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Space

Submission + - Reverse Orbit Planet Found 1,000 Light Years Away (examiner.com)

Submitted by JoshuaInNippon
JoshuaInNippon writes: Our sun and the planets that revolve around it all move in the same direction. Since 1995, over 400 planets outside our solar system have been found, and many of them are strikingly different than that of us. To explain these differences, a variety of planetary evolution models have been proposed, including the theoretical possibility that some planets orbit in the opposite direction to that of their star rotation. On November 4th, researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) announced they have found such a retrograde orbit planet for the first time, around HAT-P-7, a star about 1,000 light years away.
Privacy

Submission + - What to do about previous user's data

Submitted by SJrX
SJrX writes: I sent my netbook in for servicing as my hard disk was dying and it was still under warranty. The 'new' hard disk, wouldn't boot the first few times and made sounds no hard drive should, however after that it booted fine. I noticed a curious discovery while installing Ubuntu on it, that the other partition, had about 26 G of data on it. I had been blessed with the first two seasons of Star Trek Enterprise among other things, clearly from the previous owner, nothing inheriently sensitive. Now thankfully I wiped my data before sending it in, but I'm not sure what the best way to bring this up with them is? The hard drive will probably go back for RMA since it's broken, but beyond that, I suspect mentioning it to the Level 1 staff, will simply be a noop? The other question is, how often does this really occur? I could understand perhaps a full disk scan may find something, but the partition (which is standard on these models) hadn't even been quick formatted. I guess the data here isn't sensitive, but I don't think they really checked that before giving it to me.
Biotech

Submission + - Fear Detector to Sniff Out Terrorists

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Evidence that the smell of fear is real was uncovered by US scientists last year who studied the underarm secretions of 20 terrified novice skydivers and found that people appear to respond unconsciously to the sweat smell of a frightened person. Now the Telegraph reports that researchers hope a ''fear detector'' will make it possible to identify individuals at check points who are up to no good. ''The challenge lies in the characterization and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of human fear, especially the fear in relation to criminal acts," says Professor Tong Tun at City University London who leads the team developing security sensor systems that can detect the human fear pheromone. The project will look at potential obstacles to the device, such as the effects of perfume and the variances in pheromone production and if the initial 18-month feasibility study is successful, the first detectors could be developed in the next two to three years. ''I do not see any particular reason why similar sensor techniques cannot be expanded to identify human smells by race, age or gender to build a profile of a criminal during or after an incident,'' Tong added."

Submission + - Windows 7 upgrade breaks Zune DRM'd tracks (zunethoughts.com)

Submitted by nhtshot
nhtshot writes: On the zunethoughts.com blob, the editor Jason Dunn posts an email from a Zune owner and recently Windows 7 Upgradee:
""I just upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista, and it went smoothly. That is until I tried to sync my zune. Apparently many of the songs I purchased long ago from the zune marketplace were DRM protected WMA. Of those songs a number are now available only as MP3. Somehow my songs, which worked fine until I upgraded to Win7, are now useless files that won't play on my PC or sync to my zune. I called zune customer support and they told me that per Microsoft they are not allowed to credit me for songs that were once WMA and are now only available as MP3 because the content provider has changed. I am now stuck having spent money for music that is gone forever...It is incredibly hard to believe that they are refusing to help one of their customers out. I guess I am going to have to switch to using the Amazon MP3 store 100% of the time. The only reason I was purchasing from the zune marketplace to begin with was an effort to support Zune.""
Censorship

Submission + - Congress may require ISPs to block fraud sites (cnet.com)

Submitted by FutureDomain
FutureDomain writes: A bill which just passed the House Financial Services Committee would require Internet Service Providers to block access to sites hosting financial scams that pose as members of the government-backed Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). The bill is broad enough to block not only websites, but email and any other "electronic material". The bill is the Investor Protection Act sponsored by Paul Kanjorski. How long until the US starts censoring the Internet?

Submission + - Modern Warfare 2 PC Multiplayer Capped at 9v9 (kotaku.com) 1

Submitted by Saedran
Saedran writes: Not content with merely removing dedicated servers from MW2's PC version, Infinity Ward is also capping Online Multiplayer to 18 (9v9). Previous versions of Call of Duty on the PC had a player cap of 32 (16v16). Console versions, on the other hand, have only ever supported 9v9. Is IW intentionally trying to turn the PC into just another console? Or do they not consider the PC Gaming community to be a worthy investment of their time?

Submission + - Apache Turns 10 But Doesn't Sell Its Soul (internetnews.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Who owns Apache? 10 years ago you might have said IBM, two years ago you might have said Google. Truth is no company has any great stake in the Apache Software Foundation than any individual developer. That's right the Apache Software Foundation with its 70 projects isn't about the big companies dolling out hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to a panel of Apache Founders speaking at the ApacheCon conference, Apache has always been and will always be — a meritocracy.

"One of the reasons why we've been so successful is we've been able to have a place where people with different sets of interests can come together and work," Leung said. "For the most part, people believe it's a neutral playing field, though every year there is a different company that owns Apache, from IBM to Sun to Google, but that's mostly a joke."

Congrats on 10 great years Apache, keep on serving up great open source tech!
Cellphones

Submission + - Verizon Doubles Early Termination Fee for Smartpho (boygeniusreport.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: A new detail has emerged with a few documents and it looks like starting on November 15th Verizon will be charging up to $350 as an early termination fee on “advanced devices.”

This new “improved” fee does have a minute silver lining (if you can even say that): for every month of service completed, the $350 sum will decrease by $10. No word yet on what an “advanced device” constitutes but we can use our imaginations to figure it out.

What do you think? Anyone considering abandoning plans to buy the DROID after hearing this news, or are you just going to get yours before November 15th?

BoyGeniusReport: http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/11/04/confirmed-verizon-wireless-to-charge-up-to-350-early-termination-on-advanced-devices/

Submission + - Mac OS X 10.6.2 Will NOT Block Atom Processors (tumblr.com)

Submitted by pcaylor
pcaylor writes: It looks like the reports of Apple disabling support of Atom processors in Mac OS 10.6.2 was premature. The latest developer build of 10.6.2 (10C535) apparently works fine on Atom based systems. As Stell's Blog writes:
Wow, didn't expect to get linked all over the internet for this damn post. Anyways, in the latest development build Atom appears to have resurrected itself zombie style in 10C535. The Atom lives another day, but nothing is concrete until the final version of 10.6.2 is out.

Perhaps people shouldn't freak out quite so much when unsupported processors break in an development build.
Java

Submission + - OS software claims NASA Software of the Year award (bullsworld.net)

Submitted by Bull_UK
Bull_UK writes: You may remember NASA World Wind from previous Slashdot stories, for those who haven't heard of it before World Wind is an open source 3D interactive world viewer, it was created by NASA Learning Technologies, and released in mid-2004. It is now developed by NASA staff and open source community developers.

The original version was built using .NET, but was switched to Java to promote cross platform development, this current incarnation has been recognised by NASA who have awarded it the NASA Software of the Year award.

As a community member who has worked on this project for several years I feel this shows how the public and Government agencies can work together to produce great software, which is beneficial to the Government, Private sector and the public in general.
Microsoft

Submission + - Browser stats: Firefox finally passes IE6

Submitted by Jared
Jared writes: Web developers have waited for what seems like ages for this month to come along. Internet Explorer remains ahead of the rest of the competition, but since month after month it continues to lose ground to all other browsers, Firefox has now finally surpassed IE6, which is easily the most hated version of Microsoft's browser. Firefox's steady gain continues, Safari remains in a nonthreatening third place, Chrome is happily carving out a small niche for itself, and poor Opera can't seem to budge from fifth place. In October, all browsers except for IE and Opera showed positive growth.

Between October and September, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.07 percentage points (from 65.71 percent to 64.64 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.32 percentage points (from 23.75 percent to 24.07 percent). Safari increased 0.18 percentage points (from 4.24 percent to 4.42 percent) while Chrome once again moved further away from Opera: it gained a worthy 0.41 percentage points (from 3.17 percent to 3.58 percent). Opera slid 0.02 percentage points (from 2.19 percent to 2.17 percent). Although IE's decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions have more share than the newer ones (we can only hope that as Windows 7 gains popularity, this trend will reverse). Still, given that IE6 had 23.30 percent of the market in October, this means that Firefox has now surpassed it.
Google

Submission + - Google Interview Questions Revealed

Submitted by
Pickens
Pickens writes: "Lewis Lin is an interview coach who provides guidance on interview questions and answers and who has interviewed over 150 candidates over the past five years for marketing, product management, and program management positions at Google and Microsoft. Lin has compiled a list of 140 Google interview questions from different sources. Questions include how many piano tuners are there in the entire world, how much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle, how many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap, and a man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened? Our favorite: You have five pirates, ranked from 5 to 1 in descending order. The top pirate has the right to propose how 100 gold coins should be divided among them. But the others get to vote on his plan, and if fewer than half agree with him, he gets killed. How should he allocate the gold in order to maximize his share but live to enjoy it? (Hint: One pirate ends up with 98 percent of the gold.)"

Submission + - Placebo effect caught in the act in spinal nerves (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by SerpensV
SerpensV writes: German scientists found direct evidence that spinal cord is involved in the placebo effect. According to "New Scientist":
"The researchers who made the discovery scanned the spinal cords of volunteers while applying painful heat to one arm. Then they rubbed a cream onto the arm and told the volunteers that it contained a painkiller but in fact it had no active ingredient. Even so, the cream made spinal-cord neural activity linked to pain vanish.
"This type of mechanism has been envisioned for over 40 years for placebo analgesia," says Donald Price, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the new study. "This study provides the most direct test of this mechanism to date.""
Linux

Submission + - Early adopters "bloodied" by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala 3

Submitted by Norsefire
Norsefire writes: The Register reports that early adopters are having a tough time with Karmic Koala, Ubuntu's latest release. 'Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro. Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Ubuntu forums.'

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