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Space

Submission + - Chandrayan 1, India's mission to moon launched

Submitted by William Robinson
William Robinson writes: The Chandrayaan-1, literally "Lunar Craft", was launched today from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on the southeastern coast of India. The spacecraft will orbit the Moon for two years, charting its mineral composition, searching for ice, and helium-3, all three fundamental for the establishment of a lunar outpost. It is carrying 2 NASA instruments, The Moon Mineralogy Mapper, which will assess mineral resources, and the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar, or Mini-SAR, which will map the polar regions and look for ice deposits. Apart from these two NASA instruments and three European Space Agency instruments, the Chandrayaan-1 is carrying the C1XS, an X-ray Spectrometer to get high-quality, X-ray spectroscopic mapping of the Moon, a near infrared spectrometer called SIR-2 to study the chemical composition of the Moons crust and mantle, and SARA, the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyser which will study plasma-surface interactions in space for the first time. The picture gallery and videos of Chandrayan 1.
The Matrix

Submission + - Humans a are "hard-wired" for hierarchy? (go.com)

Submitted by
solidex
solidex writes: "ABC News is reporting a series of experiments done by scientists that shows humans are "hard-wired" for social hierarchy; however, the article seems to suggest that the respective parts of the brain that deal with hierarchies do not create social hierarchies, but rather that they "prime" humans to respond to hierarchies. But what isn't clear is whether this is a natural feature of the brain or the result of years of being taught to act this way. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=4712859&page=1"
Microsoft

What is Bill Gates Learning From Open Source? 194

Posted by CmdrTaco from the how-to-love-the-bomb dept.
christian.einfeldt writes "In the world of Free Open Source Software communities, Microsoft is often viewed as the very epitome of the Cathedral-style model of software production. But is Bill Gates learning from the software development phenomenon that he once compared loosely to communism? In commenting on the results of a Microsoft-commissioned survey of approximately 500 board-level executives about the importance of interpersonal skills versus raw IT coding skills, Gates starts to sound a bit more like a member of the Apache Foundation than the take-no-prisoners king of cut-throat competition: 'Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.'."
Google

Submission + - Indian law to make Google accountable (deelip.com)

Submitted by
deelip
deelip writes: "The recommendation of an Indian parliamentary committee threatens to change the wording in proposed legislation that would hold Google and other service providers accountable for content traversing their system. This should be interesting because Google turns a blind eye to the rampant software piracy being carried out on Orkut Communities and Google hosted blogs, inspite of them being reported using its "Report Abuse" feature."
Security

Most Users Think They Have AntiVirus Protection, While Only Half Do 294

Posted by Zonk from the watch-yourself-in-this-neck-of-the-woods dept.
SkiifGeek writes "A survey carried out by McAfee and the NCSA found that while more than 90% of users believed that they were protected by antivirus or antimalware products that were updated at least once a week, only 51% actually were. 'Even with significantly growing awareness by everyday users of the need for efficient and effective antivirus / antimalware software, and the increasing market penetration achieved by the security industry, the nature of rapidly evolving Information Security threats means that the baseline of protection is outstripping the ability of users to keep up (without some form of extra help).' The study is available online in PDF format. What sort of an effect does this sort of thinking, and practice, have on the overall security of your systems, networks, and efforts to educate?"
Graphics

Content-Aware Image Resizing 174

Posted by kdawson from the got-a-nice-gui-too dept.
An anonymous reader writes "At the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference in San Diego, two Israeli professors, Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir, have demonstrated a new method to shrink images. The method is called 'Seam Carving for Content-Aware Image Resizing' (PDF paper here) and it figures out which parts of an image are less significant. This makes it possible to change the aspect ratio of an image without making the content look skewed or stretched out. There is a video demonstration up on YouTube."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Woman offers herself in exchange for WoW gold

Submitted by aneeshm
aneeshm writes: A Spanish website writes about a woman who offered sexual services to any man who would give her 5,000 gold in World of Warcraft. The woman, a female Night Elf, Level 70 (the highest level), offered one night of sex to any guy who would give her the gold necessary to purchase the new Epic Flying Mount of the expansion The Burning Crusade. The woman finally accepted one guy's offer, and after the transaction was completed, he gave her the WoW money.
Debian

Two Major Debian Releases In One Day 189

Posted by kdawson from the busy-busy dept.
AndyCater writes "If all goes according to plan, Debian should release both an update to Debian Sarge (3.1r6, henceforth to be oldstable) and a new stable release (Debian 4.0, which was codenamed Etch) — and announce the results of the election for Debian Project Leader — all within 12 hours. Sarge was updated late on April 7th UTC, Sam Hocevar was announced as DPL at about 00:30 UTC, and preparations for the release of Debian Etch are ongoing and look good for later on the 8th."
Programming

Geeks In Asia Use Clever Hacks To Get Slashdot 154

Posted by kdawson from the whatever-it-takes dept.
Daedius writes "My comrade Hugh Perkins is living in Asia and he has been without reliable internet connectivity for many days. He uses l33t hacks to get his daily dose of Slashdot in desperate times." From the posting: "The Taiwan earthquake has brought telecommunications in the Taiwan/Hong Kong region to a standstill. I am living in Shenzhen and am unable to read Slashdot directly for several days. Gmail and Google have privileged bandwidth and local servers and both continue to work perfectly from the region. Could there be some way to use Google or Gmail to read Slashdot? A solution was to upload an executable to my web hosting in America that would receive zipped executables by email, execute them, then email me the results."
The Courts

Illinois Ban On Explicit Video Games Is Unconstitutional 195

Posted by kdawson from the let-slip-the-gods-of-war dept.
An anonymous reader writes, "A federal court has struck down an Illinois law that criminalized the sale of 'sexually explicit' video games to minors. In reaching this decision, the court held that the Illinois law was too broad, because it could be read to encompass any game which displayed a female breast, even for a brief second. Interestingly, the court chose the game God of War as the model of gaming art which must be protected. As the court explained, 'Because the SEVGL potentially criminalize the sale of any game that features exposed breasts, without concern for the game considered in its entirety or for the game's social value for minors, distribution of God of War is potentially illegal, in spite of the fact that the game tracks the Homeric epics in content and theme. As we have suggested in the past, there is serious reason to believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey.'"

Trusted Or Treacherous Computing? 208

Posted by Zonk from the eyes-in-the-dark dept.
theodp writes "Just because Richard Stallman is paranoid doesn't mean Microsoft's not out to get you. For a hint about the possible end-game of Microsoft's Trusted Computing Initiative, check out the patent application published Thanksgiving Day for Trusted License Removal, in which Microsoft describes how to revoke rights to render based on 'who the user is, where the user is located, what type of computing device or other playback device the user is using, what rendering application is calling the copy protection system, the date, the time, etc.' So much for Microsoft's you-should-have-control assurances."

U.S. Classrooms Torn Between Science and Religion 1115

Posted by Zonk from the when-the-man-has-an-agenda- dept.
Dystopian Rebel writes "A New Jersey public-school history teacher was recorded telling his students that they 'belong in Hell' if they do not accept Jesus. The teacher, who is also a Baptist Pastor, lied later when he was asked by the school principle what he said to the students. Unfortunately for this dodge, a student recorded the teacher's 'lesson'." From the article: "The student and his parents have requested that the teacher's anti-scientific remarks be corrected in open class, and that the school develop quality control procedures to ensure that future classes are not proselytized and misinformed. They have also referred the matter for disciplinary action. No apology has been forthcoming from the teacher or from the school."

What's Wrong With the FOSS Community? 348

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the 500-words-due-next-tuesday dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Patrick McFarland, one of the major Free Software Magazine authors, has completed his second article on whats wrong with the Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) community, and what we face in this world. He touches on ESR's Cathedral and the Bazaar essay briefly, and warns against cherry-picking style software development."

Novell Responds To Microsoft's IP Claims 317

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the just-can't-help-themselves dept.
Azul writes "Ron Hovsepian, Novell's CEO, has posted an open letter to the Community, where he explicitly states Novell's disagreement with Steve Ballmer's claims of Linux infringing on Microsoft's intellectual property. From the letter: 'We disagree with the recent statements made by Microsoft on the topic of Linux and patents. Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property. When we entered the patent cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.'"

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