Comment Tax them (Score 0, Offtopic) 239
Got to be due to global warming so we better have a great big tax on West Virginia
Scientists Question Safety of New Airport Scanners 357
An anonymous reader sends this quote from a story at NPR about the accelerated deployment of new scanning machines at airports:
"Fifty-two of these state-of-the-art machines are already scanning passengers at 23 US airports. By the end of 2011, there will be 1,000 machines and two out of every three passengers will be asked to step into one of the new machines for a six-second head-to-toe scan before boarding. About half of these machines will be so-called X-ray back-scatter scanners. They use low-energy X-rays to peer beneath passengers' clothing. That has some scientists worried. ... The San Francisco group thinks both the machine's manufacturer, Rapiscan, and government officials have miscalculated the dose that the X-ray scanners deliver to the skin — where nearly all the radiation is concentrated. The stated dose — about .02 microsieverts, a medical unit of radiation — is averaged over the whole body, members of the UCSF group said in interviews. But they maintain that if the dose is calculated as what gets deposited in the skin, the number would be higher, though how much higher is unclear."
Comment Great news (Score 2, Insightful) 104
This is good lets hope the guy never again gets into a position where
he can threaten our freedoms and liberty. Not only was he against the R classification for
games but he was also an advocate for Internet and press censorship.
Anti-Gamer South Australian Attorney General Quits 104
dogbolter writes "South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, infamous for the banning of R18+ rated games and the censoring of political comment in Australia, has quit. The recent South Australian election provided a massive swing against Atkinson's governing labor party. As a direct result of the South Australian election result, he is standing down. Hopefully someone with half a clue will assume the vacant post and overturn the decision to ban adult oriented computer games."
Porsche Unveils 911 Hybrid With Flywheel Booster 197
MikeChino writes "Porsche has just unveiled its 911 GT3 R Hybrid, a 480 horsepower track vehicle ready to rock the 24-hour Nurburgring race this May. Porsche's latest supercar will use the same 911 production platform available to consumers today, with a few race-ready features including front-wheel hybrid drive and an innovative flywheel system that stores kinetic energy from braking and then uses it to provide a 160 horsepower burst of speed. The setup is sure to offer an advantage when powering out of turns and passing by other racers."
Directed Energy Weapon Downs Mosquitos 428
wisebabo writes "Nathan Myhrvol demonstrated at TED a laser, built from parts scrounged from eBay, capable of shooting down not one but 50 to 100 mosquitos a second. The system is 'so precise that it can specify the species, and even the gender, of the mosquito being targeted.' Currently, for the sake of efficiency, it leaves the males alone because only females are bloodsuckers. Best of all the system could cost as little as $50. Maybe that's too expensive for use in preventing malaria in Africa but I'd buy one in a second!" We ran a story about this last year. It looks like the company has added a bit more polish, and burning mosquito footage to their marketing.
Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Comment Re:Legal Mambo-Jumbo (Score 1) 464
...a brace of contracts...
I get lost with all the legal verbiage.
Its like going to the pub and ordering a brace of lagers
Emigrating To a Freer Country? 1359
puroresu writes "I currently reside in the UK. In recent years I've seen privacy, free expression and civil liberties steadily eroded, and I can't see anything changing for the better any time soon. With people being banned from the UK for expressing (admittedly reprehensible) opinions, the continuing efforts to implement mandatory ID cards and the prospect of a Conservative government in the near future, I'm seriously considering emigrating to a less restrictive country. Which countries would you recommend in terms of freedom and privacy? Distance is not an issue, though a reasonable level of stability and provision of public services would be a bonus."
Submission + - Government Spyware Puts Chinese Computers At Risk
Ihmhi writes: China's mandatory "Green Dam Youth Escort" web filter software apparently has a series of severe flaws. In addition to not working on Linux or MacOS, traffic between the software and its servers is unencypted:
"We found a series of software flaws," explained Isaac Mao, a blogger and social entrepreneur in China, as well as a research fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
For example, he said, tests had shown that communications between the software and the servers at the company that developed the program were unencrypted.
Mr. Mao told BBC News that this could allow hackers to "steal people's private information" or "place malicious script" on computers in the network to "affect [a] large scale disaster."
For example, a hacker could use malicious code to take control of PCs using the software.
"Then you have every computer in China potentially as part of a botnet," Colin Maclay, also of Harvard, told BBC News.
Submission + - Black holes are bigger than we thought (cosmosmagazine.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Supermassive black holes are two or three times more massive than astronomers thought, according to a new supercomputer simulation that adds a missing ingredient: dark matter.
Astronomers have long known that dark matter makes up much of a galaxy's mass. But until now they haven't had the computing power to add dark matter into models that trace the orbits of stars within galaxies.
Now astronomers Karl Gebhardt, from University of Texas at Austin and Jens Thomas, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich, Germany, have added in this missing component to a simulation of the galaxy M87, a giant galaxy about 55 million light-years away.
Astronomers have long known that dark matter makes up much of a galaxy's mass. But until now they haven't had the computing power to add dark matter into models that trace the orbits of stars within galaxies.
Now astronomers Karl Gebhardt, from University of Texas at Austin and Jens Thomas, of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich, Germany, have added in this missing component to a simulation of the galaxy M87, a giant galaxy about 55 million light-years away.
Submission + - Red giant Betelgeuse to become a supernova?
KindMind writes: "According to an article on Fox News, Betelgeuse may be close to becoming a supernova. From the article: "A nearby, well-known and very bright star may soon explode in a supernova, according to data released by U.C. Berkeley researchers Tuesday. The red giant Betelgeuse, once so large it would reach out to Jupiter's orbit if placed in our own solar system, has shrunk by 15 percent over the past decade in a half, although it's just as bright as it's ever been." Betelgeuse of course is known to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans as Zaphod Beeblebrox's home system."
Submission + - China's first Mars probe ready to launch
henrypijames writes: At the Shanghai Aerospace Exhibition last week, China's first Mars probe Yinghuo-1 was the main attraction. The newly completed probe will soon be sent to Moscow for some further testing, before a joint launch with Russia's own probe Phobos-Grunt from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan this October.
Protecting the Apollo Landing Sites From Later Landings 339
R3d M3rcury writes "The Lunar X-Prize is a contest offering $20 million to the first private organization to land and maneuver a robotic rover on the moon. There is also a $1 million bonus to anyone who can get a picture of a man-made object on the moon. But one archeologist believes that 'The sites of early lunar landings are of unparalleled significance in the history of humanity, and extraordinary caution should be taken to protect them.' He's concerned that we may end up with rover tracks destroying historic artifacts, such as Neil Armstrong's first bootprint, or that a mistake could send a rocket slamming into a landing site. He calls on the organizers to ban any contestant from landing within 100KM of a prior moon landing site. Now he seems to think this just means Apollo. What about the Luna and Surveyor landers? What about the Lunokhod rovers? Are they fair game?"
Stem Cells Restore Sight For Corneal Disease Patients 223
Sean0michael writes "Australian scientists have restored the sight of three human test subjects using stem cells cultured in contact lenses. All the patients were blind in only one eye. Two were legally blind, but can now read the big letters on an eye chart. The third could read the first few lines, but is now able to pass a driver's test. The University of New South Wales reports that these patients all had damaged corneas, and the stem cells came from each person's good eye. The best part: the procedure is inexpensive, raising hopes for being able to push this to the third world sooner than other, more expensive medications."
