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Man Spends 2,200 Hours Defeating Bejeweled 2 179

Posted by Soulskill from the wins-complimentary-straight-jacket dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A California steel contractor spent 2,200 total hours over the last three years racking up a high score in Bejeweled 2. He exceeded the 2^31-1 maximum score programmed for the score display, proving that there is, in fact, an end to the game. I suppose congratulations or condolences are in order."
NASA

NASA To Cryogenically Freeze Satellite Mirrors 47

Posted by Soulskill from the ain't-it-cool dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA said it will soon move some of the larger (46 lb) mirror segments of its future James Webb Space Telescope into a cryogenic test facility that will freeze the mirrors to -414 degrees Fahrenheit (~25 K). Specifically, NASA will freeze six of the 18 Webb telescope mirror segments at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility, or XRCF, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in a test to ensure the critical mirrors can withstand the extreme space environments. All 18 segments will eventually be tested at the site. The test chamber takes approximately five days to cool a mirror segment to cryogenic temperatures."
Image

Air Canada Ordered To Provide Nut-Free Zone 643

Posted by samzenpus from the no-nuts dept.
JamJam writes "Air Canada has been told to create a special 'buffer zone' on flights for people who are allergic to nuts. The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that passengers who have nut allergies should be considered disabled and accommodated by the airline. Air Canada has a month to come up with an appropriate section of seats where passengers with nut allergies would be seated. The ruling involved a complaint from Sophia Huyer, who has a severe nut allergy and travels frequently. Ms. Huyer once spent 40 minutes in the washroom during a flight while snacks were being served."
Social Networks

Submission + - Facebook under Fire over Breastfeeding Photos (breastfeeding123.com) 4

Submitted by
NewsCloud
NewsCloud writes: "Facebook continues to struggle with when to enforce its own terms of service. While the 78,240 group members who want Facebook to shut down the F*** Islam group are still frustrated, those concerned with photos of breastfeeding mothers can rest more easily. The site has recently come under fire for removing pictures of breastfeeding mothers, and banning users on the grounds that they'd uploaded "obscene content" to their profiles. Says Facebook, "Photos containing an exposed breast do violate our Terms and are removed." In response, more than 33,431 concerned Facebook users have created the "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!" group. Apparently, scantily clad college co-eds, fine and dandy."
Security

Submission + - Trojan found in brand new HD sold in Taiwan (taipeitimes.com)

Submitted by
GSGKT
GSGKT writes: "About 1800 of these brand new 300GB or 500GB external HD made for Maxtor in Thailand have Trojan Horse malwares (autorun.inf and ghost.pif) pre-installed. When the HD is in use, these will forward information on HD to two websites in Beijing, China): www.nice8.org or www.we168.org. Potential users of these large HD would be mid/small business, the military, and the government in Taiwan, although no one can prove this to be the continuing war/spying efforts on Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army. /. has a story on Russian Business Network moving to China recently (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/09/1957239). Together, these two stories make an interesting new cyber-crime model: Infecting the HD at the manufacturing sites is far more efficient than to phish the end-users!"
Space

Submission + - SETI: Is It Worth It? 1

Submitted by njdube
njdube writes: It's a risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle? After all, aren't there better ways to use our monies and technical talents than trying to find something that's only posited to exist: sentient beings in the dark depths of space?
Graphics

Submission + - AMD Delivers First Stream Processor @ 500 GFLOPS

Submitted by
Godsmack74
Godsmack74 writes: "AMD FireStream 9170 The AMD FireStream 9170 will be the world's first Stream GPU with double-precision floating point technology tailored for scientific and engineering calculations. Competitively priced at an MSRP of $1999 USD, it features up to 500 GFLOPS of compute power, rivalling many of today's supercomputers, and providing dramatic acceleration for critical algorithms. This second generation Stream Processor is built with 55 nm process technology and consumes less than 150 watts of power — delivering an exceptional performance per watt. In addition, the reduced heat dissipation allows it to function in dense design configurations. The FireStream 9170 is a single card solution with 2GB of onboard GDDR3 memory to compute large datasets without CPU traffic. The asynchronous direct memory access (DMA) ensures data can flow freely without interrupting the stream processor or CPU. At $1999 USD it may be one of the most expensive graphics processors on the planet. Although it's not really competitively priced against anything on the "normal" graphics market, for the high end market it fits right in. Of course where else can you pay $1999 and get 500GFLOPS of compute power? With the power of graphics cards rivaling and surpassing that of average processors the migration of the entire industry to graphics architectures and line of thought is not far away. Are we once again seeing AMD's forethought and planning in action? Acquiring ATI may prove to be a genius move in the long run. Pictures and more information can be found at TechwareLabs"
Security

Submission + - The World's Biggest Botnets

Submitted by ancientribe
ancientribe writes: There's a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow the notorious Storm away in size and sophistication, according to researchers, and it's a direct result of how Storm has changed the botnet game, with more powerful and wily botnets on the horizon. This article provides a peek at the "new Storm" and reveals the three biggest botnets in the world (including Storm) — and what makes them tick and what they are after.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=138610&WT.svl=news1_1
Google

Submission + - Dvorak on the gPhone, DOOMED says he! (pcmag.com) 3

Submitted by drewmoney
drewmoney writes: Speaking with his usual frustrated crankiness, John C. Dvorak (from CNET fame, not to be confused with the good Doctor), rants, cries, and laughs his way through an article explaining why the gPhone will never work. Yes, this is the same Apple basher that made fun of the company when they included a mouse with their systems in 1984.

"There is no evidence that people want to use these things.", he said.

And, yes, this is the same person that made fun of the iBook, saying it looked like it was made for a child. And of course, who could forget when he said that people were making judgment on a product they haven't even used yet, referring to the praise that the iPhone got before its release.

Try to ignore the parts where Mr. Dvorak makes judgement on a product that he hasn't even used yet. And when you're done, feel free to make your own judgements.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft fires its CIO after investigation

Submitted by Stony Stevenson
Stony Stevenson writes: Microsoft has fired its chief information officer, Stuart Scott. "We can confirm that Stuart Scott was terminated after an investigation for violation of company policies," the company said. "We have no further information to share." But according to this article, Microsoft is already looking for a replacement. Microsoft General Manager Shahla Aly and Alain Crozier, a Microsoft VP in charge of the company's CFO, sales, marketing and services group will take over Scott's duties while Microsoft looks around.
Privacy

Submission + - Scary New Book on Privacy (gwu.edu)

Submitted by
pasquafa
pasquafa writes: "Dan Solove earlier showed us why "I've Got Nothing to Hide" is a foolish reason to brush off privacy concerns. Now his book The Future of Reputation shows us that we've all got a lot to fear from new surveillance technologies. In past articles, Solove's done a great job advocating for individual rights against big data aggregators like Choicepoint, banks, and the government. His latest book breaks new ground because it focuses on a harder issue: how to deal with Web 2.0's swarm of privacy-invading individuals. When it comes to privacy, we may well be our own worst enemies. Against the tide of knee-jerk libertarianism, Solove demonstrates that there are some baseline norms that should govern the spread of personally identifiable information, gossip, and rumors. He even offers hope that the blogosphere can become a more fair, decent, and perhaps even public-minded place."
Music

Submission + - More RIAA Foolishness

Submitted by
budohorseman
budohorseman writes: "In an article posted on The Motley Fool financial web site titled Piracy 101: A Lesson in Suboptimal Lawsuits, Alyce Lomax covers the recent RIAA attempts to get colleges and universities to help them track down file sharing. She also goes on to describe how the RIAA sidesteps the DCMA, attempts to use 1984 laws that apply to cable companies and how it's costing the RIAA millions, all while alienating their strongest consumer base."

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