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Terrific fun for the whole family.

That must be one weird family...

Yes - I thought this too - the article's slashdotted at the moment but the summary makes me think he made a mountain from a molehill. In the Sinclair Spectrum world, loading Speccy tapes on to a PC, and encoding them in a useful format (TZX) has been a solved problem for years.

All these tape formats were physically pretty similar when it comes to how they were encoded, and the same techniques could have been used by looking at any home computer emulator that loaded stuff from tape even if the details were different.

i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"

Brikus writes "And you thought your car had gadgets. In this story from Wired magazine, we hear about Alex Roy and his quest to break the record time for a cross-USA road trip. One of the biggest roadblocks to breaking the record: highway patrol officers, about 31,000 along the way. So Roy decked out his E39 BMW M5 with a thermal camera, radar/laser detectors, GPS devices, police scanners, and other high-tech gadgets and toys."

CmdrGravy writes "Anyone following the SCO saga from the beginning will probably be familiar with the writing of Rob Enderle who was in the early days a key supporter of SCOs claims. Now that SCO is heading swiftly towards bankruptcy and their claims have been completely debunked Rob has offered an explanation, if not an apology, of his involvement in this sorry affair.

You can read Robs explanation here yourselves.

What he seems to be saying is that his primary motivation for supporting SCO is a dislike of Linux supporters who attacked one of his articles written at about the same time as the SCO saga kicked off. Despite having some doubts about SCOs claims he felt he needed to stick up for them because on the one hand he though Linux supporters were a bunch of criminals and on the other he thought Groklaw was misleading people and misrepresenting the facts surrounding the case.

Whats missing from the article is any apology at all from Mr Enderle for failing to research his subject and calling the result so wrongly or any apology to Groklaw who were clearly not misrepresenting anything and predicted the actual result of the case perfectly."
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/34004/128/

CmdrGravy writes "A engineer from Cambridge University has hammered another nail into the coffin of conspiracy theorists who believe the World Trade Centre collapse could only have been caused by a controlled explosion.

Using a mathematical model Dr Keith Seffen has proved that once it was begun by the, well studied, structural failures caused by the planes impact and subsequent inferno the following collapse and pancaking were inevitable, his models showed that once begun the collapse would take around 9 seconds — only a little longer than a penny dropped from the top floor would take to fall to the ground.

Dr Keith sums up his experiment by saying

"In all senses, the collapse sequence was quite ordinary and natural. The World Trade Centre towers were designed to absorb an aircraft impact, but an accidental one with much less fuel and speed. It is widely acknowledged that the impacts on September 11th were extraordinary, which led to consequences well in excess of the design capacity for the buildings. The original design of both towers must be praised for standing as long as they did, saving more lives than might have been expected.""

bain writes "The Telegraph report that two German physicists; Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen of the University of Koblenz, claim to have broken the speed of light by 'conducting an experiment in which microwave photons — energetic packets of light — travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.' Since this goes against Einstein's special theory of relativity, you can expect a lot of people to dismiss this as rubbish."

Youtube is currently taking submissions for their next debate, in which the Republican candidates will answer the questions. This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution, but as I am not an expert in the subject, I would be interested in how the you all feel the question should be presented. For my own part, I think it is important to present the overwhelming body of evidence on the subject as incontrovertible fact, much the same way DNA evidence is during a criminal trial, and ask why the candidate feels they can pick-and-choose what facts they believe in. (Besides the fossil record and the entire study of genetics, I believe there were some experiments in forced speciation in lab environments, but IANA geneticist.) Moreover, I am wary of coming across like Christopher Hitchins, so vitriolic the candidate will defend themselves rather than answer the question. Perhaps the most important aspect of posing the question is to inform the viewers who watch the debate that this is really not a matter of opinion, but of science.

Maybe the question I'm asking is, "Hey geneticists, have you considered addressing evolution in the youtube debates? Can you do it in 30 seconds?"

amigoro writes "Believing that God was backing them, Americans embraced human space exploration because of its potential for extending US dominion beyond the final frontier and for the promise of colonization and expansion, a space historian argues in Acta Astronautica."
http://pressesc.com/news/98609082007/god-and-colonization-urge-spurred-human-spaceflight-us

Pcol writes "The New York Times is reporting that investigators of the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last week have found what may be a design flaw in the gusset plates that connect girders and raises the possibility that the bridge was structurally deficient from the day it opened. Although officials said they were still working to confirm the design flaw, in making their suspicion public, they were signaling that they considered it a potentially crucial discovery. Federal authorities said there was added stress on the gusset plates from the weight of construction equipment and nearly 100 tons of gravel on the bridge, where maintenance work was proceeding when the collapse occurred. A construction crew had removed part of the deck with 45-pound jackhammers, in preparation for replacing the two-inch top layer, and that may have also altered the stresses on the bridge, some experts said. If the engineers who designed the bridge in 1964 miscalculated the loads and used metal parts that were too weak for the job, it would recast the national debate that has emerged, about whether enough attention has been paid to maintenance."
http://hughpickens.com/

Daniel Markham writes "Several new stories broke this week, from the report that IT workers in Europe mostly don't think their jobs depend on performance to the report that says a third of all Americans don't take all of their vacation time. The number of workaholics chapters is growing in the states — these are 12-step programs for people who work too much.

IT, especially in America, is famous for long hours and little sleep. Isn't this the way it's supposed to be? Or should be be taking a month off every year like the Europeans do? Is IT like working in a union shop making widgets waiting for the weekend, or is it more like being a doctor?

As for me, when I was in my 30s I stopped thinking about my time as either being "working" or "not-working" . Those names simply do not make any sense. It's like when you went to school and thought your time was either "learning" or "not learning". Once you grow the heck up, you realize you should be learning all the time. There should never be a time when you are not learning — what, are you planning on becoming a squash? The same goes for working — you should have some point in life, some purpose. Sure, your 8-hour-day might not relate directly to that purpose, but if that's the case, then you should be spending your free time making sure you get that fixed — going to night school, getting certified, whatever.

"
http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/06/whats_wrong_wit_1.php

Not greener than green, after all

As he outlined the US' new plans for tackling climate change, President Bush made the bold claim that the US' carbon emissions are growing more slowly than those in Europe. This was presented not only as evidence to support the States' non-carbon cap approach to tackling emissions, but as something of a rebuke to the noisy climate change lobby in Europe.

http://go.theregister.com/feed/http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/bush_climate_debunked/

'Tractor' Barry writes "(Shamelessly copied from El Reg as I'm lazy and it's a good preface...)

What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program? Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better. "As a hobby, Cansdale developed an add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio. TestDriven.NET allows unit test suites to be run directly from within the Microsoft IDE. Cansdale gave away this gadget on his website, and initially received the praises of Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft was so pleased with him, it gave him a Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) award, which it says it gives to "exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others". However, his cherished status did not last...""
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/microsoft_mvp_threats/

CmdrGravy writes "The Church Of Scientology is currently engaged in a row with BBC over a Panorama investigation by the BBC reporter John Sweeney. John is investigating the Church Of Scientology for the program to find out if they have changed in the last few years and moved away from the questionable practices and secrecy they have employed in the past.

The row centres around a YouTube video posted by the scientologists and a DVD they have released which show Mr Sweeney losing his temper with a scientology spokesman Tom Davis in which Mr Sweeney is driven to yelling at Tom Davis at the top of his voice. Mr Sweeney has since apologised for losing his temper which he says he now realises was both wrong and stupid. In the DVD the scientologists also accuse the BBC of organising an anti scientology demonstration and yelling terrorist death threats at John Travolta, allegations which the BBC denounce as being clearly laughable and utter nonsense. John Travolta has also accused of Mr Sweeney of harbouring "personal prejudices, bigotry and animosity" against Scientology in the documentary, and accused the reporter of displaying "hatred against my religion." This despite the fact that in the UK scientology is not classed as a religion due to the financial nature of their practices.

Mr Sweeneys outburst came at the end of a tour of a scientology exhibition which attempts to portray psychiatrists as evil nazi type torturers entitled "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" which is both gruesome and utterly unconvincing. In the days previous to this Mr Sweeney and his camera team became the latest in a long line of reporters to suffer harassment at the hands of scientologists whereby he has been shouted at, spied on, denounced as a bigot by John Travolta had his hotel invaded at midnight, and had mysterious strangers visit his neighbours and family and spy on his wedding. You can begin to see why someone might lose their temper having been victim to this sort of activity.

There is an excellent article in the Telegraph and you can read about the incident in Mr Sweeneys own words here at the BBC.

The video of Mr Sweeney losing his temper is available on YouTube, the argument is about Tom Davis claiming he has said things in a previous interview with someone else at which Tom Davis was not present and therefore cannot know what he has said. During this interview with, I think, an ex scientologist Tom Davis burst in half way through to make claims that the interviewee was some kind of paedophile.

Happily it looks like the BBC is going to stand behind their reporter, judging by this interview with the programs editor and the general tone of their reporting but, really why I'm posting this on /., what can be done against an organisation so determined to prevent fair and unbiased reporting on their activities and is clearly able to utilise the power of the internet and YouTube to further their aims. The BBC is a large organisation and can survive attacks like this which would easily cause a lot more problems to individuals or smaller organisations, is there a way of levelling the playing field in favour of the general population being able to access accurate information on organisations or corporations rather than propaganda put out by the said organisations or corporations ?"

Two ungainly, cranky -- but heavily armored -- warships clash off the Virginia coast and naval warfare is changed forever. Compiled by Tony Long.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/100468662/0,72803-0.html