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Space

Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns 353

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the doomed-rockets dept.
mcgrew (sm62704) writes "New Scientist is reporting that John Carmack's 'Armadillo Aerospace' has suffered a large setback in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge after one of its two main rockets crashed and burned. 'During the test, Texel lifted off and hovered without incident, then descended again and touched the ground. But it then rose again unexpectedly and began accelerating upward. "Crap, it's going to fly into the crane, I need to kill it," Carmack recalls thinking. He hit the manual shutdown switch, turning off the vehicle's engine in mid-flight. Texel was about 6 metres above the ground and fell like a stone. One of its fuel tanks broke open when it hit the ground, spewing fuel that ignited and engulfed the vehicle in flames. "It made a fireball that would make any Hollywood movie proud," Carmack says.' No one was hurt in the crash, but the vehicle was destroyed."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Wg311v3 has incompatibilities with AMD (blogspot.com)

Submitted by sh3l1
sh3l1 writes: Jacob Writes that: The Wg311v3 is the worst product I have ever bought. I purchased it and it worked fine for a while. Then, I got a new computer and put the thing in. It freezes up every hour or so. It has a week signal strength. The customer support was horrible. Note how long it takes them to reply. I had to open a few other support cases just to get a reply on this one.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft ask for votes to support OOXML

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I live in Mexico and today received a call from a Microsoft representative to be part of the commission in my country to vote for the approval of Office Open XML (OOXML). After talked with this representative I found something interesting... if you tell them that you will support them you will receive the documentation to 'enroll' you in the 'committee' and make all the arrangements with the National Chamber for IT and Telecommunications (I don't know what they will do if you refuse to support them but I'm thinking about it ...). So here is my question. Is this happening in other countries? Have any other slashdotters received similar calls?
Music

Submission + - Best MP3(-only) player? 1

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: I'm in the market for a new MP3 player. I won't be using it to look at photos or watch tv, but I would like it to work natively with linux. I don't really care for the iPod or the Zune. The market seems flooded with cheap mp3-only players, but I am suspicious of their quality. What do you think is the best mp3-only player?
Education

Kids Review the OLPC 193

Posted by kdawson from the mouths-of-babes dept.
A. N. Onymous sends us to OLPCNews for an account of kids' reactions to the OLPC XO, and comments: "My first impression is, it's just like when you give a kid a box of Lego." The video of a 10-year-old and his younger sister replacing a mobo is pretty cool.
Software

Does ODF Have a Future? 402

Posted by Zonk from the answer-hazy-ask-again-later dept.
qedramania writes "Linuxworld seems to think ODF is a dead duck. Is the Windows monopoly too big and too entrenched? Other than diehard Linux fans, does anyone really care if they have to keep paying Microsoft to do basic word processing? It seems as though the momentum is towards a complete Microsoft monoculture in software for business and government. You can bet that big business and governments will want more than just reliability from Microsoft in return for their acquiescence. Does ODF have a future?"
The Internet

Are In-Depth Articles Better Than Blog Postings? 157

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the think-before-you-speak dept.
athloi writes to tell us usability expert Jakob Nielsen is stressing the importance of well-thought-out articles as opposed to off-the-cuff blog postings. "Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's comments. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant."
Communications

Submission + - Open Source Linux Phone Released (openmoko.com) 1

Submitted by
andyfrommk
andyfrommk writes: "The worlds first truly open phone has been released. the Neo 1973 has been designed for the open source hacker.
From the website

The Neo 1973 boasts the following hardware specifications

* 2.8" VGA TFT color display
* Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
* 266HZ Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
* USB 1.1, switchable between Client and Host (unpowered)
* Integrated AGPS
* 2.5G GSM — quad band, voice, CSD, GPRS
* Bluetooth 2.0
* Micro SD slot
* High Quality audio codec
"
Security

Submission + - Spammers overcome Hotmail/Yahoo CAPTCHA systems

Submitted by thefickler
thefickler writes: It appears that spammers have found a way of automatically creating Hotmail and Yahoo email accounts, having already created more than 15,000 bogus Hotmail accounts, according to security company BitDefender.p>

BitDefender says that a new threat, dubbed Trojan.Spammer.HotLan.A, is using automatically generated Yahoo and Hotmail accounts to send out spam email, which suggests that spammers have found a way to overcome Microsoft's and Yahoo's CAPTCHA systems.p>
The Internet

Submission + - The new woneders picked mostly from Latin America (new7wonders.com)

Submitted by
frankwolftown
frankwolftown writes: "With the new Seven Wonders picked finally they do show a pattern that I'm not too sure anyone else has noticed. Three of the Seven Wonders have come from Latin American countries. Mexico's Chichen Itza, Peru's Machu Picchu, and Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer three of the seven new wonders. The voting was mostly done online and via SMS could the recent upsurge in broadband uptake in Latin American countries have caused this? A recent article in Smartmoney would say so.

Broadband grew at an annual rate of around 54% in 2006, making Latin America one of the world's fastest growing regions in terms of broadband uptake . But broadband penetration at end-2006 was only 2.5%, considerably less than the global average of 5.4%. With its level of GDP per capita, Latin America should in principle have ended 2006 with a broadband penetration of 3.5%.
Sounds like a pretty big factor doesn't it?"

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