Been For Testers 182

Posted by Zonk from the concientious-tester dept.
opencity writes "The Washington Post reports on the two Diebold source disks that were anonymously sent to a Maryland election official this past week. Further investigation has lead individuals involved to believe the disks came from a security check demanded by the Maryland legislature sometime in 2003." From the article: "Critics of electronic voting said the most recent incident in Maryland casts doubt on Lamone's claim that Maryland has the nation's most secure voting system. "There now may be numerous copies of the Diebold software floating around in unauthorized hands," said Linda Schade, co-founder of TrueVoteMD, which has pressed for a system that provides a verifiable paper record of each vote."

Hack in the Box Meets Windows Vista 159

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the book-your-flights-now dept.
Strange_Brew writes "It appears Microsoft is really going all out to get Windows Vista secured before its release date in 2007. There's an article on PC World which talks about Microsoft's plan to give Asia's largest hackers conference an inside look at the new security features in Windows Vista this coming September." From the article: "The Hack In The Box conference will host two speakers from Microsoft. The first, Dave Tamasi, a lead security program manager at Microsoft, will give a presentation on security engineering in Vista. The talk will include a discussion about features suggested by hackers and other security conscious members of the computing community, in addition to security improvements made on Vista. The second speaker, Douglas MacIver, a penetration engineer at Microsoft, will review Vista's BitLocker Drive Encryption and the company's analysis of threats and attempts to penetrate the security feature."

RIAA Claims P2P Has Been Contained 388

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the desperate-spin-control dept.
Magorak writes "USA Today is reporting the RIAA now claims that the issues surrounding P2P and piracy have been contained and are no longer as big an issue as they once were. From the article; 'The problem has not been eliminated,' says association CEO Mitch Bainwol. 'But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat.'"

Tilting At Windmills 651

Posted by Zonk from the oil-just-hit-75-bucks-a-barrel dept.
GreedyCapitalist writes "Anne Applebaum writes in the Washington Post about environmentalists who are opposing renewable energy sources." From the article: "Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. -- the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast -- a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether."

Device Developed To Help Socially Challenged 327

Posted by Zonk from the insert-your-own-self-referential-joke-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A device from MIT Media Labs that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed." From the article: "The 'emotional social intelligence prosthetic' device, which El Kaliouby is constructing along with MIT colleagues Rosalind Picard and Alea Teeters, consists of a camera small enough to be pinned to the side of a pair of glasses, connected to a hand-held computer running image recognition software plus software that can read the emotions these images show. If the wearer seems to be failing to engage his or her listener, the software makes the hand-held computer vibrate."

Ballmer Won't Dismiss Idea of Suits Against Linux 644

Posted by Zonk from the errr dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to an interview with Steve Ballmer in Forbes, Microsoft is open to the possibility of filing patent suits against Linux in the interest of their shareholders. Ballmer said: 'Well, I think there are experts who claim Linux violates our intellectual property. I'm not going to comment. But to the degree that that's the case, of course we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy.' Microsoft filed more than 3000 new applications for software patents in 2005 and already owns more than 4000 patents, including many patents on fundamental, but trivial technologies, like double clicks."

Software Developer Beats Pirate in Boxing Ring 347

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the get-in-the-ring dept.
utki writes "The Moscow Times is reporting that the chief software architect at Russian software developer Cognitive Technologies, Andrei Smirnov, recently won a boxing match organized between himself and a software pirate he caught selling bootlegged software CD's at a Moscow market. At last, a practical and entertaining model for dealing with software piracy (MPAA and RIAA take note), and perhaps a useful way to channel Steve Ballmer's aggression too."

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