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Space

Submission + - Sunspots reach 1000 year peak

Submitted by rlp
rlp writes: Researchers at the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich are reporting that solar sunspot activity is at a 1000 year peak. Records of sunspots have been kept since 1610. The period between 1645 and 1715 (known as the Maunder Minimum) was a period of very few sunspots. Researchers extended the record by measuring isotopes of beryllium (created by cosmic rays) in Greenland ice cores. Based on observations and ice core records, we are now at a sunspot peak exceeding solar activity for any time in the past thousand years.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Physicist needs $20,000 for time-travel experiment

Submitted by
breem42
breem42 writes: "John Cramer at the University of Washington is apparently almost ready to set up an experiment that includes a tiny bit of time travel, but needs the aforementioned funds to finish. FTFA:

"It's a project that aims to do a conceptually simple bench-top test for evidence of something Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance." The test involves using a crystal to split a photon, a light particle, into two reduced-energy photons that — through careful manipulation — Cramer thinks could reveal a flash of time traveling backward."

On a side note, it may be a surprise to some, but the NASA agency that has funded this lab in the past, "NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts" or NIAC, is apparently being shutdown."
Networking

Submission + - The death of the network hub?

Submitted by Ageing Metalhead
Ageing Metalhead writes: The death of the network hub? As part of my day-to-day work supporting and developing embedded devices, to diagnose system and application problems within those devices I'm often left with no choice but to fire up ethereal/wireshark to understand what is happening at a network level. A cheap off-the-shelf network switch is no good, as I will not see the traffic that is addressed to my embedded device. Expensive switches allow you to set up a promiscuous port that will direct all traffic going to-from a specific port(s). So has the basic network hub now died, never to be seen again, or are there vendors still making / reselling hubs? A.M
The Courts

Submission + - Perens Counters ACT's Claim that GPLv3 is "Ris

Submitted by
Microsoft Delenda Est
Microsoft Delenda Est writes: "After ACT, a Microsoft front group, started claiming that the GPLv3 was legally "risky" and could give rise to anti-trust liability, eWeek has published a rebuttal by Bruce Perens. Aside from the fact that IBM, HP, Red Hat, and a couple dozen corporate lawyers are watching over the creation of the GPLv3, there is already precedent saying that shows the GPL is unlikely to give rise to any significant liability — Daniel Wallace v. FSF. In that case, pro se litigant Daniel Wallace was all but laughed out of the courtroom for alleging the GPLv2 violates anti-trust law, and the GPLv3 clauses in question are simply clarifications and extensions of clauses in the GPLv2. Presumably, that is why the ACT neglected to cite any precedent substantiating their allegations."
Nintendo

Submission + - Nintendo posts record profits

Submitted by mrneutron2004
mrneutron2004 writes: Does a 62 percent rise year-on-year in profit sound pretty darn sweet? How about beating 17 top analysts expectations, or beating your own corporate forecast by 24%? It sounds very sweet to anyone owning shares in Nintendo Corporation, because they posted a record $2.2 Billion Dollars in earnings for the year ended March 31. http://www.fastsilicon.com/latest-news/nintendo-po sts-record-profits.html?Itemid=60
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - ScummVM Ported to Nintendo Wii

Submitted by Croakyvoice
Croakyvoice writes: Rodolfo Portillo has released a port of ScummVM for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo Gamecube. ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games like Simon the Sorcerer, Broken Sword and Flight of the Amazon Queen. You will have to use SD Load to run this on your console.
Space

Submission + - Matter Colliding at the Speed of Light

Submitted by CannonballHead
CannonballHead writes:
Researchers have spent eight years constructing the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in New York state. Its goal is to smash the nuclei of atoms together and study their wreckage to determine the fundamental properties of matter.
Apparently, there are fears about the smashing of two gold atoms together, fears about it creating strange particles that will engulf the entire earth, or creating a black hole that will suck the entire earth into itself in a few minutes. I knew money was powerful, but I didn't know gold was that influential.

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