21258840
submission
fermion writes:
An initial report has been released by the BEA concerning the details of the last minutes of Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. According the report the autopilot disengaged and stall warning engaged at 2 hours 10 minutes and 5 seconds into flight. Less than 2 minutes later the recorded speeds became invalid. At 2 hours 14 minutes and 28 seconds, the recording stopped. The final vertical speed was recorded around 10,912 ft/min.
21255822
submission
HansonMB writes:
Unlike the various virtual currencies that have found traction (and attracted some controversy) in the world of massive multiplayer online games, where they’re used to purchase virtual farms or weapons for slaying Orcs, Bitcoins have a more serious glimmer. They rely on a novel mechanism – developed by a Japanese computer science student – by which value is accumulated through peer-to-peer networks. They can’t be forged or stolen, nor can their value be artificially inflated; transactions based on them are untraceable (cue the bad guy James Bond music).
Some people think it’s a load of nonsense; others say Bitcoin has the capacity to topple governments. Bitcoins are already being accepted by a variety of websites spanning markets like gaming, music, electronics and more. Others, meanwhile, are simply using them to sell drugs and buy prostitutes. Regardless of how they are used, one thing’s certain: Bitcoins have certainly got a lot of nerdy people talking.
To get a better understanding of how these things are made and what they can do, I sat down with a Bitcoin miner. Our subject – a system administrator at a college in the New York area – has turned his school’s computers into a server farm to get more buck for his bang, so to speak. Because of the nebulous legal and ethical nature of his scheme, he asked to remain anonymous.
