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NASA

Submission + - Voyager Makes an Interstellar Discovery (nasa.gov)

Submitted by azoblue
azoblue writes: The solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud that physics says should not exist. In the Dec. 24th issue of Nature, a team of scientists reveal how NASA's Voyager spacecraft have solved the mystery.
Security

Submission + - SPAM: Inmate gets 18 months for hacking prison computer

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: A former Massachusetts prison inmate has been given an 18-month prison sentence for hacking prison computers while he was incarcerated. Francis "Frank" Janosko, 44, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Boston for abusing a computer provided by the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. The computer had been set up to help inmates with their legal research. In 2006, Janosko managed to circumvent computer controls and use the machine to send e-mail and cull data on more than 1,100 Plymouth County prison employees. He gained access to sensitive information such as their dates of birth, Social Security Numbers, telephone numbers, home addresses and employment records.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Cell Phone to carry cancer warning like cigarettes

Submitted by Cytalk
Cytalk writes: After France cell phone cancer warning, A Maine legislator wants to make the state the first to require cell phones to carry warnings that they can cause brain cancer, although there is no consensus among scientists that they do and industry leaders dispute the claim.
Link to Original Source
Idle

Submission + - British Prisons Dispense Self-Service Methadone (wired.com)

Submitted by Dananjaya
Dananjaya writes: How's this for a snack-time quandary: Doritos, Snickers, or methadone? The synthetic opiate is commonly used to quash the cravings of heroin junkies, but dispensing the stuff involves red tape, and there's always the risk that human error will lead to an overdose. So prisons in the UK are turning the task over to vending machines. Automated dispensers scan the fingerprints or irises of preauthorized cons, then squirt an individualized dose of the syrupy goo into a plastic cup. A watchful health care professional makes sure the prisoners swallow instead of cheek-pouching it for resale. The treatment can only be given to the right person, at the right time, in the right dose, declares an official statement from the UK Department of Health.
Idle

Submission + - Court pulls insurance award in sex accident claim (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by JamJam
JamJam writes: The Supreme Court of Canada has taken away a $200,000 insurance award made to a Vancouver man who became paralyzed after a series of medical calamities arising from him having unprotected sex. The man was "accidentally" infected with genital herpes which lead to him being totally paralyzed from his mid-abdomen down. The Supreme Court deemed this a non-accident since the man was was aware that having unprotected sex could result in him contracting a sexually transmitted disease, although he did not actually know that any of the women had genital herpes.
Privacy

Submission + - World's largest 360-degree photo published online (360cities.net)

Submitted by jeffreyMartin
jeffreyMartin writes: We have just published what we believe is the largest spherical panoramic image in existence. Shot from the top of Prague's TV Tower, the subject matter is also very interesting. It is 18 gigapixels in size — that's 192,000 x 96,000 pixels. The level of detail allows you to see a rather amazing number of things — from cigarette butts on the ground, to people, to things in windows, and signs on houses. (easter egg — be sure to right-click on the image and select "little planet")

The image was shot by a [remove brands if you like — i'm not advertising, only informing about the hardare] Canon 5d mk2 digital SLR, 70-200mm lens at 200mm, and a robotic device called the Gigapanbot which turned the camera in hundreds of tiny increments over a period of a few hours. The processing took about one week on a 4 year-old machine with two single-core 3ghz xeon processors and 8gb RAM.

When the photo is printed in January, it will be 16 meters (53 feet) long and 8 meters tall.

While the level of detail and size of this image is astonishing, it was made with basically off-the-shelf components and finished with a modest computer. Yet this image seems to evoke questions of privacy. What is different about this image than, say, the hundreds of other photographers wandering the streets of Prague every day, shooting many gigabytes of photos and posting them on flickr/picasa/facebook ?

Submission + - How Autistic Artists See the World (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Discover Magazine has put together this fascinating slide show of art created by autistic people. It's a sampling of paintings, drawings, and collages, some created by people who can barely speak. The artwork offers a rare glimpse of the world as seen through autistic eyes.

Submission + - Dreamliner takes flight (cnn.com)

Submitted by Hellswaters
Hellswaters writes: After over two years of delays the Boeing 787 dreamliner has finally taken flight for the first time and has begun its extencive flight test program. Everyone that was not aware, this aircraft has millions of lines of computer code, so this flight is just as big of milestone in aviation is it is in technology.
Earth

Submission + - Swiss Geologist on Trial for Causing Earthquakes

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "BBC reports that Markus Haering's company had been working with the authorities in Basel, Switzerland to try to convert the heat in deep-seated rocks into electricity but the project was suspended in 2006 when drilling triggered earthquakes, one of them with a magnitude of 3.4, that led to $9m of damage. Haering's team planned to drill a series of holes penetrating up to three miles underground with water being pumped onto rocks with a temperature of more than 195C. Basel's location on top of a fault line – the upper Rhine trench – had been deliberately chosen because the heat was closer to the Earth's surface. A risk assessment has since shown the prospect of further quakes is too high to continue drilling in the city and Haering faces up to five years in prison if the judge finds he intentionally damaged property. Haering has admitted the 3.4 magnitude earthquake was stronger than he had expected and that his team "had very little knowledge of seismicity" before starting to drill, but called the quakes "a learning process for everyone involved" adding that project leaders had drawn up an emergency plan: "Every minute, we knew what was going on and were able to act instantly." Despite Haering's trial, the Swiss appetite for geothermal projects has not diminished, with engineers beginning preliminary drilling in Zurich to see whether the area was suitable for a similar scheme, and St Gallen, in eastern Switzerland, plans to start work on its own geothermal project next year. Drilling efforts are being closely watched in the US, where the energy department is sponsoring more than 120 geothermal energy projects in several states."

Comment Quite Fitting (Score 1) 282

by JamJam (#30446486) Attached to: The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza
First a /. poll on pizza and now this... I'm surprised though that there wasn't a reference to slicing different styles of pizza's. Thin crispy crust can really only be cut in triangles (same with stuffed crusts!) while the soggy sloppy pizza's would benefit from smaller splices. Of course size does matter so slicing an extra large pizza would almost always be sliced different from a smaller size.
Games

Submission + - Most revolutionary videogames of all time (financialpost.com)

Submitted by JamJam
JamJam writes: The trailblazing games on this list are not necessarily the "best" games ever made or even best sellers. Some, like "Dune II" (1992), were out-and-out commercial flops. But they all have one feature in common--they changed the way people play. Some introduced innovative controls or enhanced graphics. Others defined a genre or expanded gaming to entirely new audiences. All altered the industry.

Comment CO$T To Employer (Score 1) 186

by JamJam (#30358656) Attached to: What Do You Look For In a Conference?
What it really comes down to is that in a recessions companies cut back their training dollars. Think of it this way, if they just laid-off 10 workers then it generally does not look very good to send remaining employees on expensive training or conferences. Having said that, if the conference hours can be applied to maintaining a professional designation (i.e.: PDU's to maintain your PMP ) then you'll always get those people attending.

Submission + - Will Our Descendants Ever Get Lost? 1

Submitted by andylim
andylim writes: An article on recombu.com explores how mapping services are quickly becoming the focus of all the major players in the mobile industry. Citing Apple's recent job ad for an iPhone Software Engineer to join its Maps team and Google's addition of turn-by-turn driving for its Android app, the author explains that location and mapping will be at the heart of mobile phones in the future. As mapping technology becomes more and more ubiquitous though and we all use our phones to navigate then is it likely that the concept of being lost will get lost itself?

Submission + - Poll: I believe the science behind: 1

Submitted by oldspewey
oldspewey writes: :
a) AGW / Climate Change
b) Evolution
c) Continental Drift
d) I believe all 3
e) I disbelieve all 3
f) This poll is headed for a huge flamewar
Security

Submission + - Cameroon the new Hong Kong of malware? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by garg0yle
garg0yle writes: According to McAfee, more than a third of Cameroon domains (TLD of .cm) is infested with viruses or other not-so-fun party treats. Given that it's very easy to mis-type .com as .cm, this puts the computers of a lot of fat-fingered typists in peril. Second place on the most-infested domains list goes to China (.cn), while Hong Kong (last year's "winner") is now comfortably middle-of-the-pack.

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