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NASA

Simulation of Close Asteroid Fly-By 148

c0mpliant writes "NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have released a simulation of the path of an asteroid, named Apophis, that will come very close to Earth in 2029 — the closest predicted approach since humans have monitored for such heavenly bodies. The asteroid caused a bit of a scare when astronomers first announced that it would enter Earth's neighborhood some time in the future. However, since that announcement in 2004, more recent calculations have put the odds of collision at 1 in 250,000."
The Matrix

Journal SPAM: Top prosecutor in AIPAC case quits 6

Published: 02/28/2008

The top prosecutor in the case against two former AIPAC staffers is quitting.

Less than two months before the trial date Kevin DiGregory, an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia's Eastern District, is joining the private intellectual property firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips starting Monday.

Privacy

Journal SPAM: ACLU: U.S. Terror Watch List Surpasses 900,000 Names 2

Wow! Just by reading these words, you probably have a better chance of making this list than winning the lottery. "In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department that the terrorist watch list information in the United States had over 700,000 names, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month. At that rate, our list will have a million names on it by July." I wonder

Patents

Submission + - Yahoo tries to patent "enhanced" drag and

Unequivocal writes: "They're at it again. Yahoo has recently submitted an application to the USPTO describing "enhanced drag and drop" functionality. Patents are supposed to be non-obvious, useful and novel. You think this doesn't qualify? You may be in for a surprise. Andy Oram notes that "this application seems to be a tough one to crack, despite its simplicity. Only two comments are posted, and no actual instances of prior art (although one comment tentatively suggests on instance). If no prior art is found in 35 days, the comment period closes on Peer to Patent and little stands in the way of granting the patent." Law Profs Jason Schultz and James Grimmelman discuss this issue in greater detail.

Bottom line: Unless the public submits some useful prior art soon, the patent examiner who gets this application will likely approve it. So show some holiday spirit and dig into your TurboPascal source files from 1987 and find some clever drag and drop tools that show this idea has been around for a long, long time."
Power

Submission + - Toshiba Builds Ultra-Small Nuclear Reactor.

DeusExCalamus writes: "Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs. Read more here: http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html"
Education

Submission + - A Master's Degree in Intelligent Design (chron.com)

ParanoidDrunkard writes: "The Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research is seeking state approval to grant an online master's degree in science education to prepare teachers to "understand the universe within the integrating framework of Biblical creationism," according to the school's mission statement. Last week, an advisory council made up of university educators voted to recommend the program for approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, sparking an outcry among science advocates who have fended off attempts by religious groups to insert creationism into Texas classrooms. But students and faculty must profess faith in a literal translation of Biblical creation — that God created the world in six days and made humans and animals in their current life forms; that the Earth is only thousands of years old; and the fossil record is the result of a global flood described in the Bible, according to the Web site. Is this another attempt to validate intelligent design as a science?"
HP

Submission + - HP Unwilling to Fix BIOS for Linux Users (mattparnell.com)

ilikenwf writes: "Many users have had issues with the HP laptops that are currently on the market as a result of a BIOS bug persists to pop up on HP's laptops, regardless of the various updates. This causes users to have to disable lapic, which keeps features like high resolution timers from being used to increase speed and drastically increase battery life. Contacting customer support has been less than helpful, as displayed by HP's arrogance. Any BIOS hackers out there?...And no, LinuxBIOS will not work on these laptops."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Tour my floor (jaycharles.net)

An anonymous reader writes: Concept is simple. Some dude rigged up a webcam to an R/C car and wrote some funky backend code with a Flash interface so you can control his R/C car online, from anywhere and take a tour around his room. And the best bit about it... no cops or speed cameras anywhere!
The Matrix

Submission + - Surfer's Theory of Everything Stuns Physicists (arxiv.org)

Baldrson writes: "The UK Telegraph reports that: A surfer dude named Garrett Lisi has come up with a new theory of everything which physicists are calling "fabulous", "incredibly beautiful", "profound" and "most compelling". Lisi's peer-reviewed paper titled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" is being published with the New Scientist. The Telegraph article continues: "Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.""
AMD

Submission + - AMD Preparing To Release More GPU Documentation (phoronix.com)

Michael Larabel writes: "In September, AMD had released over 900 pages of GPU documentation to the open-source community and they are now on the heels of releasing even more documentation. These documents, which will be released to the community without any Non-Disclosure Agreement, will cover their Radeon X1250 and Mobility Radeon X2600. The next documentation release will be more detailed then the first set of documents and they will also be begin delivering the information needed for enabling open-source 3D support. From the article, "There is a real possibility that come Christmas, you could find at least some of the 3D documentation in your stocking. This is a hope by AMD to have them out by the end of the year, but like everything else, there could be a delay pushing it to H1'08 as this schedule is only tentative...The two main things to gather is that AMD has brought upon new staff dedicated towards enabling the open-source community and that new NDA-free GPU documentation is in the process of being released.""
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - Accellerated X drivers coming for PS3 Linux (ps2dev.org)

t0qer writes: Over at the PS2dev forums a hacker named Ironpeter has successfully managed to bypass the PS3's Hypervisor to gain direct access to it's Nvidia RSX GPU.

This is s first step and far from a complete working driver, but it seems as word of this spreads, more people are helping with the effort to hunt down the Hypervisors Fifo/Push buffer. It won't be long before we're playing tux racer on the PS3 in it's full OpenGL glory.

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