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dbolger (161340)

dbolger
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dbolger (161340)

  Science: Nanotubes Form The Darkest Material Yet Created 2008-01-17 04:08

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday January 17, @04:08AM
from the none-more-black dept.
toxcspdrmn writes "Bad news for Spinal Tap fans. The BBC reports that researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, have produced the darkest known material by manufacturing "forests" of carbon nanotubes. This forms a surface that absorbs or scatters 99.9% of all incidental light."

  Science: Where Do the Laws of Nature Come From? 2007-12-18 15:05

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 18, @03:05PM
from the you-say-anthropic-i-say-platonic dept.
mlimber writes "The NYTimes science section has up an interesting article discussing the nature of scientific laws. It comes partly in reply to physicist Paul Davies, whose recent op-ed in same paper lit up the blogosphere and solicited flurry of reader responses to the editorial page. It asks, 'Are [laws of nature] merely fancy bookkeeping, a way of organizing facts about the world? Do they govern nature or just describe it? And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?' The current article proceeds to survey different views on the matter. The author seems to be poking fun at himself by quoting Richard Feynman's epigram, 'Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.'"
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 [+] story, science, math, god, pothead, flyingspaghettimonster

  IT: Ohio Study Confirms Voting Systems Vulnerabilities 2007-12-15 07:22

Posted by Zonk on Saturday December 15, @07:22AM
from the never-thought-i'd-be-longing-for-paper dept.
bratgitarre writes "A comprehensive study of electronic voting systems (PDF) by vendors ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Premier (formerly Diebold) found that 'all of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election'. In particular, they note all systems provide insufficiently protection against threats from election insiders, do not follow well-known security practices, and have 'deeply flawed software maintenance' practices." Some of these machines are the ones California testers found fault with last week.
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 [+] story, it, security, blackboxvoting, politics, stale, insufficiently

  IT: Windows Vista SP1 Hands-On Details 2007-11-18 15:33

Posted by Zonk on Sunday November 18 2007, @03:33PM
from the preview-of-the-preview dept.
babyshiori writes "Users of Microsoft Windows Vista can rejoice in the fact that Microsoft just released a preview of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate! The build is the lead-up to the actual service pack, which will be made available to even more testers at a later date. 'In our early tests with the beta, we saw some small improvements in boot time on an HP Compaq 8710p Core 2 Duo notebook. Before SP1, the laptop took 1 minute, 51 seconds to boot. After the update, that figure dropped by almost 20 seconds. Microsoft is also touting improvements in "the speed of copying and extracting files," so we tested a few of those scenarios. We noted a slight increase in the time required to copy 562 JPEG images totaling 1.9GB from an SD Card to the hard drive of the aforementioned HP Compaq notebook.'"
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 [+] story, it, microsoft, windows, vistafailure, vistasucks

  New York Times Ends Its Paid Subscription Service 2007-09-18 03:06

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday September 18 2007, @03:06AM
from the ding-dong dept.
Mike writes "The New York Times has announced that it will end its paid Internet service in favor of making most of its Web site available for free. The hope is that this move will attract more readers and higher advertising revenue. 'The longer-term problem for publishers like the Times is that they must find ways to present content online rather than just transferring stories and pictures from the newspaper. Most U.S. news Web sites offer their contents for free, supporting themselves by selling advertising. One exception is The Wall Street Journal which runs a subscription-based Web site. TimesSelect generated about $10 million in revenue a year. Schiller declined to project how much higher the online growth rate would be without charging visitors.'"
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 [+] story, money, media, finally, technology, nyt

  IT: Surveillance Camera Network Coming To New York? 2007-08-04 07:08

Posted by Zonk on Saturday August 04 2007, @07:08AM
from the if-they-can-make-it-here dept.
yapplejax writes "New York City is seeking funding for a multi-million dollar surveillance system modeled on the one used in London. Police in the city already make use of the network of cameras in airports, banks, department stores and corporate offices — an arrangement used in cities across the country. This new project would augment that network with a city-wide grid. 'The system has four components: license plate readers, surveillance cameras, a coordination center, and roadblocks that can swing into action when needed. The primary purpose of the system is deterrence, and then an investigative tool.' But is it necessary? Steven Swain from the London Metropolitan Police states 'I don't know of a single incident where CCTV has actually been used to spot, apprehend or detain offenders in the act.'"
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 [+] story, it, security, politics, privacy, yro, bigbrother

  IT: Supercomputer On the Cheap 2007-08-01 08:01

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday August 01 2007, @08:01AM
from the mere-six-teraflops dept.
jbrodkin writes "You don't need Ivy League-type cash to get a supercomputer anymore. Organizations with limited financial resources are snatching up IBM supercomputers now that Big Blue has lowered the price of Blue Gene/L. Alabama-Birmingham and other universities that previously couldn't afford such advanced technology are using supercomputers to cure diseases at the protein level and to solve equally challenging problems. IBM dropped the price of the Blue Gene/L to $800K late last year before releasing a more powerful model, Blue Gene/P, last month. Sales of Blue Gene/L have more than doubled since then, bringing supercomputing into more corners of the academic and research worlds."
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 [+] story, it, supercomputing, ibm, definecheap, business

  Hardware: Office Printers May Pose Health Risks 2007-07-31 09:31

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday July 31 2007, @09:31AM
from the like-the-one-to-my-immediate-right dept.
drewmoney writes "The BBC reports on new findings which may have implications for the way offices are laid out. According to an Australian study, around a third of modern printer models release 'potentially dangerous levels of toner into the air' as they are completing a job. 'Almost one-third were found to emit ultra-tiny particles of toner-like material, so small that they can infiltrate the lungs and cause a range of health problems from respiratory irritation to more chronic illnesses. Conducted in an open-plan office, the test revealed that particle levels increased five-fold during working hours, a rise blamed on printer use. '"
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 [+] story, hardware, printer, it, science, officespace, pcloadletter

  Leonard Nimoy to Play Spock in Next Star Trek Movie 2007-07-27 13:47

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 27 2007, @01:47PM
from the leonard-nimoy-must-be-rolling-in-his-grave dept.
mcgrew writes "The AP is reporting that Leonard Nimoy will 'don his famous pointy ears again' in the next Star Trek movie, due out Christmas of next year. From the article: 'He greeted the crowd with a Vulcan salute. Nimoy was joined by the newly named young Spock, "Heroes" star Zachary Quinto [Sylar], who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nimoy. Both Spocks were introduced by the film's director and co-producer, J.J. Abrams.'"
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 [+] story, movies, scifi, deadhorse, illogical, logical

  Science: A Sunshade In Space To Combat Global Warming 2006-11-06 05:32

Posted by kdawson on Monday November 06 2006, @05:32AM
from the thinking-big dept.
ultracool writes, "While the only permanent solution for human-driven global warming is developing renewable energy, a temporary hack to counteract possible abrupt climate change is to build a giant sunshade in space. The sunshade would be launched in small pieces by electromagnetic launchers, conventional chemical rockets being far too expensive. The sunshade could be developed and deployed in 25 years, would last about 50 years, and would reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by 2% — enough to balance heating due to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." From the article: "The [trillions of] spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer... Sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun [at L-1], would be diverted away from our planet... The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers [collectively] launching a stack of [a million] fliers every 5 minutes for 10 years."
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 [+] story, science, space, simpsonsdidit, globalwarming, scifi, excellent, futurama

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