39789995
submission
arisvega writes:
Seven US Navy Seals have been disciplined for revealing secrets during work as paid consultants on a video game, officials say.
They received reprimand letters and had half of their pay docked for two months for work on Medal of Honor: Warfighter.
The active-duty troops reportedly include one member of the team that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011.
They were charged with violation of orders, misuse of command gear, dereliction of duty and disclosure of classified material.
The seven troops worked for two days during the spring and summer on the recently released video game, according to CBS News.
The game's maker has boasted that real commandos, both on active duty and retired, were involved with the process of designing the game to make it as realistic as possible.
39602249
submission
arisvega writes:
Apple paid less that 2% corporation tax on its profits outside the US, its filing with US regulators has shown.
Apple paid $713m in the year to 29 September on foreign pre-tax profits of $36.8bn, a rate of 1.9%.
It is the latest company to be identified as paying low rates of overseas tax, following Starbucks, Facebook and Google in recent weeks.
It has not been suggested that any of their tax avoidance schemes are illegal.
All of the companies do pay considerable amounts of other taxes in the UK such as National Insurance and raise large sums of VAT.
38082685
submission
arisvega writes:
He said sorry because a New Zealand law enforcement agency was judged to have illegally spied on Mr Dotcom.
The investigation was illegal because the agency is only authorised to spy on foreigners. Mr Dotcom became a New Zealand citizen in 2010.
In a statement, Mr Key said: "I apologise to Mr Dotcom... We failed to provide that appropriate protection for him." The illegal surveillance was the result of "basic errors" said Mr Key.
The spying was carried out just before police raids that shut down file-storing service Megaupload.
37181631
submission
arisvega writes:
One of the biggest Bitcoin currency exchanges has been taken offline after 24,000 units (~$250,000) of the virtual currency were stolen from its computer servers.
Bitfloor's founder, Roman Shtylman, said he had kept unencrypted "keys", which the thief accessed and used to take the money, putting Bitfloor's future in doubt.
Mr Shtylman said his New York-based service was the biggest of its kind in the US and the fourth largest in the world.
"As a last resort, I will be forced to fully shut Bitfloor down and initiate account repayment using current available funds”, said Roman Shtylman, Bitfloor chief executive.
Another blow to Bitcoin, since UK-based Bitcoinica was hacked twice this year and subsequently sued by several of its users after they had alleged it was not able to honour their withdrawal requests. The firm has since ceased operations for what it terms "a transition period"; and last year another exchange, Japan's MtGox, suspended operations for several days after one of its accounts was compromised causing the currency to plummet in value. The service acted to compensate users who had been caught up in the sell-off.
What do you think, Slashdot crowd? Will we ever see Bitcoin taking off?
36318375
submission
arisvega writes:
The Slashdot crowd may be aware of VLT, the Very Large Telescope array (a collaboration between several European countries) located at the Atacama desert in Chile, operating at the visible and infrared wavelengths and producing some very detailed images and exciting new science, significally boosting astronomy and astrophysics research for the past couple of years without the hassle and the expenses of orbital observatories. Now, and for the first time in its history, there is a public invitation calling YOU to vote on which of the 16 proposed locations you would like the array to be pointed at, without the need for a scientific proposal. Astronomers are standing by to do your bidding!
34856129
submission
arisvega writes:
In its resolution adopted today, the European Parliament has called on the European Commission and the Member States to make sure that the eCall system is be installed in every new vehicle by 2015.
Vehicles equipped with the eCall system will automatically contact the emergency services in the event of a crash.
Even if no passenger is able to speak, a minimum set of data will be sent through the system, including the exact location of the crash site.
It is expected that the eCall system will reduce the emergency services’ response time and thus save hundreds of lives in the EU every year. eCall will be dormant most of the time (no mentioning on what 'most of the time' is, though) and will not allow vehicle tracking outside emergencies (no elucidation on the nature of 'emergencies' either).
34436075
submission
arisvega writes:
A recent publication (for the math-versed) proposing the deployment of a Solar-powered, space-borne fleet of LASER cannons that would deflect Earth-bound asteroids caught the attention of international news agencies.
Do you think this ambition can in reasonable time turn into a fair-priced, life-saving (or indeed Biosphere-saving!) project, that will be to the benefit of all mankind? How threatened would you feel from the possibility of this proposed array being hijacked by extremely depraved individuals, ones capable or guilty of great crimes? And, are you not glad that now someone has published a paper on it, so Megacorp cannot 'patent' this Earth-saving idea?
34433449
submission
arisvega writes:
Quite a lot, if one believes this this (oddly enough) non-paywalled Nature magazine article. Added to the dissapointing, non-binding outcome of the Rio+20 (the United Nations' Conference on Sustainable Development) is a dispute with the so-called Developing Countries, since they do not acknowledge the calling for a transition to a "Green Economy". Instead, they consider "Green Economy"-proposed restrictions as inhibitors for development prospects and business opportunities.
Bolivian President Evo Morales voiced those concerns by stating that this presented "Green Economy" model is a merely a modern form of Colonialism, employed by countries from the "wealthy North" with the goal to establish footholds for intervention mechanisms (IMF, anyone?). Then, they can interfere with and manipulate other Countries' National and Large-scale Planning affairs by invoking environmental concerns as an excuse.
The Bolivian President also called out to the African countries to "protect their natural wealth against multinational corporations", at a time almost five years later back from when the "Chinese Invasion" in Africa was news.
Since there have been stories on Slashdot considering the environmentally ethical face of production, consumption and technology, I thought this will make an interesting topic for discussion
33871177
submission
arisvega writes:
x My Smartphone
x My Personal Laptop
x My Work Laptop
x My Car
x My Collectibles
33163507
submission
arisvega writes:
At a first level (the lowest court level in the Greek judiciary system) an order has been issued (article in Greek, Google translation is fair enough) for a "plan on behalf of Internet Service Providers regarding he implementation of technological measures to deny access to internet users for webpages through which illegal copies of copyrighted work are being distributed". The order seems to be general and descriptive, and is a manifestation of the implementation process for an even more general and vague larger-scale EU directive, which is the common source that caused the rulings recently posted on slashdot regarding the UK, the Netherlands and Finland. This appears to be one of the reasons that prompted Anonymous to launch defacing attacks on Greek government websites some three months back.
29979767
submission
arisvega writes:
With the recent meteor sighting (video) over UK and the smoking fall (video) in Israel, that sounds more and more like a fair question. Even though the author of the main article has yet to acquire a grasp on the distinction between asteroids, meteoroids, meteors and meteorites (see definitions) he still makes an easy to read popular article with some number-crunching, car analogies, and he even uses the new buzzword "micromort". From the article: "Working out the chances of an Earth-asteroid collision and the damage it would cause is not like an insurer dealing with a collision between two cars: there is almost no direct historical data, so astronomers create equations relating to the size of an asteroid, how many there are around, how often they might hit the Earth and what the explosive force of any impact would be. These estimates are continually being revised and are subject to some esoteric disputes."
28416285
submission
arisvega writes:
You probably remember the story about a month ago on a debate regarding the publication of a paper on a super bird flu strain. Now the debate is over, since fear has prevailed and the team of scientists who created this potentially more deadly bird flu strain have themselves temporarily stopped their research.
In a letter published in Science and Nature, the team calls for an "international forum" to debate the risks and value of the studies.
US authorities last month asked the authors of the research to redact key details in forthcoming publications, since a government advisory panel suggested the data could be used by terrorists.
The new buzzword seems to be "Biosecurity", a field that apparently already features experts who fear an altered, more contagious form of the virus could spark a pandemic deadlier than the 1918-19 Spanish flu outbreak that killed up to 40 million people.
Be that as it may, where does the slashdot crowd stand on the issue of reducing, censoring, or even halting research results in the name of potential misuse by terrorists, or anyone else for that matter? And who gets to decide what branches of research are to be "allowed"? If we start going down that road, will we ever return?
28415819
submission
arisvega writes:
NEOShield is a new international project that will assess the threat posed by Near Earth Objects (NEO) and look at the best possible solutions for dealing with a big asteroid or comet on a collision path with our planet.
The effort is being led from the German space agency's (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin, and had its kick-off meeting this week.
It will draw on expertise from across Europe, Russia and the US.
It's a major EU-funded initiative that will pull together all the latest science, initiate a fair few laboratory experiments and new modelling work, and then try to come to some definitive positions.
Industrial partners, which include the German, British and French divisions of the big Astrium space company, will consider the engineering architecture required to deflect one of these bodies out of our path.
25151366
submission
arisvega writes:
Technology radically changes warfare. There have been times where the determinant factor of the outcome would be a subtle technological advancement in folding steel, or a defecting martial artist. Nowadays war is so remote-controlled that whole schools of thought on martial arts, that have been an inspiration for science-fiction weaponary are in danger of extinction- and desperately on the lookout for students.
24913248
submission
arisvega writes:
Russian officials have backed the idea of a rail tunnel linking Russia and the US.
It would run under the Bering Strait for 105km (65 miles) — twice the length of the UK-France Channel Tunnel.
The tunnel itself has been estimated to cost $10-12bn and to take 10-15 years to build.
But an additional 4,000km (2,485 miles) of new track would be needed to link it to Russia's rail network, plus another 2,000km (1,243 miles) to connect to existing services on the US side.
