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Education

Submission + - Speed of light exceeded by German physicists? (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Tibore Escalante
Tibore Escalante writes: Two physicists in Germany claim that they've exceeded "c":

"'We have broken speed of light'"; Telegraph.co.uk

Quote: "The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons — energetic packets of light — travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of.""
Networking

Submission + - Are the current operating systems IPv6 ready? 3

Submitted by __NR_kill
__NR_kill writes: While there is much hype about many of the advantages of Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux and which one is better for what, are they actually IPv6 ready? It seems not. The newly installed Ubuntu 7.04 loads automatically the ipv6 kernel module, which in my case (IPv4 only network), dropped the network throughput from 100mbps to about 10mbps. I wondered why for about a week, until I came across this funny thread, explaining it all. Then I remembered having a client running Windows Vista and complaining about p2p programmes killing completely his network to the point that Firefox failed loading the homepage (google). I gave it a try — I disabled IPv6 for the network interfaces of his Vista box, rebooted and the p2p programs were not affecting in any way the overall network performance. Two different operating systems — same problem — same solution.

My questions to the slashdot community are whether you've experienced similar problems and what are the criteria an operating system is IPv6 ready when two of the most popular systems fail on such simple tasks even when IPv6 is not used? How are ISP's expected to roll out IPv6 when such breakage occurs?
Biotech

Submission + - Man with tiny brain shocks doctors

Submitted by
mernil
mernil writes: "New Scientist reports: "A man with an unusually tiny brain manages to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, which was caused by a fluid build-up in his skull /.../ Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled. "- What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," comments Max Muenke, a paediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, US."
Microsoft

Submission + - Zune 2.0 hitting stores before holiday season (blorge.com) 1

Submitted by
fdmendez
fdmendez writes: "With the Zune reaching it's goal of 1million units soldthis week, Microsoft plans to take its digital audio player to the next step by introducing Zune 2.0 and other models.

Microsoftreports that the Zune has officiallypassed the1 million unitlandmark this week with 1.2 million Zunes officially sold. Not satisfied with leaving the player where its at, Microsoft has confirmed the existence andimpendinglaunch of the long rumored Zune 2.0 or 2nd generation Zune.

A MicrosoftPR representative had the following to say regarding the release date of Zune 2.0:

"We have seen the rumors floating around, but we haven't announced specific dates or details for the next generation of the Zune devices or service. That said, Zune follows the cycle of the consumer electronics cycle so you can expect an update later this year prior to the holiday season."

The PR rep continued into vague details aboutfuture Zune products. "There are three predictable paths along which we'll expand Zune."

Microsoft will expand the Zune family with new styles, sizes, and price points. Future Zune products will featurepodcasting support and expanded video support. The Zune will also move into othergeographic marketswhenMicrosoft feels ithas an appealing product to offer those demographics.

Perhaps most importantly of all, the representative mentioned that Microsoft will build on the wireless support. Maybe we'll finally have the freedom of synching our digital audio players via wi-fi.

The rep didn't mention anything specific about Microsoft's rumored answer to the iPod Shuffle. But interestingrumorsfromsources considered "reliable"point to a very innovative product.

The product is essentially a music playingSD card thatwillplug into any SD slot. The second part of the playeris what makes theSDcard usable as a digital audio player. That part is a type of sleeve that'll allowthe user to control the music andplug in headphones forputting that music playing goodness to work. The player can't be turned on or off as it is always in the same state.

Sounds like good things are comingto the anti-Apple DAP crowd (which includes me)."
Biotech

Submission + - HIV vaccine ready for clinical trials (pressesc.com)

Submitted by
amigoro
amigoro writes: "A vaccine that is capable of delivering a double whammy against AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus by both providing immunity against the infection while at the same time destroying cells infected by the virus is ready for clinical trials, a group of Russian researchers announced today."
Programming

Submission + - Linux kernel 2.6.23 to have stable userspace drive

Submitted by
liquidat
liquidat writes: "Linus Torvalds included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Now the last patches where uploaded and the API was included in Linus tree. The idea of the API is to make life easier for driver developers:

This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.
(more...)"
Security

Submission + - Court orders dismissal of U.S. wiretapping lawsuit (computerworld.com)

Submitted by jcatcw
jcatcw writes: A U.S. appeals court has ordered the dismissal of a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency for a wiretapping program because it said the plaintiffs haven't been hurt by the agency's actions. A divided three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled today that the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and a group of journalists, lawyers and academics, be sent back to a District Court judge to be dismissed. In August 2006, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan ruled that the NSA program, which monitored telephone and Internet communications without court-ordered warrants, was illegal.
Security

Submission + - MediaDefender denies entrapment (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Jeek Elemental
Jeek Elemental writes: ArsTechnica reports on the Miivi.com site, MediaDefender says it was for internal testing only.
Apparently, they decided to take down the site and change the whois record to avoid hacker attacks and spam.
As expected, the MPAA says: "The Media Defender story is false. We have no relationship with that company at all."
Wonder what they were testing that required a spyware client and a registered domain...

Article here:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070706-medi adefender-denies-entrapment-accusations-with-fake- torrent-site.html
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Fox News: Universal health care breeds terrorists. 37

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Today on Fox News's Your World With Neil Cavuto, National Review Online columnist Jerry Bowyer attacked Michael Moore's movie SiCKO and its positive portrayal of the health care in countries such as Britain and France. He argued that national health care systems are breeding grounds for terrorists because they are "bureaucratic." "I think the terrorists have shown over and over again...they're very good at gaming the system with bureaucracies," said Bowyer.
Media

Submission + - University boffins squeeze 500GB onto a DVD (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by JagsLive
JagsLive writes: theRegister reports, "The University of Berlin, with partners Budapest University of Technology and Economics and Universita Politecnica delle Marche in Italy, has managed to work out how to store 500GB of data on a regular HD DVD or Blu-ray disc. By applying wavelength multiplexing techniques to multi-layer disc structures, very high storage densities can be achieved, Professor Susanna Orlic told German site Pressetext. The 500GB prototype has 50 data-storage layers. Orl said the technology has the potential to store one terabyte (1TB) of data."
Networking

Submission + - Germany passes "Anti-Hacker" law

Submitted by RotHorseKid
RotHorseKid writes: German legislators have just passed the much-dreaded "Hacker Paragraph", which essentially says that all software that can potentially used as a "Hacker Tool" is outlawed. Somehow these IT-savvy legislators missed the fact that most of these tools are also used for intrusion detection. So, essentially all german Security Consultants, Network Administrators and other users of intrusion detection software are halfway in jail now.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Russian Armoured Vehicle running on screws

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Here is Russian armored military vehicle from the seventies which runs on a pair of giant screws. It was an old russian prototype of off-road vehicle which never made it to the production line. From the video it looks to be more maneuverable than a modern tank.

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