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Television

Submission + - Should you hang onto those Avatar glasses? (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In terms of tech buzz at CES, there's none bigger this year than 3D TV. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG and Toshiba all announced 3D TVs to go onsale in 2010, and ESPN announced a 3D sports channel. But with hardly any 3D movies to watch, and questions over price, and whether people will really want to sit in their own lounge rooms, every week, watching TV while looking somewhat vaguely like Roy Orbison — remains to be seen. This article summarises some of the big basic questions hovering over the 3D TV trend.
Math

Submission + - Mathematician finds patterns in Woolworths stores (standupmaths.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A Mathematician in London has revealed precise geometric patterns in the locations of the (now defunct) UK Woolworths stores. This was in response to claims that prehistoric sites follow Mathematical patterns, which some insist may have required extraterrestrial assistance. The 2008 Woolworths sites follow equally precise patterns; should we conclude that they were also built with help from discount-product loving aliens?

Mathematician's post on The Times science blog:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/01/aliens-with-a-taste-for-pick-n-mix-woolworths-stores-follow-uncanny-geometrical-patterns.html

Claims about prehistoric sites and aliens:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1240746/Prehistoric-sat-nav-set-ancestors-Britain.html
Science

Submission + - Should Dolphins Be Treated As 'Non-Human Persons'? (physorg.com) 3

Submitted by krou
krou writes: Should dolphins be treated as 'non-human persons'? Behavioural studies indicate dolphins think of the future, have self-awareness, and distinct personalities, complex social structures 'with individuals co-operating to solve difficult problems or to round up shoals of fish to eat, and with new behaviors being passed from one dolphin to another'. This and more has led two scientists, zoologist Lori Marino and Diana Reiss, professor of psychology at the City University of New York, to claim that this understanding of dolphins may 'mean it [is not] ethical to keep dolphins in aquatic amusement parks for our entertainment, or to kill them for food'. Thomas White, professor of ethics and business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, has gone so far as to claim that dolphins should be treated as "non-human persons". Would /.'ers agree? What are the implications of such a move?

Submission + - Geek Squad - will they finally be exposed?

Submitted by wakim1618
wakim1618 writes: TMZ reports on the Xmas Eve gun incident in the NBA where two players from the Washington Wizards threatened one another with guns over a gambling debt — the standoff between Gilbert Arenas and teammate Javaris Crittenton may have been caught on tape by surveillance cameras. "We're told the Washington Wizards have told D.C. cops they have locker room surveillance video but are having trouble downloading it. The Geek Squad — aka computer-savvy detectives — are going to the Wizards organization today to help." That the general public views the Geek Squad as computer-savvy detectives is depressing enough, but it is not clear whether they have forensic expertise or whether they are licensed to carry out such work. Will this debacle finally shine a big national spotlight on the racket that is Geek Squad? Will they accidentally download videos of nubile fans in the players' locker room?

Submission + - US Tops Other Countries in IPv4 IP Address Ranges (ip2location.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the data analysis (see Table 1 & Chart 1), the United States tops the allocation list by holding 37.46% of the total IP addresses worldwide. It is followed by the United Kingdom (9.94%), China (8.33%), Japan (7.13%), Germany (3.90%), France (3.41%), South Korea (2.99%), Canada (2.51%), Italy (1.78%) and the Netherlands (1.77%). If we compare the data from the year 2008, Italy has replaced Netherlands for the 9th position.

A roundup of the report shows that the total number of IP addresses allocated for use in 2009 is 2,505,141,392 compared with 2,258,290,025 in 2010 which indicates a growth rate of 11% per annum.
The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: Why you won't recognize the Internet by 2020

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: As they imagine the Internet of 2020, computer scientists across the country are starting from scratch and re-thinking everything: from IP addresses to DNS to routing tables to Internet security in general. They're envisioning how the Internet might work without some of the most fundamental features of today's ISP and enterprise networks. Their goal is audacious: To create an Internet without so many security breaches, with better trust and built-in identity management. Researchers are trying to build an Internet that's more reliable, higher performing and better able to manage exabytes of content. And they're hoping to build an Internet that extends connectivity to the most remote regions of the world, perhaps to other planets. This high-risk, long-range Internet research will kick into high gear in 2010, as the U.S. federal government ramps up funding to allow a handful of projects to move out of the lab and into prototype. Indeed, the United States is building the world's largest virtual network lab across 14 college campuses and two nationwide backbone networks so that it can engage thousands – perhaps millions – of end users in its experiments.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Honesty box: the way to stop the inkjet rot (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence
Barence writes: A company in Britain has found a novel solution to the increasingly problem of home inkjet printers being consigned to landfill. The firm has said that any member of staff can print personal documents on their pool of big refurbished printers, with “honesty boxes” left by the printers for them to drop some change into: a much better “green” approach, than investing in a personal printer with a short life-cycle. Could this work?
Science

Submission + - Sceptical climate researcher withholds code (newscientist.com) 1

Submitted by xav_jones
xav_jones writes: New Scientist is reporting that Nicola Scafetta, a physicist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina — whose work is often highlighted by climate-change sceptics, including US senator James Inhofe — is refusing to provide the software he used to other climate researchers attempting to replicate his results. Emails between Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Oslo and Scafetta over the past week had Scaffetta repeatedly refusing to provide the code. "If you just disclose your code and data, then we will manage to get to the bottom of this," Benestad writes in one email. "I really do not understand why you are not able to write your own program to reproduce the calculations," responds Scafetta.
NASA

Submission + - Voyager Makes an Interstellar Discovery (nasa.gov)

Submitted by azoblue
azoblue writes: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.
Image

Music By Natural Selection 164

Posted by samzenpus from the survival-of-the-grooviest dept.
maccallr writes "The DarwinTunes experiment needs you! Using an evolutionary algorithm and the ears of you the general public, we've been evolving a four bar loop that started out as pretty dismal primordial auditory soup and now after >27k ratings and 200 generations is sounding pretty good. Given that the only ingredients are sine waves, we're impressed. We got some coverage in the New Scientist CultureLab blog but now things have gone quiet and we'd really appreciate some Slashdotter idle time. We recently upped the maximum 'genome size' and we think that the music is already benefiting from the change."
Earth

Submission + - Is Black Soot Melting the Himalayas?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Himalayas, home to some 110 peaks that stretch along 1,550 miles of Asia and harbor 10,000 glaciers, is the main source of replenishment to lakes, streams and some of the continent's mightiest rivers, on which millions of people depend for their water supplies. Since the 1960s, the acreage covered by Himalayan glaciers has declined by more than 20 percent with a rate of warming twice the global average over the past 30 years. Now Live Science reports that tiny particles of pollution known as "black carbon" — and not heat-trapping greenhouse gases — may be causing most of the rapid melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. "Tibet's glaciers are retreating at an alarming rate," says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. "Black soot is probably responsible for as much as half of the glacial melt, and greenhouse gases are responsible for the rest." The circulation of the atmosphere in the region causes much of the soot-laden air to "pile up" against the Himalayas. The soot mixes with other dust from nearby deserts, creating a massive brown cloud visible from space that absorbs incoming solar radiation. As this layer heats up in the Himalayan foothills, it rises and enhances the seasonal northward flow of humid monsoon winds, forcing moisture and hot air up the slopes of the majestic mountain range. Jeffrey Kargel of the University of Arizona, Tucson, says that the role of soot "adds a new wrinkle" to the story of glacier melting, but that in the big picture of climate change the main villains are still gases such as CO2. "I do want to make sure we keep our eyes on the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and that's greenhouse gases," he said."
Idle

Submission + - 'Detective' draws gun at Washington snowball fight (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by JynxMe
JynxMe writes: Video taken at the scene shows people pelting a man with snowballs after his car, a Hummer, gets stuck in the snow. The man — not in uniform at the time — then appears to pull out a gun while an angry crowd gathers and chants: "Don't freak out to a snowball fight." At one point in the video the man identifies himself as a "detective", but refuses to give his full name or badge number. Then he proceeds to admit to pulling his gun. BBC has an article on the incident.
The Almighty Buck

Call To "Open Source" AIG Investigation 259

Posted by Soulskill from the still-looking-for-somebody-to-crucify dept.
VValdo writes "As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened, exactly. That may change. In a new op-ed piece, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force AIG to release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to 'break free' of our control. As the prosecutors put it, 'By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story.' Good idea?"

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