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Moon

The Economic Development of the Moon 408

Posted by Zonk from the looking-forward-to-my-io-apartment dept.
MarkWhittington writes "Andrew Smith, the author of Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, recently published a polemic in the British newspaper The Guardian, entitled Plundering the Moon, that argued against the economic development of the Moon. Apparently the idea of mining Helium 3, an isotope found on the Moon but not on the Earth (at least in nature) disturbs Mr. Smith from an environmentalist standpoint. An examination of the issue makes one wonder why."
News

Man Arrested for Refusing to Show Drivers License 1972

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the living-your-life-with-principles dept.
NMerriam writes "Michael Righi was arrested in Ohio over the weekend after refusing to show his receipt when leaving Circuit City. When the manger and 'loss prevention' employee physically prevented the vehicle he was a passenger in from leaving the parking lot, he called the police, who arrived, searched his bag and found he hadn't stolen anything. The officer then asked for Michael's driver's license, which he declined to provide since he wasn't operating a motor vehicle. The officer then arrested him, and upon finding out Michael was legally right about not having to provide a license, went ahead and charged him with 'obstructing official business' anyways."
Science

Student Finds 5000-Year-Old Chewing Gum 143

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the ur-tree-has-a-flavor dept.
itsthebin writes "Sarah Pickin, 23, found the lump of birch bark tar — complete with neolithic tooth prints — on a dig in Finland. Ms Pickin's tutor at the University of Derby, Professor Trevor Brown, said birch bark tar contained phenols, which are antiseptic compounds. 'It is generally believed that neolithic people found that by chewing this stuff if they had gum infections it helped to treat the condition. It's particularly significant because well-defined tooth imprints were found on the gum which Sarah discovered,' he said. Ms Pickin was on a volunteer program at the Kierikki Centre on the west coast of Finland when she made the find."
United States

Submission + - Missile Launcher Dumped at Gun Amnesty

Submitted by nevillethedevil
nevillethedevil writes: The BBC has a story about a man who "found" a missile launcher in a shed in Florida. Having tried to dispose of it he finally handed it to the Kicks for Guns scheme. After inspecting the rocket launcher, police spokeswoman Sgt Barbara Jones said: "I tell you, you never know what you're going to get."
Technology (Apple)

Submission + - Woz Details His Plans for Energy-Efficient House (ecnmag.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: ECN magazine posted a long interview with the Woz. "Apple Inc. co-founder and legendary hacker Steve Wozniak recently found a new passion in energy-efficienct housing. Last month he told PC World magazine, 'I have a long dream to build my own house in a very energy-efficient approach,' and here at ECN we thought you'd like to know more. So we interviewed Woz by email. Here is a transcript of our questions and his answers." Good insight into the mind of a living genius!
Nintendo

Submission + - Carmack's Rage, plus games for the Wii & DS

Submitted by ILikeRed
ILikeRed writes: In a Quakecon 2007 interview, John Carmack introduced his new high end game Rage, and then went on to call the Wii "a spark of newness". He talks about creating a Quake Arena themed game for the DS, and porting Orks & Elves to the Wii. He was less than happy with current cell phone hardware and Java however.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft and Kittens join forces to stop spam (infoworld.com) 1

Submitted by Onlyodin
Onlyodin writes: An executive at Microsoft has an unusual idea for beating spammers. Powerful software tools and supercomputers aren't involved, but kittens are. Or rather, photos of kittens.

Kevin Larson, a researcher at Microsoft's advanced reading technologies group, has found that asking a user to identify the subject of a photo, like a kitten, could help block spam programs.

Services like Microsoft's free e-mail service Hotmail commonly require new users to type in a string of distorted letters as proof that it's a human signing up for the account and not a computer. The trouble is, computers are getting smart enough to recognize the characters and it's a race for Microsoft to continue to alter its HIP (Human Interactive Proofs) system to fool the computers before they catch on.

With 90 billion pieces of e-mail spam sent every day, according to Larson, companies like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft that offer free online mail services have an incentive to try to block spam. Otherwise they pay for the resources that help send the spam.
United States

Best Presidential Candidate for Nerds? 1140

Posted by Zonk from the vote-quimby dept.
blast writes "Given the broad field of candidates, I was wondering who the community thinks will make the best President when it comes to representing issues Slashdot readers might care about? Eg: privacy, 'total information awareness', Internet regulation and taxation, net neutrality, copyright/patent reform, the right to read, the right to secure communications, the right to tinker. Who do you think best represents your views? "
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Non-digital computing theory from Rudy Rucker

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "Mathematician Rudy Rucker argues that any natural process can be regarded as a computation — which means "The digital thing is sort of a red herring." If one system can be "mapped" using another — since they share a recurring pattern — a universal computation is expressed in any number of systems, including living beings. Taking the idea to an extreme, he's explored the idea in a new science fiction book asking if existing patterns approximate ongoing patterns, could it generate partial predictions of the future?"
Sci-Fi

Star Trek To Return Christmas 2008 358

Posted by kdawson from the beaming dept.
Tycoon Guy writes "Paramount today announced the new Star Trek film is scheduled for release on Christmas Day 2008. The studio also confirmed the film will be directed by J. J. Abrams, who said the film will 'embrace and respect' Trek canon, but will also 'chart its own course.' Also today, rumors are out claiming Matt Damon, Adrien Brody and Gary Sinise will play Kirk, Spock, and Scotty, respectively."
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates in Hissy Fit Over New Apple Ads

Submitted by
WillCodeForRaisins
WillCodeForRaisins writes: "Bill Gates has lost it again, this time in a fit over Apple's new John Hodges' PC ads. Among his comments:"I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it's superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it." The full interview with Newsweek can also be read here."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Apple Homepage India Error

Journal by bcalifornian
If you go on the apple website & select India from the drop down list, it navigates to the India website but gives a little error message on top of the site.

I tried both with ie & Firefox just to be sure that it is not an Apple/MSFT issue. I have a screenshot on my blog for the non believers ;-)
The Internet

Submission + - Help Find Jim Gray

Submitted by
Friends of Jim
Friends of Jim writes: "Amazon has loaded satellite image data from the area where computer giant Jim Gray disappeared into Amazon Mechanical Turk and they are asking the community to help scan those images for signs of Jim Gray's boat. Details on the background of the data can be found on the weblog of Amazon's CTO Werner Vogels."
Microsoft

Microsoft Debuts MySpace-Like IT Site 181

Posted by Zonk from the get-together-and-talk-cisco dept.
snib writes "Microsoft has launched Aggreg8, a 'social networking and collaboration space for the IT community.' Apparently, the owner of the popular open-source RSS reader of the same name sold the domains to Microsoft for $5000 in August in order to host what was then called 'Microcosm.' Microsoft hopes their new service, which utilizes Windows Live ID (formerly .NET Passport) authentication, will become a 'MySpace-like forum for developers to share scripts, tools, or best practices, or even to just connect with others within the profession.'"

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