zookie - Slashdot User

Submission + - MySpace Hoax Ends in Suicide

Submitted by zookie on Monday November 12, 2007 @01:21PM

zookie writes: This heartbreaking article tells of an overweight teenage girl — duped by a fake MySpace profile of a cute boy — who committed suicide when the 'relationship' soured. Who was behind the fake profile? According to a police report and newspaper interviews, it was the mother of a neighborhood girl, who created the profile "to 'find out what Megan was saying on-line' about her daughter."

Submission + - Keeping Cool on Venus

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Monday November 12, 2007 @11:00AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "In the 1970s and 80s, several probes landed on Venus and returned data from the surface but they all expired less than 2 hours after landing because of Venus' tremendous heat. It's hard to keep a rover functioning when temperatures of 450 C are hot enough to melt lead but NASA researchers have designed a refrigeration system that might be able to keep a robotic rover going for as long as 50 Earth days using a reverse Stirling engine. The rover's electronics would be packed in a ceramic-based insulator and placed it inside a metal sphere about the size of a grapefruit. Heat would then be pumped out of the sphere by compressing and then expanding a gas with a piston. When the gas expands, it absorbs heat from the electronics chamber then, as the gas is compressed and its temperature rises, the heat is allowed to dissipate in the atmosphere via a radiator. NASA has not committed to a Venus rover mission, but a 2003 National Academies of Science study recommended that high priority be given to a robot mission to investigate the Venusian surface helping to answer such questions as why Venus ended up so different from Earth and if the changes have taken place relatively recently."

Submission + - A Pilot on Airline Security (hotair.com)

Submitted by Paperweight on Monday July 16, 2007 @06:11PM

Paperweight writes: Dave Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, recently wrote how unsafe and hole-ridden airline security still is, in spite of all the money being blown on it. There is simply no deployable technology that has a prayer of keeping a motivated, prepared terrorist out of the system. The US Transport Security Administration misses more than 90% of detectable weapons at passenger checkpoints even in their own tests. Until the mindset behind airline security is changed, using an airliner as a weapon of mass destruction is as easy today as ever.

Submission + - Apple Introduces New Mobile Phone at MacWorld

Submitted by

octavian755

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @02:23PM

octavian755 writes: "Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs confirmed months of speculation Tuesday by unveiling a new mobile phone and a set-top box that allows people to stream video from their computers to their televisions. Jobs said Apple's iPhone would "reinvent" the telecommunications sector and "leapfrog" past the current generation of hard-to-use smart phones."

Submission + - Apple's Phone Uses Touchscreen, OS X

Submitted by

necro81

on Tuesday January 09, 2007 @02:09PM

necro81 writes: "As reported by Engadget's blow-by-blow of Steve Job's keynote at Macworld Expo, Apple's new phone (still called the iPhone, despite that name already being taken) is a smartphone-PDA that runs OS X (embedded), has a 160 ppi 3.5" screen, has a full-szied touchpad (no stylus), syncs via iTunes to OS X or Windows and, of course, is an iPod. The phone communicates to the outside world via GSM, EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, and Dock connector."

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