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Australian Politician Caught Viewing Porn 150

Posted by samzenpus from the stiff-opposition-party dept.
destinyland writes "An Australian Parliament member has resigned after admitting he'd used government computers to access porn and gambling sites. McLeay 'gave an uncomfortable press conference outside Parliament House,' notes one technology site, 'during which he admitted he had acted in a standard not expected of cabinet ministers.' Paul McLeay was also the Minister for Mineral and Forest Resources as well as the Minister for Ports and Waterways. In resigning, he apologized to his constituents and parliamentary colleagues, as well as to his wife and family."
Space

Submission + - Scientist: 'Galaxy is Rich in Earth-Like Planets' (discovery.com)

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes: "In a recent presentation, Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov unexpectedly announced news that the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered dozens of candidate Earth-like exoplanets. Not waiting for the official NASA press release to announce the discovery, Sasselov went into some detail at the TEDGlobal talk in Oxford, UK, earlier this month. This surprise announcement comes hot on the heels of controversy that erupted last month when the Kepler team said they were withholding data on 400 exoplanet candidates until February 2011. In light of this, Sasselov's unofficial announcement has already caused a stir. Keith Cowing, of NASAWatch.com, has commented on this surprise turn of events saying it is really annoying "that the Kepler folks were complaining about releasing information since they wanted more time to analyze it before making any announcements. And then the project's Co-I goes off and spills the beans before an exclusive audience — offshore." Although Sasselov could have handled the announcement better (and waited until NASA made the official announcement), this has the potential to be one of the biggest astronomical discoveries of our time — so long as these Earth-like "candidates" are confirmed by further study."
Security

Submission + - Is open source SNORT dead? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: Is Snort, the 12-year-old open-source intrusion detection and prevention system, dead?

The Open Information Security Foundation (OISF), a nonprofit group funded by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) to come up with next-generation open source IDS/IPS, thinks so. But Snort's creator, Martin Roesch, begs to differ, and in fact, calls the OISF's first open source IDS/IPS code, Suricata 1.0 released this week, a cheap knock-off of Snort paid for with taxpayer dollars.

The OISF was founded about a year and a half ago with $1 million in funding from a DHS cybersecurity research program, according to Matt Jonkman, president of OISF. He says OISF was founded to form an open source alternative and replacement to Snort, which he says is now considered dead since the research on what is supposed to be the next-generation version of Snort, Snort 3.0, has stalled.

"Snort is not conducive to IPv6 nor to multi-threading," Jonkman says, adding, "And Snort 3.0 has been scrapped."

According to Jonkman, OISF's first open source release Suricata 1.0 is superior to Snort in a number of ways, including how it can inspect network packets using a multi-threading technology to inspect more than one packet at a time, which he claims improves the chances of detecting attack traffic

Submission + - Pampers Dry Max diapers, chemical burns

Submitted by Theovon
Theovon writes: Despite the self-deprecating jokes, many of us slashdotters do indeed have the social skills to find mates and have children. This is why articles like the recent one on delayed umbilical cord cutting are of interest to us. Well, here's another one for us parents, something my week-old daughter is experiencing first-hand. Procter and Gamble is putting their heads in the sand and denying all responsibility in response to a spate of reports that the most recent version of their "Dry Max" diapers are causing severe rashes that appear to be chemical burns. There are articles all over the place, with questions and blogs and even P&G's lame response trying to suggest that it's a mere coincidence that rashes are increasing at the same time that their new diapers came out. The feds are investigating, and hopefully, there will be a recall soon. My little girl's rash isn't quite as severe as what I've been reading about, since we caught it early and are using liberal amounts of Desitin. We're accustomed to seeing corporate greed stand in the way of product quality, every one of us who is forced to use Microsoft products. But it's one thing to lose some work. It's entirely another when helpless babies are physically injured by a product that we're supposed to trust, and even worse when the manufacturer tries to tell us that we're the ones at fault.
Earth

"Argonaut" Octopus Sucks Air Into Shell As Ballast 72

Posted by timothy from the 8-legs-good dept.
audiovideodisco writes "Even among octopuses, the Argonaut must be one of the coolest. It gets its nickname — 'paper nautilus' — from the fragile shell the female assembles around herself after mating with the tiny male (whose tentacle/penis breaks off and remains in the female). For millennia, people have wondered what the shell was for; Aristotle thought the octopus used it as a boat and its tentacles as oars and sails. Now scientists who managed to study Argonauts in the wild confirm a different hypothesis: that the octopus sucks air into its shell and uses it for ballast as it weaves its way through the ocean like a tiny submarine. The researchers' beautiful video and photographs show just how the Argonaut pulls off this trick. The regular (non-paper) nautilus also uses its shell for ballast, but the distant relationship between it and all octopuses suggests this is a case of convergent evolution."

Submission + - Nearby 'hot spot' gives clues to growth of galaxy (cosmosmagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Astronomers have the first evidence that galaxy clusters interact with the large-scale structure of the universe. At the largest possible scale, the universe resembles a kind of cosmic web with voids – huge bubble-like areas with no matter – and filaments.
Earth

Aral Sea May Recover; Dead Sea Needs a Lifeline 131

Posted by timothy from the just-needs-feng-shui-adjustment dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's a tale of two seas. The drying up of the Aral Sea is considered one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history, but the northern sector of the sea, at least, is showing signs of life. A dam completed in 2005 has increased the North Aral's span by 20 percent, and birds, fish, and people are all returning to the area. Meanwhile, the Dead Sea is still in the midst of precipitous decline, since too much water is being drawn out of the Jordan River for thirsty populations and crops. To keep the sea from shrinking more, scientists are pushing an ambitious scheme called the 'Red-Dead conduit,' which would channel huge amounts of water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. However, the environmental consequences of such a project may be troubling."

Comment It's not Sophophora yet (Score 5, Informative) 136

by ethogram (#31798962) Attached to: The Fruit Fly <em>Drosophila</em> Gets a New Name
The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) ruling addressed a request to name D. melanogaster as the type species for the genus. Under the rules of nomenclature, another species in the genus has naming priority. As long as the genus (currently more than 1400 species) remains intact there is no name change for melanogaster. However, the biologist who submitted the petition to protect the name D. melanogaster did so because a revision and splitting of Drosophila is long overdue (and is apparently interested in taking on the project). The ICZN did not make this decision lightly, it has been under review for a couple of years.
Space

Submission + - Mysterious star system's secret revealed. (space.com)

Submitted by Doctor Morbius
Doctor Morbius writes: The strange behavior of the Epsilon Aurigae star system has been known for a while but the reason for this behavior was unknown until now. For almost 180 years astronomers had observed that the star, Epsilon Aurigae, underwent a partial eclipse approximately every 27 years. The eclipse had the strange feature that in the middle of it there was a slight brightening. One theory for this was that Epsilon Aurigae, which is a red giant star, is orbited by a smaller companion which has a disk of dust orbiting it.A hole in the middle of the dust disk caused the brightening. Astronomers at the University of Michigan have now shown that this theory is correct. Using 4 linked telescopes they obtained an image of the star system that shows the disk of dust from the companion slowly passing if front of Epsilon Aurigae.
Idle

Submission + - Couple raises virtual child.. and starves real one (cnn.com)

Submitted by NeutronCowboy
NeutronCowboy writes: According to CNN.com, a South Korean couple was arrested for allowing their baby to starve to death while they were out at an internet cafe. One of their activities there: raising a virtual child in the online game "Prius Online." While a South Korean professor calls it a case of Internet Addiction, it's probably more a case of bad coping mechanisms: they were jobless and had apparently little to look forward to.
Intel

Submission + - Intel Details Upcoming Gulftown Six-Core Processor (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "With the International Solid-State Circuits Conference less than a week away, Intel has released additional details on its upcoming hexa-core desktop CPU, next gen mobile, and dual-core Westmere processors. Much of the dual-core data was revealed last month when Intel unveiled their Clarkdale architecture. However, when Intel set its internal goals for what its calling Westmere 6C, the company aimed to boost both core and cache count by 50 percent without increasing the processor's thermal envelope. Westmere 6C (codename Gulftown) is a native six-core chip. Intel has crammed 1.17 billion transistors into a die that's approximately 240mm sq. The new chip carries 12MB up L3 (up from Nehalem's 8MB) and a TDP of 130W at 3.33GHz. In addition, Intel has built in AES encryption instruction decode support as well as a number of improvements to Gulftown's power consumption, especially in idle sleep states."
Image

"Tube Map" Created For the Milky Way 142

Posted by samzenpus from the non-stop-service-to-the-Perseus-Arm dept.
astroengine writes "Assuming you had an interstellar spaceship, how would you navigate around the galaxy? For starters, you'd probably need a map. But there's billions of stars out there — how complex would that map need to be? Actually, Samuel Arbesman, a research fellow from Harvard, has come up with a fun solution. He created the 'Milky Way Transit Authority (MWTA),' a simple transit system in the style of the iconic London Underground 'Tube Map.' (Travel Tip: Don't spend too much time loitering around the station at Carina, there's some demolition work underway.)"
Science

94 New Species Described By CA Academy of Sciences 52

Posted by samzenpus from the what's-in-a-name dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences traversed four continents and two oceans to uncover 94 new species in 2009, proving that while sometimes in this digital age the world can feel like a small place, much of it has yet to be explored. Among the 94 discoveries were 65 arthropods, 14 plants, 8 fishes, 5 sea slugs, one coral, and one fossil mammal. Why does it matter? As Dr. David Mindell, Dean of Science and Research Collections at the Academy, explained, 'Humans rely on healthy ecosystems, made up of organisms and their environments. Creating a comprehensive inventory of life on our planet is critical for understanding and managing resources. Yet a great many life-forms remain to be discovered and described.'"
Science

Aussie Scientists Find Coconut-Carrying Octopus 205

Posted by timothy from the concealed-carry-in-australian-waters dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. ... 'I was gobsmacked,' said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. 'I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.'"

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