Ashran - Slashdot User

Submission + - Eco-ruin caused the fall of Bronze Age Argaric civ (bbc.co.uk)

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kfz versicherung

on Friday November 16, 2007 @11:12AM

kfz versicherung writes: "A new study suggests that the fall of the Bronze Age Argaric people in south-east Spain, Europe's driest area, was caused by the exhaustion of precious natural resources resulting from the early civilisation. By compiling a pollen sequence to see how vegetation changed over thousands of years, the researchers obtained clues to how human settlement and climate affected ecosystems. The study revealed significant amounts of charcoal about 4,200 years ago, just after the Argaric civilisation emerged. The authors say that this is a sign that Bronze Age people were setting fires to clear the forests for mining activities and grazing."

Submission + - Artic seed bank starting up (bbc.co.uk)

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kfz versicherung

on Friday November 16, 2007 @11:06AM

kfz versicherung writes: "Inside a mountain in Spitsbergen, on an norwegian island more 600 miles (1000km) north of mainland norway, researchers have constructed secured vault to safeguard the world's crops from disasters, such as nuclear wars and asteroids. At 0F (-18C), seeds for important crops like wheat, barley and peas can last for up to 1,000 years. Having completed the so called "doomsday vault", researchers now have begun with the two-month long process of cooling it down for operation."

Submission + - Potential landing sites for EU Mars Rover selected (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Friday November 16, 2007 @10:57AM

kfz versicherung writes: "In 2013 the european equivalent of NASA, ESA will launch its mission to mars called ExoMars. The multi-million-euro mission calls for a rover weighing just over 200kg that can trundle over the martian soil in search of past and present life. Now prime landing spots have been selected, the list includes two sites at Meridiani Planum, the flat expanse near Mars' equator where Nasa's Opportunity found possible evidence for an ancient sea. Since on the early Earth, all the primordial biochemistry took place in phyllosilicates, some kind of mineral that is a good matrix for preserving organic matter. That is the best place to start looking for fossil life."

Submission + - German amateur cracks WWII mega-code in 46 second

Submitted by

JrOldPhart

on Friday November 16, 2007 @09:19AM

JrOldPhart writes: "Another fiat for the radio/computer geek team! http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071116/wl_nm/britain_germany_codebreaker_dc_1;_ylt=AgP7WztOUETnoN_c56IonDwE1vAI While the re-created Colossus computer ground away, "Schueth's computer program actually managed to crack the hardest part of the challenge — deciphering the code of a Lorenz SZ42 encryptor, which has approximately 16 million million million permutations — in just 46 seconds.""

Submission + - The OpenMoko Linux Phone

Submitted by LinucksGirl on Thursday November 15, 2007 @04:46PM

LinucksGirl writes: This tutorial introduces the OpenEmbedded build environment used to create filesystem images for OpenMoko phones, such as the Neo 1973. The OpenMoko environment provides a completely free development environment for running application and system code on supported phone hardware, eliminating all dependency on proprietary code.

Submission + - Mario Galaxy, an indepth review (arstechnica.com)

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kfz versicherung

on Thursday November 15, 2007 @04:24PM

kfz versicherung writes: "At E3, fans were promised that Super Mario Galaxy would be the "true" sequel to Mario 64, a game that many Nintendo and platforming fans speak of in hushed, respectful tones. This would likely be the only admission by Nintendo that Super Mario Sunshine wasn't exactly the game it could have been. Thus begins the extremely uninspired story: Bowser has the Princess, he has taken her to the stars, and Mario will get some new powers as he tries to rescue her. Nothing we haven't seen before, but as the crowds at the local video game store where I picked my copy up can attest, this is exactly what we want. See how ArsTechnica likes the long awaited sequel to Mario64."

Submission + - Do quantum laws give rise to our classical world? (physorg.com)

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kfz versicherung

on Thursday November 15, 2007 @01:26PM

kfz versicherung writes: "Quantum physics forbids that quantum mechanics works on a macro level in the classical world. Now Kofler and Brukner demonstrated that the time evolution of a quantum system, no matter how macroscopic the system is, cannot be treated in a classical sense. "Just because something is big doesn't mean it can be described by classical physics." Then referring back to the case of spin, he continues: "Arbitrarily large spins can still have a quantum time evolution and violate the Leggett-Garg inequality." Next, the two realized that coarse-grained measurements are used in realistic conditions, such as situations that we are confronted with every day, as the resolution of the apparatuses usually is limited. "If you are bound to restrict yourself to coarse-grained measurements of the spin," Kofler explains, "you get the classical Newtonian laws of motion.""

Submission + - Possible backdoor found in RNG standardizedby NSA (schneier.com) 1

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Thursday November 15, 2007 @09:34AM

kfz versicherung writes: "Defining algorithm for random numbers is one of the hardest fields in mathematics. We all know Microsoft failed miserably, even Linux (pdf) and SSL had their fair share of troubles. But now Bruce Schneier tells us the Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG, one of four random number generation algorithms standardized by the NSA (pdf). While on first look just slower than the other three, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed at Crypto 2007 that the algorithm contains a weakness that can only be described a backdoor. Their presentation showed that the constants used have a relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can predict the output of the random-number generator after collecting just 32 bytes of its output."

Submission + - Strange new space weather phenomen discovered (physorg.com) 1

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Wednesday November 14, 2007 @12:07PM

kfz versicherung writes: "Something strange is happening in the atmosphere above Africa and researchers have converged on Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the phenomenon. Researchers liken the plumes to smoke billowing out of a factory smokestack — except instead of ordinary ash and dust, ion plumes are made of electrified gas floating so high above ground they come in contact with space itself. "The plumes appear during geomagnetic storms and they can interfere with satellite transmissions, airline navigation and radio communications," says Fuller-Rowell. Indeed, it is their effect on GPS signals that led to the discovery of plumes over North America just a few years ago."

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