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Earth

'Eco-Anarchists' Targeting Nuclear and Nanotech Workers 426

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the ignorance-is-freedom dept.
scibri writes, quoting Nature: "A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists. A group calling itself the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front has claimed responsibility for the non-fatal shooting of a nuclear-engineering executive on 7 May in Genoa. The same group sent a letter bomb to a Swiss pro-nuclear lobby group in 2011; attempted to bomb IBM's nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland in 2010; and has ties with a group responsible for at least four bomb attacks on nanotechnology facilities in Mexico. Another branch of the group attacked railway signals in Bristol, UK, last week in an attempt to disrupt employees of nearby defense technology firms (no word on whether anyone noticed the difference between an anarchist attack and a normal Wednesday on the UK's railways). A report by Swiss intelligence says such loosely affiliated groups are increasingly working together."
Communications

Researchers Create Life-sized 3D Hologram For Videoconferencing 60

Posted by timothy from the perfect-for-the-basement dept.
yyzmcleod writes with this excerpt: "A research team at Queen's University has created a human-scale 3D hologram pod that allows people in different locations to videoconference as if they are standing in front of each other. Called TeleHuman, the technology is the creation of professor Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab, and his graduate team at the Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Similar to the Star Trek holodeck, participants can walk around the 3D hologram of the remote person they're talking to and view them from all sides. More importantly, the system captures 3D visual cues that 2D video miss, such as head orientation, gaze and overall body posture."
Chrome

Submission + - Google introduces programming test for attending GoogleIO (google.com)

Submitted by
X10
X10 writes: "Google announced some time ago that they want only developers to attend their Google IO conference. They hinted at developing a "programming test" that you have to pass before you can register. Now, they have introduced the Input Output machine at the same time they announced that Google IO registration will open on March 27. I take it that registrations will be ordered according to the quality of one's IO machine. Cute idea...."

Submission + - Wikipedia Didn't Kill Brittanica. Windows Did (wired.com)

Submitted by rudy_wayne
rudy_wayne writes: The end of Encyclopedia Brittanica has been widely reported and its demise has been blamed on Wikipedia. However, this article at Wired points out that the real reason is something entirely different.

"In 1990 Brittanica had $650 million in revenue. In 1996, long before Wikipedia existed, it was bankrupt and the entire company was sold for $135 million. What happened in between was Encarta. Even though Encarta didn't make money for Microsoft and Brittanica produced its own encyclopedia CDs, Encarta was an inexpensive, multimedia encyclopedia that helped Microsoft sell Windows PCs to families. And once you had a PC in the living room or den where the encyclopedia used to be, it was all over for Mighty Brittanica. It’s not that Encarta made knowledge cheaper, it’s that technology supplanted its role as a purchasable ‘edge’ for over-anxious parents. They bought junior a new PC instead of a Britannica. When Wikipedia emerged five years later, Brittanica was already a weakened giant. It wasn’t a free and open encyclopedia that defeated its print edition. It was the personal computer itself."
Games

Submission + - Playing with friends makes you a better gamer (unm.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer scientists at the University of Colorado and the Stevens Institute of Technology have shown that gamers that play with friends player better. The study used the blockbuster FPS Halo: Reach as a testbed, and combined ground truth data on friendships from an anonymous survey with data about the multiplayer competitions extracted using the Reach Stats API. They found that the more friends you have on your team, the more assists, the fewer betrayals, the more you score and the greater the probability your team wins, and that this "friends for the win" effect goes above and beyond the benefits of playing with skilled strangers. (They also show that older gamers are statistically better than younger players, contrary to popular opinion.) Study lead Prof. Aaron Clauset, writing on his blog, says that friends "may be able to effectively anticipate or adapt to each others' actions or strategies without an explicit need for verbal (and thus time consuming) communication or coordination" and "these effects may be fairly universal, and not merely limited to the traditional domains like sports and war, where practicing together has a long tradition." The full results of the study are on the arxiv.
Businesses

Aderall Or Nothing: Anatomy of the Great Amphetamine Drought 611

Posted by timothy from the subtractitall-oddly-much-less-popular dept.
pigrabbitbear writes "To prevent hoarding of materials and their potential for theft and illicit use, the Drug Enforcement Agency sets quotas for the chemical precursors to drugs like Adderall. The DEA projects the need for amphetamine salts, then produces and distributes the materials to pharmaceutical companies so that they can produce their drugs. But with the number of prescriptions for Adderall jumping 13 percent in the past year, pharmaceutical companies claim that the quotas are no longer sufficient for supplying Americans with their Adderall. The DEA contends that their quotas do, in fact, meet demands, and that any shortages arise from pharmaceutical companies selectively producing only certain, typically name-brand and more expensive versions of ADHD medications."
IBM

Submission + - NASA unplugs last mainframe (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "It's somewhat hard to imagine that NASA doesn't need the computing power of an IBM mainframe any more but NASA CIO posted on her blog today at the end of the month, the Big Iron will be no more at the space agency. NASA CIO Linda Cureton wrote: This month marks the end of an era in NASA computing. Marshall Space Flight Center powered down NASA's last mainframe, the IBM Z9 Mainframe."
Government

Submission + - DHS reading your Tweets and Facebook postings. (cnn.com) 1

Submitted by BitterOak
BitterOak writes: Apparently, the DHS is reading your Tweets and looking at your Facebook wall. This may seem reasonable if they're trying to prevent a terrorist attack, but apparently, they're more interested in whether or not you are criticizing them!
Security

Submission + - Tools, Techniques, Procedures of the RSA hackers revealed

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Details of the tools, techniques and procedures used by the hackers behind the RSA security breach have been revealed in a research paper published by Australian IT security company Command Five. The paper also, for the first time, explains links between the RSA hack and other major targeted attacks. This paper is a vendor-neutral must-read for any network defenders concerned by the hype surrounding "Advanced Persistent Threats".

Submission + - Planned Post-ACTA Repression In European Union: The Documents (falkvinge.net)

Submitted by petval
petval writes: Rick Falkvinge, the Swedish Pirate Party MEP, discovered two interesting European Commission documents — Proposal for a Revision of the Directive of Intellectual Property Rights and Notice and Takedown procedures that give a glimpse of the planned crackdown on online freedoms of speech post-ACTA. Falkvinge informs about some of the most blatant parts like references to eroding the common carrier status of the ISPs, fast-track lowcost civil procedures which should we read as "Fast-track, low-cost civil procedures: Civil procedures means “lawsuits against ordinary people”. Fast-track means “without delays caused by due process of law and exercising of rights”. Low-cost means “preferably in bulk”.. Continuing with other cases he also mentions some similarites with Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
His closing really sums it well: All in all, this is a completely horrible document that shows how the European Commission prepares to legislate post-ACTA. The proposals above have already entered the legislative process and will result in a real legislative proposal. We need to stay more vigilant than ever.
Canada

Submission + - Canada ISPs not subject to content rules, court says (financialpost.com)

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes: Upholding a 2010 decision from the Federal Court of Appeal, the country’s highest court said ISPs cannot be subject to the Broadcasting Act of 1991 because they have no control over the content they distribute. The ruling ends a years-old dispute over whether ISPs that deliver movies and television shows over their networks should be regulated as conventional broadcasters as well as telecommunications providers.

A cultural coalition made up of several Canadian media industry groups — including the Canadian Media Production Association (CMPA), the Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) and others — argued ISPs should be required to help pay for the production of made-in-Canada music, films and television. Conventional broadcasters, of which Bell and Rogers already qualify, have long been required to do so by law.

Comment Re:Oh my god! (Score 1) 129

by FauxReal (#38846601) Attached to: North Star May Be Wasting Away
Wow, I only recently started delving into Sci-Fi stories. Never heard of this one but it sounds cool. Thanks for the post! (The most recent one I read is " Machines That Think: The Best Science Fiction Stories About Robots and Computers" A pretty good collection.)

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