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Robotics

New Robots Hunt Pirates by Sea 207

Posted by samzenpus from the long-john-silicon dept.
mattnyc99 writes "PopularMechanics.com takes a peek into the growing world of high-tech piracy on the open seas, which the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard are looking to cut off by investing in a new fleet of superfast, gun-mounted unmanned surface vessels (USVs). From the article: "The Interceptor is available now. But the USV market is just getting started: Two months ago, British defense firm Qinetiq debuted its own robotic vessel, the jetski-size Sentry. Among its potential duties is intruder investigation, which could include scouting out unidentified boats, along the lines of the raft that detonated alongside the USS Cole in Yemen, as well as offering a first look at a possible pirate-controlled vessel.""
Music

Submission + - Oink music sharing servers raided, Admin arrested

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "The servers of OiNK.cd — one of the most popular private BitTorrent trackers — are raided and the admin, a 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough, is arrested." Oink is known for being a popular music sharing group. This shows why being popular is not always a good thing. http://torrentfreak.com/oinkcd-servers-raided-admin-arrested/
Security

Submission + - Unofficial URI-patch for Windows (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by dg2fer
dg2fer writes: For more than two month, the vulnerability of parsing URIs is known for several Windows programms, including Outlook, Adobe Reader, IRC clients and many more.

The latest Microsoft patches published for October did not include a solution for the URI problem, so according to an article on heise security hackers started to solve the problem theirselfes and published an unofficial patch which cleans up the critical parameters of URI system calls before calling the vulnerable Windows system function.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Man Goes Through Vasectomy to Get iPhone (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Weird, weird, weird! A Gizmodo reader called Mr. Johnson (yes, apparently it's his name) underwent a vasectomy to get an Apple iPhone, following wife's orders after a roadtrip with his kids to Boise, Colorado. But fear not, dear readers-with-your-manly-parts-still-intact, because his amazing tale of heroic Apple fandom doesn't include any Bobbit-style genital violence. Keep reading to know why and the — strange — happy finish.
Editorial

Submission + - But Mom! The other 61-year-olds get an allowance! (reuters.com)

Submitted by
deweycheetham
deweycheetham writes: "ROME (Reuters) — A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son's house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late. http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idU SL0288587220070802 The article goes on to say "Most Italian men still live at home late into their 30s, enjoying their "mamma's" cooking, washing and ironing.". Well Pack my bags, I am moving to Italy."
Math

Submission + - Winnie Wrote a Math Book

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Hollywood is not known for providing a wealth of positive female role models. Danica McKellar, the actress that played Winnie Cooper on The Wonder Years and Elsie Snuffin on The West Wing, has written a math book for teenage girls. Math Doesn't Suck is in the style of a teen magazine. It even includes a horoscope, cute doodles of shoes and jewelry, and testimonials from attractive young career women that use math at work. It focuses on fractions and pre-algebra and uses mnemonics like calling a reciprocal a "refliprocal", because you just take the fraction and flip it upside down. Wired interviewed McKellar about the new book and her crusade to eliminate the achievement gap between boys and girls in math courses. McKellar graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA. While studying there, she co-authored a proof and presented it at a conference. After she and Mayim Bialik — star of Blossom and a PhD in neuroscience — appeared in a 20/20 episode about intellectual actresses, several literary agents came knocking on her door.
Games

Nielsen's First PlayMetrics Results Announced 49

Posted by Zonk from the how-we-play dept.
June was the first month that Nielsen's new approach to tracking game play was fully implemented, and the statistics from last month are now out. Some sample numbers: "The company determined that 68.1 million individuals used a videogame console in June, playing an average of 7.5 days during the month. The PlayStation 2 was the most-played console, accounting for 42 per cent of the total console usage ... The Xbox 360 accounted for eight per cent of console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 2.2 sessions per day, with an average session length of 61 minutes. The PS3 accounted for 1.5 per cent of console usage. Its users logged in an average of 1.9 sessions per day with an average session length of 83 minutes-the longest playing session of all consoles studied. The Wii, by comparison, accounted for four per cent of overall console playing time. Its users logged in an average of 1.78 sessions per day with an average session length of 57 minutes." GameDaily has further demographics from the results.
Google

Submission + - AdSense Disabling Arbitrage Accounts by June 1st

Submitted by
shird
shird writes: "Reports of google trying to clean up its search results by cracking down on dubious Web sites that contain little content but lots of ads, sometimes known as "Made for AdSense" (MFA) sites, have been reaching the media. The Jensense blog reports "Numerous AdSense publishers have been receiving emails from Google the past couple of days stating that their use of their AdSense account is an unsuitable business model and that accounts would be disabled as of June 1st, giving publishers about two weeks notice to prepare for the loss of the AdSense accounts." Google regularly bans and rejects AdSense accounts in violation of the TOS, however this change appears to be affecting a much larger quantity of MFA sites profiting from the imbalance of AdWords costs vs AdSense profits. Currently being discussed over at WebMasterWorld."

Heroic IT Dept Less Likely to Steal... Lunches? 491

Posted by CmdrTaco from the wow-august-is-boring dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the Houston Chronicle concerning lunch theft, people from IT are least likely to steal lunches because they are a "hero department." The most likely? Accounting and Customer-Support... "

'Stargate: SG-1' Cancelled 605

Posted by Zonk from the gate-closed dept.
Ant writes "The Sci-Fi channel has announced that it will not be renewing its (very popular) original series Stargate SG-1 for another season.The spinoff series Stargate: Atlantis will get the nod, though, airing for a fourth year. SG-1 aired its 200th episode on August 18th, and the SF series is the longest-running SF show on American television." Gateworld has further details: "New episodes of both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis continue Fridays this summer starting at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, leading up to the mid-season finale on September 22. The second half of the season will begin in March, leading to SG-1's final bow on SCI FI in June."

VoIP Numbers Stations were Social Experiment 116

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the mysteries-always-draw-the-crowds dept.
IO ERROR writes "The mysterious phone number stations appearing on Craigslist for the last three months, which resembled their shortwave radio cousins, and which Slashdot reported on in June, were an experiment devised by security researcher Strom Carlson and a group of Los Angeles hackers to determine if encrypted messages could be passed using unwitting third parties to foil traffic analysis by hostile intelligence agencies. Carlson and the hackers presented their findings at DEFCON earlier today and gave away CDs with "Make your own Mein Fraulein station" kits and posted one final number station for people to try to decrypt."

Vista Speech Recognition Goes Awry 418

Posted by CowboyNeal from the egg-on-face dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It seems even MSNBC is willing to take a jab on those rare occasions when Microsoft products don't work. During a demo of Vista's speech recognition technology, Vista couldn't differentiate between mom and aunt, and all attempts to rectify the problem just made it worse. Wait until you see what it spat out, I think we have a new 'All your base.' Don't you just love Microsoft's live demonstrations?"

Tom's Hardware Reviews ATI and Nvidia on Linux 201

Posted by CowboyNeal from the pretty-pictures dept.
Beuno writes "I stumbled upon a GeForce vs Radeon review on Tom's Hardware, which seems normal enough. The big surprise is that it was actually a comparison of those two video cards on Linux (Fedora Core 5). The review isn't as thorough as I would like, but it does review all aspects ranging from tools available, complexity of getting them to work and benchmarks on performance. To me, this is a clear signs of Linux finally making a long expected breakthrough into common desktops."

The Software Internet Database 67

Posted by timothy from the ambition-defined dept.
Larry points out an interesting project called The Software Internet Database, the goal of which "is to compile the largest database of software titles and credits on the Internet. This includes all types of software such as operating systems, security, financial, mapping, browsers, video editing, games, word processing, and more. They have made a good start but still need more titles. Please take some time to submit missing titles so that they may compile the database faster." It would be informative to have a subway-map overhead view to know which of these are still available from their makers,have been folded into other products, or are now abandonware.

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