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We built the LHC to look for tits?

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We built the LHC to look for tits?

MahariBalzitch writes "Popular Mechanics shows step by step guide on how to install Ubuntu Linux on a PlayStation 3 and still keep the PS3 gaming functionality. Now I just need to get my hands on a PS3." Not bad specs for the price, either, since Blu-Ray players still aren't cheap. And though the article calls the procedure "somewhat complicated," it's a lot simpler than was installing Linux from floppies not so many years ago.

NotableCathy writes "CNet has an interesting retrospective write-up documenting the most notable dotcom disasters and now-defunct Websites that were massive in their day, detailing what happened to them and what they led to. Nupedia didn't escape a slating (remember Larry Sanger's memoir?), or indeed Beenz, whose founder and CEO once said 'would become the universal currency, supplanting all others,' according to The Register seven years ago."

CNet News.com is reporting that the Air Force's Cyber Command has just as much interest in offense as defense. "Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER), a US military unit set up in September 2007 to fight in cyberspace, is due to become fully operational in the autumn under the aegis of the US Eighth Air Force. Lieutenant general Robert J. Elder Jr., who commands the Eighth Air Force's Barksdale base, told ZDNet.co.uk at the Cyber Warfare Conference 2008 that Air Force is interested in developing its capabilities to attack enemy forces as well as defend critical national infrastructure. "

XaN-ASMoDi writes "Yesterday saw the 30th anniversary of the very first broadcast of Douglas Adam's seminal work, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", to mark this, Mark Vernon has written an article for the BBC News Magazine on the answer to The Question. 'It's 30 years since Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made its debut on BBC radio, but its most famous mystery is still waiting to be resolved...'"

alternative coup writes "eWEEK is running a story on the emergence of an anti-botnet market to fill a perceived need for software to deal with botnet-related malware (Trojans, keyloggers, rootkits, etc.). The article characterizes this as 'another black eye' for the existing anti-virus industry — asking consumers to pay twice for protection from things that anti-malware suites are missing. Venture capital money is flowing to these anti-bot products, an implicit statement that the AV giants are not doing their jobs. 'For companies such as Symantec, which sells the Sana-powered Norton AntiBot and anti-malware subscriptions, it's a nickel-and-dime situation. Symantec officials say Norton AntiBot is for a specialized, technical market segment looking for high-end tools to deal with botnets, but [Andrew Jaquith, an analyst with The Yankee Group] said it's a case of anti-malware companies double-dipping.'"

Ponca City, We Love You writes "Researchers at Monash University, in Australia, have found a process to coat natural fibers such as wool, silk, and hemp that will automatically remove food, grime, and even red-wine stains by coating their fibers with titanium dioxide nanocrystals, which break down food and dirt in sunlight. Titanium dioxide is a strong photocatalyst and in the presence of ultraviolet light and water vapor, it forms hydroxyl radicals, which oxidize, or decompose, organic matter. "These nanocrystals cannot decompose wool and are harmless to skin," says organic chemist and nanomaterials researcher Walid Daoud. Titanium dioxide can also destroy pathogens such as bacteria in the presence of sunlight by breaking down the cell walls of the microorganisms making self-cleaning fabrics especially useful in hospitals and other medical settings."

An anonymous reader writes "We've known for ages that IPv4 was going to run out of addresses — now, it's happening. IPv6 was going to save us — it isn't. The upcoming crisis will hit, perhaps as soon as 2010, but nobody can agree on what to do. The three options are all pretty scary. This article covers the background, and links to a presentation by Randy Bush (PDF) that shows the reality of the problem in stark detail."

An anonymous reader writes "A new type of frog the size of a bowling ball, with heavy armor and teeth, that lived among dinosaurs millions of years ago has been discovered. It was intimidating enough that scientists who unearthed its fossils dubbed the beast Beelzebufo, or Devil Toad."

cristarol sends word that Microsoft's accusation, that IBM has sabotaged Redmond's attempts to have the Office OpenXML format approved by the ISO, has drawn a heated response from IBM. Ars Technica has the story. "'IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,' IBM VP of standards and OSS Bob Sutor told Ars. 'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.'"

The C|Net Crave blog has up an article exploring the history of console gaming, and wonders aloud about the pecking order of the various systems. "Gaming is so subjective that there is no single "greatest" system ever. It might sound like a cop-out, but it really depends on what standards you're using and what generation you grew up in. I loved the SNES, and would personally call it the greatest system of all time. However, the NES and PlayStation could both easily be called the best, based on the standards they set and the advances they presented to gaming." The Guardian follows up this piece, noting that the article's rose-colored recollections of the SNES days may not be entirely accurate. Subjective or not, it's a good question: which consoles have a valid place in history and which ones should be forgotten?

mAriuZ writes "Bob Rogers just released Parrot 0.5.2. This monthly release includes a couple of interesting new features. First, we've bundled Patrick Michaud's Rakudo (thats the implementation of Perl 6 on Parrot) such that you can type make perl6 on Unixy platforms and make perl6.exe on Windows and get a working standalone Perl 6 binary. This is experimental and we hope to iron out some installation and deployment issues by next months release, but it was important to demonstrate our progress. The second new feature is a toolkit for starting your own compiler. Max Mohun built a prototype several months ago, and we've added a stripped-down version for now that builds the skeleton of a compiler for you using the Parrot Compiler Tools. I mentioned the LOLCODE compiler in What the Perl 6 and Parrot Hackers Did on Their Christmas Vacation; this is how Simon and Company were able to get LOLCODE up and running so quickly."

DeeQ writes "Ask.com is betting that it will. The search engine is working on a service called AskEraser that will attempt to obscure the searches a user enters into the site. 'Some privacy experts doubt that concerns about privacy are significant enough to turn a feature like AskEraser into a major selling point for Ask.com. The search engine accounted for 4.7 percent of all searches conducted in the United States in October, according to comScore, which ranks Internet traffic. By comparison, Google accounted for 58.5 percent, Yahoo for 22.9 percent and Microsoft for 9.7 percent.'" We first discussed this project back in July.

coondoggie writes "While the skies aren't exactly buzzing with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) just yet, experts are warning their explosive growth will require military and public officials to address the issue sooner than they might think. The four chiefs of service aviation and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) branches told the Army Aviation Association of America's unmanned aircraft symposium last week that the military should crystallize combat air control regarding UAVs, while domestic authorities must work out access and use of UAVs in domestic airspace. "I'm surprised we haven't had a collision yet," said Rear Adm. Joseph Aucoin, director of the Navy's aviation plans and requirements branch."