Comment Re:0_o (Score 1) 343
No thats not wierd. Try dreams of worlds done in celtic knotwork. This after a weekend of drawing knotwork in almost every waking moment.
Submission + - France Telecom Adds 40-million OpenIDs (readwriteweb.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Read/WriteWeb writes, "Orange SA, a subsidiary of France Telecom, announced today at the Digital ID World conference in San Francisco that France Telecom will act as an OpenID server. That means the company will verify the identities of their 40 million users immediately, without the need for another account to be created, for any other site on the web that supports OpenID." Orange appears to also have plans to accept OpenIDs from other providers to access various services and more information can be found (in French) on their website.
Submission + - Can IPTV replace Digital Cable yet?
lordicarus writes: I have been an avid reader of Slashdot for nearly 7 years now and have grown to really appreciate the feedback provided by the readers on various questions. My day has come where I have a question that could really use the assistance of the collective mind here.
If you were ever in a situation where you wanted to get all of your television needs... ahem... legally, and you have no access to a cable connection or satellite what would you do? Can IPTV over a broadband cell card get you your fix? Is there some other way to get all the good cable channels I want like SciFi, USA, FX, Comedy Central, Bravo, Cartoon Network, VH1, etc?
I have searched online for various IPTV providers and some of them have a few of those channels (Joost seems to have the most), but not all of them. Is there some option out there that I simply haven't found and don't know about, or am I sadly just SOL?
If you were ever in a situation where you wanted to get all of your television needs... ahem... legally, and you have no access to a cable connection or satellite what would you do? Can IPTV over a broadband cell card get you your fix? Is there some other way to get all the good cable channels I want like SciFi, USA, FX, Comedy Central, Bravo, Cartoon Network, VH1, etc?
I have searched online for various IPTV providers and some of them have a few of those channels (Joost seems to have the most), but not all of them. Is there some option out there that I simply haven't found and don't know about, or am I sadly just SOL?
Submission + - FBI's Unknown Eavesdropping Network (wired.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Building off the design mandates of CALEA, the FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act, Wired News reports.
The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.
Submission + - The Solar oxygen crisis
Astrophysicist writes: The Astrophysical Journal publishes this week an article about the abundance of oxygen in the Sun. Oxygen (O) is the third most abundant atom in the universe, behind Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He). Most of the H and He was formed in the Big Bang, which means that O is the element most frequently produced by nuclear fusion reactions in the interior of the stars. The solar abundance of O, which is key in Astrophysics because of its use as a calibration reference for other objects, was thought to be well established since the 80s. However, recent evidence indicates that it has been overestimated by almost a factor of two. A revision of the Solar oxygen abundance would have a cascading effect on other important elements, such as Carbon, Nitrogen and Neon, whose abundance is only known relative to that of O. In addition to the impact on the chemical composition of many stars, models of solar interior may require some reworking in order to be consistent with the new data.
Submission + - Theoretical Physics to be Turned on its Ear?
Bad Labrador writes: "Slashdot readers may remember an article and a powerpoint presentation delivered by Alexander Franklin Mayer last year entitled "The Many Directions of Time". In it, he postulates a slight modification to General Relativity, actually correcting an error Einstein apparently made.
According to Mayer, correcting this error accounts for a large number of "anomalies" in observations, including a small but persistent error in GPS locations, the apparent acceleration and deacceleration of the Voyager spacecraft and so on.
The blockbusting part is when the change is applied to cosmology — according to Mayer, the expanding universe, the Hubble constant and the "big Bang" theory are no more. They are artefacts of his discovery — gravitational transverse red shift. The Universe is not expanding.
The book is freely available for download at http://afmayer.net/index.html
Happy Slashdotting."
Submission + - Gutenberg nanotechnology = printable electronics
hakaii writes: Using a process akin to the printing press, researchers have managed to bypass the need for epitaxial growth or wafer bonding to integrate wide ranging classes of dissimilar semiconducting nanomaterials onto substrates for the purpose of constructing heterogeneous, three dimensional electronics. The researchers at the University of Illinois have alreday used their printing process to fabricate ultrathin multilayer stacks of high-performance metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), thin-film transistors (TFTs), photodiodes, and other components.
more: http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1528.php
Submission + - laser arrays, mirror sails for 10 days to Mars
nanotrends writes: "67 kilowatt solid state lasers have been developed Photonic Laser Propulsion has had a proof of concept demo. They generated 35 micronewtons of thrust using mirrors that generated 3000 times amplification.
An array of lasers could be used to equal a larger laser. 10 kg could be delivered to Mars in only 10 days of travel time using laser-based lightsail caft (Meyer, 1984), but would require a 47 GW laser system. One thousand 100 kilowatt laser modules and 2000 bounces would be equal to a 200 Gigawatt laser. This would be 4 times the 10 kg system and could deliver 40kg payloads to Mars in ten days. Ten thousand modules would allow for 400 kg payloads to Mars in ten days. A twenty ton vehicle could be sent to Mars in 96 days using ten thousand 100 kw lasers and 2000 reflections. It would only cost $240/kg of electricity for the delivered cargo."
An array of lasers could be used to equal a larger laser. 10 kg could be delivered to Mars in only 10 days of travel time using laser-based lightsail caft (Meyer, 1984), but would require a 47 GW laser system. One thousand 100 kilowatt laser modules and 2000 bounces would be equal to a 200 Gigawatt laser. This would be 4 times the 10 kg system and could deliver 40kg payloads to Mars in ten days. Ten thousand modules would allow for 400 kg payloads to Mars in ten days. A twenty ton vehicle could be sent to Mars in 96 days using ten thousand 100 kw lasers and 2000 reflections. It would only cost $240/kg of electricity for the delivered cargo."
