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Space

Supermassive Black Hole Is Thrown Out of Galaxy 167

Posted by samzenpus from the moving-to-better-quarters dept.
DarkKnightRadick writes "An undergrad student at the University of Utrecht, Marianne Heida, has found evidence of a supermassive black hole being tossed out of its galaxy. According to the article, the black hole — which has a mass equivalent to one billion suns — is possibly the culmination of two galaxies merging (or colliding, depending on how you like to look at it) and their black holes merging, creating one supermassive beast. The black hole was found using the Chandra Source Catalog (from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory). The direction of the expulsion is also possibly indicative of the direction of rotation of the two black holes as they circled each other before merging."
Businesses

EA Introduces "Online Pass" To Get In On Used Games Market 223

Posted by Soulskill from the gee-thanks dept.
EA Sports has unveiled a new feature that they hope will help them get a piece of the lucrative used games market: the Online Pass. Each of their new titles will come with a one-time code that allows access to "premium" content and features. Players who buy the games used can get the same content, but will need to pay $10 for the privilege. "According to EA, the content can include anything from title updates and downloads to features like online leagues — and even online gameplay and multiplayer modes. ... EA will offer 10-day trials of Pass content so that users can see what they would be getting. So far, EA seems to be limiting the premium add-on experiment to its sports portfolio. ... The company has apparently gained the support of retailer GameStop, which has been watching with a close eye efforts on the part of publishers to discourage its thriving used games business. According to the retailer, encouraging premium content add-ons still benefits GameStop, since it sells PlayStation Network and Microsoft Points cards. It praised EA's Online Pass as 'forward-thinking.'"
Image

NASA's Space Balloon Smashes Car In Australia 174

Posted by samzenpus from the wrong-turn dept.
Humunculus writes "Of more worldly issues, NASA's latest multimillion-dollar stratosphere-bound balloon launch has gone horribly wrong and crashed into a car, turning it over and narrowly missing two elderly people who were observing the launch. The payload fared worse, reportedly being smashed into a 'thousand pieces.'"
Image

George Washington Racks Up 220 Years of Late Fees At Library 146

Posted by samzenpus from the at-least-he-read dept.
Everyone knows that George Washington couldn't tell a lie. What you probably didn't know is that he couldn't return a library book on time. From the article: "New York City's oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years' worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned. One of the books was the 'Law of Nations,' which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates from Britain's House of Commons. Both books were due on Nov. 2, 1789."
Image

Testing the Safety of Tasers On Meth-Addled Sheep 253

Posted by samzenpus from the thank-you-science dept.
Funded in part by Taser International, a recent study was done to learn the effects of being tasered while on methamphetamines. Since someone would probably complain about researchers going around and tasering meth addicts, they used sheep instead. From the article: "The less-lethal device of choice was the Taser X26, a standard law enforcement tool which can fire at suspects from a distance of 35 feet. Researchers shocked sixteen anesthetized sheep after dosing the animals with an IV drip of methamphetamine hydrochloride. Some of the smaller sheep weighing less than 70.5 pounds suffered exacerbated heart symptoms related to meth use. But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition, a highly abnormal heart rhythm that can become fatal."

Comment Re:Had enough of Joss already (Score 1) 349

by Karna99 (#31846492) Attached to: Joss Whedon To Direct <em>The Avengers</em>

I agree with your comments whole heartily. I have no issues with Aliens and the themes inherit with Ripley the Warrior and Ripley the mother. In fact I really enjoyed her casting as the figure of Artemis in the movies. Good story telling is being able to spin the classic tales for a new generation.

Not to be confused with the fanboy worship Whedon seems to have for anime style story telling for all his projects.

And I agree that he needs to be beaten for blaming Jeunet for his shity script.

Comment Had enough of Joss already (Score 1) 349

by Karna99 (#31845152) Attached to: Joss Whedon To Direct <em>The Avengers</em>

Well if Joss does it I can tell the focus will be on the Wasp as she struggles in a man's superhero world. Expect some drama about love/sex with the villain and eventually she will discover after being abused that she has small sun inside her that will go nova and she will destroy/kill everything.

Bastard ruined Aliens for me with all the Motherhood/Feminist bullshit he laid on Ripley's character. Those themes were in Alien 2 also, but not quite the sled hammer Joss likes to employ.

All his stories are the same: about some abused woman/girl who discovers she has superpowers and then proceeds to eviscerate everything in site. The guy is a hack, not the worst, but certainly doesn't not deserve the credit geekdom seems to give him.

Image

Son Sues Mother Over Facebook Posts 428

Posted by samzenpus from the check-your-family-status dept.
Most kids hate having their parents join in on a discussion on Facebook, but one 16-year-old in Arkansas hates it so much he has filed suit against his mother, charging her with harassment. From the article: "An Arkadelphia mother is charged with harassment for making entries on her son's Facebook page. Denise New's 16-year-old son filed charges against her last month and requested a no-contact order after he claims she posted slanderous entries about him on the social networking site. New says she was just trying to monitor what he was posting." Seems like he could just unfriend her.
Biotech

Frog Foam Photosynthesis 21

Posted by samzenpus from the how-green-are-your-frogs dept.
Garrett Fox writes "University of Cincinnati researchers describe a method of getting photosynthesis from a high-surface-area foam containing enzymes that produce sugar using light and CO2 (abstract). Oddly, the foam itself is derived from a species of frog. More interesting is that the technique doesn't use whole cells or apparently even chloroplasts. The researchers claim 'chemical conversion efficiencies approaching 96%,' as well as tolerance for deliberately high-CO2 environments."
Image

How the Internet Didn't Fail As Predicted 259

Posted by samzenpus from the series-of-popular-tubes dept.
Lord Byron Eee PC writes "Newsweek is carrying a navel-gazing piece on how wrong they were when in 1995 they published a story about how the Internet would fail. The original article states, 'Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.' The article continues to say that online shopping will never happen, that airline tickets won't be purchased over the web, and that newspapers have nothing to fear. It's an interesting look back at a time when the Internet was still a novelty and not yet a necessity."
Image

Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334

Posted by samzenpus from the go-ahead-and-have-another dept.
Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."

Comment Re:I am seeing it. (Score 1) 686

by Karna99 (#30480574) Attached to: Not Enough Women In Computing, Or Too Many Men?

I worked about 10 years in IT and eventually got laid off due to the usual BS. I took a good 4 months to do some research and soul searching on exactly what was keeping me in IT. Nothing really other than I felt this was were I ought to be. Do yourself a favour and divorce the thing that makes you money and the things you love.

Its my love of Computers and Technology that I pursued a CS degree and got into some serious student loans and ended up working in IT as a slave to idiot masters. The layoff was the best thing that ever happed. It made me evaluate life goals, work, money and the balance I really needed.

I ended up retooling myself to become a Business Analyst in the Banking Industry and found I make a lot more money and get treated much better in an established Industry than the relatively young IT. Also I found my CS Education and IT background gave me a significant edge in performance over people coming in from other streams. Computers are pretty much a part of every high level endeavour, your IT talents will be useful. Guess what I am saying is if you love IT, but don't want to end up in the grind, aim for a double specialization and you will find you can still do IT along side your other job.

Comment Re:Is day trading a good thing? (Score 1) 260

by Karna99 (#29750497) Attached to: Device Protects Day Traders From Emotional Trading
As someone working the banking industry the quick answer I can give you is that they in theory keep the price honest for securities. Same reason short sales are allowed and other such strategies that seem on the surface "damaging" but are necessary to keep the market fluid and honest. Say a security is over valued, the day traders will ensure that it gets corrected by shorting the crap out of it. Same thing if under valued, they will buy it until it reaches an equilibrium point. The role I think they play is insuring information gets factored in the market as fast as possible thus making the market efficient.

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