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PlayStation (Games)

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.
bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."
United States

White House Gets Green by Putting Federal Budget Online 206

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-someone-think-of-the-trees dept.
coondoggie writes "Looking to save $1 million, 20 tons of paper, or close to 500 trees, the White House said today President Bush's 2009 Federal Budget will for the first time be posted online. The E-Budget will be available for downloading at the Office of Management and Budget Web site on Feb. 4. Typically the White House has paper-bombed congress and anyone else who wanted to read the budget with a tome which can reach 3,000 pages and weighed multiple pounds each."
Google

Submission + - Satellite Dish Alignment with Google Maps (dishpointer.com)

Submitted by
Alan
Alan writes: "Anyone who ever installed a satellite dish knows how frustrating it is to point the dish at the right satellite. Here is a unique tool which actually shows a satellite image of your house and then draws a line where to point the dish. That easy and always spot on. It's a pretty neat use of Google Maps and comes with many other features, such as dish size calculator, satellite and channel charts, and a magnetic variation calculator for compass use based on the latest NGDC geomagnetic field model — DishPointer.com."
Announcements

Submission + - $100 Billiion 'Fix' For Global Warming Discredited (scienceblog.com) 4

Submitted by
slowboy
slowboy writes: "Science Blog reports that a $100 billion fix for global warming may not work. The discredited 'fix' is the fertilization of potentially millions of tons of iron or other nutrients into the ocean to promote an algae bloom. If this was to work then the algae would start sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce the effects of a major greenhouse gas. But guess what, that may just not work, regardless of how it would disrupt the ocean's ecosystem. It seems that the carbon may not get pumped into the deeper ocean, it may just lie near the surface and get taken back up into the atmosphere. Fortunately we are finding this out now, and not after $100 billion of you're, mine and others tax money went to the scheme."
Security

Submission + - PlayStation speeds password probe (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
T810105
T810105 writes: "The BBC is reporting that "The powerful chip at the heart of Sony's PlayStation gaming console has been used to crack passwords faster than ever before. Security researcher Nick Breese used a PS3 to crack supposedly strong eight-character passwords in hours. Typically, previous attempts to crack such passwords took days to get the same result.""
The Internet

Submission + - Bluehost and Copyright/DMCA

Submitted by nnn2007
nnn2007 writes: Without notice Bluehost has shut me down after a banking institute claimed that publishing international banking law violated their (!?) copyright.

Apparently on Thursday (11/29) my hosting service provider bluehost received a request from a banking institute that "ISP 98" be removed.

On my web site on international finance law I had posted a couple of articles I had written and published the underlying laws. Laws is not 100 % accurate since in international finance, there are few conventions (that is government to government agreements to implement the same set of laws) but "international standard practices" (ISP), a set of rules agreed upon by banks and other interested parties, which everybody follows.

When asking bluehost today for technical support (Saturday), they asserted that bluehost's abuse department had contacted me.

Under the phone number on file I have not received any message from bluehost and since the last email I had received from bluehost dates from two weeks back, their technical staff suggested that bluehost had sent the email after they shut me down.

The banking institute never contacted me.

The shutdown means that I cannot access any of my several domains unconnected to the allegedly infringing site or receive email from them.

The request by the banking institute raises an interesting question whether international practices/customs can be copyrighted.
Government

Submission + - Help me fight the swiss dmca. (no-dmca.ch)

Submitted by
pyalot
pyalot writes: "The swiss goverment has passed a law that would make it impossible to cirvumvent effective copy protection measures. I have created a page to inform and organize a resistance against this law. If we collect 50'000 signatures until the 24th of January however, we can force a national vote on this law. Help me in any way that you can fight this law. I was first made aware of this two days ago by this article on slashdot."
United States

Submission + - U.S. Claims Right to Kidnap British Citizens (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by
boarder8925
boarder8925 writes: "The U.S. federal government has informed Britain that it has the right to kidnap British citizens suspected of criminal offenses. The Times continues: "A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.""
NASA

Submission + - NASA being called-out on AMS grounding (msn.com)

Submitted by mpsmps
mpsmps writes: Attention is being renewed on NASA's grounding of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. As pointed out in the article, Nobel-laureate Steven Weinberg says the AMS "would be the only significant science ever done on the space station." Plenty of similar quotes from other scientists. Lets keep the heat on for a special AMS mission like they're doing for Hubble.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft says firefox is spyware (maneelgrover.com) 1

Submitted by MozeeToby
MozeeToby writes: Microsofts new Anti-Spyware tool (currently in beta) identifies Firefox as spy ware with a high security risk. To quote the author, "I strongly believe Mozilla Foundation should sue Microsoft for defamation."
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Sun and Dell Make Solaris Distribution Agreement (sun.com)

Submitted by treak007
treak007 writes: November 14, 2007: Dell and Sun Microsystems have signed an OEM agreement for Dell to make the Solaris Operating System (OS) and Solaris support services available directly to customers for select Dell PowerEdge servers.
The Internet

Submission + - Honeybees prompt faster Internet server technology (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Honeybee intelligence can be used to improve the speed and efficiency of Internet servers by up to 25% according to Georgia Institute of Technology researchers.Honeybees somehow manage to efficiently collect a lot of nectar with limited resources and no central command. Such swarm intelligence of these amazingly organized bees can also be used to improve the efficiency of Internet servers faced with similar challenges. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/22045"
Security

Submission + - The Evolving Face of Credit Card Scams

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The 12 Angry Men have a follow up to their piece on the evolving cross sell scam credit card companies have begun using. Their new article concerns another evolving scam being employed, where users are racking up huge fees, and charges on cards which have never even been activated. The article goes deep into the standard way the scam plays out, as well as detailing some interesting history on how credit applications are processed, and where they are typically (and frighteningly) subject to tampering.

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