382261
submission
steveoc writes:
In Indonesia, years ago a young man cut his knee in an accident, and ever since he has slowly turned into a human-plant hybrid creature. This has to be the most WTF story I have ever read, ever :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml%3Bjsessionid%3DMLYGYKBGOGQ2DQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2007/11/12/wtree112.xml
382215
submission
rubydooby writes:
Well, until 1998. According to the BBC, Britain's WE 177 nuclear bomb's final layer of protection was a familiar-looking cylindrical key. That's right, it's the same type as the key to the recently-replaced Kryptonite bicycle lock- brought to fame by demonstrations of it's compatibility with Bic pen barrels. Other security features? How about "a series of dials which you can turn with an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters". Everyone knows how hard it is to find the right size allen wrench...
All this is in contradistinction to the U.S.'s "PAL protection", or "Permissive Action Links", which required the Chiefs of Staff to phone in the correct combination.
Of course, the U.K. government responds that "officers of the Royal Navy as the Senior Service could be trusted", (BBC) and that The Bombs are "designed such that the warhead must have experienced missile launch and ballistic deployment before it can detonate".
Now I feel safe.
382173
submission
Kurtz'sKompund writes:
Sun and a consortium of other businesses are going to lower Blackbox self-contained computing facilities into a Japanese coal mine to set up an underground data centre using up to 50 percent less power than a ground-level data centre.
http://www.techworld.com/green-it/news/index.cfm?newsID=10667
382167
submission
mattaw writes:
From an article in the BBC's Newsnight program: Until 1998 the RAF nuclear bomb was protected by a bike lock.
After the Americans implemented coded arming systems their was an attempt to get these fitted to the British systems however this was rejected by the Navy with the following statement:
"It would be invidious to suggest... that Senior Service officers may, in difficult circumstances, act in defiance of their clear orders".
That's alright then.
381591
story
goatherder writes
"The Telegraph is running a story about a new Unified Theory of Physics. Garrett Lisi has presented a paper called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" which unifies the Standard Model with gravity — without using string theory. The trick was to use E8 geometry which you may remember from an earlier Slashdot article. Lisi's theory predicts 20 new particles which he hopes might turn up in the Large Hadron Collider."