zip0nada - Slashdot User

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:52PM from the i-for-one dept.

likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Comment That's nearly perfect. (Score 2, Interesting) 107

by zip0nada on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @03:26AM (#28525175) Attached to: Toyota Demonstrates Brain Control of Wheelchair

Oh, good, I stand a relatively good chance of being able to stop myself before rolling into traffic. Although, to be fair, I'd much rather face a 5% error rate than have no control at all. Not to mention that's only one week of training.

Submission + - Surveillance camera for my kids 1

Submitted by

JChan

on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @05:44PM

JChan writes: "My family just finished moving into a rambler-style house with a basement. We're enjoying it, but one thing we didn't realize is how far away the kitchen is from the playroom. Often my wife or I will be cooking a meal while the kids are playing. To check on the kids requires walking to the other side of the house, down the stairs, and back to the other side of the house again. And yelling at them to come upstairs doesn't work because they can't hear the yelling. I've been thinking about installing some sort of surveillance equipment so that someone in the kitchen can quickly check on the children downstairs. So far, everything I have found is either little toys that don't work well or business-style equipment that is far too expensive. We'd like to have at least a video feed, although an intercom-style audio system would be nice. And I'm hoping to keep it under a couple hundred bucks. Has anyone put together something like this on the cheap? Any suggestions on equipment or software to use for this?"

Submission + - Robot warriors will get a guide to ethics (msn.com) 1

Submitted by thinker on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @02:45PM

thinker writes: MSNBC reports:
Smart missiles, rolling robots, and flying drones currently controlled by humans, are being used on the battlefield more every day. But what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own?

Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an "ethical governor," a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. His book on the subject, "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots," comes out this month.

Aspiring Massachusetts Teachers Fail In Math 15

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday May 19, 2009 @01:43PM from the x-isn't-even-a-number dept.

Unfortunately for the 73% of prospective new teachers who failed to pass the math section of the state elementary school teacher's licensing exam, Massachusetts does not grade on a curve. More than 600 applicants took the exam that tests knowledge of elementary school mathematics including geometry, statistics, and probability. Tom Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, says "The high failure rate puts a shining light on a deficiency in teacher-prep programs."

Submission + - Virtual Machine vulnerabilities

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16, 2009 @05:22PM

An anonymous reader writes: I am a new software developer not even a year out of school. I work for a big company, in a "secure" civilian government facility. All the software developers are required to use an ancient but "secure" version of RHEL. The machine I work on has encrypted hard drives, and I don't even have sudo access. I've talked to management about having the developers administer their own machines, but my suggestions fall on deaf ears. Trying to make the best of a bad situation I installed Ubuntu in VMWare (VMWare was already installed). About a week later the head of IT found out what I was doing, and I got a reprimand from the program manager for violating a corporate "security policy". Now my question is: What kind of vulnerabilities does running a virtual machine expose?

Submission + - Rocket Hobbyists prevail over Feds in court case

Submitted by

Ellis D. Tripp

on Monday March 16, 2009 @05:17PM

Ellis D. Tripp writes: "DC District Court judge Reggie Walton has finally ruled in the 9-year old court case pitting the model rocketry community against the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE). The ruling is a "slam dunk" for the rocketry community, stating that the BATFE ignored scientific evidence and overstepped their bounds by classifying ammonium perchlorate composite propellant (APCP) as an "explosive". Effective immediately, the BATFE has no legal jurisdiction over hobby rocket motors, and a federal Low Explosives User's Permit (LEUP) will no longer be needed in order to purchase APCP motors.

Full text of the Judge's decision here:

http://www.rocketryplanet.com/images/pdf/ATFE-03-16-09.pdf"

Submission + - Netbooks Continue to Errode Windows Profits (businessweek.com)

Submitted by

twitter

on Monday March 16, 2009 @02:02PM

twitter writes: "From the wrap-up department

Last year, analysts blamed netbooks for the decline in Microsoft's traditional software sales, and predicted worse things for this year. Now, they are lowering their expectations again as the recession deepens and netbooks continue to dominate sales.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt expects PC unit sales to fall by 11 percent for calendar year 2009, down from his previous outlook of a 2 percent decline. ... PC sales dropped by 4 percent in 2001, ... this downturn will be worse ...

Holt sees netbooks comprising 13 percent of total PC units this year and 18 percent next year. Since many netbooks don't bundle Microsoft's Windows operating system, the analyst sees the average selling price of Windows through manufacturers falling by 15 percent to $56. Holt sees netbooks comprising 13 percent of total PC units this year and 18 percent next year. Since many netbooks don't bundle Microsoft's Windows operating system, the analyst sees the average selling price of Windows through manufacturers falling by 15 percent to $56. However, the Windows 7 release, expected by the December quarter, should stabilize 2010 prices as companies upgrade.

Holt is an optimist. Others, including Intel's CEO, have low expectations for Windows 7 and other current plans. All the bad news, Vista and Vista renamed are consistently panned, their entertainment hardware is lackluster at best, web users defect, and their business model is more recession sensitive than expected, paints a worse picture of M$ than ever."

Comment Re:Hello! (Score 1) 518

by zip0nada on Thursday July 10, 2008 @12:24PM (#24136825) Attached to: I prefer to sleep in / on ...

I'm not sure what's more hilarious, the fact that this actually happened, or the fact that both of them were modded as "Funny"

Submission + - Light Bulb Destruction Techniques

Submitted by

jrmcferren

on Tuesday February 26, 2008 @10:30AM

jrmcferren writes: "From an old Candlepower forums post in 2000 here are some interesting ways to destroy a light bulb.

Examples:

Soak light bulbs overnight in liquid nitrogen. Remove them, screw them in, and quickly turn them on.

Microwave them. Always place a cup of water in with the bulb(s) to prevent the magnetron from overheating.

http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showpost.php?p=165263&postcount=2"

Submission + - UPS Software Saves Fuel by Eliminating Left Turns (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

longacre

on Wednesday December 12, 2007 @07:25PM

longacre writes: "UPS has revealed a schema in their route planning software that saved the company millions on fuel last year. The secret: elimination of left-hand-turns. Turning left often involves idling at red lights and waiting for oncoming traffic to pass, whereas hanging a right can often be done without stopping at all. When implemented through their fleet of 95,000 trucks, the changes saved the company 3 million gallons fuel last year and reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons."

Submission + - The Register exposes more Wikipedia abuse

Submitted by cyofee on Friday December 07, 2007 @09:34AM

cyofee writes: The Register writes another great article exposing the abuse Wikipedia's policies and processes. It tells a tale of a man, Gary Weiss, controlling the Wikipedia article about himself and his enemies, one of the most important things Wikipedia prohibits, all under the blessing of the Wikipedia Cabal, among them the ex-spy-turned-wikipedian Linda Mack, better known as SlimVirgin. A man who attempted to expose the affair on Wikipedia was not only immideately blocked but also had his entire IP range (which covers more then 1000 homes) permanently blocked. This comes only days after the affair of the Secret Mailing list

Submission + - Major Identity Theft Operation Exposed (exaprotect.com)

Submitted by

ExaProtect

on Friday December 07, 2007 @09:17AM

ExaProtect writes: "Four years, 95,000 stolen credit card numbers and already $4m of identified credit card fraud discovered to date is what one company, Western Express International, and seventeen individuals have been upto in a major case of identity theft. The charges relate to cybercrime, global trafficking of stolen credit card numbers and identity theft. The indictment of the afformentioned was announced by Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau. Read the full article by ExaProtect, a security information management industry-leader now."

Submission + - Canadian DMCA Won't Include Consumer Rights 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07, 2007 @08:09AM

An anonymous reader writes: As protests mount over the Canadian DMCA, law professor Michael Geist is now reporting that the government plans to delay addressing fair use and consumer copyright concerns such as the blank media tax for years. While the U.S. copyright lobby get their DMCA, consumers will get a panel to eventually consider possible changes to the law. Many Canadians are responding today with a mass phone-in to Industry Minister Jim Prentice to protest the policy plans.

Submission + - Adaptive Thirty Meter Telescope Sees Progress

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Friday December 07, 2007 @06:03AM

Hugh Pickens writes: "Caltech and the University of California have are making progress toward the development and construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) with the recent $200 million commitment from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The core of the TMT Observatory will be a wide-field, alt-az Ritchey-Chretien telescope with a 492 segment, 30 meter diameter primary mirror, a fully active secondary mirror and an articulated tertiary mirror. TMT will be the first ground-based astronomy telescope designed with adaptive optics as an integral system element that will sense atmospheric turbulence in real-time, correct the optical beam of the telescope to remove its effect, and enable true diffraction-limited imaging on the ground. TMT will have 144 times the collecting area of the Hubble Space Telescope and a spatial resolution at near-infrared and longer wavelengths more than ten times better, equivalent to observing above the Earth's atmosphere for many observations at a fraction of the cost of a space-based observatory. TMT will reach further and see more clearly than previous telescopes by a factor of 10 to 100 depending on the observation and will be a fundamental tool for the investigation of large-scale structure in the young universe including the era in which most of the stars and heavy elements were formed."

Slashdot Top Deals