Submission + - Largest Ever Colossal Squid Caught
An anonymous reader writes: The largest squid ever caught has been landed in the Ross Sea, estimated to weigh in at 450kg, it's a male colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni).
Submission + - World's First Extradition for Warez Complete
Glad I'm Not Down Under writes: In a move sure to frighten most of those with piles of old cracked PC games and a hastily copied list of serial numbers, the world's first warez extradition — dating back to a series of raids dubbed "Operation Buccaneer" in 2001 — has finally come to an end. Hew Rayond Griffiths, alleged to also have gone by the screen name Bandido, has been delivered into American custody and faces up to 10 years in prison despite never having profited from his alleged crimes or having set foot on American soil committing them. Victim companies impacted by the group Bandido is said to have run, Drink or Die, are situated globally. Griffiths spent three years prior to extradition in an Australian prison, equal in length to some of the longest warez sentences handed out to date. It is unclear as to how he will be represented as his case proceeds, as he was the recipient of provided counsel while fighting against the extradition in Australia. Justice served, or the export of American intellectual property ideals on a foreign nation?
Submission + - Building the Interplanetary Internet
sighted writes: "Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is leading a NASA effort to create a permanent network link to Mars within the next two years. As Cerf outlined in a recent talk, the "InterPlaNet" protocol is designed to handle the delay caused by interplanetary distances. For example, it can take a signal up to 20 minutes to travel between the Earth and Mars, depending on the distance between the two planets."
Scientists Make Quantum Encryption Breakthrough 156
Madas writes "Scientists working in Cambridge have managed to make quantum encryption completely secure (registration required) by
putting decoy pulses in the key transmission stream. According to the story this paves the way for safe, encrypted high-speed data links. Could this allow completely private transmission of data away from snooping eyes and ears? Or will it mean film studios can stop movies from being copied when traveling on the internet?"
Submission + - $10 wok keeps TV station on air
Bevan Weir writes: "Why pay $20,000 for a commercial link to run your television station when a $10 kitchen wok is just as effective?. 45 South volunteer Ken Jones designed the wok transmitter in his spare time last year when he wanted to provide wireless broadband to his Ardgowan home."
Submission + - First Woman Wins Turing Award
bc90021 writes: "Frances E. Allen, 75, was honored for her work at IBM Corp. on techniques for optimizing the performance of compilers. It's well deserved, and she's the first woman to receive it in the 40 years of the award's history."
Submission + - New Go Algorithm May Help Beat Human Players
An anonymous reader writes: The Birmingham Post reports that two Hungarian scientists have now come up with an algorithm that helps computers pick the right move in Go (an ancient Chinese board game that is still popular in Asia). Though computers have beat top players in chess, even the most powerful computer failed to beat top players in Go. The new method uses two processors instead of one. Though 19x19 board is still tough for computers, "On a nine by nine board we are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player," said Levente Kocsis at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' computing lab SZTAKI.
SETI Finally Finds Something 416
QuatumCrypto writes "SETI@home is a distributed processing client from UC Berkeley that installs on the volunteers' home computers and harnesses their processing power in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far nothing noteworthy has comeout of this massive project... that is until today! One of the volunteers was able to track down his wife's stolen laptop using the IP address that SETI@home client reports back to the server. After getting back the laptop his wife said, 'I always knew that a geek would make a great husband.'"
Submission + - Building an energy efficient always-on PC?
An anonymous reader writes: Like many Slashdotters, I find it necessary to leave my home PC running 24/7, for things like web or ftp servers, bittorrent, or simply to make sure I don't miss any messages on IRC or my instant messaging client. It has been about 3 years since I built my current PC, and keeping it running all the time uses a lot of juice. With my next PC I would like to do what I can to keep the power-consumption to a minimum, without sacrificing processing power or other features. What should I look for when choosing components for my PC, and what other ways are there to keep the power consumption down?
The World's First National Internet Election 297
InternetVoting writes "Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France's successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?"
Submission + - Solar power cheaper than fossil fuels?
An anonymous reader writes: This article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml lite on technical details, argues that solar power may be cheaper than fossil fuels in 5 to 10 years thanks to new materials that are significantly lighter and easier to produce than traditional solar panels
Submission + - Penny Arcade Recieves email on homeless man murder
Gots_Hussies writes: Penny Arcade artist Mike "Gabe" Krahulik recently recieved an email from a woman who knew one of three teenagers who beat and murdered a homeless man. The email is a response to Krahuliks attack on the media for believing the teenagers story that 'violent videogames were the reason we did it'.
Excerpt from article "Your news post about the kids and the homeless man yesterday made me sick to my stomach, before I even read the CNN article. I knew what it was going to be about before even reading the article. It was not the article itself, or even your post that made me sick, it was the fact that I know this boy. Or, rather that I could be considered one of the "parents" of this boy."
Submission + - AMD's 'Frantic Price Cuts' May Pressure Intel
kog777 writes: Price competition is sparking up again between the world's largest chip makers, Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD).
As Intel took a technological lead late last year, AMD responded with "frantic price cuts" after a weak start to its first quarter, Needham analyst Y. Edwin Mok said in a note to clients on Tuesday.
Windows Vista: the Missing Manual
John Suda writes "
It's been over five years in the making and its nearly perfect. No,
Im not referring to Microsofts vast new operating system named Windows
Vista, but to the reference book Windows Vista: the Missing Manual,
by author David Pogue. The book is the latest, and perhaps best, in the Missing
Manual series published by Pogue Press/ OReilly Media, Inc. The Missing
Manual series is the benchmark of quality for computer manuals. Unless youre
a system administrator, programmer, or uber-geek, this is probably the only reference
source you'll need to learn Microsofts Vista." Read below for the rest of John's review.
Windows Vista: the Missing Manual 220
John Suda writes "It's been over five years in the making and its nearly perfect. No,
Im not referring to Microsoft's vast new operating system named Windows
Vista, but to the reference book Windows Vista: the Missing Manual,
by author David Pogue. The book is the latest, and perhaps best, in the Missing
Manual series published by Pogue Press / O'Reilly Media, Inc. The Missing
Manual series is the benchmark of quality for computer manuals. Unless youre
a system administrator, programmer, or uber-geek, this is probably the only reference
source you'll need to learn Microsofts Vista." Read below for the rest of John's review.
