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Mars

Volunteers Wanted For Simulated 520-Day Mars Trip 356

Posted by timothy from the represent-slashdot-there dept.
anglico writes 'Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the martian surface. In reality, they will live and work in a sealed facility in Moscow, Russia, to investigate the psychological and medical aspects of a long-duration space mission. ESA is looking for European volunteers to take part.'

Comment Kill your cable (Score 5, Insightful) 345

by szquirrel (#29223275) Attached to: An End To Unencrypted Digital Cable TV and the HTPC

I finally got tired of the $75/month, the cable box meltdowns every three months (Scientific Atlanta FTL), and the generally craptastic quality of over-compressed video from Brighthouse. Six months ago I told them where to shove it and never looked back. Now I get TV series on DVD from Netflix, occasionally catch a new show on Hulu, and use some good ol' rabbit ears to get my local channels (which look great in over-the-air digital, better than they ever did through the cable).

Screw cable. I'm done with paying for a raft of crap I don't need to subsidize their other businesses. And I'm certainly done with their obsessive consumer lock-in.
Image

Want to Eat Chocolate Every Day For a Year? Screenshot-sm 158

Posted by samzenpus from the dental-nightmare dept.
Scientists from the University of East Anglia are studying the potential health benefits of dark chocolate, and need 40 female volunteers who would like to eat chocolate every day for a year. The chocolate loving 40 must be post-menopausal and have type 2 diabetes so it can be determined if the flavonoid compounds in chocolate can reduce the risk of heart disease. Dr Peter Curtis, of the UEA's School of Medicine, said, "Our first volunteers are about to return for their final visit to see if the markers of heart health - such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels — have changed. A successful outcome could be the first step in developing new ways to improve the lives of people at increased risk of heart disease."
The Almighty Buck

$33 Million In Poker Winnings Seized By US Govt 465

Posted by samzenpus from the mine-now-I-take-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A New York Times story reports that, 'Opening a new front in the government's battle against Internet gambling, federal prosecutors have asked four American banks to freeze tens of millions of dollars in payments owed to people who play poker online. ... "It's very aggressive, and I think it's a gamble on the part of the prosecutors," Mr. Rose said. He added that it was not clear what law would cover the seizure of money belonging to poker players, as opposed to the money of the companies involved.' Many players are reporting that their cashout checks have bounced."
Power

Next-Gen Nuclear Power Plant Breaks Ground In China 426

Posted by timothy from the plenty-safe-bye-now-call-later dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The construction of first next-generation Westinghouse nuclear power reactor breaks ground in Sanmen, China. The reactor, expected to generate 12.7 Megawatts by 2013, costs 40 billion Yuan (~US$6 billion; that's a lot of iPods.) According to Westinghouse, 'The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.' However, Chinese netizens suspect China is being used as a white rat to test unproven nuclear technologies (comments in Chinese)." Update: 04/20 07:28 GMT by T : As several readers have pointed out, this plant will generate much more than 12.7 Megawatts -- more like 1100 MWe.
Privacy

Using Net Proxies Will Lead To Harsher Sentences 366

Posted by Soulskill from the no-word-on-mask-and-cape-penalties dept.
Afforess writes "'Proxy servers are an everyday part of Internet surfing. But using one in a crime could soon lead to more time in the clink,' reports the Associated Press. The new federal rules would make the use of proxy servers count as 'sophistication' in a crime, leading to 25% longer jail sentences. Privacy advocates complain this will disincentivize privacy and anonymity online. '[The government is telling people] ... if you take normal steps to protect your privacy, we're going to view you as a more sophisticated criminal,' writes the Center for Democracy and Technology. Others fear this may lead to 'cruel and unusual punishments' as Internet and cell phone providers often use proxies without users' knowledge to reroute Internet traffic. This may also ultimately harm corporations when employees abuse VPN's, as they too are counted as a 'proxy' in the new legislation. TOR, a common Internet anonymizer, is also targeted in the new legislation. Some analysts believe this legislation is an effort to stop leaked US Government information from reaching outside sources, such as Wikileaks. The legislation (PDF, the proposed amendment is on pages 5-15) will be voted on by the United States Sentencing Commission on April 15, and is set to take effect on November 1st. The EFF has already urged the Commission to reject the amendment."

Comment The Model M is much more than a keyboard (Score 4, Interesting) 519

by szquirrel (#27348981) Attached to: Old-School Keyboard Makes Comeback of Sorts

It's a geek badge of honor. I own a few and I love them like my children (okay not really, maybe like my pets) but part of that comes from the effort I put in to scrounge them and clean them up myself. I do like the feel of typing on a Model M but what I love is the feeling of gravitas (figuratively and literally, it's really heavy).

Vintage hardware is neat but most of it is of no practical use today. Is there any other part of a 20-year-old computer that you could still use for day-to-day tasks? A Model M lets you feel old-school without actually having to live in the bad old days of floppy disks and 300 baud modems.

I type on my wife's Mac keyboard and it's fine. I type on a rubber dome keyboard at work and it does the job too. Maybe I would feel differently if my job required pumping out hundreds of thousands of words very quickly, but for most people (and, I suspect, most Model M owners) that's not the case.

Nostalgia is fun. It's okay to have a "throwback" keyboard if that's what you want. Not every technological choice we make has to be justified by greater efficiency or superior ergonomics. Relax and feel the Model M love.

Comment Or perhaps they just aren't good (Score 1) 753

by szquirrel (#27150369) Attached to: What Has Fox Got Against Its Own Sci-Fi Shows?

I love Joss Whedon and I still carry a huge torch for Firefly but I watched two episodes of Dollhouse and they just weren't very good. The characters are totally one-dimensional, the action is boring and the dialogue isn't funny. Compared to Firefly it's hard to believe they came from the same guy.

And I'm sorry, but you lost me at the word "Terminator". I have zero interest in seeing yet another retread of that franchise. Find another stone to squeeze blood from.
The Courts

MD Appellate Ct. Sets "New Standard" For Anonymous Posting 260

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the or-you-could-just-clean-the-place-up dept.
A Maryland court of appeals has set what they are calling a new "standard that should be applied to balance the First Amendment right to anonymous speech on the Internet with the opportunity on the part of the object of that speech to seek judicial redress for alleged defamation." The court overturned an earlier ruling that would have required NewsZap.com to turn over the names of anonymous posters who posted negative remarks about the cleanliness of a Centreville Dunkin' Donuts. "In a defamation case involving anonymous speakers, the ruling said, courts should first require the plaintiff to try to notify the anonymous posters that they are the subject of a subpoena. That notification could come in the form of a message posted to the online forum in question, and the posters must be given sufficient time to respond. The plaintiff must then hand over the exact statements in question, so the court can decide whether the comments are obviously defamatory. Finally, the ruling says, the court must weigh the anonymous poster's right to free speech against the strength of the defamation case and the necessity of disclosing the poster's identity."
Privacy

Bill Would Require ISPs, Wi-Fi Users To Keep Logs 857

Posted by kdawson from the boon-for-disk-makers dept.
suraj.sun notes CNet reporting on bills filed in the US House and Senate that would require all ISPs and operators of Wi-Fi hotspots — including home users — to maintain access logs for 2 years to aid in law enforcement. The bills were filed by Republicans, but the article notes that the idea of forcing data retention has been popular on both sides of the aisle over the years. "Republican politicians on Thursday called for a sweeping new federal law that... would impose unprecedented data retention requirements on a broad swath of Internet access providers and is certain to draw fire from businesses and privacy advocates. ... Each [bill] contains the same language: 'A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user [i.e., DHCP].'"
Books

Author's Guild Says Kindle's Text-To-Speech Software Illegal 683

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-gotta-be-kidding-me dept.
Mike writes "The Author's Guild claims that the new Kindle's text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that 'They don't have the right to read a book out loud,' said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. 'That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.' Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn't copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person's nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild's claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance."
Security

FAA Network Hacked 110

Posted by CmdrTaco from the in-good-company dept.
coondoggie writes "The Federal Aviation Administration has joined the growing list of government agencies that have had their supposedly safe systems hacked. The agency this week notified about 45,000 employees that one of its servers was hacked into and employee personal identity information was stolen. The FAA was quick to say the server that was accessed was not connected to the operation of the air traffic control system or any other FAA operational system. It did say two of the 48 files on the breached computer server contained personal information about more than 45,000 FAA employees and retirees who were on the FAA's rolls as of the first week of February 2006."

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