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Comment Re:Should be (Score 1) 572

Or he was, you know, joking. Like he said. Just sayin'.

Whoops, you busted me not RTFA. I thought it was Dan Lyons and not his alter ego. Actually I thought Fake Steve Jobs was retired after we found out who was behind it. Oh well, consider me a troll.

Comment Re:Should be (Score 2, Insightful) 572

If they change the terms of the contract then those contracts are no longer valid, allowing customers to cancel them prematurely.
Given that those contracts are used to subsidize the cost of the phones, I don't think it's going to happen.

Not really, there is always force majeur. They could use this "digital flashmob" to change their plans permanently, and carriers and ISP's in the US have been wanting to introduce bandwidth caps for a while now...

Either Dan Lyons is a complete fool, or is a man on the inside trying to change the attitude to bandwidth permanently. So who is Newsweek owned by?

I strongly suspect this is a stunt for the corporations, not to humiliate them.

NASA

Submission + - New Hubble Ultra Deep Field in infrared (hubblesite.org)

Hynee writes: Just in time for Christmas, HubbleSite has released a Hubble Ultra Deep Field redux. The original was in visible light, this version, five years on, is in infrared (1.05, 1.25 and 1.6 um).

The observation is in support of the upcoming JWST which will observe exclusively in infrared, but the newly installed WFC3 does seem to provide some extra resolution over the 2004 visible observations with WFC2.

All the mainstream media has picked up on this, but strangely not even a tweet from NASA or any of its centers. (There's been one tweet in the last 12 hours, I wonder if they're reviewing their tweeting policy. Maybe they finally decided their tweetups were dumb. No text releases either, maybe too close to the holidays.)

Good luck in comparing observations, this new release covers a region about 70% x 70% of the original, aligned with the top left corner (the North corner).

Comment Re:I think he may possibly deserver the prize (Score 2, Insightful) 1721

Well OK then, he maneuvered his way into the presidency without corruption or favours or an army of spin doctors, and has significantly changed the style with which the U.S. engages with the rest of the world.

I still feel this is a significant shift of the Nobel committee from observer and awarder to well established figures, to influencer of current affairs. This is either just pandering to populism or out-and-out lobbying, and we don't need another lobby group.

Comment Re:I think he may possibly deserver the prize (Score 0, Troll) 1721

I think he may possibly deserver [sic] the prize, but its too early to say. Shouldn't they have waited to see if he manages to sort out Iraq, bring peace to the Middle East or something like that? After all if he does manage it now there will be nothing to reward him with.

That's what a lot of people are thinking. The Nobel Prize is famous for being conservative, waiting decades after the achievements of individuals before they give the prize, and then only if they're still living!

The concensus of the nay-sayers is that Obama doesn't have any achievements, he's only 8 months into his first term.

I think this is populist sh*t, same with the prize for the inventors of the CCD--the photodiode was physics, the CCD was a superb engineering effort based off the photodiode. The CCD in combination with fibre optics made it possible for us to see thousands of photos of teenage girls taken in their bathroom mirror. All hail the Internet.

Submission + - Hubble releases first (second) image batch after s

Hynee writes: "As tweeted, NASA has released 10 new images, all from the new WFC3 instrument [Link broken at publish] and others, including the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.

More links

hubblesite.org

HubbleSite.org Video about 10 release images.

Full HubbleSite.org release page with 56 release images.

Images include NGC 6302, Carina Nebula, Stephan's Quintet, Markarian 817, Abell 370, and a few others.

Great looking stuff, the WFC3 has twice the resolution of the WF/PC2, on the CCD at least, if memory serves correctly.

Eta Carina is a fascinating object, and there are at least two releases in this 'Early Release Observations' set."

Comment Re:How can you... (Score 1) 452

What I don't get is why we don't just buy some Soyuz spacecraft off the Russians and be done with it. The Soyuz has a proven track record, the damned things are built like tanks, it is solid and dependable.

It's tiny, three astronauts have to be squeezed in there. It's basically a stepping stone to a proper spacecraft, but they didn't go to the next step because the U.S. had already won the race to the moon. It's good enough to transport astronauts to and from the ISS, and can be modified (Progress) as an unmanned resupply vehicle for the ISS. Not much use beyond that.

They really need a bigger vehicle for long duration missions beyond LEO.

Graphics

Open Source Camera For Computational Photography 167

David Orenstein writes "Stanford Computer Science researchers are developing Frankencamera, an open source, fully programmable and finely tunable camera that will allow computational photography researchers and enthusiasts to develop and test new ideas and applications — no longer limited by the features a camera manufacturer sees fit to supply. Disclosure: The submitter is a science writer for Stanford and wrote the linked article."
Idle

Will Honolulu Make Body Odor a Crime? 3

trbdavies writes "The Honolulu Advertiser reports that the Honolulu City Council is considering a bill to make it illegal to 'bring onto transit property odors that unreasonably disturb others or interfere with their use of the transit system, whether such odors arise from one's person, clothes, articles, accompanying animal or any other source.' So if you stink up the bus, you could 'be fined up to $500, spend up to six months in jail, or be both fined and jailed.' Councilman Rod Tam explains, 'As we become more inundated with people from all over the world, their way of taking care of their health is different. Some people, quite frankly, do not take a bath every day and therefore they may be offensive in terms of their odor.' The ACLU is predictably 'concerned about laws that are inherently vague, where a reasonable person cannot know what conduct is prohibited.' Is this country becoming Singapore?"
NASA

Sending Astronauts On a One-Way Trip To Mars 917

The Narrative Fallacy writes "Cosmologist Lawrence M. Krauss, director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, writes in the NY Times that with the investment needed to return to the moon likely to run in excess of $150 billion and the cost of a round trip to Mars easily two to four times that, there is a way to reduce the cost and technical requirements of a manned mission to Mars: send the astronauts on a one way trip. 'While the idea of sending astronauts aloft never to return is jarring upon first hearing, the rationale for one-way trips into space has both historical and practical roots,' writes Krauss. 'Colonists and pilgrims seldom set off for the New World with the expectation of a return trip.' There are more immediate and pragmatic reasons to consider one-way human space exploration missions including money. 'If the fuel for the return is carried on the ship, this greatly increases the mass of the ship, which in turn requires even more fuel.' But would anyone volunteer to go on such a trip? Krauss says that informal surveys show that many scientists would be willing to go on a one-way mission into space and that we might want to restrict the voyage to older astronauts, whose longevity is limited in any case. "
IBM

IBM Patents Tweeting Remote Control 282

Fluffeh writes "IBM has applied for a patent on a network-enabled smart remote control that sends out a message to Twitter, Facebook or a blog when you start watching a TV show." Hopefully this launches an exciting patent landgrab of devices that are socially enabled. Your car can tweet when you leave your garage. Your dishwasher can tweet when the load is done. Your skillet can tweet when your eggs are burnt. And they say innovation is dead.
Government

Emergency Government Control of the Internet? 853

TheZid writes "A newly proposed bill would give Uncle Sam the power to disconnect private sector computers from the internet in the event of a 'cyber security emergency.' As usual, our government is trying to take away our privacy by citing security. What actually counts as a 'Cyber-Security Emergency?' Does the president now have the option of disconnecting people when they disagree with his policies? How about disconnecting bloggers that criticize his health care reform? What counts as an emergency? Can political opponents be deemed a cyber-security emergency?"

Comment Re:so who will (Score 1) 340

be the first to sell pr0n to little kids without any age-rating?

I think there'll be other laws to cover that, like p@edophile laws.

(I know parent is a joke)

I wonder why they don't just change the names and dates on a copy of the old law, get a chorum at the house of commons, get trusted speed readers to check that the old and new laws are the same, and pass it as some sort of emergency act. Surely the don't need Europe to sign their own emergency legislation in Britain?

The loophole probably won't be exploited by any shopfront stores.

Comment Re:Good, BUT (Score 1) 219

OK, I'll bite, how would NASA using Russia or China (however unlikely the latter is) benefit anyone in NASA or the U.S. congress, eg, Shelby*? Is it not the case that the only reliance on Russia under NASA's current plan is crew ferry to and from the ISS during 2011-2015? Surely this is nothing more than minor and temporary hurt to the pride of U.S. space expertise? No technical transfer, no hit to unmanned spaceflight, where 90%** of the science is done anyway?

*Apart from saving money in NASA and giving it to other US domestic programs, giving a different distribution of US Fed money. And do you mean Richard Shelby?

**Number is a guess, but all they do is crystal, plasma and minor biology research on the ISS/SpaceHab.

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