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Censorship

Australia To Block BitTorrent 674

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-saw-that-coming dept.
Kevin 7Kbps writes "Censorship Minister Stephen Conroy announced today that the Australian Internet Filters will be extended to block peer-to-peer traffic, saying, 'Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.' This dashes hopes that Conroy's Labor party had realised filtering could be politically costly at the next election and were about to back down. The filters were supposed to begin live trials on Christmas Eve, but two ISPs who volunteered have still not been contacted by Conroy's office, who advised, 'The department is still evaluating applications that were put forward for participation in that pilot.' Three days hardly seems enough time to reconfigure a national network."
Image

The Best Burglar Alarm In History Screenshot-sm 137

Posted by samzenpus from the suck-it-Edison dept.
Sportsqs writes "When Nikola Tesla got creative with transformers and driver circuits at the turn of the 20th century he probably had no idea that others would have so much fun with his concepts over a hundred years later. One such guy is an Australian named Peter who runs a website called TeslaDownUnder, which showcases all his wacky Tesla ways, or rather electrickery, as Peter calls it." Very cool stuff, I wish I would have had something like this to protect my comic books from my little brother when I was a kid.
Medicine

Why Climbers Die On Mount Everest 417

Posted by timothy from the failure-to-be-born-sherpas dept.
Science Daily reports that researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of deaths during expeditions to the summit of Mt. Everest. They found that most deaths occur during descents from the summit in the so-called "death zone" above 8,000 meters, and also identified factors that appear to be associated with a greater risk of death, particularly symptoms of high-altitude cerebral edema. The big surprise that the data indicate those deaths aren't primarily from avalanches or falling ice, as had long been believed.
Space

Meteorite Destroys Warehouse In Auckland, NZ 278

Posted by timothy from the creative-excuse-for-the-late-night-set dept.
vik writes "According to local media, multiple eye witnesses are reporting that a meteorite crashed into a warehouse in Auckland, New Zealand last night, setting it on fire. The warehouse roof was destroyed but no nearby buildings were damaged and there was only one minor casualty — a man who happened to be inside the building at the time. The fire service have not yet made an official announcement."

Comment Re:I tried WoW this weekend (Score 4, Insightful) 545

by frostband (#26036785) Attached to: Review: <em>Wrath of the Lich King</em>

I think people stay in MMOs for the social aspect of it. You made it sound like a bad thing by saying it's a "glorified chat" but really, it's chat where the people have a defined goal or objective. So they can talk about whatever including the game and their objectives in the game. I agree though if the objective is always the same, it can get boring, but that's when talking about different things comes in to play to break the monotony.

I don't play WoW, but I do play other games (TF2, L4D, WAR, ...) with "online friends" and I've been friends with these guys for over a year because we talk to each other in ventrilo about all types of stuff. I would have stopped playing TF2 a long time ago if it wasn't for chatting with these other people.

Comment Re:Daily? (Score 1) 393

by frostband (#26027011) Attached to: I Backup My Personal Data..

I too backup daily. I use a program called BackupPC: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

For the backup server, I use a D-Link DNS-323: a NAS that's very low power (I believe 7 W idle and ~20 W under load) and provides RAID 1. You have to do a bit of hacking, but I've also put up a howto at this wiki for the DNS-323: http://wiki.dns323.info/howto:backuppc

I backup 3 desktops and 2 laptops daily with this setup and it works very well. There are many other NAS units that would work well in this situation, but I've been very happen with what I have.
Sci-Fi

Battlestar Galactica Gets Spinoff Prequel Series 297

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the frak-here-comes-more-fraking dept.
It was recently announced that sci-fi remake series Battlestar Galactica is getting a whole new spinoff prequel series called "Caprica." Signed on for twenty hours worth of finished product, including a two-hour pilot, the new series is to be set 50 years prior to Battlestar Galactica, and will focus on two rival families, the Graystones and the Adamas. "Enmeshed in the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons, the two houses go toe-to-toe blending action with corporate conspiracy and sexual politics. 'Caprica' will deliver all of the passion, intrigue, political backbiting and family conflict in television's first science fiction family saga."
Data Storage

Real-World Benchmarks of Ext4 249

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-i-live-in-a-fake-world dept.
Ashmash writes "Phoronix has put out a fresh series of benchmarks that show the real world performance of the Ext4 file-system. They ran 19 tests on Fedora 10 with changing out their primary partition to test Ext3, Ext4, Xfs, and ReiserFS. The Linux 2.6.27 kernel was used with the latest file-system support. In the disk benchmarks like Bonnie++ Ext4 was a clear winner but with the real world tests the results were much tighter and Xfs also possessed many wins. They conclude though that Ext4 is a nice upgrade over Ext3 due to the new features and just not improved performance in a few areas, but its lifespan may be short with btrfs coming soon."
Programming

Avoiding Mistakes Can Be a Huge Mistake 268

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the joys-of-corporate-overlordship dept.
theodp writes "No doubt many will nod knowingly as they read Paul Graham's The Other Half of 'Artists Ship', which delves into the downside of procedures developed by Big Companies to protect themselves against mistakes. Because every check you put on your programmers has a cost, Graham warns: 'And just as the greatest danger of being hard to sell to is not that you overpay but that the best suppliers won't even sell to you, the greatest danger of applying too many checks to your programmers is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for you.' Sound familiar, anyone?"
Image

New "MP3 100% Compatible" Logo For DRM-Free Music Screenshot-sm 263

Posted by kdawson from the plays-for-sure-this-time-we-really-mean-it dept.
Sockatume writes "A coalition of seven UK digital music stores have created a logo for DRM-free, MP3 music. The 'MP3: 100% Compatible' logo allows the stores to emphasize the advantages of the format, namely that MP3 files will run on any device and won't keel over and die as DRM-laden files are wont to. The BPI — the UK equivalent of the RIAA — is backing the scheme, emphasizing that it will also allow users to identify legitimate stores."
Cellphones

T-Mobile G1 Faster Than iPhone 3G 304

Posted by CmdrTaco from the couldn't-be-much-slower dept.
An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK have run some very simple in-house tests comparing the T-Mobile G1's 3G connection against the iPhone 3G's. Result? The G1 loaded Web pages almost twice as fast as the iPhone's. Of course, the test only applies to the CNET UK offices if you're being scientific about it, as stated, but it's still impressive nevertheless."
Science

Fictional Town "Eureka" To Become Real? 337

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the next-terrorist-targets dept.
Zarath writes "The fictional town of Eureka (from the TV series by the same name) is going to potentially become a real life town as the University of Queensland, in Australia, plans to build a multibillion-dollar 'brain city' dedicated to science and research. The city, hoping to hold at least 10,000 people, is looking to attract 4,500 of the brightest scientists from around the world to live and work there. The city is planned to be built west of the city of Brisbane, in Queensland. While not funded by the Department of Defense (like the [city of the] TV series), the potential for such a community is very interesting and exciting."
Image

Slashdot's Disagree Mail Screenshot-sm 100

Posted by samzenpus from the good-things-come-in-small-packages dept.
Ernest Hemingway's micro-story, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," is one of my favorite examples of how less is sometimes more. Sometimes a few sentences say it all; you don't always need a hundred pages to convey an idea. Most of the mail I get is brief and to the point. Others are just brief. To be honest, I appreciate the short, crazy email more than the long rants, and they can be just as funny. Read below for this week's mail snippets.
The Military

Researchers To Build Underwater Airplane 263

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the journey-to-the-bottom-of-the-sea dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us that DARPA seems to still be having fun with their funding and continues to aim for the "far out." The latest program, a submersible airplane, seems to have been pulled directly from science fiction. Hopefully this voyage to the bottom of the sea is of the non-permanent variety. "According to DARPA: 'The difficulty with developing such a craft come from the diametrically opposed requirements that exist for an airplane and a submarine. While the primary goal for airplane designers is to try and minimize weight, a submarine must be extremely heavy in order to submerge underwater. In addition, the flow conditions and the systems designed to control a submarine and an airplane are radically different, due to the order of magnitude difference in the densities of air and water.'"

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