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NASA

Congress Dumps James Webb Space Telescope 409

Teancum writes "On the list of items on the upcoming federal budget for 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives has announced they are going to cancel the continued development of the James Webb Space Telescope. While this debate is certainly still very much a preliminary draft, the road ahead for this project is now very much uncertain. In this time of budget cuts, it seems unlikely that this project is going to survive at this time. It certainly will be an uphill battle for fans of this telescope if they want to keep it alive."
Ubuntu

Ask Slashdot: Easiest Linux Distro For a Newbie 622

anymooseposter writes "My mom is taking a computer class at the local Community College. she asks: 'I need to download a Linux OS and try it out for class. The assignment is to use an OS different from what you normally use. Well, since I use Windows and OS X, the assignment suggests Linux. But, my question is, what is the easiest version based on Linux for me to put on CD and try? I saw several on the web. Any thoughts off the top of your head?' What Linux Disto would be easiest to set up without having to resort to dual booting and/or driver issues?"

Comment Re:It's me, the creator. (Score 1) 161

This is amazing. This article doesn't give enough credit to what you have done. This is unbelievable - There is no question that you are a genius - but I also really admire your patience - I cannot believe the amount of frustrating debugging that you would have to go through for this.

I am a low level entrepreneur/inventor myself - and while I have nowhere near the intelligence and patience that you posses, I do have enough experience in this area to appreciate this. Study hard and become a great - you have the capability - just focus it enough.

Security

PBS Web Sites and Databases Hacked 387

wiredmikey writes "Late Sunday night, hackers gained access to several areas of PBS Web servers and were able publish a fake news story on a PBS news blog. The group also published PBS internal user login information that they were able to siphon out of PBS databases. The fake story was about rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996 after being shot in Las Vegas, being been found alive and well in a small resort in New Zealand. A group going by the name of 'LulzSec' claimed responsibility for the hack, saying the attack was a protest against a PBS Frontline broadcast last week about WikiLeaks."
Science

Activists Destroy Scientific GMO Experiment 1229

Freggy writes "In Belgium, a group of activists calling themselves the Field Liberation Movement has destroyed a field which was being used for a scientific experiment with genetically modified potatoes. In spite of the presence of 60 police officers protecting the field, activists succeeded pulling out the plants and sprayed insecticides over them, ruining the experiment. The goal of the experiment was to test potato plants which are genetically modified to be resistant to potato blight. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research."
Linux

Linus Renames 2.6.40 Kernel To Linux 3.0, Announces Release Candidate 378

An anonymous reader writes "Linus just released the first -rc of the next kernel series, but rather than continuing development as the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, he has renamed it to be the Linux 3.0 kernel." And he's tacked on a second dot and another zero (3.0.0), at least for now, because many scripts expect and rely on a three-part kernel version.

Comment Re:Misleading Title As Usual (Score 2) 172

It need not melt in the 40-50 minutes as you suggest. When the tsunami came only the diesel generators failed. The battery backup was still working. Only when the batteries wound down was the effect of the tsunami felt - i.e. generators were offline. So, there was ample time for the meltdown due to structural damage to occur.

I am not sure about your other points - only pointing out that the timeline need not be as stringent as you were mentioning.

Comment Re:Push the asteroid at the earth plz k thx bye (Score 1) 57

Actually, I was calculating momentum - not energy ratio - if you check the result of calculations I had mentioned (100 M to 10 M kms distance). But, I agree that my post was misleading since I mentioned energy ratio and not momentum specifically.

Also, for dino-killer I dont think any impact option is feasible at all - other than the hovering spacecraft idea. But the probability of dino killer is pretty low, compared to the 100m asteroid. So, I was considering for moderate asteroid impacts (torino scale - 8/9).

I was just wondering whether it is possible for such impacts?

Comment Re:Push the asteroid at the earth plz k thx bye (Score 1) 57

Talking about asteroid impacts, this is just a question which had popped up in my head. Just thought this will be the best place to get the answer –
I am not an astronomer. So my question below might contain a lot of factual errors and foolishness. But I had this doubt for a long time, which I wanted to solve.

For avoiding asteroid impact – is the following method thought out and discarded?

Keep a pretty big satellite circling (or nearby) the earth. Make it the fastest man made object – if possible even faster than Solar Probe + , by using gravity assists. Now, suppose we find that an asteroid is going to hit the earth, get this satellite to impact the asteroid and nudge it out of position so that it doesnt hit earth.

The advantage of this option is:
1. The satellite is always on standby – so if it is required, we can use it in a short notice (1 year range)
2. The more the time we have – i.e. if the asteroid is going to hit us in say 50 years, more slingshot runs we could do and due to gravity assists so that we can increase the speed to a very huge value
3. The faster it is, the less mass it need be – say a satellite weighing 10 ton and say moving at 200 km/s should be able to nudge a moderate size asteroid –
Comparison:
Asteroid Diameter: 100 m
Asteroid size: approx 10^6 ton – speed 10 km/s
Satellite: size: approx 10 ton – speed 200 km/s
Energy ratio ~= 250 : 1
If, say, we find the asteroid when it is at around 100 Million kms from earth (at least 6 months prior to collision)
This looks good enough to nudge the asteroid enough to avoid collision – from my non-scientific viewpoint. Am I completely wrong here?
Since we usually find asteroids in such time and distances, what are the pitfalls here?

Comment Re:Um, how (Score 2) 138

In that case, they can use Youtube videos for this, right? Their automatic translation is quite horrible - they could use the good/bad check there too.
Actually they can translate the same videos everytime people sees it - and until quite a high percentage of people say yes, they can test it again.
Also, when they have more than 200 Million videos in youtube, why do they need to store data from Google Voice - which is much more personal and important.

Comment Re:Enough already? (Score 0) 691

If it is over water, it will make a big splash.
If it is over land, it will make a crumbling sound.
It might completely fail - but it will not cause radioactive contamination of the surrounding area for the next year or more.
It will not cause cancer in the surrounding cities (including tokyo) just because wind blew wrong.

I was a neutral on the nuclear energy till two days back - now, I am having a rethink - it is far too dangerous for the advantages it offers.

Comment Re:all this crap about israel (Score 5, Informative) 240

India - a nominally democratic country that has nucs so it can ward off Pakistan.

I guess you are using nominally - as - existing on name only - right?

From this sentence, I take it that you have never been to India - and dont even really know about it. There are many negatives for India, but being non-democratic is not one of them.

Democracy is the most important thing in our collective psyche. And when people kick your country down on the biggest thing it believes, due to their ignorance - it really really feels bad.

Comment Re:Ummmm ... (Score 1) 286

Whoever who could have done anything against the US gov using these applications would already have done this by now. People are talking about proxies etc - can they proxy to a different country?
All they are doing now is to provide these tools to the Iranian citizens - which is a good thing.

Comment Re:Repeating history (Score 2) 266

IANAE, but it looks like an issue with the basic concept of stocks. Stocks are a nice way for a small company to get external funding and grow, but once it breaches the small company size and the companies growth decreases in speed, then short term benefits override long term benefits for the share holder.

For smaller companies, the money put in by the investor grows in multiples within few years - so the investor is wary of doing anything that can jeopardize the future of the company - since the profit margins are unattainable through other methods. For bigger companies, the company might grow 20% or so per year - so people who make the decisions (big investors) - has multiple options, and so try to maximize the profit even if messes up the company. Even the company tanks after 5 years of higher profit, they can use the money to put in any other big company giving the same level of profit, and totally they have higher returns overall.

Even dividends I dont think helps much in this case, since it is just percentage of the profit. So, unless a completely new concept comes which can avoid this problem, this issue is going to be there.

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