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Moon

Protecting the Apollo Landing Sites From Later Landings 339

Posted by timothy from the everyone-must-have-a-hobby dept.
R3d M3rcury writes "The Lunar X-Prize is a contest offering $20 million to the first private organization to land and maneuver a robotic rover on the moon. There is also a $1 million bonus to anyone who can get a picture of a man-made object on the moon. But one archeologist believes that 'The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to protect them.' He's concerned that we may end up with rover tracks destroying historic artifacts, such as Neil Armstrong's first bootprint, or that a mistake could send a rocket slamming into a landing site. He calls on the organizers to ban any contestant from landing within 100KM of a prior moon landing site. Now he seems to think this just means Apollo. What about the Luna and Surveyor landers? What about the Lunokhod rovers? Are they fair game?"
News

First Zero-Gravity Wedding Planned 133

Posted by samzenpus from the vomit-comet-nuptials dept.
Trenchcoatjedi writes "A couple from Brooklyn, NY are planning the first wedding in zero gravity. The wedding will take place June 20th aboard a parabolic flight operated by Zero G Corp and will be officiated by Richard Garriott of Ultima fame. The dress is designed by a Japanese haute couture designer and is specifically intended to be worn in zero gravity. Even the wedding rings will be made from meteorite."
Medicine

Hospital Turns Away Ambulances When Computers Go Down 406

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-that's-not-good dept.
CurtMonash writes "The Indianapolis Star reports that Tuesday Morning, Methodist Hospital turned away patients in ambulances, for the first time in its 100-plus history. Why? Because the electronic health records (EHR) system had gone down the prior afternoon — due to a power surge — and the backlog of paperwork was no longer tolerable. If you think about that story, it has a couple of disturbing aspects. Clearly the investment in or design of high availability, surge protection, etc. were sadly lacking. But even leaving that aside — why do problems with paperwork make it necessary to turn away patients? Maybe the latter is OK, since there obviously were other, more smoothly running hospitals to send the patient to. Still, the whole story should be held up as a cautionary tale for hospitals and IT suppliers everywhere."
Earth

Research Vehicle Reaches the Bottom of the Ocean 165

Posted by kdawson from the ah-ooo-gah dept.
timothy found BBC coverage of the voyage of the Nereus, which on May 31 dove to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. Only two vehicles have accomplished this feat before, the last 11 years ago. "The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight tether. Its thin, fibre-optic tether to the research vessel Kilo Moana allows the submersible to make deep dives and be highly manoeuvrable. Nereus can also be switched into a free-swimming, autonomous vehicle. ... The Challenger Deep... is the deepest abyss on Earth at 11,000m-deep, more than 2km (1.2 miles) deeper than Mount Everest is high. At that depth, pressures reach 1,100 times those at the surface."
Media

Firefox 3.5 Beta Boosts Open Video Standard 281

Posted by kdawson from the nothing-flashy dept.
bmullan writes "Dailymotion, one of the world's largest video sites, announced support for Open Video. They've put out a press release, a blog post on the new Open Video site, and an HTML 5 demo site where you can see some of the things that you can do with open video and Firefox 3.5. (You can get the Firefox 3.5 beta here.) Dailymotion is automatically transcoding all of the content that their users create, and expect to have around 300,000 videos in the open Ogg Theora and Vorbis formats."
Hardware Hacking

Making a Child Locating System 1092

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-contact-a-local-fish-and-wildlife-officer-for-radio-tagging dept.
celtic_hackr writes "Well, I never thought I'd be an advocate for placing GPS devices on people. However, since it took less than three days for my local school district to misplace my daughter, I have decided that something needs to be done. By the school district's own admission it has a recurring problem of placing children on the wrong buses. Fortunately, my daughter was located, with no thanks to the local school district. Therefore, I would like input on a way to be able to keep track of my child. I know there are personal tracking devices out there. I have nothing against these systems. But I want more than this. My specification are: 1) a small unobtrusive device I can place on my daughter, 2) an application to pull up on any computer, a map with a dot indicating the real-time position of my child, 3) a handheld device with the equivalent information, 4) [optional] a secure web application/plug-in I can install on my own domain allowing me to track her from anyplace in the world, 5) a means of turning it all off, 6) a Linux based solution of the above. I believe all the pieces for making such a system are out there. Has anyone built anything like this? Is there an open source solution? How would I go about building my own? Has anyone hacked any of these personal trackers before, to serve their own purposes? How does a tinfoil hat wearer engineer such a device to make sure Big-Brother isn't watching too? Can these devices be locked down so only certain devices can pick up the GPS location of an individual locator? What other recommendations do you have?"
Communications

Google's "Wave" Blurs Chat, Email, Collaboration Software 170

Posted by timothy from the you-may-be-thinking-of-shimmer-floor-polish dept.
superglaze writes "Google has unveiled a distributed, P2P-based collaboration and conversation platform called Wave. Developers are being invited to join an open source project that has been formed to create a Google Wave Federation Protocol, which will underlie the system. Anyone will be able to create a 'wave,' which is a type of hosted conversation, Google has said. Waves will essentially incorporate real-time dialogue, photos, videos, maps, documents and other information forms within a single, shared communications space. Developers can also work on embedding waves into websites, or creating multimedia robots and gadgets that can be incorporated within the Google Wave client." Jamie points out this more informative link.
Microsoft

Submission + - MS VP boasts Office 2007 saves 50% over Openoffice (microsoft.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Microsoft Corporate Vice President Allison Watson recently told partners several MS success stories, including this one:

"After 16 months of employee frustration, lost revenue, delays in getting proposals to clients, and escalating IT support costs, Art of Transport Logistics migrated from OpenOffice.org to the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Projected savings? Around 50 percent in support costs, with an uplift in staff productivity of US$550 per person, per year."

See:
http://www.microsoft.com/emea/partnersolutionmarketplace/CaseStudyDetail.aspx?casestudyid=4000003242"
Idle

Submission + - Dormitory turned into huge 12x10 color display. (projekt-piwo.pl) 1

Submitted by macson_g
macson_g writes: Students from Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland) once again turned one of dormitories into huge display. The project is called P.I.W.O. (B.E.E.R.). This time they converted 10-story building into 4-color, 12x10 display. The display was used to display animations, and to play interactive games as well. On the project page (in polish, Google translation here) you can watch almost hour-long video, featuring music videos, Tetris session, dancing Michael Jackson, Duke Nukem and Mario.
Privacy

Submission + - Budget spy opps in South Australia

Submitted by GenThrift
GenThrift writes: Model air plane enthusiast captures criminals with home made drone survailance "A MODEL aeroplane equipped with a camera has inadvertently captured graffiti artists at work in the southern suburbs, leading to their arrest.The aerial surveillance was carried out over the Aldinga Bay Surf Life Saving Club in March by an model aircraft enthusiast using what police described as a "slow -flying electric remote-controlled aeroplane".The modified aircraft was rigged with a camera, attached with a rubber band, which had been set to capture images every 1.5 seconds.The images proved much more interesting than the plane owner was expecting — they captured graffiti vandals at work.The plane operator sent the pictures to South Coast police who used them to identify the alleged offenders." http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,25480726-5006301,00.html

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