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Robotics

Submission + - 'Archetype' – New Short Film on Robots With Memories (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "In Aaron Sims‘ exciting new short film Archetype, RL7 is a devastatingly powerful military robot that seems to be remembering its past lifeas a human and loving father. Running under seven minutes, the brief movie grabs its audience with stunning visual effects and an immersive futuristic world. That’s no surprise considering Sims’ impressive credentials – his visual effects and design can be seen in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Green Lantern, and dozens of other blockbusters. Archetype is Sims’ breakout project, a self-produced short film that is aimed at attracting the right attention so that it can be extended into a full length feature."
NASA

Submission + - NASA considering moving GALEX astrophysics satellite to private ownership (spaceflightnow.com)

Submitted by
hogghogg
hogghogg writes: "The GALEX spacecraft (surveying the Universe in ultraviolet wavelengths at which the atmosphere is close to opaque) is coming to the end of its budget life, but it hasn't finished imaging the entire sky and is still (fairly) functional. A group at Caltech wants to keep it running, so NASA is considering transfer of ownership under the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act which "allows the transfer of government-owned excess research equipment to educational institutions and non-profit organizations". Many NASA missions are terminated for budget reasons at the end of a prescribed period, even while the hardware is still highly functional. Although this is the first-ever transfer from NASA of a functioning satellite, maybe this is just the start for a class of privately run astronomical and Earth-observing facilities in space?"
The Military

Submission + - "Virginia is for drones?" (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: ""Virginia is for drones" might be the new catch-phrase for the state if its senators succeed in bringing a major unmanned aircraft flight test center to the area. Democratic senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner from Virginia and along with Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski of Maryland sent a joint letter to the Secretaries of Defense, Transportation and the NASA Administrator touting the Virginia/Maryland region as a strategic place to host one of the nation's first major Unmanned Aircraft Systems test range."
Space

Submission + - Is Venus Slowing Down? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Venus, our closest planetary neighbor, has the slowest rotational period of any world in our solar system—and according to data recently gathered by the European Space Agency's Venus Express orbiter, it's getting slower. In the 1990s, NASA's Magellan probe measured the Venusian day, the length of time needed for the planet to complete one rotation, to be 243.0185 Earth days. But new measurements by Venus Express, which has been orbiting the cloud-shrouded planet since 2006, reveal the current rotational period to be about 6.5 minutes slower.
AI

Submission + - 30% of All US Military Aircraft are Now Drones (singularityhub.com) 1

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "The American era of drone warfare has clearly arrived. According to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service, nearly one in three US warplanes are drones and those machines are changing the way the world wages war. From short range surveillance craft like the Raven to missile packing hunter-killers like the infamous Predator, the US military is awash with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)."
NASA

Submission + - Huge Crack In Antarctic Glacier Gives Rise To Iceberg Bigger Than Manhattan! (techie-buzz.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NASA’s Terra satellite saw a huge crack in the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica and it is all set to give rise to an iceberg the size of Manhattan! The huge gash in the snow is 30 kilometers (or 19 miles) long and nearly 100 meters wide, and is widening every passing minute. This is expected to create an iceberg more than 900 square kilometer in area, as compared to the 785 square kilometer area of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Bronx combined, said NASA.
Robotics

Submission + - Small device puts drones on the radar (suasnews.com)

Submitted by
garymortimer
garymortimer writes: "They have a footprint the size of a business card and at 100g, weigh 30% less than an iPhone.

Just the ticket for the UAS rush expected soon in the USA, this device will allow air traffic controllers to see drones on their radar.

Because of its size it is suitable for smaller Unmanned Aviation Systems. The type of system that might be used by Police or Fire services when the FAA eventually open up airspace for drone flight in America."

Comment Typos & Streaming (Score 1) 1

by shuttah (#38968799) Attached to: Accidental Empires To See Reboot, via the Internet

Sorry, guys. I got really excited after reading this entry on Cringely's blog and realize there are a few typos in there. My apologies. Anyway, the 1996 "Triumph of the Nerds - The Rise of Accidental Empires" television series "Official Website" is uploaded onto YouTube via the links below. You can also buy the series on the PBS website here.

The follow-up series, 1998's "Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet" ("official" website) is uploaded onto Google Video via the links below, too. You can buy a copy or two of this follow-up series on Amazon in glorious VHS format.

Triumph of the Nerds - The Rise of Accidental Empires
Part 1 - "Impressing Their Friends"
Part 2 - "Riding The Bear"
Part 3 - "Great Artists Steal"

Nerds 2.0.1 - A Brief History of the Internet
Part 1 - Networking the Nerds
Part 2 - Serving the Suits
Part 3 - Wiring the World
Books

Submission + - Accidental Empires To See Reboot, via the Internet (cringely.com) 1

Submitted by shuttah
shuttah writes: Robert X. Cringely, author of the 1992 influential book Accidental Empires, will be republishing & updating (including pictures & new chapters) the now twenty year-old book via the launch of a new blog also by the author.

Cingeley tell us — "So next month I’ll be starting a second blog with its own URL just for Accidental Empires. I, Cringely will continue right here as ever (no changes at all), but on the book blog I will over several months publish — a chapter or so at a time — the entire 100,000-word book for the world to read, free of charge."

The book was also the basis for Cringley's 1996 TV miniseries "Triumph of the Nerds" released by PBS.
Android

Submission + - The Dark Side of Apple's Mobile Dominance (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
GMGruman
GMGruman writes: "Although it sold just 9 percent of mobile phones globally last quarter, Apple made 75 percent of all the mobile phone profits. Android sales stalled, allowing the iPhone 4S to outsell all Android phone sales in the same period. And each iPhone sale costs the carriers more due to higher iPhone subsidies, hurting their bottom lines. It's a nightmare scenario for many not he mobile industry: Apple is sucking the money out of the market, much as we saw with iTunes and iPods. Apple's success is due to its own innovations, as well as to the continual stumbles of others, but the result is nonetheless a discomforting dominance by a company users love but that has a dark side tendency to control and obstinance. The joke "It's Steve Jobs' world and we just live in it" may not turn out to be so funny."
Science

Submission + - Biological computer decrypts images stored in DNA (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Californian and Israeli researchers have created a biological computer — a machine made from biological molecules — that has successfully decoded two images stored and encrypted within DNA. We’re not talking about a molecular computer that’s comparable to the CPU in your PC, though; rather, the scientists created a simple Turing machine-like finite state automaton. 'Our biological computing device is based on the 75-year-old design by the English mathematician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist Alan Turing,' says Ehud Keinan who led the research. Basically, Keinan and co have created a mixture of molecules that acts in a very specific and repeatable way on DNA that stores image data. Pour in the DNA, wait a few moments while the molecules decode the DNA helix in a massively parallel way, and then — thanks to fluorescent-tagged DNA — marvel as the decoded image appears."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Comments on Slashdot - A Whole New Low 1

Journal by shuttah

Can someone tell me what has happened to my favorite part of Slashdot; the comments on posted articles? In the last two months, it seems as though comments have taken a huge, huge drop in quality. I realize in the past it was bad but as i said, in the passed several months it's almost like i'm on a completely different website altogether.

Is there any particular reason for this?

And most importantly... what can i do to help get rid of them?

Comment Re:Look at the credits for Adobe Reader. (Score 4, Insightful) 236

by shuttah (#38287986) Attached to: Adobe Warns of Critical Zero Day Vulnerability

I agree 110%.

It's a blatant and inexcusable display of negligence on Adobe's part to schedule an update over a month after telling us that a REMOTE EXECUTION EXPLOIT is confirmed, and is being exploited in the wild. Again, with confirmation. To add to that, this isn't even something where you can advise everyone to turn off javascript and pray everyone follows your instructions while keeping an eye on traffic. It's nothing short of nightmare to be honest. The fact that this software is installed on everything from a consumer's new laptop or desktop, to a hell of a lot of government agencies doesn't sit well with me either.

Comment Get the FUD Out of Here. (Score 5, Interesting) 57

by shuttah (#38246146) Attached to: Was Conficker Stuxnet's Trojan?

I'm doubting this story.

Admittingly, the following two clues as to who the author(s) of Conficker are, are circumstantial, but i would like to offer them to you guys for consideration since this behavior from Conficker has been observed and documented -

1.

"Once Conficker [A] infects a system, it includes a keyboard layout check, via the GetKeyboardLayout API, to determine whether the victim is currently using the Ukrainian keyboard layout. If so, [A] will exit without infecting the system. This suicide exit scheme has been observed in other malware-related software, such as Baka Software's Antivirus XP Trojan installer."

The suggestion is that Conficker's author(s) were trying to avoid violating the local laws of their native country. Presumably Ukraine (who's laws concerning computer crime seem to have several loopholes).

Source

2.

In a honeynet, there was a connection observed of the [B] variant of Conficker using variant [A]'s protocol to take over a machine already infected with Variant [A]... so it was Conficker trying to replace variant [A] with Variant [B]. For several reasons (located in the source link below), it is suggested the packet captured was an instance of Conficker testing it's own robust nature to not be taken over by another author or virus.

The significance of this is the "hybrid" packet described above came from an address owned by, again, Baka Software in the Ukraine.

Source
Android

Submission + - Linaro releases Ice Cream Sandwich builds for iMX5 (linaro.org)

Submitted by
b0101101001010000
b0101101001010000 writes: "We've just released preview ICS builds of Freescale's iMX53, ST Ericsson's Snowball, Samsung's Origen and TI's Panda boards (AOSP supports Panda out of the box, this just contains a kernel that based on Linus' HEAD). This should give Android platform developers on these platforms a good base to work from."

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