Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes "July marks the 50th anniversary of the world's largest tsunami — a 1,720-foot-tall wave in Lituya Bay, Alaska. It was triggered by a chain reaction of events that began with a magnitude 7.7 earthquake on the Fairweather Fault, which dislodged a rock fall of 40 million cubic yards, that fell 3,000 feet and splashed into the northwest end of Lituya Bay to generate the wave. This article includes survivor accounts, maps, a satellite image, and photos taken right after the event." To be fair, eyewitness accounts put the height of the wave as it came toward their boats at perhaps 100 feet. The tsunami scoured the land of vegetation and soil to a height of 1,720 feet above sea level, however.

In a surprise move, it appears that Apogee Software has returned to action. As their first move, they are promising to bring Duke Nukem to the handheld market. "Apogee is bringing the King of Action himself, Duke Nukem, to the handheld console market with three new missions, together called the Duke Nukem Trilogy. Apogee Software is producing the Trilogy under an exclusive license agreement with 3D Realms and MachineWorks Northwest LLC. The Trilogy is comprised of three episodes: Critical Mass, Chain Reaction, and Proving Grounds. 'This marks a new beginning for a famous publisher with a history of market-making innovation,' said Terry Nagy, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Apogee. 'I can't think of a better character than Duke or a better franchise than the Trilogy to usher in a new era for Apogee.'"

Newspapers have always had the responsibility to verify their stories, why should that change simply because the information's off the web?

Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "According to the BBC, ICANN is considering opening up the wholesale creation of TLDs by private industry. While I'm sure this is done for the convenience of the companies and has nothing to do with the several thousand dollars they will be charging for each registration, I was curious what the tech community at large thought about this idea. It seems to me that this will simply open the doors for a never-ending stream of TLD squatters."

MyLongNickName writes "Less than a month ago I took a position at a smaller firm (around 50 employees) as an IT Manager. As you might expect from the size of the company, I oversee quite a variety of tasks. I come from a background of computer programming, and am definitely not a master of every function. We rely on third-party solutions providers for areas like our networking, web hosting, phone systems, etc. I am used to working in a larger environment with a large IT staff (and not just because of super sizing at McDonald's). Just the daily rubbing elbows allowed me to stay current in areas that I did not directly touch. And when I had a question, I personally knew someone who could answer my question. I am not in that environment now. How do I stay current? I don't want to be a master of every technology, but I want to be aware of trends in the industry. I want to not depend on one contractor advising me."

jexrand recommends an interview with John De Goes in which he argues: "The tools market is dead. Open source killed it." The software developer turned president of N-BRAIN explains the effect that open source has had on the developer tools market, and how this forced the company to release the personal edition of UNA free of charge. According to De Goes, selling a source-code editor, even a very good one, is all but impossible in the post-open source era, especially given that, "Some developers would rather quit their job than be forced to use a new editor or IDE." N-BRAIN's decision is but one in a string of similar announcements from tools companies announcing the free release of their previously commercial development tools.

Dr. Jim writes "The good folks over at the Gartner Group have revealed the top 10 technologies that they believe will change the world over the next four years. The usual suspects including multi-core chips, virtualization, and cloud computing are on the list. Multicore servers and virtualization will mean that firms will need fewer boxes, and apps can be easily moved from box to box (and right out the door to an outsourced data center). Workplace social networks and cloud computing means that the need for a centralized IT department will go away. Firms will no longer need to own/maintain the boxes that they use to run their firm's apps. With no need to touch a box, there will be no need to have the IT staff co-located with the boxes."

ManicMechanic and other readers sent in news of a tribe of aboriginal people from the border of Peru and Brazil that has been photographed by helicopter for the first time. The images show huts in a village and people in red body paint shooting arrows at the helicopter. The outfit that released the photos, Survival International, works to end illegal logging in the rainforest in order to protect the uncontacted tribes living there. They estimate that 100 uncontacted groups exist worldwide, about half of them in the Amazon basin.

sowjetarschbajazzo writes "Air Force Col. Charles W. Williamson III believes that the United States military should maintain its own botnet, both as a deterrent towards those who would attempt to DDoS government networks, and an offensive weapon to be used against the networks of unfriendly nations, criminal groups, or terrorist organizations. "Some people would fear the possibility of botnet attacks on innocent parties. If the botnet is used in a strictly offensive manner, civilian computers may be attacked, but only if the enemy compels us. The U.S. will perform the same target preparation as for traditional targets and respect the law of armed conflict as Defense Department policy requires by analyzing necessity, proportionality and distinction among military, dual-use or civilian targets. But neither the law of armed conflict nor common sense would allow belligerents to hide behind the skirts of its civilians. If the enemy is using civilian computers in his country so as to cause us harm, then we may attack them." What does Slashdot think of this proposal?"

paradoxSpirit writes "Physorg has a paper comparing the cost of text messaging versus the cost of getting data from Hubble Space Telescope. From the article: 'The maximum size for a text message is 160 characters, which takes 140 bytes because there are only 7 bits per character in the text messaging system, and we assume the average price for a text message is 5p. There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte, so that's 1 million/140 = 7490 text messages to transmit one megabyte. At 5p each, that's £374.49 [$732.95] per MB — or about 4.4 times more expensive than the 'most pessimistic' estimate for Hubble Space Telescope transmission costs." "Hubble is by no means a cheap mission — but the mobile phone text costs were pretty astronomical!""

mattnyc99 writes "We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. Quoting: 'We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years,' Huber says. 'And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.'" The process is running at about 50% efficiency now; the $1/gallon figure is based on getting to 100%.

Jeff recommends Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat's story from a community meeting with Northwest border control agents. Seems their monitoring for dirty bombs from the median of Interstate 5 caught a car transporting a radioactive cat. "It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear 'dirty bombs.' They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident. 'Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour... Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]. The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot.' Did he find a nuke? 'Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier.'"

Ant writes "MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."

eweekhickins writes "Google's Postini team says new attacks will take the form of sneaky viruses that will blend with spam, leveraging specific current events, such as the Super Bowl or the Summer Olympic Games. Better yet, virus attacks will target executives at companies whose intellectual property is deemed valuable on the black market. A lot of these attacks will masquerade as legitimate business agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Better Business Bureau and the SEC."

njondet recommends an article at The Economist that sheds light on the identity crisis faced by Wikipedia as it is torn between two alternative futures. "'It can either strive to encompass every aspect of human knowledge, no matter how trivial; or it can adopt a more stringent editorial policy and ban articles on trivial subjects, in the hope that this will enhance its reputation as a trustworthy and credible reference source. These two conflicting visions are at the heart of a bitter struggle inside Wikipedia between 'inclusionists,' who believe that applying strict editorial criteria will dampen contributors' enthusiasm for the project, and 'deletionists' who argue that Wikipedia should be more cautious and selective about its entries."