zenwarrior - Slashdot User

Submission + - Frozen Smoke (AreoGel) New Miricle Substance (timesonline.co.uk) 1

Submitted by thejuggler on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:33PM

thejuggler writes: Scientists hail 'frozen smoke' as material that will change world. A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars. Aerogel, one of the world's lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.

I had to keep checking to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion. It seems that this AeroGel can save "The World" by stopping global warming, saving whales and polar bears, eliminating our need for oil. Never has so much been said about something that isn't even there (or at least 99%) of isn't there.

Submission + - Paramount & Dreamworks to distribute HD-DVD on (cnn.com)

Submitted by

earthsound

on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:32PM

earthsound writes: "Paramount and DreamWorks Animation have announced they will be releasing titles exclusively in HD-DVD format, beginning with "Blades of Glory", "Transformers" and "Shrek the Third"."

Submission + - Fungi Make Biodiesel at Room Temperature

Submitted by SoyChemist on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:28PM

SoyChemist writes: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology have used pellets made from the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae to produce biodiesel at room temperature. Usually, biodiesel is made by brewing vegetable oil with methanol and lye at high temperatures. That wastes a lot of energy, and thus partially defeats the point of making an alternative fuel. The researchers in Hyderabad mixed sunflower oil with methanol and trickled it through a glass column filled with fungus pellets. A lipase enzyme in the fungus converted the brew into biodiesel with a yield as high as 85 percent. Considering that the U.S. Department of Energy and BP are have pumped tons of money into synthetic biology for making alternative fuels, it is amazing to see what an apparently underfunded lab can do with natural organisms.

Submission + - Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years (yahoo.com)

Submitted by valdean on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:22PM

valdean writes: Microscopic artificial protocells, made from the basic chemicals in DNA, could be developed within the next decade. Once the protocell is made, 'if scientists add nucleotides in the right proportions, then Darwinian evolution could simply take over' — potentially creating entirely new organisms. Scientists even imagine expanding the four DNA bases (A,C,G,T) to twelve. But don't welcome our artificial cell overlords just yet. According to one scientist, 'When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab. But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen.'

Submission + - Paramount Drops Blu-ray; Goes HD DVD Exclusive

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:15PM

An anonymous reader writes: Just as it was beginning to seem like Blu-ray had a lock on the high-def format war, in an unexpected move, Paramount Pictures today announced that it would drop its dual-format support, and moving forward would release its movies on HD DVD exclusively. For those keeping track, now it's Disney, Fox and Sony in the Blu-ray camp versus Universal and Paramount in the HD DVD camp. Warner Bros is now the only major studio currently supporting both high-def formats. In a company press release, Paramount attributed its decision to HD DVD's lower manufacturing costs.

Submission + - Bug in ATI driver throws Vista wide open (com.com)

Submitted by

Marvintm

on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:12PM

Marvintm writes: "Paul Mah: "Microsoft is currently working with AMD to fix a bug in an ATI driver that ships preinstalled on millions of laptops. In effect, this bug leaves the kernel of Vista wide open via the loading of unsigned drivers. ... Fancy starting a Monday morning to find the 500 PCs on your corporate network down with the screen flashing a "Video Driver Error" message? http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=103 5&tag=nl.e019"

Submission + - Voyager celebrates 30-years out of this world (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Monday August 20, 2007 @01:56PM

coondoggie writes: "NASA is today celebrating one of its most successful space programs ever: Voyager. Voyager 2 launched on Aug. 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 launched on Sept. 5, 1977 and between them, they have explored all the planets of the outer solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune; 48 of their moons; and the unique system of rings and magnetic fields those planets possess. And the craft continue to run smoothly and send back information from distances more than three times farther away than Pluto. NASA notes that even though most of the launch vehicle's 700 ton weight is due to rocket fuel, Voyager 2's travel distance of 4.4 billion miles from launch to Neptune results in a fuel economy of about 30,000 MPG. As Voyager 2 zips out of the solar system, this economy will get better. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18560"

Submission + - ACLU Issues Report on Gov't Video Surveillance (aclunc.org)

Submitted by

Ravi Garla

on Monday August 20, 2007 @01:55PM

Ravi Garla writes: "The California ACLU affiliates, today, released a new report — the first comprehensive look at video surveillance in California, its rapid expansion, and the lack of regulation or debate on the issue.

Here is the full press release. Additionally, our Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director will post in her blog on the issue.

At our website, we also have a video surveillance Web page, where you can see the full report and the many supporting documents including other studies and recent news stories: www.aclunc.org/watchfuleye.

I saw that you've previously covered video surveillance several times and thought you'd be interested. The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Diego Union-Tribune also have coverage of the report today."

Submission + - JoyBubbles, '60s & '70s phone phreak, dead at (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

ZenWarrior

on Monday August 20, 2007 @11:54AM

ZenWarrior writes: ""Joybubbles (the legal name of the former Joe Engressia since 1991), a blind genius with perfect pitch who accidentally found he could make free phone calls by whistling tones and went on to play a pivotal role in the 1970s subculture of "phone phreaks," died on Aug. 8 in Minneapolis."

"In an article in Esquire in 1971, the writer Ron Rosenbaum called Joybubbles the catalyst uniting disparate phreaks. Particularly after news accounts of his suspension from college in 1968 and conviction in 1971 for phone violations, he became a nerve center of the movement.""

Submission + - Skype Outage Caused by Microsoft Update (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by

ZenWarrior

on Monday August 20, 2007 @10:48AM

ZenWarrior writes: ""Skype, the internet telephony provider, said today that a massive, simultaneous restart of its users' computers was to blame for the two-day outage its service suffered last week. Millions of users collectively downloading a routine security update from Microsoft and then rebooting their machines had caused what the company called a "critical disruption", prompting its peer-to-peer network to collapse." Is Skype actually serious about that explanation?!"

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