Dorduan - Slashdot User

Submission + - Arriving 60 nanoseconds too soon? Not so fast, neutrinos! (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by stillnotelf on Wednesday February 22, 2012 @05:39PM

stillnotelf writes: ScienceInsider is carrying the news that the controversial faster-than-light neutrinos detected by the OPERA experiment (covered in Slashdot here, here, here, here, here, and here) are attributable to an experimental error. Briefly, there was a mistimed connection between their GPS receiver synchronizing the experiment and the computer collecting the data. The timing was off by 60 nanoseconds — the same 60 nanoseconds by which neutrinos were arriving too early.

Submission + - Preserved 298-Million-Year-Old Forest Discovered (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @03:43PM

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists just discovered an incredibly preserved 298-million-year-old forest buried deep beneath a coal mine in Wuda, China. The ancient forest in Inner Mongolia was preserved by volcanic ash, much like Pompeii. Both Chinese and American scientists are marveling at finds of 80-foot-tall trees from the Permian Era, which provide an incredible snapshot of plant life 298 million years ago.

Submission + - Hubble Spies New Type of Planet (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @01:58PM

sciencehabit writes: Data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope suggest that a planet tightly circling a star 40 light-years from Earth is a water world swaddled in a thick, steamy atmosphere. The new observations reveal that the atmosphere transmits light consistently across a broad range of wavelengths—which tips the balance strongly toward an atmosphere mostly composed of water vapor, the researchers say, because a hazy atmosphere would be more transparent to infrared light than to visible wavelengths. While our solar system contains rocky worlds such as Venus and Earth, gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn, and icy orbs such as Pluto—and other solar systems sport "lava worlds" and "hot Jupiters"—GJ1214b is the first planet discovered to be composed largely of water rather than rock.

Submission + - Microsoft Office for iPad: Coming Soon? (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @01:42PM

redletterdave writes: "Sources say Microsoft has wrapped production on Microsoft Office for the iPad, and is ready to submit the app for approval. The app could arrive in early March, would be right around the time Apple reportedly plans to unveil its next iPad; it's entirely possible that the two will launch together. Microsoft already has several apps available on the iPad and iPhone, including Bing, MSN OnPoint, MSN Onit, Windows Live Messenger, Wonderwall, and Microsoft Tag; the Office suite, however, which includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook, has been the most successful software platform in Microsoft's history, reportedly earning about $15 billion in revenue in 2011 alone."

Submission + - Damaged US passport chip strands travelers (kdvr.com)

Submitted by

caseih

on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @12:30PM

caseih writes: "Damaging the embedded chip in your passport is now grounds for denying you the ability to travel in at least one airport in the US. Though the airport can slide the passport through the little number reader as easily as they can wave it in front of an RFID reader, they chose to deny a young child access to the flight, in essence denying the who family. The child had accidentally sat on his passport, creasing the cover, and the passport appeared worn. The claim has been made that breaking the chip in the passport shows that you disrespect the privilege of owning a passport, and that the airport was justified in denying this child from using the passport."

Submission + - Electric Rockets Are Set to Transform Space Flight (txchnologist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @12:29PM

An anonymous reader writes: The spectacle of a booster rocket lifting off a launch pad atop a mass of brilliant flames and billowing smoke is an iconic image of the Space Age. Such powerful chemical rockets are needed to break the bonds of Earth’s gravity and send spacecraft into orbit. But once a vehicle has progressed beyond low-earth orbit (LEO) chemical rockets are not necessarily the best way to get around outer space. That’s because chemical propulsion systems require such large quantities of fuel to generate high speeds, there is little room for payload.

As a result rocket scientists are increasingly turning to electric rockets, which accelerate propellants out the back end using solar-powered electromagnetic fields rather than chemical reactions. The electric rockets use so much less propellant that the entire spacecraft can be much more compact, which enables them to scale down the original launch boosters.

Submission + - The Pirate Bay: Banned in the UK? (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Monday February 20, 2012 @05:29PM

redletterdave writes: "Swedish filesharing website The Pirate Bay may soon be blocked in the UK after a London judge ruled that the site breaches copyright laws on a large scale, and that both the platform and its users illegally share copyrighted material like movies and music. In addition to finding legal fault with The Pirate Bay and its users, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) also wants all British Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to The Pirate Bay in the UK."

Submission + - Apple Reveals New Details of iDataCenter (datacenterknowledge.com)

Submitted by

miller60

on Monday February 20, 2012 @05:05PM

miller60 writes: "Apple has revealed new details about the operations of its huge data center in Maiden, North Carolina. Apple plans to build a 20-megawatt array to power the huge server farm, along with a fuel cell (backed by biogas) that could provide another 5 megawatts of on-site power. Apple also offered new details on the power, cooling and data hall design for the 500,000 square foot iDataCenter in North Carolina."

Submission + - Samsung Spins Off Its Display Business (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

redletterdave

on Monday February 20, 2012 @01:18PM

redletterdave writes: "Samsung Electronics announced Monday that it will spin off its LCD business division to launch a new entity, provisionally called Samsung Display Co., set to go live on April 1, 2012. The new business will launch with about $668 million in capital, but Samsung plans to invest about $5.8 billion in 2012 to develop better displays. The move, which now awaits shareholder approval, has been rumored for months since Samsung's LCD business announced operating losses of $666 million in 2011, citing sluggish TV sales. The company's spin-off display business may eventually merge with Samsung Mobile Display, which makes the company's organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels that are currently in high demand. Nam Ki Yung, a spokesman for Samsung, said the company is reviewing a merger of its LCD and OLED operations."

Submission + - VLC 2.0 with Experimental BluRay Support Now Available for Windows, Mac [Downloa (thetechnologytimes.com)

Submitted by

Prabhakaran

on Sunday February 19, 2012 @10:21PM

Prabhakaran writes: "VideoLan has just released the most awaited version 2.0 of open source VLC media player and it’s now available for download. Case of changes it has plenty, yes VLC 2.0 has revamped with new UI, 10bits codecs, new video rendering pipeline, high-quality subtitles, and also supports new experimental BluRay discs, more HD file formats and bunch of bug fixes. Especially the Mac version has"

Submission + - DARPA researches 'Avatar' Surrogates (ieee.org) 1

Submitted by kgeiger on Friday February 17, 2012 @01:20PM

kgeiger writes: Feeling blue? DARPA is funding a program to investigate the feasibility of battlefield cyborg-surrogates:

"In its 2012 budget, DARPA has decided to pour US $7 million into the 'Avatar Project' whose goal is the following: 'develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier’s surrogate.'"

Power and bandwidth constraints aside, what could go wrong? Chinese hackers swooping in and commandeering one's army? Gives new meaning to the question "Where's Waldo?"

Submission + - $6 Trillion in Fake US Treasury Bonds Siezed in Switzerland (sfgate.com)

Submitted by ackthpt on Friday February 17, 2012 @12:32PM

ackthpt writes: If you're going to steal, steal big, right? Italian anti-mafia prosecutors announce seizure of $6 trillion of allegedly fake U.S. Treasury bonds, an amount that's almost half of the U.S.'s public debt. The probe focusing upon money laundering has also include financial dealings alleged to direct money to Nigerian sources to buy plutonium. Sound like a movie plot, yet? $6 Trillion, that's a lot of lettuce.

Submission + - Google Working on Password Generator for Chrome (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Friday February 17, 2012 @11:41AM

Trailrunner7 writes: Google is in the process of developing a tool to help users generate strong passwords for the various and sundry Web sites for which they need to register and authenticate. The password-generator is meant to serve as an interim solution for users while Google and other companies continue to work on widespread deployment of the OpenID standard.

The tool that Google engineers are working on is a fairly simple one. For people who are using the Chrome browser, whenever a site presents them with a field that requires a password, Chrome will display a small key icon, letting the users know that they could allow Chrome to generate a password for them.

Comment Canada? (Score 3, Interesting) 210

by Dorduan on Thursday February 16, 2012 @09:02PM (#39068783) Attached to: FCC Cracks Down on Robocalls

Assuming that this is implemented properly in US, does this cover people like me in Canada who are called by telemarketers from US?

Submission + - JotForm domain shut down by US Secret Service (thenextweb.com)

Submitted by lomedhi on Thursday February 16, 2012 @02:17PM

lomedhi writes: Probably in response to phishers using JotForm's free form service, the Secret Service has seized jotform.com, denying access to 2 million forms created by 700,000 users. The Secret Service is unresponsive. Who needs SOPA?

The service is now available at alternate domains jotform.net and jotformpro.com, but changing URLs is a serious inconvenience to some. Many are paid corporate clients. Among other things, iPad and iPhone apps that embed forms will have to be re-approved by Apple.

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