Comment: Obsidian (Score 1) 118
Will it blend Minecraft Obsidian or is there a Diamond Blade upgrade option?
Comment: beta? (Score 1) 386
Beta user complains because Beta doesn't work and criticizes the company.
Company bans user from logging into the Beta game.
User posts the fact they were banned and will most likely never buy the app.
News how?
Journal: Operation: Heist Is Underway
Journal
by
karniv0re
Last night I finally got some time to myself. I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown because I feel like I have no free time anymore. The girlfriend has been occupying almost all of it. She worked last night so I finally got a moment to chill out. It looks like I'll get some more time this week to myself as well. I'm trying not to freak out and bail like my instincts are telling me, but I'm going to need a little more me-time to even things out. It's been a little much lately.
+ - Ortiz Had 'JSTOR for Life' While Prosecuting Swarz 1
Submitted
by
theodp
theodp writes "Two days before Aaron Swarz committed suicide while under fire by the office of U.S. District Attorney Carmen Ortiz for downloading JSTOR PDFs, JSTOR reminded folks that graduates of select universities had been provided with free access to JSTOR PDFs for the past three years under the Access for Alumni program. So, because she's a grad of George Washington University, it would appear that Ms. Ortiz ironically had a very nice perk available to her while prosecuting Mr. Swarz — JSTOR for Life — and wouldn't have to worry about being faced with the threat of '35 years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release, restitution, forfeiture and a fine of up to $1 million,' since she was entitled to freely access JSTOR documents that college dropouts like Aaron Swarz could be prosecuted for downloading. Still, U.S. Attorney Ortiz issued a statement late Wednesday insisting that 'this office's conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case.' As the WSJ notes, philanthropic funding of nonprofits (like JSTOR) doesn't have a great track record for eliminating inequity."
+ - Triple-junction solar cell could break 50 percent conversion barrier->
Submitted
by
fergus07
fergus07 writes "The current world record for triple-junction solar cell efficiency is 44 percent, but a collaboration between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the Imperial College of London, and MicroLink Devices Inc. has lead to a multi-junction photovoltaic cell design that could break the 50 percent conversion efficiency barrier under concentrated solar illumination."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Comment: Re:D'uh (Score 5, Funny) 90
The Emperor doesn't have a Term Limit.
Comment: but... (Score 1) 866
Chemistry helps me understand how to mix my own Cocktails... How can that not be considered important?!?!?!
+ - New Proof That the Moon Was Created in a Massive Collision 2
Submitted
by
derekmead
derekmead writes "New proof that the giant impact hypothesis is correct: A paper published today in Nature shares findings of a chemical analysis of Moon rocks that shows fractional differences between the makeup of the Earth and Moon that most likely were caused by the collision between Earth and a Mars-sized planet around 4.5 billion years ago.
Although the two are quite similar, it’s been previously shown that Moon rocks lack volatile elements, which suggests they may have evaporated during the incredibly intense heat and pressure created during an impact event. But if the hypothesis that light elements actually evaporated from Moon rocks during their formation is correct, you’d expect to find evidence of elements being layered by mass — heavier elements would condense first, and so on.
That process is known as isotopic fractionation — a concept central to carbon dating — and the Washington University team's results suggest they found exactly that. They compared the blend of zinc isotopes in Moon rocks and Earth samples, and found that the Moon rocks held slightly higher proportions of heavier zinc isotopes. If the Moon was indeed once part of Earth — which has been shown by extensive modeling — the difference in the balance of zinc profiles would most likely be explained by lighter zinc isotopes evaporating away following a collision."
Although the two are quite similar, it’s been previously shown that Moon rocks lack volatile elements, which suggests they may have evaporated during the incredibly intense heat and pressure created during an impact event. But if the hypothesis that light elements actually evaporated from Moon rocks during their formation is correct, you’d expect to find evidence of elements being layered by mass — heavier elements would condense first, and so on.
That process is known as isotopic fractionation — a concept central to carbon dating — and the Washington University team's results suggest they found exactly that. They compared the blend of zinc isotopes in Moon rocks and Earth samples, and found that the Moon rocks held slightly higher proportions of heavier zinc isotopes. If the Moon was indeed once part of Earth — which has been shown by extensive modeling — the difference in the balance of zinc profiles would most likely be explained by lighter zinc isotopes evaporating away following a collision."
+ - NASA exploring $1.5 million unmanned aircraft competition->
Submitted
by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "NASA today said it wants to gage industry interest in the agency holding one of its patented Centennial Challenges to build the next cool unmanned aircraft. NASA said it is planning this Challenge in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Force Research Lab, with NASA providing the prize purse of up to $1.5 million."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - The FSF Adapts the Kickstarter Approach to Fund-raising 3
Submitted
by
ChronoEngineer
ChronoEngineer writes "Recently the Free Software foundation launched a new fund-raising system starting with the GNU Mediagoblin project. Rewards from its new tiered donation reward system include physical objects such as a 3d print of the project's mascot as well as digital ones (Rewards List). This gives free software projects an alternative crowd-funding source where all of their contributions go to advancing free software since the administrative cut taken from the earnings goes to the Free Software Foundation. Chris Webber, of GNU Mediagoblin, mentions this as one of the reasons he chose the FSF over Kickstarter for his project."
+ - World's biggest geoengineering experiment 'violates' UN rules->
Submitted
by
diewlasing
diewlasing writes "US businessman Russ George is conducting a geoengineering experiment of Canada's coast in apparent violation of two United Nations rules. From the article:
'A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a "blatant violation" of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week.""
Link to Original Source
'A controversial American businessman dumped around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean as part of a geoengineering scheme off the west coast of Canada in July, a Guardian investigation can reveal.
Lawyers, environmentalists and civil society groups are calling it a "blatant violation" of two international moratoria and the news is likely to spark outrage at a United Nations environmental summit taking place in India this week.""
Link to Original Source
+ - Millions of blogs knocked offline by legal row->
Submitted
by
another random user
another random user writes "A row over a web article posted five years ago has led to 1.5 million educational blogs going offline.
The Edublogs site went dark for about an hour after its hosting company, ServerBeach, pulled the plug. The hosting firm was responding to a copyright claim from publisher Pearson, which said one blog had been illegally sharing information it owned.
ServerBeach said it had had to act because two requests to remove the content had been ignored.
The offending article was first published in November 2007 and made available a copy of a questionnaire, known as the Beck Hopelessness Scale, to a group of students. The copyright for the questionnaire is owned by Pearson, which asked ServerBeach to remove the content in late September."
Link to Original Source
The Edublogs site went dark for about an hour after its hosting company, ServerBeach, pulled the plug. The hosting firm was responding to a copyright claim from publisher Pearson, which said one blog had been illegally sharing information it owned.
ServerBeach said it had had to act because two requests to remove the content had been ignored.
The offending article was first published in November 2007 and made available a copy of a questionnaire, known as the Beck Hopelessness Scale, to a group of students. The copyright for the questionnaire is owned by Pearson, which asked ServerBeach to remove the content in late September."
Link to Original Source
+ - Magic Finger turns any surface into a touch interface->
Submitted
by
cylonlover
cylonlover writes "A trip on public transport or to the local coffee shop might give the impression that touchscreens are everywhere, but scientists at Autodesk Research of the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto are looking to take the ubiquity of touch interfaces to the next level. They are developing a “Magic Finger” that allows any surface to detect touch input by shifting the touch technology from the surface to the wearer’s finger. It’s a proof-of-concept prototype made up of a little Velcro ring that straps to the wearer’s fingertip with a trail of wires leading to a box of electronics. On the ring there are a pair of optical sensors. One is a low resolution, high-speed sensor for tracking movement, the other a high-resolution camera, which is able to detect 32 different surface textures with 98 percent accuracy."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
+ - Teen Suicide Tormenter Outed By Anonymous->
Submitted
by
MightyMartian
MightyMartian writes "From the story:
The tragic story of a Canadian teen suicide victim Amanda Todd has taken another bizarre twist as the internet hacking and activist group Anonymous has named a man the group says was the girl's primary tormentor. Todd, 15, of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, died last Wednesday, a month after posting a haunting video on YouTube that cited the sexualized attack that set her down a path of anxiety, depression and drug and alcohol abuse.
This raises a whole nest of issues surrounding the presumption of innocence and vigilantism. Should the police and the courts be given the appropriate amount of time to determine if there is sufficient evidence, or if a crime has in fact been committed, or is Anonymous right in short-circuiting what might in fact be a lengthy process with no guarantee that anyone will face charges?"
Link to Original Source
+ - SC Supreme Court: Inbox emails may not be private->
Submitted
by
wesware
wesware writes "The justices unanimously ruled Wednesday that since the emails were still in the husband's inbox, the daughter-in-law did not violate a 1986 federal law about email storage. What difference would it make if an email was in your inbox vs the 'No one can see these'box?"
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source