Comment: Re:Face it (Score 1) 112
Really? I see it as capitalism with a conscious.
Comment: Re:So, you don't understand Zen. (Score 1) 175
mod up please
Armadillo Aerospace Takes Level 1 Lunar Lander Prize 50
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the easy-money dept.
from the easy-money dept.
jedibfa writes "Las Cruces International Airport came alive with applause and cheers yesterday afternoon as John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace took the first place prize for the Level 1 challenge of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, winning $350,000 and bragging rights. Adding to the excitement of the day, shortly before completing their second qualifying flight, Armadillo Aerospace and The Rocket Racing League announced a joint program to develop a sub-orbital tourist vehicle that will fly out of the New Mexico-based Spaceport America and cost less than $100,000 per ticket. On Sunday, the team will have three opportunities to go for the Level 2 challenge that more closely approximates the required performance for a real lunar landing. Good luck, Armadillo Aerospace, both on Sunday and in your new endeavor!"
We discussed preparations for the challenge last week. Several other readers have contributed additional coverage, including the Space Fellowship's live blog of the event, the website for Truezer0, another team participating in the challenge, and a VentureBeat article discussing the economic downturn in space exploration, and how the X-prize competitions figure in. Today's Level 2 challenge will be covered live via webcast.
Record Label Infringes Own Copyright, Site Pulled 282
Posted
by
kdawson
from the wonder-who-filed-the-complaint dept.
from the wonder-who-filed-the-complaint dept.
AnonCow sends in a peculiar story from TorrentFreak, which describes the plight of a free-download music site that has been summarily evicted from the Internet for violating its own copyright. The problem seems to revolve around the host's insistence that proof of copyright be snail-mailed to them. Kind of difficult when your copyright takes the form of a Creative Commons license that cannot be verified unless its site is up. "The website of an Internet-based record label which offers completely free music downloads has been taken down by its host for copyright infringement, even though it only offers its own music. Quote Unquote Records calls itself 'The First Ever Donation Based Record Label,' but is currently homeless after its host pulled the plug."
Man Uses Remote Logon To Help Find Laptop Thief
251
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the cyber-bloodhound dept.
from the cyber-bloodhound dept.
After his computer was stolen, Jose Caceres used a remote access program to log on every day and watch it being used. The laptop was stolen on Sept. 4, when he left it on top of his car while carrying other things into his home. "It was kind of frustrating because he was mostly using it to watch porn," Caceres said. "I couldn't get any information about him." Last week the thief messed up and registered on a web site with his name and address. Jose alerted the police, who arrested a suspect a few hours later. The moral of the story: never go to a porn site where you have to register.
Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap 621
Posted
by
kdawson
from the head-out-of-the-clouds dept.
from the head-out-of-the-clouds dept.
stevedcc writes in to tell us about an interview with RMS in The Guardian, in which he gives his views on cloud computing, with a particular focus on user access to data and the sacrifices made for convenience. "'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign,' he told The Guardian. 'Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'" Computerworld has a summary of some of the blogosphere's reaction to RMS's position.
Comment: Re:Obama spinning? (Score 2, Interesting) 438
Abortion
+ - Can the internet enable direct action offline? 3
Submitted
by
notque
notque writes "We are sitting in a time with so many political scandals, and some would say an illegal war. You would think that given these facts the United States would be a hotbed of political activity and protest. So far this hasn't occurred, although people continue to do difficult work. There are many websites that attempt to coordinate political activity, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to show for it. Can the internet actually enable direct action offline? What are some ways that this could be carried out? On another website, digg, there was an article concerning a general strike on 09/11/07 that received 4600 diggs, so it seems that people want to do something, but feel isolated and alone. Does the internet help foster this?
Noam Chomsky once said, "By margins that are now so overwhelming that it's even front page news, people are strenuously opposed to everything that's going on and are frightened and angry and reacting like punch-drunk fighters. They're just too alone, both in their personal lives and associations and also intellectually, without anything to grasp. They don't know how to respond except in irrational ways. In some ways it has sort of the tone of a devastated peasant society after a plague swept it or an army went through and ruined everything. People have just dissolved into inability to respond."
How can individuals help to change this, and is the internet a useful tool for that? Does the internet just stagnate individuals further?
Thanks."
America's War on the Web 428
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the controlling-the-flow-of-information dept.
from the controlling-the-flow-of-information dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Sunday Herald is reporting that while the US is continuing to pursue traditional means of protecting national security, they are also planning to launch a new wave of 'information warfare' to help combat a perceived growing threat of IT security. From the article: 'The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document's recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of "a revolution in the concept of warfare". The report orders three new developments in America's approach to warfare [...] the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.'"
SCOTUS To Hear Patentable Thought Case 394
Posted
by
Zonk
from the get-out-of-my-head dept.
from the get-out-of-my-head dept.
skayell writes "The Supreme Court of the United States will hear a landmark patent case involving whether or not thoughts and relationships are patentable. Michael Crichton's essay in the New York Times attempts a thoughtful summary of Metabolite's primary assertion: they not only own the connection between homocysteine levels in the blood and vitamin B12 deficiency, but also any thought connecting the two."