78688
submission
Bananatree3 writes:
BBC is currently seeking submissions from all you Microsoft Windows, Mac and Linux devotees "in 100 words or less, why you are such a supporter of your chosen operating system and what features you love about it". They will then select one user of each platform to go head to head in a debate that will be part of the BBC's Microsoft Vista launch coverage on January 30th.
73240
submission
de_smudger writes:
For years 'lost' tapes recording data from the Apollo 11 Moon landing have been stored underneath the seats of Australian physics students. A recent search has uncovered them.
Recorded on telemetry tapes, they are said to be the best quality images of the landing (unconverted slow scan TV) yet to be seen by a public still fascinated by the early space race. These tapes were mislaid in the early 1980s on their way to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland.
73118
submission
G3ckoG33k writes:
* less than 20
* 20-39
* 40-59
* 60-79
* 80-99
* 100 or more
* none, I have them on paper
71738
submission
Adeptus_Luminati writes:
Check out the new logo on The Pirate Bay's (TPB) front page and you will notice it resembles that of the contravertial Sealand once featured (July 2000) in the front page of Wired magazine. Click on TPB's new logo and you will redirected to their buysealand.com website where they have setup a public forum allowing anonymous posts, but specifically stating their very brief Plan A & Plan B intentions and asking for Paypal donations. Apparently, the owners of Sealand are looking to sell the man-made island for an unspecified sum — which some external sources value at an incredible 750Million Euros! Seeing as the entire Wikipedia is struggling to raise even $1Million in donations, I doubt the TPB will succeed in raising enough funds... but hey, maybe if enough slashdotters contribute, perhaps they can at least proceed with a much needed paint job.
71018
submission
BayaWeaver writes:
Is there a moral to this tragic story? Boy goes to Caltech at the age of 12, gets his Ph.D from Cornell in string theory (under Brian Greene, a boy genius himself), and then things seem to have gone downhill after that. He is treated in a hospital for depression at 25, dies at age 30 and his family won't say why.
Here is the story from the New Straits Times in Malaysia.
"Boy genius Chiang Ti Ming, who died on Saturday, was buried yesterday at the Jalan Sikamat Christian Cemetery. The cause of his death is unknown and family members were tight-lipped at the funeral. Chiang made the headlines in 1989 when, as a 12-year-old, he was accepted into the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech) to study physics. He went on to pursue a doctorate in the field of Super String Theory in 1992 at Cornell University, an Ivy League institution.Not much was known about Chiang after his initial "fame", though in 1993, he suffered a personal tragedy when his four-year-old sister Eei Wern drowned at the swimming pool of the Seremban International Golf Club. In 2002, it was reported that he was admitted to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur after suffering from depression."
If there a lesson to be learnt here, what would that be? Don't go to Caltech when you are 12yo? Don't waste the best years of your life doing string theory?
Was the poor kid pushed too far too fast? One can only imagine the overwhelming pressure the boy must have felt to perform. Perhaps he should have been left alone to
find his way and not be pushed to what is very possibly a dead end
70970
submission
Aglassis writes:
NASA investigators have determined that a software update performed in June of 2006 may have doomed the 10 year old spacecraft. Apparently the software error caused the solar arrays to drive against a mechanical stop which then forced the spacecraft into safe mode. Unfortunately, after that the spacecraft's radiator was pointed at the sun which overheated the battery and destroyed it. Contact was lost with the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft in November of 2006. NASA will form an internal review board to formally determine the cause of the loss of the spacecraft and what remedial actions are needed for future missions.
