achtzwerge - Slashdot User

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

Submitted by

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)

Submitted by

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 + - Researchers capture exotic radioactivity on camera (physorg.com)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Thursday November 15, 2007 @12:54PM

kfz versicherung writes: "Until now, measuring fleeting, exotic nuclei has been largely impossible. Understanding of the exotic form of radioactivity of the iron-45 isotope has thus been poor. A novel combination of advanced physics equipment and imaging technology found in most off-the-shelf digital cameras has done the trick. 'We have proven in a direct and clear way that this extremely neutron-deficient nucleus disintegrates by the simultaneous emission of two protons,' one of the researchers is quoted."

Submission + - The small line between quantum and classical world (physorg.com)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Thursday November 15, 2007 @12:23PM

kfz versicherung writes: "On what scale do the quantum world and the classical world begin to cross into each other? How big does an "observer" have to be? It's a long-argued question of fundamental scientific interest and practical importance as well, with significant implications for attempts to build solid-state quantum computers. Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and their collaborators at the University of Frankfurt, Germany; Kansas State University; and Auburn University have now established that quantum particles start behaving in a classical way on a scale as small as a single hydrogen molecule. They reached this conclusion after performing what they call the world's simplest — and certainly its smallest — double slit experiment, using as their two "slits" the two proton nuclei of a hydrogen molecule, only 1.4 atomic units apart (a few ten-billionths of a meter)."

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 + - Rosetta craft interpreted as interplanetary thread (newscientist.com)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Wednesday November 14, 2007 @12:15PM

kfz versicherung writes: "An asteroid tracking system interpreted the Rosetta spacecraft as an incoming rock last week and issued an alert that a near-miss was looming. Three U.S. observatories spotted an unidentified object heading Earth's way. The observation prompted the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., which coordinates the search of near-Earth objects, to issue a potential near-miss warning. The warning was retracted after astronomer Denis Denisenko in Moscow noticed the object's trajectory closely matched Rosetta's."

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."

Submission + - PS3 game ships with game save glitch

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @09:25AM

kfz versicherung writes: "According to Insomniac Games, the developer of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, some users will receive a message saying there is insufficient space to create the small save file, even if they have plenty of room left on their hard drive. While opensource developer are able to write simple programs on the PS3, the GPU and other hardware functions are offlimits for non signed code. Maybe this save game bug will enable us to write software utilizing the gpu."

Submission + - Apple gets 18$ per phone, per month (news.com)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @07:40AM

kfz versicherung writes: "While Apple has confirmed that a revenue sharing agreement exists, Jobs refuses to share the details about exactly how much cash it's getting from the revenue AT&T makes on iPhone customers using the carrier's data network. In July, Munster estimated Apple was receiving just $3 per iPhone subscriber and $11 per iPhone customers new to AT&T, but he's rethought the numbers after Apple's latest earnings release. New calculations suggest Apple is raking in as much as 18$ per phone, per month."

Submission + - Facebook Gets Blackberried (efluxmedia.com)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Thursday October 25, 2007 @07:35AM

kfz versicherung writes: "Facebook Inc. is beefing up its role for business users. Dustin Moskovitz announced during his keynote at CTIA today that a mobile version of the popular social networking platform will natively be available on BlackBerry smartphone devices. T-Mobile USA Inc. will be the first carrier to bundle the Facebook Mobile app for its subscribers, but any user can download the software — a crucial point for open-access."

Submission + - German ISP forced to block american porn sites (heise.de)

Submitted by

kfz-versicherung

on Wednesday October 24, 2007 @11:04AM

kfz-versicherung writes: "While american porn sites enjoy a constitutional right to make porn available, Germany does not have a constitution like the United States, and thus porn cannot be made a matter of free speech. Adult entertainment sites are required to perform age verification using a complicated system called PostIdent (babelfish), which requires users to print out a card, sign it and get it verified in person by the Deutsche Post. You have to bring an official photo ID and once verified your data gets entered into a database. This allows you to access this one site you have requested access to. Now in an apparent move to squash competition a german porn provider has reached an injunction(babelfish) to have german ISP Arcor block all access to a list of american porn sites, because those sites do not require age verification in compliance with german law."

Submission + - China launches probe in Asian race for moon (google.com)

Submitted by

kfz versicherung

on Wednesday October 24, 2007 @09:36AM

kfz versicherung writes: "According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, China successfully launched its first lunar probe on Wednesday. The Chang'e I blasted off at about 6:05 pm on a Long March 3A carrier rocket from the No. 3 launching tower in the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The mission named after a Chinese goddess who, in a popular fairy tale, lives on the Moon, carries a satellite based on China's Dongfanghong 3 telecommunication satellite platform and reportedly carries a 280-pound (127-kilogram) payload of science instruments for its planned one-year mission."

Slashdot Top Deals