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Denver Rejects UFO Agency To Track Aliens Screenshot-sm 80

Posted by samzenpus from the name-and-galaxy-of-origin-please dept.
Republicans weren't the only ones to win big yesterday. Aliens in The Mile-High City can breathe easier thanks to voters rejecting a plan to officially track them. From the article: "The proposal defeated soundly Tuesday night would have established a commission to track extraterrestrials. It also would have allowed residents to post their observations on Denver's city Web page and report sightings." Let the anonymous probings begin!
Space

Submission + - BBC News - Runway opens at world's first spaceport (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by mayberry42
mayberry42 writes:

Commercial space travel took a step closer with the opening of the runway at the world's first spaceport in the US state of New Mexico. The event was marked with a flypast of an aircraft carrying SpaceShip Two. The vehicle has been designed to take fee-paying tourists on trips to the edge of space and back. British billionaire Sir Richard Branson — whose Virgin group has backed the venture — said the first passenger trip should take place within 18 months.
Microsoft

Submission + - London Stock Exchange smashes world record trade s (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by mayberry42
mayberry42 writes:

The London Stock Exchange has said its new Linux-based system is delivering world record networking speed, with 126 microsecond trading times.

The news comes ahead a major Linux-based switchover in twelve days, during which the open source system will replace Microsoft .Net technology on the group’s main stock exchange. The LSE had long been criticised on speed and reliability, grappling with trading speeds of several hundred microseconds.

Comment Re:Water? (Score 1) 191

by mayberry42 (#33959500) Attached to: UK-Developed 'DNA Spray' Marks Dutch Thieves With Trackable Water

I've used a similar competing product called SmartWater.

The beauty of things like SmartWater is that its a suspension of fine molecules that can be *uniquely* identified to a particular user (i.e. you get a coded bottle with a unique number and a unique solution). The UV is just there to light up when people go through police stations but the chemical itself is, supposedly, uniquely identifiable.

You mean this smartwater? Wow, i had no idea flavoured vitamin water could do such things! And i thought it was to make you smart...

Comment Re:three million (Score 1) 1348

by mayberry42 (#33933040) Attached to: Desktop Linux Is Dead

Ah, i knew i had the link somewhere!. It averaged out at about 4.64% not bad, actually. True, these are far from perfect statistics, but non the less an indication that linux is definitely moving in the right direction.

One more point to mention: I'm actually VERY unimpressed with the Mac OSX numbers - I'm wondering how much publicity and fame they have (and how much money spent behind it), yet their market share is still under 10% (less than twice that of linux). Sorry fanboys :-p

Comment Re:three million (Score 1) 1348

by mayberry42 (#33932914) Attached to: Desktop Linux Is Dead

A 1-2% usage rate equals ~three million desktop users in the United States.

I actually read just recently (wish i could remember the source) that Linux has about a 4.5% market share this year, with a steady growth from about 2% just 8 years ago with the highest adoption rate being around 2004 onwards (Ubuntu?), if i recall correctly. Either way, it's a slow and steady improvement.

Desktop Linux may not be alive and well, but it certainly isn't dead.
The Internet

Submission + - IPv4 Space Shrinks To 5% (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by mayberry42
mayberry42 writes:

The Number Resource Organization, the coordinating mechanism for the five Regional Internet Registries or RIRs, this morning announced that less than 5% of the world’s IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) addresses remain unallocated. The IPv4 pool first dipped below 10% in January 2010, and in the next nine months some 200 million addresses have subsequently been allocated from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to the RIRs.

NRO anticipates to allocate the last IPv4 address blocks to the registries within months.

Comment not the first time... (Score 3, Interesting) 297

by mayberry42 (#33866760) Attached to: French City To Use CCTV For Parking Fines

This is not the first time I've heard "this is for your own safety" arguments only to have them turn out as thinly veiled guises of trying to make money at your expense. Details escape me, but not too long ago, somewhere in the US, a town added red light cameras which took a snapshot of your car and sent you the fine for running a red light. In a matter of months, it was so successful that very few, if anybody, ran red lights anymore. You think they'd be happy - after all, they probably DID save lives. So why did they take them down? Because the revenue from tickets (those types anyway) was reduced to a big, fat 0

This also makes you wonder what else is being done "for our safety", when in reality it's just a way to take your money. Surely at least speeding enforcement must be exempt from this. Oh wait...

Rothbard was right when he said that governments only have destructive ways of making money (of course, he was referring to taxation at the time, but a valid point non the less)

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