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Space

Submission + - NASA to use Metric System on Moon Mission

Submitted by JustOK
JustOK writes: With the first mission scheduled for 2020, NASA plans, among other things, to use "metric units for all operations on the lunar surface"
"NASA's lunar plan also encourages participation by other nations, as well as non-governmental organizations and commercial groups." NASA has nearly 60 space and Earth science projects currently, with about half having some type of international cooperation. North and South lunar poles are being looked at as locations for moon bases. Lunar stays of up to 180 days are being planned.
The project will see "A string of robot spacecraft will shoot for the Moon within the next two years, departing from Japan, China, India, as well as the United States."
According to a report via Yahoo! by Space.com staff, NASA has had informal discussions on using Internet protocols for lunar communications.
Slashback

Submission + - Copy Protection Going Over the Edge?

Submitted by Paco103
Paco103 writes: I recently (today) purchased Need for Speed Carbon Collectors Edition. The game would not run after installing, claiming I need to insert the proper disc. I tried to call their tech support, but it was always busy. I tried submitting a support request online, but it would never go through. It stated the userID field must have a value (I was logged in, not much else *I* could do about it. So in response to the gaming industries lack of respect to their customers, and treating all customers as tbeives from the start, I'd like to submit an open letter to the industry. While this problem is not isolated to the gaming industry by any means, they are what hit my nerve today. At least with DRM, I *CAN* listen/watch how and when they say. With my game, I am not even able to do that tonight.

Here's just a thought. How about you give your customers the benefit of the doubt. I just bought a game today (Need for Speed Carbon by EA Games, if you're wondering). When I try to run it, I am told I need to insert the correct disc.

I resent being treated like a thief. The people that are copying this will continue to copy it. People like me, that purchased the game legit, are left wondering why we can't play the game we purchased, when James across the street was playing the copy he downloaded illegally a week before it was released.

Treat your customers like the enemy, and they may soon become it.

I don't mind copy protection that prevents me from using virtual images, as I like to do because dealing with discs can get annoying. It only affects me if I try to run the game in a non-standard way.

This just pisses me off as a loyal customer. Please feel free to provide solutions if you feel like respecting your customers. I'm not waiting around. I bought this game today, and I will play it as I have bought the right to.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Inexpensive upconverter for PS3 with older HDTV?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For those of us who want to use PS3s with older HDTVs that only support component video input at 1080i resolution, what are the options for inexpensive upconverter units that can take both 720p and 1080i input and always produce component 1080i output? I've heard that some HDTV tuners are capable of this (e.g. the Samsung SIR-TS360), but are there better options out there? And if the upconverter takes HDMI input, is that enough to ensure forward compatibility for Blu-Ray playback at 1080i native, even when they start using the Image Constraint Token?
The Media

Submission + - C-SPAN: Liberating & Restricting Floor Footage

Submitted by
bigmammoth
bigmammoth writes: "C-SPAN bid to "liberate" the House and Senate floor footage has re-emerged and been shot down. In an aim to build support a recent New York Times editorial called for reality TV for congress. But what is missing from this editorial is the issue of privatization and the subsequent restriction of meaningful access to these media assets. Currently the US government produces this floor footage and it is public domain. This enables projects such as metavid to publicly archive these media assets in high quality ogg theora using all open source software guaranteeing freely reusable access to both the archive and all the media assets. In contrast C-SPAN's view only online offerings disappear into their pay for access archive after two weeks and are then subject to many restrictions.
If C-SPAN succeeds reusable access to floor footage will be lost and sites such as metavid will be forced to stop archiving. Because of C-SPAN's zealous IP enforcement metavid has already been forced to take down all of already "liberated" committee hearings which are C-SPAN produced. Fortunately, the house leadership sees private cameras as a loss of "dignity and decorum" and will be denying C-SPANS request"
Businesses

Submission + - What is the HR "state of the art"?

Submitted by pamar
pamar writes: Sometimes in January I will have to meet a couple of HR people to discuss the new Skill Assessment and Performance Review process which my company has decided to adopt.

I am a bit skeptical (based on how the previous attempts at mapping skills/aptitudes/performance/training worked) but I would like to have something to back up my position.

Apart from Peopleware, can someone please point to other resources/methodologies/concepts/best practices/"patterns" regarding:

* How to map and assess employees skills — especially in IT
* Corollary elements to better profile employees (Example: being an ACM/IEEE member, OS contributor, tech magazine subscription)
* Career path and titles, possibly linked to the current skill set in some objective way

I do know, for example, that Construx (www.construx.com) has/used to have a detailed ladder system on their website.

Anything else? How does the Army approach this problem, for example? Are there some specific methodologies which you can point me to, so that I have a better grasp of what the "state of the art" is in large (1000+ employees), high-tech (IT/VAR) companies is supposed to be?

N.B.: I am not asking if you think that HR is a bunch of baloney (or not). I am asking for resources to better understand what the "state of the art is". In other terms, if I asked about, say "Function Points" I would not care about your opinion regarding FP (mine would be "a bunch of baloney") but pointers to a concise explanation of what they are, how they are supposed to work and — even better, some well-reasoned criticism of them.
Music

Journal Journal: Why your early adulthood music likely stays with you.

Journal by phorest

Unfortunately for my particular generation there may be a reason why songs like "Freebird" & "Fly Like An Eagle" stay with us.
Now if only someone can create a way to counter-act this phenomenon so one may actually enjoy hearing them again!

Link to Research.

Link to Graph.

Wii

Submission + - Wii Woes

Submitted by John Fletcher
John Fletcher writes: The Independent reports of some weird problem and mishap (Wiinjuries) with Wii: 1. If you play one near a lighted Christmas tree, you may need to switch the lights off or you might find it behaving very strangely. Nitendo said: "For the best performance of your Wii, avoid bright light sources behind or near the TV, shining towards the Wii remote or reflecting off the TV screen." 2. Nintendo offered to take back the 200,000 wrist straps in circulation after dozens of reported 'wiinjuries' when owners lost control of the wiimote causing bruised heads, blackeyes and even damaged TV.
Movies

Submission + - New Transformers Trailer Shows Battles, Prime

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Transformers Movie is now only 7 months away. A couple of months back we saw an underwhelming teaser showing the Beagle 2 'rover' discovering robots on Mars. A new trailer has been posted on the official website [flash] showing battle scenes, transformations and a fleeting glimpse of what appears to be Optimus Prime. Autobots, roll out!
United States

Journal Journal: More Troops in Iraq 9

Journal by pudge

Why is everyone up in arms about Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq when almost no one who has an opinion actually has the remotest idea of whether it's the right thing to do?

Just curious.
Red Hat Software

Submission + - Red Hat Sales Surge

Submitted by
head_dunce
head_dunce writes: "Red Hat reported on it's third quarter earnings, and it did quite a bit better than expected even with the Oracle and SuSE/Microsoft new kids on the block.

From the conference call:
CFO Charlie Peters said that the company is "cautiously optimistic that competitive efforts by some of the largest technology companies in the world are actually expanding our opportunity."

Trip Chowdhry, managing director Global Equities Research, said Oracle has misread the market for open source software. "Oracle thinks Linux support is a cost issue; it isn't. It's a business issue."
So it looks like all these companies trying to be like Red Hat has only validated Linux in big business. And all it takes is one tech support call to Microsoft to understand the value of support. Congrats to Red Hat!"
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Ryzom.org Unsuccessful

Submitted by
orospakr
orospakr writes: "Despite their efforts, Ryzom.org's bid was declined by the court.
Xavier's post:
At the end, there were three offers presented, and the other two were bigger than our's. They are keeping more employees than we do, and offer more money. We should get the details of the other offers soon, so I should be able to tell you more then. In the meantime, I'd like to personally congratulate the winner, Gameforge, and I wish them good luck."
The Internet

Submission + - Police consider Youtube effective against crime

Submitted by
Khalid
Khalid writes: "The Canadian Press is reporting that after a 72-second surveillance tape was posted on Youtube, a suspect in a stabbing murder case has surrendered.

Consequently, police in Hamilton, Ontario say they now consider YouTube to be an effective crime-fighting tool.

From the article:
Police say the clip didn't lead to any witnesses coming forward, but the extra attention paid to the case because of the use of YouTube likely encouraged the suspect to turn himself in.
Hamilton police believe it's the first time law enforcement has used YouTube as a direct investigative tool.
Staff Sgt. Jorge Lasso, who made the decision to post the clip online, says the video had registered some 34,000 hits as of Thursday.
"

Non-Geeky Gifts for Tech Geeks 142

Posted by Zonk from the when-you-absolutely-have-to-serve-hockey-puck-smoothie dept.
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad.com has just put out another holiday gift guide. They've gathered together, along with the usual video cards and whatnot, several non-techie toys with a techie slant. With the exception of an mp3 and a digital camera, everything else they recommend is stuff I haven't seen on any list before. They have things ranging from $10 to $7500. My favorite has to be the Blendtec blender. 2 horsepower motor. Turns hockey pucks into mulch."

Spam Volume Jumps 35% In November 371

Posted by CowboyNeal from the crazy-email-subject-lines dept.
gregleimbeck writes "Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters. 'There's been a huge increase in spam volume,' says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, 'from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28.'"
Networking

Submission + - How Web Crawlers Work

Submitted by
Eran Aharonovich
Eran Aharonovich writes: "A web crawler (also known as a web spider or web robot) is a program or automated script which browses the internet seeking for web pages to process.

Many applications mostly search engines, crawl websites everyday in order to find up-to-date data.
Most of the web crawlers save a copy of the visited page so they could easily index it later and the rest crawl the pages for page search purposes only such as searching for emails ( for SPAM ).

How does it work?

A crawler needs a starting point which would be a web address, a URL.

In order to browse the internet we use the HTTP network protocol which allows us to talk to web servers and download or upload data from and to it.

The crawler browses this URL and then seeks for hyperlinks (A tag in the HTML language).

Then the crawler browses those links and moves on the same way.

Up to here it was the basic idea. Now, how we move on it completely depends on the purpose of the software itself.

If we only want to grab emails then we would search the text on each web page (including hyperlinks) and look for email addresses. This is the easiest type of software to develop.

Search engines are much more difficult to develop.

When building a search engine we need to take care of a few other things.

1. Size — Some web sites are very large and contain many directories and files. It may consume a lot of time harvesting all of the data.

2. Change Frequency — A web site may change very often even a few times a day. Pages can be deleted and added each day. We need to decide when to revisit each site and each page per site.

3. How do we process the HTML output? If we build a search engine we would want to understand the text rather than just treat it as plain text. We must tell the difference between a caption and a simple sentence. We must look for bold or italic text, font colors, font size, paragraphs and tables. This means we must know HTML very good and we need to parse it first. What we need for this task is a tool called "HTML TO XML Converters". One can be found on my website. You can find it in the resource box or just go look for it in the Noviway website: Noviway

That's it for now. I hope you learned something."

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Work expands to fill the time available. -- Cyril Northcote Parkinson, "The Economist", 1955

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