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Submission + - SpaceX set to create 300 new US jobs and expand facilities (spaceindustrynews.com)

Submitted by littlesparkvt
littlesparkvt writes: The SpaceX manufacturing plant in McGregor , TX is set to spend $46 million on an expansion that would create 300 full-time jobs. SpaceX is proposing to invest $46.3 million in the site during the next five years. They will spend $32.4 million in real property improvements and $13.9 million in personal property improvements.

Submission + - Reverse Engineering CAPCOM'S Crypto CPU (blogspot.com.es)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There are a few old Capcom arcade titles – Pang, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and Block Block – that are unlike anything else ever seen in the world of coin-ops. They’re old, yes, but what makes these titles exceptional is the CPU they run on. The brains in the hardware of these games is a Kabuki, a Z80 CPU that had a few extra security features. why would Capcom produce such a thing? To combat bootleggers that would copy and reproduce arcade games without royalties going to the original publisher. It’s an interesting part of arcade history, but also a problem. Read more about the efforts to reverse engineer this security cpu on Arcade Hacker.

Submission + - Vinyl Record Pressing Plants Struggle to Keep Up With Demand

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The WSJ reports that the revival of vinyl records, a several-year trend that many figured was a passing fad, has accelerated during 2014 with an astounding 49 percent sales increase over 2013 (line chart here). Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital, and some youngsters like the social experience of gathering around a turntable. The records are pressed at a handful of decades-old, labor-intensive factories that can't keep up with the demand; but since the increased sales still represent only about 2 percent of US music sales, there hasn't been a rush of capital investment to open new plants. Raw vinyl must now be imported to America from countries such as Thailand, since the last US supplier closed shop years ago. Meanwhile, an industry pro offers his take on the endless debate of audio differences between analog records and digital formats; it turns out there were reasons for limiting playing time on each side back in the day, apart from bands not having enough decent material.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Best software for image organization? 1

Submitted by Wycliffe
Wycliffe writes: Like many people, I am starting to get a huge collection of digital photos from family vacations, etc... I am looking for some software that allows me to rate/tag my own photos in a quick way. I really don't want to spend the time tagging a bunch of photos and then be locked into a single piece of software so what is the best software to help organize and tag photos so that I can quickly find highlights without being locked into that software for life. I would prefer open source to prevent lock-in and also prefer linux but could do windows if necessary.

Submission + - Judge Rules Drug Maker Cannot Halt Sales of Alzheimer's Medicine

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Andrew Pollack reports at the NYT that a federal judge has blocked an attempt by the drug company Actavis to halt sales of an older form of its Alzheimer’s disease drug Namenda in favor of a newer version with a longer patent life after New York’s attorney general filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the drug company of forcing patients to switch to the newer version of the widely used medicine to hinder competition from generic manufacturers. “Today’s decision prevents Actavis from pursuing its scheme to block competition and maintain its high drug prices,” says Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general. “Our lawsuit against Actavis sends a clear message: Drug companies cannot illegally prioritize profits over patients.”

The case involves a practice called product hopping where brand name manufacturers make a slight alteration to their prescription drug (PDF) and engage in marketing efforts to shift consumers from the old version to the new to insulate the drug company from generic competition for several years. For its part Actavis argued that an injunction would be “unprecedented and extraordinary” and would cause the company “great financial harm, including unnecessary manufacturing and marketing costs.” Namenda has been a big seller. In the last fiscal year, the drug generated $1.5 billion in sales. The drug costs about $300 a month.

Submission + - Former iTunes Engineer Tells Court He Worked to Block Competitors (wsj.com)

Submitted by loftarasa
loftarasa writes: Yesterday, former engineer Rob Schultz unwillingly testified in court against Apple that he worked on project 'Candy' which 'intended to block 100% of non-iTunes clients' from 2006 to 2007. In his opinion, the work of his team contributed to create 'market dominance' for the iPod. Apple argues, and Schutlz agree, that its intentions were to improve iTunes, not curb competition.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: SpaceX Will Attempt to Land a Falcon 9 Rocket on a Floating Platform in the Ocea (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

The Utah People's Post
SpaceX Will Attempt to Land a Falcon 9 Rocket on a Floating Platform in the Ocean
The Utah People's Post
Officials from SpaceX announced that they will conduct simulation exercises to successfully land a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform in the ocean. SpaceX will make an attempt that was never tried before. They will try to land a Falcon 9 spacecraft on a...
SpaceX will attempt to land rocket booster on floating ocean platformiTWire
Can SpaceX land a rocket on a floating ocean platform? (+video)Christian Science Monitor
SpaceX Will Try to Land Rocket on Floating Ocean PlatformDiscovery News
Beta Wired-Science Recorder
all 33 news articles

Submission + - US Navy authorizes use of laser in combat (usni.org)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: The U.S. Navy is has declared an experimental laser weapon on its Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB) in the Persian Gulf an operational asset and U.S. Central Command has given permission for the commander of the ship to defend itself with the weapon.

The 30 kilowatt Laser Weapon System (LaWS) was installed aboard USS Ponce this summer as part of a $40 million research and development effort from ONR and Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) to test the viability of directed energy weapons in an operational environment.

No word yet on a smaller, shark-mounted version.

Submission + - Titan's dunes took tens of thousands of years to form (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Massive dunes, some of them 100 meters tall and a kilometer or more wide at their base, cover about one-eighth of Titan’s surface. And they take an exceptionally long time to form, according to a new study. Using radar data gleaned by the Cassini probe when it occasionally swooped past Saturn’s haze-shrouded moon, researchers conclude that it would take about 3000 Saturn years (or 88,200 Earth years) to shift Titan’s dunes to the extent seen in the images. A similar phenomenon has taken place on Earth, the researchers note: The overall patterns in many large dune fields in the southwestern Sahara and the southwestern United States, shaped by the winds that blew during the most recent ice age more than 10,000 years ago, remain largely unaffected by modern winds that now blow in a different direction.

Submission + - Displaced IT workers are being silenced (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: A major problem with the H-1B debate is the absence of displaced IT workers in news media accounts. Much of the reporting is one-sided — and there's a reason for this. An IT worker who is fired because he or she has been replaced by a foreign, visa-holding employee of an offshore outsourcing firm will sign a severance agreement. This severance agreement will likely include a non-disparagement clause that will make the fired worker extremely cautious about what they say on Facebook, let alone to the media. On-the-record interviews with displaced workers are difficult to get. While a restrictive severance package may be one handcuff, some are simply fearful of jeopardizing future job prospects by talking to reporters. Now silenced, displaced IT workers become invisible and easy to ignore. This situation has a major impact on how the news media covers the H-1B issue and offshore outsourcing issues generally.

Submission + - FTC: Online Billing Service Deceptively Collected Medical Records (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: The FTC has reached a proposed settlement with PaymentsMD, an Atlanta health billing company that used the sign-up process for its billing service to surreptitiously seek customers’ consent to obtain detailed medical information. The medical information PaymentsMD requested included customers’ prescriptions, procedures, medical diagnoses, lab tests performed and their results, and other information, the FTC said. The bright spot in all this: In all but one case, the health care providers contacted for data refused to comply with PaymentsMD’s requests.

Submission + - Will Microsoft Ever Fix The Network Problem?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "You never know what you've got till it's gone" and that certainly applies to XP!

If you link several PCs together using ethernet and mapped drives and for some reason you don't
know what I'm talking about, try this:-

Open about 10 folders across your network on a windows Vista-W8 PC, then put your PC
into standby or hibernate. Now wake it up again and you will be greeted by a lot error
message boxes that you have to individually click OK on.

The error message is "The local device name is already in use. This connection has not been restored."
I can understand a bug creeping into vista and it being promptly fixed but
this have been going on now for YEARS and microsoft seem incapable of (or unwilling to) fixing it.

You can install all the updates and apply all the suggested fixes, upgrade to a "new" version
and nothing makes the slightest difference.

This Totally Unacceptable!
This NEVER, EVER happens on XP!

Comment Re:Flip Argument (Score 1) 1128

by Bomarc (#48462577) Attached to: Officer Not Charged In Michael Brown Shooting

I'm just asking you to separate facts from your own conjecture.

You are right... you weren't there, you didn't see it. However a series of facts (not conjecture) were laid out. People that were believable were listened to people who's stories didn't fit the facts (or changed their story multiple times) were not. Example: He was not shot in the back.

Fact: he was shot in the top of the head.

You are right there.....

Conjecture: what MB was doing that caused him to lower his head.

Not really. There were multiple people that did witness the incident, and they (the reliable ones) stated he charged the officer.

I'll say again, if somebody shot me I'd crumple to the ground pretty quickly and my head could end up facing the attacker.

Contact me again when you have experience in this area.

Note that MB WAS shot (in the hand), and DID run away. Physical evidence also suggests that MB may have been shot a 2nd time at the police car (Once reaching inside, once outside still at the door). Point here: Just being shot is not necessarily a reason to crumple over.

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