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NASA

Spitzer Telescope Sheds Light On Colony of Baby Stars 34

astroengine writes "NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope had the unprecedented opportunity to observe the heart of the Orion Nebula for 40 days, returning 80 images of the star-forming region. In doing so, the observatory has been keeping track of 1,500 young stars as they undergo rapid variations in brightness, caused by large 'cool spots' on the surface of the stars and obscuring dust. However, the high resolution images Spitzer is returning take center-stage, showing a tight cluster of stellar birth amid the nebulous clouds of dust. This is an incredible achievement considering its primary mission is over (after using up all of its liquid helium coolant in May 2009) and only two instruments are still working."
Idle

RPG Heroes Are Jerks Screenshot-sm 119

I have to give him credit for smashing the vases to get the medicine, and finding the legendary wedding dress among the rags. However, he forgot to kill the peasants for xp and you should always check the fireplace for any remaining food.

Comment A nuclear reactor and Bill Gates (Score 1) 347

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be anywhere a nuclear reactor that Bill Gates had any part in designing. It's bad enough that computers running software he had a hand in creating have orders of magnitude more problems than software from any other source. Put Bill Gates into the nuclear reactor business, and... well, I shudder to think of the sheer magnitude of the potential for disaster there.
Science

Invisibility Cloak Created In 3-D 113

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have created the first device to render an object invisible in three dimensions. The 'cloak,' described in the journal Science (abstract; full text requires login), hid an object from detection using light of wavelengths close to those that are visible to humans. Previous devices have been able to hide objects from light travelling in only one direction; viewed from any other angle, the object would remain visible. This is a very early but significant step towards a true invisibility cloak." The "object" hidden in this work was a bump one micrometer high. The light used was just longer than the wavelengths our eyes detect. To get a visible-light cloak, the features of the cloaking metamaterial would need to be reduced in size from 300 nm to 10 nm.

Comment ext3 (Score 2, Informative) 484

I go with ext3 for this personally. NTFS doesn't store *nix style filesystem permissions, and causes various other issues with you Linux systems. With ext3, you can store all your files with all of your permissions intact, the filesystem is mature and trustworthy, and you can still access all of the files from any operating system by simply connecting the drives to a dedicated fileserver machine (an older computer or small device works perfectly for this). Simply share your files via NFS, Samba and ftp (if you need ftp access for something like xmbc). Having a dedicated machine for this means you can also script your replication to the secondary drive, so that you only have to attach the drive for the mirroring process to take place.

This is the solution I've been using for about four years now, and it works great for me.

Comment Software solution, no hardware required (Score 1) 549

That's easy! Switch them to Linux, where the devs weren't too shortsighted to realize that it would be a good idea to make everything on the desktop scalable. I run at my native resolution, which would make things a bit small for me, but all I have to do is set the monitor DPI to a higher value than actual, and everything appears at a nice, easily readable size.

Comment Mac Mini (Score 1) 438

How about a Mac Mini with a remote control? They have good audio hardware, you can connect it to your network wirelessly, and you can use Mac OS X, Linux or Windows on it for playing audio. They're also small, nearly silent, and women think they're cute.

Comment I've noticed this myself (Score 1) 567

This is why I only ask musicians who are good at what they do for advice on audio equipment. If you want to know what's good, you have to ask a musician who's passionate about music. Musicians know what the music is supposed to sound like because they've spent countless hours learning songs and practicing their craft. By listening to them, I have a setup that's so good it's made me turn and look behind me more than a few times because I swore the noise was made by something in the room.

KRK Rokit Studio monitors with a BBE Sonic Maximizer, in case you're wondering.

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