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Space

Submission + - How would you build a micro satellite?

Submitted by
Dishwasha
Dishwasha writes: "After reading about the possibility of an earth-link planet "only" 12 light years away, I instantly thought about the possibility of sending an amateur micro satellite. Although such a thing would not reach 12 light years in my lifetime, perhaps the satellite would be a legacy that I could hand over to my children and they to their children, etc. From my perspective, the sooner we start sending out probes in to the universe and the more we send out, the earlier the start we get in exploring the universe beyond just our singular earth perspective.

A fellow co-worker of mine turned me on to the CubeSat standard and apparently there are commercial space companies that will launch CubeSat systems from their payload for a modest fee.

Is anybody in the /. community involved in amateur micro satellite systems? How would I go about getting involved at an amateur level? Are there any amateur user groups and meetups I can join? I have limited background in all the prerequisites but am eager to learn even if it takes a lifetime. Any links to design and engineering of satellites would be appreciated."
Space

Submission + - Need help recovering a solar-powered ballon next week (wordpress.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We are a small group of high-altitude balloon enthusiasts based in Socorro, New Mexico. Our current endeavor is to launch a solar-powered balloon (one that only uses the sun to generate all lift rather than helium as a weather balloon would) sometime between 12/22 and 12/28. The balloon is estimated to reach 50k-80k feet and will be carrying a payload that includes a full flight profile recorder. The only problem? While we will know where it comes down, we probably won't be able to drive that far. We would like to crowdsource the recovery. Getting the payload back means we can validate our flight models and better design future balloons.
Space

Submission + - Earth Avoids Collisions with Pair of Asteroids

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Science Recorder reports that according to NASA a pair of asteroids — one just over three mile wide — passed Earth Tuesday and early Wednesday avoiding a potentially cataclysmic impact with our home planet. 2012 XE5, estimated at between 50-165 feet across, was discovered just days earlier, missing our planet by only 139,500 miles or slightly more than half the distance to the moon. 4179 Toutatis, just over three miles wide, put on an amazing show for astronomers early Wednesday missing Earth by 18 lunar lengths, while allowing scientists to observe the massive asteroid in detail. Asteroid Toutatis is well known to astronomers. It passes by Earth’s orbit every four years and astronomers say its unique orbit means it is unlikely to impact Earth for at least 600 years. It is one of the largest known potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs), and its orbit is inclined less than half-a-degree from Earth’s. “We already know that Toutatis will not hit Earth for hundreds of years,” says Lance Benner of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program. “These new observations will allow us to predict the asteroid’s trajectory even farther into the future.” Toutatis would inflict devastating damage if it slammed into Earth, perhaps extinguishing human civilization. The asteroid thought to have killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was about 6 miles wide, researchers say.The fact that 2012 XE5 was discovered only a few days before the encounter prompted Minnesota Public Radio to poll its listeners with the following question: If an asteroid were to strike Earth within an hour, would you want to know?"
Apple

Submission + - Microsoft's Creepy Retail Experience (lee-phillips.org) 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The author peers into a Microsoft store and spies a sea of Microsoft employees, vastly outnumbering the few customers. Later, he notices an animated crowd of civilians surrounding a Microsoft display. But it's not the product that they're excited about."

Comment Re:failure round 2 incoming (Score 2) 375

by sichbo (#42194699) Attached to: Microsoft Surface Struggles to Ship A Million Units
If it's anything like the Samsung Slate 7 (similar to the device given out during the 2011 BUILD conference for win8 developer launch) I reckon the Pro should do OK. I paid $1400 for a slate 7 about a year ago and loaded on the various preview win8 builds.. to this day it's still working good as a complete laptop/desktop replacement. You basically have an 128GB i5 "ultrabook" spec machine, but with a separate bluetooth keyboard (mine eventually broke so replaced with a proper $15 USB keyboard.) When docked you have a very small footprint workstation with HDMI out for large monitor, LAN port, audio out, 2x USB ports (one on the dock, one on the tablet, although I just use a hub out of the dock for mouse+keys and leave the side USB port for TV tuners etc.) At the end of the work day, pick it up off the dock and walk around with it and consume content. Runs for a good 4-5 hrs on battery if doing "nothing intensive" or enough to watch two feature films. I suspect the "pro" will give more or less the same viability as a "laptop/desktop replacement".
Software

Submission + - Winulator app runs x86 games on ARM (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Winulator is an app that aims to get games developed for the x86 Windows OS running on ARM-powered hardware without any work on the part of a developer. The independent project is being run by Dan Aloni, who only revealed the existence of Winulator last week. Even so, he’s already got a x86 DirectX (DX7 to be exact) game running on ARM.

What Aloni has done is to convert the machine code from the original x86 game to be ARM-compatible using his Winulator wrapper app. This allows the game to run natively without issue, but with control updates required for touchscreen input.

Submission + - BP and Executive Facing Criminal Charges (chron.com) 1

Submitted by SleazyRidr
SleazyRidr writes: Finally some news that will please a lot of the Slashdot crowd: A company has been charged with Manslaughter! BP has been charged with manslaughter following the Macondo Incident. Two of the rig supervisors and a BP executive are also facing jail time. Is this the start of companies being forced to take responsibility for their actions?
Mars

Submission + - SpaceX Founder Sets Sights On Martian Colony (isciencetimes.com)

Submitted by amkkhan
amkkhan writes: Elon Musk, founder of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, is has his eye on forming a Mars colony, and you can be part one of the first Martian explorers for only $500,000. The Mars colony would be part of a Mars settlement program, and Must envisions ferrying up to 80,000 people to the red planet as part of the first Mars colony.

The Mars settlement program would start with 10 people, who would journey on to Mars on a reusable rocket created by SpaceX powered by liquid oxygen and methane, according to Yahoo! News.

"At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big," Musk said, according to Space.com.
Businesses

Submission + - Amazon founder Jeff Bezos calls for governments to end patent wars (metro.co.uk)

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "So-called patent wars have raged in the smartphone and tablet era, with Apple and Samsung most consistently at loggerheads over their products.

The tech giants have had mixed results in the courtroom, however, as Apple secured a significant legal victory in the US but Samsung won comparative cases in South Korea and Japan, with many more lawsuits not yet heard.

Mr Bezos told Metro that innovation and society itself was threatened by the patent lawsuit culture."

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What happens if you Open Source, and in doing so violate a Patent? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We have developed a fairly useful Video Processing algorithm that we are thinking of open sourcing in 2013. There is one snag however: There are hundreds of imaging and image/video processing Patents that have been granted over the years, and some (small) part of our algorithm may violate one or more of these patents accidentally. Checking our work against the mountain of imaging patents out there is unfeasible. It would take a team of 5 months to do that. It doesn't help that many of these patents use obscure mathematical notations and formulae that make it difficult to decipher quickly precisely what the patent holder has patented. Now suppose that we open source our algorithm, and it turns out that it violates one or more patents. Could we get sued for damages because we open sourced it, and hundreds or thousands of people are now using it for free? It could take the patent holder months or years to identify that their patent is being violated, by which time our algorithm may have thousands of users. To sum it up: If you open source something that — accidentally — violates somebodys patent somewhere, what happens to you? Do you get sued for damages or forced to pay a high license fee? Do you have to shut the Open Source project down and take all files offline? Has anyone been in such a situation before? Are there any legal mechanisms or protections that shield you in a case like this? Thanks for any advice!

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Does Open-Source "Donationware" work?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We've been developing an algorithm for 3 years that could be useful to a lot of different people working in a variety of fields. Our attempts to commercialize it, however haven't been successful. No corporate entity that we have contacted to date has agreed to invest in it, or to participate in commercializing it. We are sitting on something really useful, but industry doesn't seem to understand its usage potential fully. Now we are thinking "How about if we Open Source the algorithm?". We would put our source code online for anybody to use, and place a "Please Donate Money if this is useful to you" link on the website. Has anybody does this in the past? Do people donate to you if you give them something useful for free? Or are most people natural-born "Free Riders", who use your software with gusto, but clam up when it comes to donating some Dollars in return for that? We have spent over 140,000 Dollars developing this algorithm, so if no money comes our way, we'd have to pick up the financial tab for that. Any help or advice on this from Slashdotters would be most welcome!
Earth

Submission + - Scientist Cleared In Drowned Polar Bear Controversy 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "AP reports that Alaska scientist Charles Monnett whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has been cleared of engaging in scientific misconduct. Monnett and a colleague, Jeffrey Gleason, wrote an influential 2006 report describing apparently drowned polar bears floating in the Arctic, which they saw during a routine aerial survey of whales. The dead bears became a symbol of the threat of climate change and melting ice, and Al Gore mentioned them in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth. But the sightings were called into question in March 2010, after officials with Interior's Office of Inspector General received allegations of scientific misconduct. Monnett spent more than two years under investigation, and agents repeatedly asked him detailed questions about the dead-polar-bear paper. The final report on that investigation was delivered to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the agency told Monnett that no action would be taken against him — except for an official reprimand for the improper release of internal government documents back in 2007 and 2008. "We have confirmed that the [inspector general's] findings do not support a conclusion that the individual scientists involved engaged in scientific misconduct," says BOEM press secretary Theresa Eisenman. "Sound science is the foundation of BOEM's decision-making, and therefore we take the integrity of our scientists and the reliability of their analyses extremely seriously.""
NASA

Submission + - Flexible, high-strength polymer aerogels deliver "super-insulation" properties (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Often called "frozen smoke", aerogels are among the amazing materials of our time, with fifteen Guinness Book of World Records entries to their name. However, despite their list of extreme properties, traditional aerogels are brittle, crumbling and fracturing easily enough to keep them out of many practical applications. A new class of mechanically robust polymer aerogels discovered at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio may soon enable engineering applications such as super-insulated clothing, unique filters, refrigerators with thinner walls, and super-insulation for buildings.
Government

Submission + - New Zealand PM Apologizes to Kim Dotcom (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: In an interesting turn of events, John Key, New Zealand’s Prime Minister has apologized to Kim Dotcom after a report found that the government had illegally carried out surveillance on the Megaupload founder. John Key earlier requested an inquiry by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security into the circumstances of unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the Government Communications Security Bureau. The report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security Paul Neazor indicates that the New Zealand security service didn’t conduct a thorough check on Dotcom’s immigration status before monitoring Dotcom, which otherwise would have proved that he hold’s a permanent resident’s visa, thus making the whole thing unlawful. The Government Communications Security Bureau (GSCB) can only take actions against foreign targets, thus faltering when it carried out surveillance on Dotcom. In a media conference, Key said, “Of course I apologize to Mr Dotcom, and I apologize to New Zealanders.”
Intel

Submission + - Intel Denies CEO Said Microsoft Is Releasing Windows 8 Prematurely

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Intel today denied a rumor from earlier this week that suggested CEO Paul Otellini told employees Microsoft was releasing its Windows 8 operating system before it was fully ready. Intel referred to the hype that ensued as “unsubstantiated news reports” and quoted Otellini going on record to say that “Windows 8 is one of the best things that ever happened to Intel.”

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