Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Space

US Air Force Pays SETI To Check Kepler-22b For Alien Life 301

Posted by Soulskill from the best-defense-is-a-strong-offense dept.
New submitter iComp writes with this quote from El Reg: "The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has announced that it is back in business checking out the new [potentially] habitable exoplanets recently discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope to see if they might be home to alien civilizations. The cash needed to restart SETI's efforts has come in part from the U.S. Air Force Space Command, who are interested in using the organization's detection instruments for 'space situational awareness'."
AT&T

AT&T Issues Scathing Response To FCC Report 215

Posted by samzenpus from the we-strongly-disagree dept.
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has issued a scathing letter in response to the FCC's decision to release a staff report on its findings surrounding AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. 'We expected that the AT&T-T-Mobile transaction would receive careful, considered, and fair analysis,' Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External & Legislative Affairs, said. 'Unfortunately, the preliminary FCC Staff Analysis offers none of that.'"
AT&T

Justice Dept. Files Antitrust Complaint Against AT&T and T-Mobile Merger 301

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the but-ma-was-so-close-to-being-rebuilt dept.
Hitting the front page for the first time, AngryDeuce writes with a piece of exciting news hot off the news wire. From the article: "The Justice Department is blocking AT&T's $39 billion deal to buy T-Mobile USA, saying the acquisition of the No. 4 wireless carrier in the country by No. 2 AT&T would reduce competition and raise prices. The deal has faced tough opposition from consumer groups and No. 3 carrier Sprint since it was announced in March." The DOJ has released a full statement on their decision to file the antitrust suit, and AT&T has drafted a response. So much for AT&T's paltry promise of bringing 5000 unskilled call center jobs back to the U.S. if the merger were approved. Competition may yet live!
Crime

Law Enforcement Wants To Try 'Predictive Policing' 377

Posted by Soulskill from the don't-anger-the-precogs dept.
Harperdog with this excerpt from a story about using statistics to fight crime: "It’s great when cops catch criminals after they've done their dirty work. But what if police could stop a crime before it was even committed? Though that may sound like a fantasy straight from a Philip K. Dick novel, it's a goal police departments from Los Angeles to Memphis are actively pursuing with help from the Department of Justice and a handful of cutting-edge academics. It's called 'predictive policing.' The idea: Although no one can foresee individual crimes, it is possible to forecast patterns of where and when homes are likely to be burgled or cars stolen by analyzing truckloads of past crime reports and other data with sophisticated computer algorithms. 'We know where crime has occurred in the last month, but that doesn't mean it'll be there next month,' Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Sean Malinowski says. 'The only way for us to continue to have crime reduction is to start anticipating where crime is going to occur.'"
Education

BitTorrent and Khan Academy To Distribute Education 139

Posted by Soulskill from the racing-to-zero-cost-education dept.
drDugan writes "BitTorrent, Inc. announced this morning that they have launched a partnership with the Khan Academy to distribute open education videos. They launched with more than 2,000 videos, covering high school and college level curriculum, across science, math, history, finance and test prep. All of the videos are free to download and open licensed with Creative Commons."
Input Devices

A Kinect Princess Leia Hologram In Realtime 112

Posted by timothy from the recreation-opportunities dept.
mikejuk writes with this snippet from I, Programmer: "True 3D realtime holography is not only possible — it makes use of a Kinect as its input device. A team at MIT has recreated the famous 3D Princess Leia scene from the original Star Wars — but as a live video feed! It's a great stunt but don't miss the importance — this is realtime 3D holography and that means you can view it without any glasses or other gadgets and you can move around and see behind objects in the scene. This is more than the flat 3D you get in movies."
United States

Drug Catapult Found At US-Mexico Border Screenshot-sm 225

Posted by samzenpus from the things-have-been-rough-for-Wile-E dept.
suraj.sun writes "According to a Fox News report: 'Drug smugglers trying to get marijuana across the Arizona-Mexico border apparently are trying a new approach — a medieval catapult, capable of launching 4.4 pounds of marijuana at a time. National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station say they observed several people preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence last Friday evening. The 3-yard tall catapult was found about 20 yards from the US border on a flatbed towed by a sports utility vehicle, according to a Mexican army officer with the 45th military zone in the border state of Sonora.'"
Government

NSA Adds Kahn Collection To Cryptologic Museum 34

Posted by timothy from the classic-in-the-field dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Baltimore Sun reports that as recently as the late 1960s, the very existence of the National Security Agency was a closely held secret until a New York newspaper reporter named David Kahn published The Codebreakers, a 1,200-page blockbuster that would establish Kahn as the world's leading expert on the history of cryptology, the art and science of making and breaking codes. 'According to my editor, the NSA director flew up to New York to say it would be dangerous to national security, and unpatriotic, to publish it,' says Kahn. Fast forward 43 years and now the NSA has announced it has added the David Kahn Collection to the library of its public anteroom, the National Cryptologic Museum — complete with more than 130,000 pages of original interview notes and 2,800 books. 'For those who care about cryptology — what it is, how it works, where it fits into world history and culture — at some point, [they'd] want to look at the Kahn collection,' says curator Patrick Weadon. 'It's an eclectic cornucopia of all things cryptological.'"
Transportation

Heroic Engineer Crashes Own Vehicle To Save a Life 486

Posted by kdawson from the delta-vee dept.
scottbomb sends in this feel-good story of an engineer-hero, calling it "one of the coolest stories I've read in a long time." "A manager of Boeing's F22 fighter-jet program, Innes dodged the truck, then looked back to see that the driver was slumped over the wheel. He knew a busy intersection was just ahead, and he had to act fast. Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — 'there was no time to take a vote' — Innes kicked into engineer mode. 'Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together,' Innes explained."
Power

Tapping Solar Wind's Renewable Energy 277

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hope-that-works-out-for-ya dept.
A few folks noted a story making the rounds about the huge energy potential just blowing past the planet in the form of solar wind. This research involves putting a satellite into orbit with a thousand-meter cable and a 5,000-mile sail to generate more power than the earth currently uses.
Sci-Fi

Sunshine Writer Joins Logan's Run Remake 216

Posted by CmdrTaco from the expect-nothing-get-something dept.
bowman9991 writes "Remember to check your palm to ensure that your crystal hasn't gone black. If it has, you better start running. The 1976 science fiction classic Logan's Run, starring Michael York, is being remade in 3-D with British writer Alex Garland now onboard to write the screenplay. Garland's film Sunshine, directed by Danny Boyle, was one of the stand-out science fiction films of the last decade, and he wrote the screenplays for Leonardo DiCaprio's The Beach (based on Garland's own novel) and the science fiction horror 28 Days Later (a massive adrenaline rush of a movie). This should give first-time director Carl Rinsch some great material to work with — a great premise meets a great writer."
Space

Jupiter Is Missing a Belt 187

Posted by CmdrTaco from the what-holds-up-its-pants dept.
mbone writes "Jupiter just went through Superior Conjunction (i.e., went behind the Sun as seen from the Earth), so it has been out of view for a while. Now that it has returned, it is different — the South Equatorial Belt (SEB) is missing. The SEB has about 10 times the surface area of the Earth, so this is not a small change. Here are a series of photos of Jupiter's new look. The Great Red Spot typically inhabits the southern border of the SEB, but it doesn't seem to be affected by the change. It's a pity that this happened at Superior Conjunction, and that there is no satellite in Jupiter orbit, so details of the change are largely missing. The SEB has previously gone missing in 1973 and 1990. Since no one really knows what makes the Jovian belts, no one knows why they disappear either. If the belts are really just material from deeper layers coming to the surface, it is possible that the convection has stopped for some reason, or that high-altitude clouds have covered it over."

Slashdot Top Deals

What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey

Close