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Comment "Serbian Comic" (Score 1) 36

by newsdee (#29853525) Attached to: Chessboxing Storming the Athletic World

The comic in question is "Cold Equator" (Froid Equateur) from Enki BIlal. He's French comic book artist and filmmaker of Serbian origins.

At least in the World Chess Boxing organization website, they give proper credit to the guy (with photos and all).

The comic is very good too, part of the Nikopol trilogy. Check it out.
Mars

Next-Gen Mars Rover In Danger of Cancellation 210

Posted by timothy from the infinite-possibilities-finite-taxpayers dept.
OriginalArlen writes "NASA's next-generation rover, the nuclear-powered, laser-equipped Mars Science Laboratory is reported to be at a serious risk of cancellation due to budget and schedule overruns, including non-delivery of vital parts by a subcontractor. Costs are running over $2B so far, and the already thin schedule of Mars missions planned for the next decade — with budget ring-fenced for an outer-planets flagship mission — is in danger of further cuts."

Comment Re:X86 under $100 (Score 1) 354

by newsdee (#25189165) Attached to: Designing The Ultimate Netbook

You'd want X86 for backwards compatibility, unless you can emulate (DosBox) or simulate (Wine), then I agree it's irrelevant. The former works great already, but the latter still has some time to go (but gets better every year).

Btw there are already a few interesting hardware products done in ARM, check the GP2X Wiz and the OpenPandora (although those are geared more towards gaming than general-purpose computing).
First Person Shooters (Games)

Submission + - Jack Thompson sues for Omaha shooter videogames (ketv.com)

Submitted by
KlomDark
KlomDark writes: "Omaha's KETV reports that our "good buddy" Jack Thompson is suing Omaha's police chief in connection with the Von Maur shootings. Attorney Jack Thompson said he wants to find out whether Robert Hawkins, 19, played any violent video games. Hawkins shot eight people to death, then killed himself at Von Maur on Dec. 5.

Well, he definitely played the ultimate first person shooter."
OS X

Submission + - Emulated Mac OS X (csgraf.de)

Submitted by
Alexander Graf
Alexander Graf writes: "Have you ever been in the position of running Linux as main Operating System on your Intel Mac and you were in dire need of an OSX only program? This is no longer a problem, as I modified Qemu and KVM to run Mac OS X, so you can just boot Mac OS X in a virtual machine, just like you did with Windows anyway.
If you don't have a Mac though, don't despair. This works for non-Macs too.

@staff I don't think this is enough of a description. Please ask me something I can answer directly your readers would like to know and visit the project site, especially the FAQ section.
http://alex.csgraf.de/self/?qemu/"
Microsoft

Submission + - Office 2003SP3: Old file formats, now unavailable! 3

Submitted by
time961
time961 writes: "In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft has disabled support for many older file formats, so if you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are "less secure", which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source.

Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward "Do you really want to do this?" dialog boxes to click through. And, of course, because these are, after all, old file formats, many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives.

One of the better aspects of Office is its extensive compatibility mechanisms for old file formats. At least the support isn't completely gone—it's just really hard to use. Security is important, but there are better ways to fulfill this goal.

This was also covered by the Windows Secrets newsletter, although I can't find a story URL for it."
Privacy

Submission + - Is Adobe spying on CS3 users? (uneasysilence.com) 2

Submitted by henrypijames
henrypijames writes: For months, users of Adobe Creative Suite 3 have been wondering why some of the applications regularly connect to 192.168.112.2o7.net which looks a lot like a private IP address but is actually a public domain address belonging to the web analytics company Omniture. Now allegations of user spying are getting louder, prompting Adobe Photoshop product manager John Nack to respond, though many remain unsatisfied with his explanation.
Government

Submission + - Convincing the Military to Embrace Open Source (linuxinsider.com)

Submitted by drewmoney
drewmoney writes: Misconceptions about open source software have made many U.S. Defense Department sectors reluctant to employ this technology. Although a 2003 department policy allows its use, many still believe that open source software poses an increased security risk to networks and that it is not supported as well as commercial products.
United States

Submission + - Craig Barrett Fires at Foreign Worker Restrictions (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Quote Article:
A Talent Contest We're Losing -
The European Union took a step recently that the U.S. Congress can't seem to muster the courage to take. By proposing a simple change in immigration policy, E.U. politicians served notice that they are serious about competing with the United States and Asia to attract the world's top talent to live, work and innovate in Europe. With Congress gridlocked on immigration, it's clear that the next Silicon Valley will not be in the United States.
[cont...]
Media

Submission + - Writers Guild of America and the Open Source Model (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by
stevedcc
stevedcc writes: "The Guardian is running an article about seven groups of writers creating their own ventures to deliver content over the internet, bypassing the movie studios. There is a mention of one particular project involving A-list talent that will be released in 50 or so daily segments. From the article:

"It's a whole new model to bring content directly to the masses," said screenwriter Aaron Mendelsohn. "We're gathering together a team of A-list TV and film writers, along with their A-list equivalent from Silicon Valley."
Are consumers finally going to see the internet used to distribute movie content in a sensible way?"
Wii

Submission + - Nintendo Wii Fully Hacked at 24C3, runs Homebrew (wiinintendo.net)

Submitted by
cHALiTO
cHALiTO writes: "From the site:
The guys over at 24C3 just demoed a Wii hack that is set to provide native Wii homebrew in the near future (not running in GC mode, and with full access to all the Wii hardware!)
They were able to find encryption and decryption keys by doing full memory dumps at runtime over a custom serial interface. Using these keys, they were able to create a Wii 'game' that ran their own code (their demo happened to show live sensor/Wiimote information, amongst a few other things).
Read here and watch video here."
The Courts

Submission + - U.S. K-12 schools must comply with ediscovery rule (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: "K-12 school districts throughout the US have a daunting IT homework assignment over the summer: Develop systems that ensure their electronic documents, email and instant messages are in compliance with new federal e-discovery regulations, much in the same way corporations have been preparing over the past year. The new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) are expected to be widely enforced by the end of 2007, according to a Computerworld story. '"A lack of preparation could prove dire for K-12 school districts, which oftentimes lack technical proficiency, funding and legal expertise," said Robert Ayers, technology coordinator for the Kingston, Pa.-based Luzerne Intermediate Unit 18 school district.'"
Space

Submission + - Is there any future left for us in space?

Submitted by jollyreaper
jollyreaper writes: I was born in the late 70's and cut my science geek teeth on the promise of a better tomorrow. NASA had all these bold ideas of where we'd be going and what we'd be doing. What happened to the future we were promised? For a microcosm of what's happened to our national ambition, look at Epcot. Epcot, "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow." According to Wikipedia, "It was dedicated to international culture and technological innovation." And you know something? I remember it being that way as a kid. It was Disney for geeks. I remember seeing hydroponics, technology demos from our leading corporations, showcasing the bleeding edge of human innovation. And even that was a downscaling of Disney's original vision. But what's it about now? Minimized expectations. It's just another theme park, another way to surgically extract money from the wallets of indifferent tourists. Instead of doing and being something visionary, Disney executives settled for mediocrity and the fast buck.

NASA seems to share more in common with Disney these days than just proximity. The shuttle program has been described as a 30 year detour for the American space program. The shuttle was designed by a committee to satisfy multiple contradicting goals, none of which remained by the time the vehicle was completed. It cost more than the disposable vehicles it replaced, could not go high enough to do anything interesting, possessed capabilities that proved unnecessary, and contained so many design compromises that many engineers thought it to be a widowmaker before Challenger was even lost. Right now NASA doesn't make headlines for shuttles blowing up, they make headlines for shuttles NOT blowing up. After the cancellation of several shuttle successors, NASA has decided to go back to capsules with Project Constellation. There are vague talks of moonbases and a showboat Mars mission that will undoubtedly be canceled after squandering millions, possibly billions of dollars. NASA at this point is divided between the manned space flight camp (a political creature which suffers for it) and the "everything else" camp which includes the wildly successful pure science missions. Nobody can agree on the agency's goals and, even they they could, political appointees will change with every administration and sabotage whatever progress has been made.

NASA at this point seems to be like an 800lb man, trapped in his own house, suffocating under his own weight, too far gone to do anything to change his condition, just waiting to die. I think NASA is a lost cause.

Who represents the future in space? The private concerns like Virgin Galactic? Perhaps SpaceX? Government-sponsored programs such as China and India's? And even at that, these efforts represent small thinking. Tourists in space? More communication satellites? Whatever happened to proper space colonies like O'Neill Habitats? What about solar power satellites? How about space mining and manufacturing? How about a cost-effective heavy lift vehicle like Sea Dragon? I suppose an Orion Drive vehicle might be too much to ask for, though I have heard that there might be ways to generate the nuclear-style explosions without fallout and environmental damage.

What I find the most frustrating here is that none of what I've mentioned is technologically infeasible, it is all within the realm of possibility. What is lacking is the political will to make it so. Of course, the same thing can be said about world hunger: we have the resources and technology to feed the world, what prevents that from happening is politics. Most wish-fulfillment sci-fi involves individual men and women of genius who are capable of developing and applying revolutionary technology while cleverly circumventing the stifling hand of government oversight and bureaucracy. That isn't how it works in the real world.

My question boils down to this: I'm not asking what is theoretically possible, I'm asking what we can realistically expect. What can we expect our future in space to be?

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