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Submission + - NASA's $349 Million Empty Tower (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a scathing indictment of the NASA bureaucracy, the Washington Post documents a $349 million project to construct a laboratory tower that was closed as soon as it was finished. "[The tower was] designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space. ... As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down. The project was officially 'mothballed' — closed up and left empty — without ever being used. ... The reason for the shutdown: The new tower — called the A-3 test stand — was useless. Just as expected. The rocket program it was designed for had been canceled in 2010. ... The result was that NASA spent four more years building something it didn’t need. Now, the agency will spend about $700,000 a year to maintain it in disuse. ... Jerked from one mission to another, NASA lost its sense that any mission was truly urgent. It began to absorb the vices of less-glamorous bureaucracies: Officials tended to let projects run over time and budget. Its congressional overseers tended to view NASA first as a means to deliver pork back home, and second as a means to deliver Americans into space. In Mississippi, NASA built a monument to its own institutional drift."

Submission + - Denmark claims North Pole via Greenland ridge link (yahoo.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Scientific data shows Greenland's continental shelf is connected to a ridge beneath the Arctic Ocean, giving Danes a claim to the North Pole and any potential energy resources beneath it, Denmark's foreign minister said.

Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said Denmark will deliver a claim on Monday to a United Nations panel in New York that will eventually decide control of the area, which Russia and Canada are also coveting.

Comment Re:I find this amusing... (Score 1) 250

by Zocalo (#48604025) Attached to: Sony Demands Press Destroy Leaked Documents
Oh, please, please, PLEASE let them mean that.

If every media outlet there proceeds to print as much as they can about this story then Sony will apparently have NO CHOICE but to hold them responsible and take every single one of them to court. Given David Boies' likely fees that alone will probably end them, let alone any damages that such losing suits will bring, and with the reputation as being the lawyer that drove two companies into Chapter 7 bankruptcy though bad advice it will probably end David Boies too. What's not to like with that scenario?

Submission + - Want to influence the world? Map reveals the best languages to speak (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Speak or write in English, and the world will hear you. Speak or write in Tamil or Portuguese, and you may have a harder time getting your message out. Now, a new method for mapping how information flows around the globe identifies the best languages to spread your ideas far and wide. One hint: If you’re considering a second language, try Spanish instead of Chinese.

Submission + - 80's Person Computing Behind the Iron Curtain: Western Clones plus Black Market (hackaday.com) 2

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: Obviously the person computer revolution was world-wide, but the Eastern Bloc countries had a story of PC evolution all their own. Martin Malý tells first hand of his experiences seeing Black Market imports, locally build clones of popular western machines, and all kinds of home-built equipment.

How do you build a 1980's computer around if 68000, 8080, and Z80 are all embargoed?

Submission + - The Pirate Bay Responds to Raid

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Pirate Bay's crew have remained awfully quiet on the recent raid in public, but today Mr 10100100000 breaks the silence in order to get a message out to the world. In a nutshell, he says that they couldn't care less, are going to keep some hiatus, and a comeback is possible. In recent days mirrors of The Pirate Bay appeared online and many of these have now started to add new content as well. According to TPB this is a positive development, but people should be wary of scams. Mr 10100100000 says that they would open source the engine of the site, if the code "wouldn't be so shitty". In any case, they recommend people keeping the Kopimi spirit alive, as TPB is much more than some hardware stored in a dusty datacenter.

Submission + - Sony Demands Press Destroy Leaked Documents (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by SydShamino
SydShamino writes: In an effort that may run afoul of the first amendment, Sony, through their lawyer David Boies (of SCO infamy), has sent a letter to major news organizations demanding that they refrain from downloading any leaked documents, and destroy those already possessed. Sony threatens legal action to news organizations that do not comply, saying that "Sony Pictures Entertainment will have no choice but to hold you responsible for any damage or loss arising from such use or dissemination by you."

Comment Re:Hmmmm ... legality? (Score 2) 138

by Zocalo (#48602901) Attached to: Amazon UK Glitch Sells Thousands of Products For a Penny
After a few previous high-profile incidents of this kind of error most online retailers have a clause in their Ts&Cs excusing them from obvious mistakes, errors and omissions, and Amazon is no exception. If they'd had a big banner saying "Special Offer!" or some such, or the price difference was less obvious then it was then the might have had to honour the sales, or done so out of good faith if the damage wasn't too high, but in this case they're pretty much home and dry.

Submission + - Smithsonian Museum Digitizes Entire Collection, Plans Release on New Year's Day

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art, will release their entire collections online Jan. 1, 2015, providing unprecedented access to one of the world’s most important holdings of Asian and American art. The vast majority of the 40,000 artworks have never before been seen by the public, and more than 90 percent of the images will be in high resolution and without copyright restrictions for noncommercial use. The Freer and Sackler galleries are the first Smithsonian and the only Asian art museums to digitize and release their entire collections, and in so doing join just a handful of museums in the U.S. The release is the result of a massive staff effort to photograph and create digital records for its objects, requiring almost 6,000 staff hours in the past year alone and resulting in more than 10 terabytes of data and 50,000 images. The galleries also hosted the Smithsonian’s Rapid Capture Pilot Project, an emerging method of quickly and efficiently digitizing vast numbers of smaller objects.

Submission + - BT to buy UK 4G leader EE for £12.5bn (v3.co.uk)

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes: The UK mobile market looks set for a radical shake-up after BT confirmed it is now in final stage discussions to buy EE for £12.5bn. The move will see the telecoms giant return to the mobile market for the first time in over a decade and make the company the leader in both fixed and mobile markets. Whether or not the telecoms regulatory Ofcom will agree to such a deal, though, remains to be seen

Submission + - The GPLv2 goes to court (opensource.com)

Submitted by Jason Baker
Jason Baker writes: Despite its importance, the GPLv2 has been the subject of very few court decisions, and virtually all of the most important terms of the GPLv2 have not been interpreted by courts. This lack of court decisions is about to change due to the five interrelated cases arising from a dispute between Versata Software, Inc. ("Versata") (its parent company, Trilogy Development Corporation, is also involved, but Versata is taking the lead) and Ameriprise Financial, Inc. ("Ameriprise"). The courts in two separate cases issued decisions on November 25, just before Thanksgiving.

These cases are dealing with four important terms in the GPLv2: 1) What are the remedies for breach of the terms of the GPLv2? 2) What is a "distribution" under the GPLv2 that triggers the obligations under the GPLv2? 3) Does the GPLv2 include a patent license? 4) What type of integration between proprietary code and GPLv2 licensed code will result in creating a “derivative work” and subject such proprietary code to the terms of the GPLv2?

Submission + - Apple and Samsung Already Working On A9 Processor (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: According to a report in Korean IT Times, Samsung Electronics has begun production of the A9 processor, the next generation ARM-based CPU for iPhone and iPad. Korea IT Times says Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production (a cutting-edge design for semiconductors that many other manufacturers, including AMD, IBM and TSMC, are adopting) in Austin, Texas and Giheung, Korea, but production is only taking place in Austin. Samsung invested $3.9 billion in that plant specifically to make chips for Apple. So now Apple can say its CPU is 'Made in America'.

Submission + - Govt Docs Reveal Canadian Telcos Promise Surveillance Ready Networks (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist reports that Canadian telecom and Internet providers have tried to convince the government that they will voluntarily build surveillance capabilities into their networks. Hoping to avoid legislative requirements, the providers argue that "the telecommunications market will soon shift to a point where interception capability will simply become a standard component of available equipment, and that technical changes in the way communications actually travel on communications networks will make it even easier to intercept communications."

Submission + - How Birds Lost Their Teeth

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A research team from the University of California, Riverside and Montclair State University, New Jersey, have found that the lack of teeth in all living birds can be traced back to a common ancestor who lived about 116 million years ago. From the article: "To solve this puzzle, the researchers used a recently created genome database that catalogues the genetic history of nearly all living bird orders--48 species in total. They were looking for two specific types of genes: one responsible for dentin, the substance that (mostly) makes up teeth, and another for the enamel that protects them. Upon finding these genes, researchers then located the mutations that deactivate them, and combed the fossil record to figure out when those mutations developed. They concluded that the loss of teeth and the development of the beak was a two-stage process, though the steps basically happened simultaneously. The paper states: 'In the first stage, tooth loss and partial beak development began on the anterior portion of both the upper and lower jaws. The second stage involved concurrent progression of tooth loss and beak development from the anterior portion of both jaws to the back of the rostrum.'"

Submission + - Interviews: Ask Jonty Hurwitz About Art, Engineering, and Math

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Jonty Hurwitz is an artist with a degree in engineering who says, "each one of his pieces is a study on the physics of how we perceive space and is the stroke of over 1 billion calculations and algorithms." Recently, his nano sculpture project drew a lot of attention. With help from the Weizmann Institute of Science and using a 3D printing technique by the Institute of Microstructure Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hurwitz created a number of sculptures that were so small they could fit in the eye of a needle, or on a human hair. Jonty has agreed to answer any questions you have big or very small. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

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