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NASA

Remembering NASA Disasters With an Eye Toward the Future 273

Posted by timothy
from the those-categories-aren't-the-only-possibilities dept.
mattnyc99 writes "This next week marks the anniversary of three sad days in NASA's history: three astronauts died in a capsule fire testing for Apollo 1 exactly 42 years ago today, then the Challenger went down 23 years ago tomorrow, followed by the Columbia disaster six years ago this Super Bowl Sunday. Amidst all this sadness, though, too many average Americans take our space program for granted. Amidst reconsiderations of NASA priorities from the Obama camp as the Shuttle nears retirement, then, the brilliant writer Chris Jones offers a great first-hand account in the new issue of Esquire — an impassioned argument against the impending end of our manned space program. In which camp do you fall: mourner or rocketeer?"

Comment: Re:Tycho Brahe - Amazing (Score 3, Informative) 98

by Aliks (#26002713) Attached to: Light Echoes Solve Mystery of Tycho's Supernova

Well he had already done a lot of work on parallax measurements for astronomical objects. So when the supernova appeared, and showed no parallax against the moon . . . he was on pretty firm ground stating that the moon was closer to earth than the supernova.

More details in Wikipedia.

Comment: The Iron Laws of Software Sales (Score 1) 604

by Aliks (#25897417) Attached to: Rewriting a Software Product After Quitting a Job?

Ok so you can totally rewrite the software in a couple of months. Lets say you budget for 1 man year of coding.

Now you have software that works but you don't have a product you can sell. Expect to spend a further man year of effort "productising" the software. You need to make the thing bullet proof enough that someone who was not part of the development team can use the thing.

Now you have a piece of equipment that ordinary people can use, but you still won't sell much. Expect to spend a further 3 man years on the service side so that business folk can rely on your company and product.

Pretty much you can expect 6 times as much investment as you spend coding.

Oh and did I talk about timescales and cash flow?

These calculations are why early service/consultancy revenue is so important, and sadly why sales and marketing folk do what they do, and act like they do.

Biotech

Ice Agers Stopped Off at Beringia for 20,000 Years

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes "Research analyzing DNA sequences from Native American, New World and Asian populations shows a gradual migration and expansion of people from Asia through Siberia and into Beringia, a once-habitable region that today lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait, starting about 40,000 years ago; a long waiting period in Beringia where the population size remained relatively stable; and finally a rapid expansion into North America through Alaska or Canada about 15,000 years ago. "If you think about it, these people didn't know they were going to a new world. They were moving out of Asia and finally reached a landmass that was exposed because of lower sea levels during the last glacial maximum, but two major glaciers blocked their progress into the New World. So they basically stayed put for about 20,000 years, says Connie Mulligan, Ph.D. "It wasn't paradise, but they survived. When the North American ice sheets started to melt and a passage into the New World opened, we think they left Beringia to go to a better place." Researchers believe that their synthesis of a large number of different approaches into a unified theory will create a platform for scientists to further analyze genomic and non-genetic data as they become available. The original paper is published open-access on PLOS."
It's funny. Laugh.

Poll: Favourite Slashdot Poll?

Submitted by SurturZ
SurturZ writes "I think you should have a poll "Best Slashdot Poll?" * What would you like the CIA to declassify? * Best Meme in Slashdot's First 10 Years * Favorite Sci-Fi Ship? * Favourite Poll involving CowboyNeal? etc etc I'm sure you could do a database search to work out the top five most voted for polls to put in the list"
Space

Hundreds of Black Holes Found->

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes "Hundreds of black holes that were thought to exist at the beginning of the universe have been found by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes. From the article, 'The findings are also the first direct evidence that most, if not all, massive galaxies in the distant universe spent their youths building monstrous black holes at their cores. For decades, a large population of active black holes has been considered missing. These highly energetic structures belong to a class of black holes called quasars. A quasar consists of a doughnut-shaped cloud of gas and dust that surrounds and feeds a budding supermassive black hole. As the gas and dust are devoured by the black hole, they heat up and shoot out X-rays. Those X-rays can be detected as a general glow in space, but often the quasars themselves can't be seen directly because dust and gas blocks them from our view.' This is pretty big, as it's empirical evidence proving the existence of objects that theoretically had to exist but could not be detected previously."
Link to Original Source
Classic Games (Games)

The Visible Pinball Machine->

Submitted by
Greg Maletic
Greg Maletic writes "Michael Schiess — proprietor of the legendary Lucky JuJu Pinball Arcade in Alameda, CA — has with the help of a few friends transformed a 1976 "Surf Champ" Gottlieb pinball machine piece by piece into a completely transparent pinball machine. The machine will be part of a science center exhibit he's developing around the science of pinball machines. This thing is beautiful, and you can read the story of its creation here. The machine will be on public display for the first time at this year's Pacific Pinball Expo."
Link to Original Source
Google

New Google Apps For Linux Coming 159

Posted by kdawson
from the bated-breath dept.
techoon writes "The goal of the Google Linux Client Team is to develop Linux desktop applications, such as the official Linux versions of Google Earth and Google Picasa. This team made an interesting splash during a presentation at the first-ever Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, which they had kindly hosted at their Mountain View campus. The Google presenters claimed some 'significant accomplishments' and other new Google desktop applications coming out this year for the Linux platform."
The Internet

Virtual Earth Exposes Nuclear Sub's Secret 355

Posted by kdawson
from the tarp-would-have-helped dept.
NewsCloud alerts us to a story a few months old that has been getting a lot of play recently. A Seattle blogger, Dan Twohig, was browsing in Microsoft's Virtual Earth when he accidentally came across a photo of a nuclear sub in dry-dock. Its propeller is clearly visible — this was a major no-no on the part of someone at the Bangor Sub Base. The designs of such stealth propellers have been secret for decades. Twohig blogged about the find and linked to the Virtual Earth photo on July 2. The debate about security vs. Net-accessible aerial photography has been building ever since. The story was picked up on military.china.com on Aug. 17 — poetic justice for the Chinese sub photo that had embarrassed them a month before. On Aug. 20 the Navy Times published the article that most mainstream media have picked up in their more recent coverage. Twohig's blog is the best source to follow the ongoing debate. No one has asked Microsoft, Google, or anyone else to blur the photo in question. Kind of late now.
Education

New theory on 5,000-year-old Iceman's death->

Submitted by CmpEng
CmpEng writes "ROME, Italy — Researchers studying Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, have come up with a new theory for how he died, saying he died from head trauma, not by bleeding to death from an arrow. Just two months ago, researchers in Switzerland published an article in the Journal of Archeological Science saying the mummy — also known as Oetzi — had died after the arrow tore a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to massive loss of blood, shock and heart attack."
Link to Original Source
PC Games (Games)

Where Are All The Free MMORPGS ? 3

Submitted by DarkrhaveN
DarkrhaveN writes "My girlfriend asked the other day if I could find her a free MMORPG ala WoW and Everquest. I decided to search a bit more but got caught up in hokey pay sites and other things when it dawned on me to just ask the slashdot community. Where are all the free MMORPGS ?"
Space

Geo-engineering to fend off climate change

Submitted by moon_monkey
moon_monkey writes "While cutting greenhouse gases might be the best way to halt climate change, it's reassuring to know some scientists are already thinking about ways to combat fend off runaway warming if this doesn't work. NewScientistSpace has an interesting blog post about some pretty crazy-sounding ways for combating climate change. These include pumping sulfur into the atmosphere, sending thousands of tiny mirrors into orbit and even painting all our roads white to reflect the Sun's rays. Could this be the next X-prize?"

You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.