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Comment Re:Hackers (Score 2) 89

by MrKaos (#46829315) Attached to: The Hackers Who Recovered NASA's Lost Lunar Photos

"Hacker" can't have two meanings and the efforts to muddy the definition is a transparent attempt to lessen the stigma attached to breaking into computer systems and stealing other people's shit.

I think your comment is the epitome of the evolving idiocracy that ignorance and anonymity allows. What's it like to be on the cutting edge of stupid?

Long before you even heard the word "Hacker" the saying went You hack to learn, you don't learn to hack. Repeat this over and over.
Moon

The Hackers Who Recovered NASA's Lost Lunar Photos 89

Posted by Soulskill from the best-thing-to-come-out-of-a-mcdonald's dept.
An anonymous reader sends this story from Wired: "The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project has since 2007 brought some 2,000 pictures back from 1,500 analog data tapes. They contain the first high-resolution photographs ever taken from behind the lunar horizon, including the first photo of an earthrise. Thanks to the technical savvy and DIY engineering of the team at LOIRP, it's being seen at a higher resolution than was ever previously possible. ... The photos were stored with remarkably high fidelity on the tapes, but at the time had to be copied from projection screens onto paper, sometimes at sizes so large that warehouses and even old churches were rented out to hang them up. The results were pretty grainy, but clear enough to identify landing sites and potential hazards. After the low-fi printing, the tapes were shoved into boxes and forgotten. ... The drives had to be rebuilt and in some cases completely re-engineered using instruction manuals or the advice of people who used to service them. The data they recovered then had to be demodulated and digitized, which added more layers of technical difficulties."
The Internet

ARIN Is Down To the Last /8 of IPv4 Addresses 306

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the end-times dept.
An anonymous reader writes "On 3 February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) issued the remaining five /8 address blocks, each containing 16.7 million addresses, in the global free pool equally to the five RIRs, and as such ARIN is no longer able to receive additional IPv4 resources from the IANA. After yesterday's large allocation (104.64.0.0/10) to Akamai, the address pool remaining to be assigned by ARIN is now down to the last /8. This triggers stricter allocation rules and marks the end of general availability of new IPv4 addresses in North America. ARIN thus follows the RIRs of Asia, Europe and South America into the final phase of IPv4 depletion."
The Courts

Supreme Court OKs Stop and Search Based On Anonymous 911 Tips 461

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the someone-said-you-were-a-sinner dept.
An anonymous reader writes "On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police officers are legally allowed to stop and search vehicles based solely on anonymous 911 tips. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority opinion, reasoned that 'a 911 call has some features that allow for identifying and tracking callers' as well as for recording their calls, both of which he believed gave anonymous callers enough reliability for police officers to act on their tips with reasonable suspicion against the people being reported.

The specific case before them involved an anonymous woman who called 911 to report a driver who forced her off the road. She gave the driver's license plate number and the make and model of his car as well as the location of the incident in question. Police officers later found him, pulled him over, smelled marijuana, and searched his car. They found 30 pounds of weed and subsequently arrested the driver. The driver later challenged the constitutionality of the arrest, claiming that a tip from an anonymous source was unreliable and therefore failed to meet the criteria of reasonable suspicion, which would have justified the stop and search. Five of the nine justices disagreed with him." The ruling itself (PDF).

Comment Re:Shocking... (Score 1) 600

by Calinous (#46822415) Attached to: The US Public's Erratic Acceptance of Science

Most of the vaccines are safe, and most of them are effective. However, there are many vaccines with spectacularly bad side effects on a minority of people, and some even with side effects on every taker.
I would put the exceptions mostly on technological problems or medical "conditions".
And vaccines (in case of epidemics) protect both those that took them and those that didn't (considering that a large immune population reduces greatly the spreading of epidemics) - "I haven't took the vaccine, and I'm fine" is quite plausible if everyone _else_ took their vaccines.

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