duh P3rf3ss3r - Slashdot User

Submission + - No Intelligent Aliens Detected in Gliese 581 (discovery.com)

Submitted by

astroengine

on Saturday June 02, 2012 @05:14PM

astroengine writes: "Using an Australian very long baseline array (VLBA) of three radio antennae, the first very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) campaign has been carried out on a SETI target star: the famous Gliese 581 red dwarf. However, after 8 hours of observing the star — thought to play host to six exoplanets, two of which are in the star's "habitable zone" — no alien signals were detected. This result isn't surprising, as the likelihood of us stumbling across intelligent aliens living in the Gliese 581 system transmitting radio is extremely slim, but it does validate VLBI as a very exciting means of using the vast amount of exoplanetary data (coming from missions such as the Kepler space telescope) for "directed SETI" projects."

Submission + - Poll: My (primary) phone runs:

Submitted by pswPhD on Saturday June 02, 2012 @05:12PM

pswPhD writes: 1- Android
2- iOS
3- Symbian
4- WebOS
5- BlackBerry OS
6- Other

Submission + - NYPD Cop posing as 14-year-old girl online catches NY Police Sergeant (timesunion.com)

Submitted by McGruber on Saturday June 02, 2012 @04:43PM

McGruber writes: The Albany, NY Times Union has a story that you are not likely to see on "Cops", the Fox television show: "A sting operation involving a New York City police officer posing as a 14-year-old girl" that resulted in the arrest of a 26-year veteran police sergeant, on charges accusing him of committing computer crimes dangerous to minors. The sergeant was arrested Friday morning when he arrived for work at police headquarters and was handcuffed while in uniform.

Submission + - Fake Shuttles Arrive in New York, Houston (yahoo.com)

Submitted by

MarkWhittington

on Saturday June 02, 2012 @03:58PM

MarkWhittington writes: "Two versions of the space shuttle, one a drop test article named Enterprise, the other a wooden mockup dubbed Explorer, are moving toward their final resting places at New York's Intrepid museum and Space Center Houston."

Submission + - SpaceX Brownsville Space Port Opposed by Texas Environmentalists (yahoo.com)

Submitted by

MarkWhittington

on Saturday June 02, 2012 @03:48PM

MarkWhittington writes: "The proposed SpaceX space port in Brownsville, Texas, has run into opposition from an environmental group. Environment Texas is conducting a petition drive to stop the project. According to a news release by the group, the proposed space port, which would include a launch pad and control and spacecraft processing facilities, would be "almost surrounded" by a park and wildlife refuge. Environment Texas claims the launching of rockets would "scare the heck" out of every creature in the area and would "spray noxious chemicals all over the place." The petition will demand SpaceX build the space port elsewhere."

Submission + - Why the GPL licensing cops are the good guys (infoworld.com)

Submitted by rtfa-troll on Saturday June 02, 2012 @03:14PM

rtfa-troll writes: 'GPL enforcement by Software Freedom Conservancy puts electronics makers on notice, leaves business users untouched', says Infoworld, going on to explain 'You are several orders of magnitude more likely to be raided by your proprietary suppliers, in the form of the Business Software Alliance, than to ever hear from SFC, let alone face any action. License compliance is a major and costly issue for proprietary software, but the case concerns an end-user license agreement (EULA), not a source license.' the expertly written article gives a good summary of why having GPL licenses enforced helps everybody except for 'hardware manufacturers — typically those creating low-cost consumer and business electronics' who need to verify that they pass on the same rights to others as they received with the original code.

Submission + - Geezers (over 55 years) pick stronger passwords than youngins (under 25) (newscientist.com)

Submitted by McGruber on Saturday June 02, 2012 @12:38PM

McGruber writes: Joseph Bonneau, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, calculated the password strengths of nearly 70 million Yahoo! users. He compared the strengths of passwords chosen by different demographic groups and compared the results.

People over the age of 55 pick passwords double the strength of those chosen by people under 25 years old.

Submission + - Google going to paid-only product search (blogspot.com)

Submitted by DogDude on Saturday June 02, 2012 @12:20PM

DogDude writes: Like the subject says: Google is moving to paid-only product search. It has always been free to submit items to Google, but that all changes this fall. Here's a blog post announcing the change from the Vice President of Product Management of Google Shopping

Submission + - Machine Learning Algorithms to Crack Morse Code (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

mni12

on Saturday June 02, 2012 @10:43AM

mni12 writes: "Morse code has been used since early 1840's and is still a very popular mode of communication especially among ham radio operators. While it takes some effort for humans to learn Morse code it is a very efficient way in communicating short messages over radio waves, especially under noise, interference, propagation fading or other adverse conditions. Experienced human operators can easily outperform any publicly available Morse decoding software.
I have done some experiments with machine learning algorithms, especially with Self Organizing Maps (SOM) applied to real-time decoding Morse code in real world noise & interference filled signals. Early test results look promising but I would like to turn to Slashdot community for some advice and ideas.

What kind of machine learning algorithms would be applicable for real time Morse decoder when signals contain a lot of noise, interference from other stations, fading, irregular timing and other problematic features?"

Submission + - Speech Recognition using the Raspberry Pi (aonsquared.co.uk)

Submitted by

aonsquared

on Saturday June 02, 2012 @08:30AM

aonsquared writes: "In a previous slashdot story I demonstrated a voice-controlled robotic arm using the open-source speech decoder Julius. This time, I have managed to port the system to a Raspberry Pi to control the same robotic arm, and as usual, posted the tutorial and source code. Some negative reviews of the Raspberry Pi are starting to appear, and they're missing the educational point of this device — I'm hoping this will counter the naysayers, and help inspire a new generation of hackers, as well as also bring open-source speech recognition the same attention as proprietary solutions (i.e Siri) are getting!"

Submission + - Build your own supercomputer (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by

Barence

on Saturday June 02, 2012 @04:56AM

Barence writes: "PC Pro has a feature explaining how a home-brew approach can provide a usable measure of supercomputing power at a comparatively realistic price. The feature explores how it's possible to create 16-core and upward home computers with clustering, even using a hotchpotch of systems including netbooks, laptops, workstations and high-performance servers.

"Windows-based clusters can be assembled quite easily using the Windows HPC Server 2008 operating system, and Microsoft provides guidelines for creating 'cluster-aware' applications that will make use of cluster resources when run on such a system," the feature explains. "Alternatively, there are various free Linux distributions that are designed for clustering, such as openMosix and ClusterKnoppix. These provide a user-friendly experience that makes it almost effortless to set up a cluster of any size using the popular Beowulf system.""

Submission + - Google Mail now blocked in China

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 02, 2012 @03:38AM

An anonymous reader writes: For some time, access to Gmail has been deliberately "delayed" in China.
Since about 6pm on Friday, local time it has been completely blocked. The login screen "may" come up, but login itself just times out.

Submission + - China arrested a CIA spy (latimes.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy on Saturday June 02, 2012 @02:07AM

Taco Cowboy writes: A 38-year-old Chinese national, who was a secretary to Qiu Jin, the deputy minister of state security, is alleged to have been recruited and trained by the CIA and was arrested by the Chinese authority sometime this year

It was reported that the man was approached by the CIA while he was a student studying in the USA

To "cement" the relationship, the CIA arranged a classic "honey trap", where the guy was photographed with a woman in a compromising setting in a Hong Kong apartment. And with that, the guy is coerced into spying for the CIA

Submission + - 'Legitimized' cyberwar will make culture wars much dirtier (itworld.com)

Submitted by DillyTonto on Friday June 01, 2012 @09:49PM

DillyTonto writes: US officials have acknowledged playing a role in the development and deployment of Stuxnet, Duqu and other cyberweapons against Iran.
The acknowledgement makes cyberattacks more legitimate as a tool of not-quite-lethal international diplomacy.
It also legitimizes them as more-combative tools for political conflict over social issues, in the same way Tasers gave police less-than-lethal alternatives to shooting suspects and gave those who abuse their power something other than a club to hit a suspect with. Political parties and single-issue political organizations already use "opposition research" to name-and-shame their opponents with real or exaggerated revelations from a checkered past, jerrymander districts to ensure their candidates a victory and vote-suppression or get-out-the-vote efforts to skew vote tallies. Imagine what they'll do with custom malware, the ability to DDOS an opponent's web site or redirect donations from an opponent's site to their own.
Cyberweapons may give nations a way to attack enemies without killing anyone. They'll definitely give domestic political groups a whole new world of dirty tricks to play.

Submission + - What is a patent troll? (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by schliz on Thursday May 31, 2012 @10:53PM

schliz writes: Australian tech publication iTnews is defining ”patent trolls" as those who claim rights to an invention without commercializing it, and notes that government research organization CSIRO could come under that definition.

The CSIRO in April reached a $220 million settlement over three US telcos’ usage of WLAN that it invented in the early 1990s. Critics have argued that the CSIRO had failed to contribute to the world’s first wifi 802.11 standard, failed to commercialize the wifi chip through its spin-off, Radiata, and chose to wage its campaign in the Eastern District courts of Texas, a location favored by more notorious patent trolls.

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