Comment I support traditional orbital mechanics (Score 5, Funny) 48
Where I come from, a solar system is defined as the union of one sun and a few planets.
We don't go in for that kinky multi-stellar shit.
Massive Exoplanet Evolved In Extreme 4-Star System 48
astroengine writes "For only the second time, an exoplanet living with an expansive family of four stars has been revealed. The exoplanet, which is a huge gaseous world 10 times the mass of Jupiter, was previously known to occupy a 3-star system, but a fourth star (a red dwarf) has now been found, revealing quadruple star systems possessing planets are more common than we thought. "About four percent of solar-type stars are in quadruple systems, which is up from previous estimates because observational techniques are steadily improving," said co-author Andrei Tokovinin of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The whole 4-star family is collectively known as 30 Ari, located some 136 light-years from Earth — in our interstellar backyard. The exoplanet orbits the primary star of the system once every 335 days. The primary star has a new-found binary partner (which the exoplanet does not orbit) and this pair are locked in an orbital dance with a secondary binary, separated by a distance of 1,670 astronomical unit (AU), where 1 AU is the average distance between the Earth and sun.
Paul Allen Helps Find Sunken Japanese WWII Battleship Musashi Off Philippines 114
mpicpp writes with news about the discovery of a sunken Japanese battleship by Paul Allen and a team of researchers. Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen and his research team have found a massive Japanese World War II battleship off the Philippines near where it sank more than 70 years ago, his representatives said Wednesday. The apparent discovery of the wreckage of the Musashi, one of the largest battleships in history, comes as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the war's end. Allen and the team aboard his superyacht M/Y Octopus found the ship on Sunday, more than eight years after their search began, Allen's publicity agency Edelman said in a statement. Detailed images captured by a high-definition camera mounted on the underwater probe confirmed the wreckage as that of the Musashi, it said. Japanese experts said they were eager to study the images to try to confirm the ship's identity. Allen's team found the battleship in the Sibuyan Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle in its third dive after narrowing down the search area using detailed undersea topographical data and other locator devices, the statement said. "The Musashi is truly an engineering marvel and as an engineer at heart, I have a deep appreciation for the technology and effort that went into its construction," Allen said.
Comment Not news. /. is "hyping empty garbage". Again. (Score 1) 671
Don't worry, he won't. And this story (like so much of
Comment I Know It's Not Possible (Score 1) 1
But I'd still be nervous, near the nozzle like that.
Video Drones Underwater, Drones on Wheels (Video) 18
New Zealand Spied On Nearly Two Dozen Pacific Countries 129
An anonymous reader writes New documents from Edward Snowden indicate New Zealand undertook "full take" interception of communications from Pacific nations and forwarded the data to the NSA. The data, collected by New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau, was then fed into the NSA's XKeyscore search engine to allow analysts to trawl for intelligence. The New Zealand link helped flesh out the NSA's ambitions to intercept communications globally.
Comment Try and try again. (Score 5, Informative) 445
It is actually kind of sad if you know their history.
Back in the day they were competing with Palm, and had Windows CE and Pocket PC 2000. When PocketPC 2002 came out my employer switched over from Palm and I got to rewrite a bunch of tools. They did pretty good for a while with Mobile 2003, and Windows Mobile 5. It knocked Palm down several notches in the mobile market, with Palm losing value and getting bought out in 2005.
The fun thing about that era is that there were phones with PDAs in them, you can go back to "Pocket PC Phone Edition" for that. Each version of Windows Mobile supported running in phones, but they never took off.
The iPod was getting some power and some apps, but I loved that with a single CF card I could have my entire music library on my device; the Axim x51v used the same audio chipset as the iPod of the era coupled with better playback software where you could mix and such. It also offered all kinds of apps making the device useful for the other common tasks of the time like calendar, email, and web over both wifi and bluetooth.
Again you could get phones running WM5 and WM6 with all their apps, and in late 2006 they had 51% of the market. Blackberry had 37%, Palm was 9%, and Symbian at 9%.
Then came the iPhone. At the time I didn't really see the reason for the hype, when it came to processor power, memory, and even 3D graphics the iPhone was less powerful than my Windows 6 phone.
As the numbers came back, iOS rose and WM feel by the same percent; the other companies were flat in market share. By early 2007 Windows Mobile drooped to 42% and iOS was at 11%. By 2008, WM had 29% and iOS 19% and Android had entered at 2%. By 2010 Windows Mobile devices had dropped to 7% market share, Blackberry had dropped to 25%, Palm to 3%, and Symbian at 2%.
Phones running Windows Mobile continued to exist, but that's about it. Three more versions of Windows Mobile, the three editions as Windows Phone, they have never been able to get their market share back anywhere near 2006 levels.
Comment Re:Classic Case (Score 1) 144
It's a classic case of confirmation bias. The human brain does it all the time; if you don't know what it is or how to avoid it, look it up.
Indeed. Once I learned about confirmation bias, I started to see examples of it everywhere.
Microsoft Convinced That Windows 10 Will Be Its Smartphone Breakthrough 445
jfruh (300774) writes At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, handset manufacturers are making all the right noises about support for Windows 10, which will run on both ARM- and Intel-based phones and provide an experience very much like the desktop. But much of the same buzz surrounded Windows 8 and Windows 7 Phone. In fact, Microsoft has tried and repeatedly failed to take the mobile space by storm.
Submission + - NASA scientists reproduce uracil, cytosine, and thymine non-biologically in lab (techienews.co.uk)
hypnosec writes: Scientists over at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California have reproduced non-biologically the three basic components of life found in both DNA and RAN — uracil, cytosine, and thymine — in lab. For their experiment scientists deposited an ice sample containing pyrimidine — a ring-shaped molecule made up of carbon and nitrogen — on a cold substrate in a chamber with space-like conditions such as very high vacuum, extremely low temperatures, and harsh radiation and irradiated the sample with high-energy ultraviolet (UV) photons from a hydrogen lamp. Researchers discovered that such an arrangement produces these essential ingredients of life including uracil, cytosine, and thymine.
Submission + - Are Google and Wikipedia in a mutually-destructive relationship? (newslines.org)
metasonix writes: Who benefits from Google's increasing of Wikipedia data to support its search results? Mark Devlin, CEO of Newslines, a new crowdsourced news search engine, says the increasing co-dependency between the multi-billion dollar search corporation and its built-for-free partner hurts users experience, devalues web results and has turned unwitting Wikipedia editors into Google's slaves." And he offers evidence, unlike most WMF press releases.
Previously by Devlin: Stop Giving Wikipedia Money
Previously by Devlin: Stop Giving Wikipedia Money
Comment Re:There might be hope for a decent adaptation (Score 3, Interesting) 331
Starship Troopers was bad. Very bad. While Puppet Masters was bad, too -- it had at least Donald Sutherland. I could picture him as the "Old Man" easily and I could almost imagine a script that didn't suck.
Comment There might be hope for a decent adaptation (Score 4, Insightful) 331
Predestination was a "decent' attempt at "All you Zombies" and was very watchable.
All the other attempts kind of sucked out loud with a bamboo umbrella.
Submission + - FTC targets group that made billions of robocalls (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: Given the amount of time the FTC and others have put into curing the robocall problem, it is disheartening to hear that a group of companies for almost a year have been making billions of illegal robocalls. The Federal Trade Commission and 10 state attorneys general today said they have settled charges against a Florida-based cruise line company and seven other companies that averaged 12 million to 15 million illegal sales calls a day between October 2011 through July 2012, according to the joint complaint filed by the FTC and the states
