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Education

Huston Huddleston Wants You To Help Save the Star Trek TNG Set 131

Posted by timothy
from the ok-this-demands-a-video-visit dept.
New submitter ShadoCat points out this interesting project to restore the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, writing: "This isn't the original set unfortunately (which was destroyed making the ST:Generations movie). This is one that Paramount created for display in 1991. Huston Huddleston saved the pieces of the set late 2011 when they were about to be trashed by Paramount. Huddleston and crew will be refitting the set with working displays and controls. They plan to host parties and educational events in the set which, apparently, is big enough to hold a large number of students. For safety though, I hope they add circuit breakers (a technology along with seat belts that seems to have been lost in the 24th century)."
Communications

Google Launches Hurricane Isaac Site 43

Posted by samzenpus
from the one-stop-hurricane-news dept.
redletterdave writes "Google Crisis Response, one of Google's thousands of active projects that merges various Google tools like Maps, Docs, Forms and Earth, posted a new webpage on Monday dedicated to Tropical Storm Isaac — soon to be Hurricane Isaac — in an effort to disseminate helpful information about the hurricane's path, its forecasted track, and how local residents can stay safe during this emergency situation. Google's Crisis Map for Hurricane Isaac allows the user to set up and see public alerts from weather.gov, flood gauge forecasts, surge zones, evacuation zones and routes, barrier resources and relevant YouTube videos for each impacted area."
Music

+ - Why New Distribution Models Terrify Hollywood->

Submitted by
sperlingreich
sperlingreich writes "Movie studios, television networks and record labels still haven’t updated their business models to account for video and music streaming services like Netflix and Spotify. Now companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple plan on introducing a whole new group of media subscription services so it’s no surprise the entertainment industry is concerned about all these disruptive distribution methods."
Link to Original Source
Science

+ - Shells Take Radioactive Contaminants From Water->

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes "A byproduct of the paper industry and crab shells may soon be used to take radioactive contaminants out of water.

Joel Pawlak, an associate professor of forest biomaterials at North Carolina State University, has developed a material similar to foam rubber that absorbs water and attaches to molecules dissolved in it, leaving pure and potable water behind.

The material is a combination of hemicellulose and chitosan. The first comes from wood and is extracted by the ton in the paper-making process. Chitosan is extracted from ordinary crustacean shells — primarily crab, shrimp and lobster — by treatment with hydrochloric acid and then sodium hydroxide."
Link to Original Source
Microsoft

+ - Web Stores Vulnerable to "Free Shopping" Exploits->

Submitted by Orome1
Orome1 writes "A new study presents the depressing results of a security analysis of some of the most popular online stores, executed as a joint effort by researches from Indiana University and Microsoft. Web applications increasingly integrate third-party services. The integration introduces new security challenges due to the complexity for an application to coordinate its internal states with those of the component services and the web client across the Internet. Researchers concentrated their efforts on analyzing merchant websites that accept payments through third-party cashiers such as PayPal, Amazon Payments and Google Checkout, and they came to the conclusion that merchant applications (both open source and commercial), online stores and third-party cashiers all present weak links in the security chain."
Link to Original Source
Security

+ - A Look Inside Cybercriminal Mule Networks->

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes "An interesting piece on about money mule recruitment and herding tactics, and how mules play such a critical part in cybercrime operations.

Mules have been considered to be the “bottleneck” of fraud. While fraudsters have the capabilities of stealing millions of credentials, eventually they can cash out only as many mules as they have access to. Fraudsters are aware of it just as much as security professionals and they invest their efforts, resources, time and ingenuity to open this bottleneck as much as they can.

Because of it, we can expect new scams and innovations coming from fraudsters not only in the realm of obtaining credentials or new ways to cash them out, but also in establishing the infrastructure that allows them to do just that."
Link to Original Source

+ - Is Anti-Matter Gravitationally Repulsive?->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A new paper attempts to show how CPT symmetry (charge, parity, and time) and Einstein's General Theory implies that matter and anti-matter should be gravitationally repulsive. The author (who unfortunately plugs his book in the article) believes that this could eliminate the need to postulate dark energy and possibly even dark matter."
Link to Original Source
Books

+ - ALA Top 10 List of Books Americans Want Censored->

Submitted by krou
krou writes "The American Library Association has released their "Top Ten List of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2010". In at number one is 'And Tango Makes Three', which tells the true story of two male Emperor Penguins hatching and parenting a baby chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo. Making an appearance at number three is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World because of 'Insensitivity, Offensive Language, Racism, Sexually Explicit' content."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:iTouch on steroids (Score 2, Informative) 1713

by quadelirus (#30922784) Attached to: Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open
I think people generally refer to their iPod Nanos as iPods (not iPod Nanos). iPod Nanos aren't significantly different than other iPods. iTouch differentiates between the iPod Touch and other iPods which makes sense because it really is a different class of device--there really isn't a need to verbally differentiate between iPod 120GB and iPod Nano--it's simply your apple music player, or iPod. That's why I think most people use iTouch (and b/c iPod Touch is too many syllables to use every time you want to talk about your device).

Comment: Re:What is the point? (Score 1) 1713

by IronChef (#30922750) Attached to: Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open

It's also a $500 16GB USB device with no mass storage mode! Assuming that it works like the iPhone.

If I could drag 'n' drop content to this thing, it might, MIGHT be on my shopping list. A 10+ hour color ePub reader would be truly swell. But forcing me to use iTunes sync is a complete killer because it prevents me from adding content from two different computers.

Say I am at home with my iPhone. I sync the device to my computer and copy over books and music. Then I go to work, and a coworker says, "check out this mp3."

I want to put the mp3 on my iPhone so I can listen to it later, maybe in the car on the way home. But I can't. My iPhone is paired to my Mac at home, and if I want to put an MP3 on while I am at work, iTunes insists on erasing the device first. (It doesn't do this for some data, like contacts, which sync at home & work with no problem.)

I still use a Zune, a BROWN Zune, because it has a "guest mode." Mass storage support would be better, but at least with guest mode I can manage the content from the 2 machines I use most, home and work.

If I am a moron, and I have missed some obvious way to do that on my iPhone, I will happily take a -5 iTard moderation if someone tells me how to do it.

Comment: Re:price? (Score 1) 1713

by Rycross (#30922678) Attached to: Apple's "iPad" Out In the Open

That's still ridiculous price increase for merely getting 3G.

I wonder what the hardware cost for the 3G stuff is? Regardless, prices are set based on what people are willing to pay. I'd wager that being able to browse the internet while loafing around in the park is worth $120 to some people. It seems a bit steep to me too, though, and I have to admit I did a bit of a double-take at the price. The main kick in the balls is that you have to pay $30 a month on top of that for the data plan...

What I also would like to know if it supports fallback to gprs in case 3G isn't available, as is usually outside cities.

Good question. It doesn't mention anything about that, so I'm assuming that its going to be useless outside of cities. Not a big deal for some people, I would guess, and that's probably why they're offering the WiFi-only versions too. That way, if your 3G coverage stinks, you don't have to pay extra for a useless feature.

Comment: Re:Sad news (Score 1) 920

by cpscotti (#30921600) Attached to: Obama Choosing NOT To Go To the Moon
I would put like: Let's face it, without some amazing and so-far-unforeseen advances in technology, any on-Earth colonies would die out within a few years of losing support with whatever is outisde. Given that, the presence or absence of those colonies isn't really relevant to the survival of mankind..

It's just a matter of "how long". And also, without putting LOTS of effort into "so-far-unforeseen advances in technology", nothing will happen.

Guillotine, n.: A French chopping center.

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