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+ - Ubuntu 9.04 released

Submitted by Daehenoc
Daehenoc writes "Ubuntu 9.04 has been released and you can get it from http://www.ubuntu.com/ or your local mirror. Eventually. I'm glad that they got it out on the date they said they would!"
Censorship

+ - Australian blacklist leaked on Wikileaks

Submitted by Daehenoc
Daehenoc writes "As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, "The Australian communications regulator's top-secret blacklist of banned websites has been leaked on to the web and paints a harrowing picture of Australia's forthcoming internet censorship regime.", "But about half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist." Why would Christian sites be on the list? And yeah, I hate dentists too! Here's the good stuff on Wikileaks: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist%2C_6_Aug_2008"

Comment: Re:Really? (Score 3, Insightful) 198

by Daehenoc (#26568275) Attached to: Despite Gates' Prediction, Spam Far From a Thing of the Past

If those people would simply find a decent email provider, the spammers' market would dry up and spam might become a "thing of the past" once and for all. But for now there's no reason you can't switch to a decent email provider and forget about spam today.

The only way for the spammers' market to dry up would be if THEY STOPPED GETTING REPLIES to the messages they send out now. They still get replies to some (single digit percent?) of the messages they send out, and that makes them money. So they keep fighting (successfully!) against the majority of the Internet population and sending out new spam messages and keep trying to defeat anti-spam measures.

The spammers aren't the problem, the people who reply to spam are the problem.

Upgrades

+ - Wow, i havent plugged in my laptop in 40 hours-> 2

Submitted by
Barkalot
Barkalot writes ""Stanford University researchers have made a discovery that could signal the arrival of laptop batteries that last more than a day on a single charge. The researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to give rechargeable lithium ion batteries — used in laptops, iPods, video cameras, and mobile phones — as much as 10 times more charge. This potentially could give a conventional battery-powered laptop 40 hours of battery life, rather than 4 hours. ""
Link to Original Source
Space

+ - New Scientist Retracts "Puddles on Mars" s->

Submitted by
Geoffrey.landis
Geoffrey.landis writes "New Scientist magazine retracted a story stating that scientists analyzing MER rover images found evidence of "puddles" of standing water at the Opportunity rover site in Meridiani crater on Mars.

The researchers quoted by the magazine were apparently unfamiliar with MER rover images, and were unaware that the "puddles" they reported were sloped at an angle of nearly 30 degrees. New Scientist had not gotten comments on the story from scientists on the MER mission before publishing because calls from the reporter "were not immediately returned" over the weekend.

New Scientist reports: "In the end, it was savvy readers who first pointed the error out to us over the weekend, sending in panoramic images pinpointing the location of the purported puddles. Though it seemed clear from those images that the terrain was sloped, I found it hard to believe that the researchers themselves could have missed such an obvious — and crucial — detail. But apparently they had, analysing just the smaller images without understanding the larger context of their surroundings — missing the forest for the trees. "I want to retract the claim in the paper that the smooth area we discussed was "standing liquid water"', Levin acknowledged on Tuesday." Earlier Slashdot story"
Link to Original Source
Space

+ - Hurricane Satellite Could Fail without Replacement

Submitted by statemachine
statemachine writes "An aging weather satellite crucial to accurate predictions on the intensity and path of hurricanes could fail at any moment and plans to launch a replacement have been pushed back seven years to 2016. Last year, forecasts were off an average of 111 miles two days in advance, a figure that has been cut in half over the past 15 years. But experts said that could grow 10 percent to 122 miles if the satellite is lost, causing the "cone of error" well known to coastal residents to expand. QuikScat, launched in 1999 and designed to last two to three years, provides key data on wind speed and direction over the ocean. Weather aircraft and buoys can also obtain similar measurements near a storm, but they do not provide a constant flow of data as QuikScat does. Now the satellite is limping along on a backup transmitter and has other problems. A European satellite called ASCAT is available, but it does not give scientists as clear a picture as QuikScat because the distance between the readings it takes is larger. A NASA and Department of Defense satellite called WINDSAT also measures wind speed and direction, but it too is beyond its expected lifespan, and scientists have had trouble using it to observe tropical weather systems. Even if money were immediately available, a replacement satellite is estimated to take at least four years and cost approximately $400 million to build."
Graphics

+ - Top 10 tallest structures by the end of 2010->

Submitted by
GadgetMike
GadgetMike writes "With the number of eople living on earth growing exponential (6 billion in the last 100 years), there's no room for cities to expand on the ground, especially in the big overcrowded areas, and that's why architects are planning many ways of expanding through the air. No, we're not talking about flying cities, just about structures that are getting higher and higher everyday.

So, here's a top of the world's highest structures that already exist nowadays or are going to be built by the end of this decade. Hope you enjoy it."
Link to Original Source
Editorial

+ - Apple Making Money Internationally More So Than US

Submitted by
kobe_2104
kobe_2104 writes "Is Apple making more money through the international exchange markets than what many people are lead to believe? A recent example was used to see if Apple updated their prices in local countries based on the current exchange rates between those countries and the US. A MacBook Pro with the following additional extras was used a the example: 160Gb 7200RPM HDD, 17" High Res Glossy Widescreen Display. Pricing this on the US Apple Store shows the price as being $3049 US. Pricing this on the AUS Apple Store shows the price as being $4368.99 AU. Using the $0.8436 AU to US conversion rate at the time of writing this, one could buy the MacBook Pro in the US for $3614 AUS. Why is there a $750 difference in price between the two countries? One would think the prices can't be THAT far apart because of shipping costs, especially considering China is a closer relation of Australia than it is the US. Does Apple have a reason for this and are other countries experiencing the same discrepancy in prices compared to the US? This certainly looks like a money grab by Apple based on fluctuating exchange rates which would "advantage" Apple, especially in Australia."
Education

+ - English physics teachers asks for his subject back->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "An open letter to the English government regarding the ways in which they've broken physics education in secondary schools. The gist is that students are being taught a qualitative, subjective subject instead of physics in its quantitative glory. From the letter:

I am a young and once-enthusiastic physics teacher. I despair at what I am forced to teach. I have potentially thirty years of lessons to give, but I didn't sign up for this — and the business world still calls. There I won't have to endure the pain of trying to animate a crippled subject. The rigorous of physics been torn down and replaced with impotent science media studies."
Link to Original Source

Force has no place where there is need of skill. -- Herodotus

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