Comment Coon and Friends? (Score 4, Funny) 391
Am I the only one thinking of the latest South Park episodes?
Comment Alcohol forbidden? (Score 1) 113
How many of the astronauts would be considered flight crew? So long as they're "flying", it would seem they'd be covered by 14 CFR 91.17, which is the 0.04% and 8 hour bottle-to-throttle rule. Oh, IANAL, but IAAP and wondering how many of the FAA regulations apply.
Comment He'll go down in history... (Score 1) 244
While he may have never actually said it, years from now the world will only remember one thing:
"64 fart apps ought to be enough for anybody"
-- Alan Panezic
Google Found Guilty of Australian Privacy Breach 105
schliz writes "The Australian Privacy Commissioner has found Google guilty of breaching the country's Privacy Act when it collected unsecured WiFi payload data with its Street View vehicles. While the Commissioner could not penalize the company, Google agreed to publish an apology on its Australian blog, and work more closely with her during the next three years. Globally, Google is said to have collected some 600 GB of data transmitted over public WiFi networks. In May, the company put its high-definition Australian Street View plans on hold to audit its processes."
Comment Double blind study (Score 5, Informative) 298
it's hard to see how a double-blind study could even be designed in this area
In the medical field, it means that both the patient and the doctor evaluating the symptoms don't know who received a placebo.
For this experiment - setup two antennae in front of some seedlings, have a different dude turn one of them on. The person measuring the seedling growth doesn't know which were exposed to radio waves. That's all you need to make sure the study doesn't have some bias in it.
Comment Re:ITA? Never heard of it (Score 3, Informative) 72
I think ITA made a great deal of hype around their NP proof, but the complexity of the search was known by many and was known before ITA published their results. For example, Tom Holloran (United Airlines) published a paper at AGIFORS in the 1980's that showed the equivalence to a set covering / set partitioning problem.
Sabre's fare search engine was rewritten from scratch in C++ & Java starting about the same time ITA started. The search engine runs on a Linux cluster, and independent benchmarks show that it is the leader in finding the lowest fares. In fact, pretty much *all* the major players in fare search run on x86 clusters. You could look this up online too
Submission + - Google Street View Wi-Fi Data Includes Passwords (infoworld.com)
snydeq writes: "The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty has found passwords and email messages among the Street View Wi-Fi data Google intercepted, InfoWorld reports. The data protection authority has been investigating Google's recording of traffic carried over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google has said it collected only 'fragments' of personal Web traffic as it passed by because its Wi-Fi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second. With Wi-Fi networks operating at up to 54Mbps, however, those 'fragments' may have been more than just that. 'We can already state that [...] Google did indeed record email access passwords [and] extracts of the content of email messages," CNIL said."
Submission + - Alberta scientists discover largest bed of dinosau (theglobeandmail.com)
Cryolithic writes: The largest cache of dinosaur bones ever found has been unearthed in Alberta. From the article: "Scientists in Alberta have discovered the largest dinosaur bonebed ever documented – along with evidence of massive carnage – near Hilda, 50 km north of Medicine Hat"
Submission + - DIY Synthetic Aperture Radar (makezine.com) 1
An anonymous reader writes: Here is a tutorial on how to build a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) from a bunch of junk found at swap meets, a garage door opener and a cordless drill. This system is capable of high resolution imaging of pins and model aircraft. Wonder why you were pulled over? build one of these then measure the radar reflectivity of your car.
Comment Re:State of the Databases (Score 1) 157
I've had very good support from MySQL as well. This is experience from several years ago, before Sun or Oracle got involved. The nice thing is that you get to choose, if you don't want support then you pay very little - but ther enterprise level support is quite good.
Comment Re:How about the ones helicopter pilots etc use? (Score 1) 110
The noise reduction (ANR) headsets that pilots use are a little more expensive but work really well. Start shopping (well) north of $300 and the top of the line models are around $900. I have a Lightspeed headset, and really like it. I've tried it with my phone a couple of times and it makes a great hands-free for driving on the highway.
You could try one at any pilot store. Most General Aviation (GA) airports, even many of the smaller ones, have a store nearby.
Sticky Rice Is the Key To Super Strong Mortar 194
lilbridge writes "For over 1,500 years the Chinese have been using sticky rice as an ingredient in mortar, which has resulted in super strong buildings, many of which are still standing after hundreds of years. Scientists have been studying the sticky rice and lime mortar to unlock the secrets of its strength, and have just determined the secret ingredient that makes the mortar more stable and stronger. The scientists have also concluded that this mixture is the most appropriate for restoration of ancient and historic buildings, which means it is probably also appropriate for new construction as well."
New Linux Petabyte-Scale Distributed File System 132
An anonymous reader writes "A recent addition to Linux's impressive selection of file systems is Ceph, a distributed file system that incorporates replication and fault tolerance while maintaining POSIX compatibility. Explore the architecture of Ceph and learn how it provides fault tolerance and simplifies the management of massive amounts of data."
Beaver Dam Visible From Space 286
ygslash writes "The
Hoover Dam
no longer holds the title of the world's widest dam.
Satellite photos of northern Alberta, Canada, show that several families
of beavers have apparently
joined forces
to build a dam 850 meters
wide, more than twice as wide as the Hoover Dam."
8-Core Intel Nehalem-EX To Launch This Month 186
MojoKid writes "What could you do with 8 physical cores of CPU processing power? Intel's upcoming 8-core Nehalem-EX is launching later this month, according to Intel Xeon Platform Director Shannon Poulin. The announcement puts to rest rumors that the 8-core part might be delayed, and makes good on a promise Intel made last year when the chip maker said it would release the chip in the first half of 2010. To quickly recap, Nehalem-EX boasts an extensive feature-set, including up to 8 cores per processor, up to 16 threads per processor with Intel Hyper-threading, scalability up to eight sockets via Intel's serial Quick Path Interconnect and more with third-party node controllers, and 24MB of shared cache."
