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Submission + - Missing Apollo 11 tapes may have been found (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by

saccade.com

on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @07:31PM

saccade.com writes: "The Register and several other outlets are reporting that the missing tapes of the first manned lunar landing may have been found at a storage facility in Perth, Australia. If found, these could have much clearer pictures than the recordings we currently have that were downsampled for TV broadcast. We don't have pictures yet, though: 'Whether the world will finally enjoy high-quality pics of Aldrin and Armstrong strolling the Moon's surface remains to be seen. When NASA coughed to having lost the original tapes, John Sarkissian of the Parkes Observatory noted that even if a machine could be found to replay them, they would be "so old and fragile, it's not certain they could even be played.'"

Submission + - Seven Arrested for Pics of Out-of-Control Officer (signonsandiego.com)

Submitted by Quothz on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @04:49PM

Quothz writes: When San Diego Deputy Marshall Abbott was called to a Congressional campaign fundraiser on a noise complaint, he went out of control. After the hostess refused to provide her date of birth, he decided it was time to break out the pepper spray. He then pulled out a Taser, dragged a 60-year-old woman to the floor by her arm, and called for backup. Police cars, fire trucks, a K-9 unit, and a helicopter apparently were needed, in case others chose not to reveal their dates of birth — but the real story is that seven people were arrested for photographing the cops with their cell phones and "talking back to an officer". "Most" were released at the scene. It's about time we stopped coddling these photograph-taking, back-talking, birth-date-withholding little old ladies and brought some justice to Congressional campaign fund-raising gangs.

Submission + - The Hidden Cost of Using Microsoft Software (computerworlduk.com) 1

Submitted by

Glyn Moody

on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @05:36AM

Glyn Moody writes: "Detractors of free software like to point out it's not really "free", and claim that its Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is often comparable with closed-source solutions if you take everything into account. And yet, despite their enthusiasm for including all the costs, they never include a very real extra that users of Microsoft's products frequently have to pay: the cost of cleaning up malware infections. For example, the UK city of Manchester has just paid out nearly $2.5 million to clean up the Conficker worm, most of which was "a £1.2m [$2million] bill in the IT department, including £600,000 [$1 million] getting 'consultancy support' to fix the problems, which including drafting in experts from Microsoft." To make the comparisons fair, isn't it about time these often massive costs were included in those TCO calculations?"

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