thatisscary - Slashdot User

Submission + - Russia Says Apophis will Certainly Hit The Earth (usatoday.com) 3

Submitted by rubycodez on Wednesday December 30, 2009 @03:21PM

rubycodez writes: USA Today reports that Russia wishes to start a new space project to deflect the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which instead of missing the earth as NASA claims, will certainly hit it by Russian calculations. They aren't going to let Bruce Willis blow it the hell up with nu-cu-lar weapons, instead planning on using "basic physics" to alter its trajectory.

Comment And its not just North America (Score 1) 207

by thatisscary on Friday December 11, 2009 @04:55PM (#30406760) Attached to: Global Deforestation Demoed In Google Earth

Now if we can just see Europe and the Middle East Before civilization crept in. Or perhaps India, and China. Probably a lot of trees there thousands of years ago. Maybe we should just depopulate Europe. Make into into a great big foresty theme park. Or better yet, lets just depopulate the world and then we can all enjoy beautiful trees. You go first. I will make sure that everyone else drinks their kool-aid. I promise, I will drink mine too.

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released 272

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 08, 2009 @06:48PM from the hot-bits dept.

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

Posted by samzenpus on Monday December 07, 2009 @07:06PM from the fattening-up-on-brains dept.

ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."

Submission + - EFF wants to know are the Feds cyberstalking? (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by rossendryv on Wednesday December 02, 2009 @06:00PM

rossendryv writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation and UC Berkeley's Samuelson Center filed suit in California's Northern District, asking the court to force a number of government agencies to hand over any documents they have concerning the use of social networking sites as part of investigative procedures.

New Food-Growth Product a Bit Hairy 243

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @03:06PM from the what-can-your-grow-from-fingernails dept.

MeatBag PussRocket writes "An article from Marketplace.org reports, 'A Florida company has developed an all-natural product that it says could revolutionize how food is grown in the US. It's called Smart Grow, but it might be a tough sell. It's inexpensive. It eliminates the need for pesticides, so it's environmentally friendly, but it's human hair. Plant pathologists at the University of Florida have found the mats eliminate weeds better than leading herbicides and can also make plants grow up to 30 percent larger.'"

(Useful) Stupid Unix Tricks? 2362

Posted by timothy on Wednesday November 05, 2008 @04:48PM from the sed-is-underrated dept.

So the other day I messaged another admin from the console using the regular old 'write' command (as I've been doing for over 10 years). To my surprise he didn't know how to respond back to me (he had to call me on the phone) and had never even known you could do that. That got me thinking that there's probably lots of things like that, and likely things I've never heard of. What sorts of things do you take for granted as a natural part of Unix that other people are surprised at?

Submission + - Another Way The LHC Could Destroy The Planet (arxivblog.com) 7

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Monday September 29, 2008 @05:09AM

KentuckyFC writes: "Just when you thought it was safe to switch on the LHC, another nightmare scenario has emerged that some critics believe could cause the particle accelerator to explode. The culprit this time is not an Earth-swallowing black hole but a "Bose supernova" in the accelerator's superfluid helium bath. Physicists have been playing with Bose Einstein Condensate or BECs for almost 20 years now. But in 2001, one group discovered that placing them in a powerful magnetic field could cause the attractive forces between atoms to become repulsive. That caused their BEC to explode in a Bose supernova, which was little more than a novelty when it was no more than a microscopic blob of cold matter. But superfluid liquid helium is also BEC. And physicists have suddenly remembered that the LHC is swimming in 700,000 litres of the stuff while zapping it by some of the most powerful magnetic fields on the planet. So is the LHC a Bose supernova waiting to go off? Not according to the CERN theory division which has published its calculations that show the LHC is safe (abstract). It also points out that no other superfluid helium handling facility has mysteriously blown itself to pieces."

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