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Comment Re:Low estimate (Score 1) 70

Yes, point taken... "My entire profession" should be "Libraries" above.

As a reference librarian, my main goal is to be Bablyon 5. I'd love it if we succeeded in creating a powerful enough search and retrieval tool with an intuitive interface that negated the need for library user instruction. My career mission is to work towards this ideal. It would, just as how B5 succeeded in its mission so much so that it was no longer necessary, make a large part of what librarians now do obsolete.

Books

Submission + - [Ponies!] Vatican to Digitize Prohibited Archives (tk421.net) 2

tiltowait writes: [in case you want to queue up something for tomorrow... :o] Hot on the heels of their successful iPhone app and drive-through confessional, the BBC News reports that the Vatican has announced plans to digitize their pornography collection and make it available online to paying subscribers. Given what the church has planned for the project's profits, here's hoping they learn lessons from the the New York Times paywall loopholes. Is anyone in on the Indulgentia beta?
Security

OpenSSL 1.0.0 Released 105

hardaker writes "After over 11 years of development since the start of the OpenSSL Project (1998-12-23), OpenSSL version 1.0.0 has finally hit the shelves of the free-for-all store."
Mars

Mars Rover's Epic Trek For the Crater Endeavor 145

Smivs writes "The BBC reports that NASA is to send its Mars rover Opportunity on a two-year trek to try to reach a crater called Endeavour. The robot will have to move about 11km to get to its new target — a distance that would double what it has already achieved on the planet. Endeavour is much bigger than anything investigated to date, and will allow a broader range of rocks to be studied. Detailed satellite imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will help pick out the best route ahead; and new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path. Opportunity has just emerged from the 800m-wide Victoria Crater. Endeavour, by comparison, is 22km across."
Mars

Mars Polar Cap Mystery Solved 77

Matt_dk writes "Scientists are now able to explain why Mars' residual southern ice cap is misplaced, thanks to data from ESA's Mars Express spacecraft (the same probe running the 'Mars Webcam'). It turns out the martian weather system is to blame. And so is the largest impact crater on Mars — even though it is nowhere near the south pole. Like Earth, Mars has frozen polar caps, but unlike Earth, these caps are made of carbon dioxide ice as well as water ice. During the southern hemisphere's summer, much of the ice cap sublimates, a process in which the ice turns straight back into gas, leaving behind what is known as the residual polar cap. The mystery was that while the winter cap is symmetrical about the south pole, the residual cap was offset, and scientists couldn't figure out why."
Bug

Submission + - ESPN.com crashes all mac browsers

jfrumkin writes: (WARNING: If you are on a mac, do not click on the ESPN.com link) Tonight I went to ESPN.com to check on some basketball scores, and it hung Firefox on my mac to the point I had to force-quit the application. I tried one more time with the same result. "Ok, I thought, I'll just use Safari". Same result. Very strange. A quick search turned up this thread on the apple discussions — not only does the site crash both browsers, but you then need to re-install Quicktime, as somehow it also corrupts that as well!
The Internet

Submission + - Skype system down

L Ray writes: "This note posted this AM by Skype . . . we are all down for 12-to 24 hours . . . interestingly before this total system crash Skype had done "maintenance" last night?? Hmmmm??? Larry Joosep Problems with Skype login By My status Joosep on August 16, 2007. UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it's a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience. Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible."
Networking

Submission + - Bug Hits Skype's Peer-to-Peer Network (itworld.com)

narramissic writes: "ITworld reports that a software bug affecting Skype's peer-to-peer network is preventing users in some parts of the world, particularly Europe, to log on to the VOIP service, although users in the U.S. don't seem to be having problems. A posting on a company blog said the company expects to have the problems resolved within 12 to 24 hours and advises users to leave their Skype client running so they can be logged back in once the issues are dealt with. The blog also said that downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled and that the company hopes to make them available again as quickly as possible."

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