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Crime

Submission + - Laser strikes on aircraft becoming epidemic. (arstechnica.com)

AlphaWolf_HK writes: Ars Technica has a story about a 52 year old man who was arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for shining a high powered green laser at a helicopter along with an interesting video showing how he was tracked down. The FBI says that laser strikes are becoming epidemic, saying that they expect to see reports of 3,700 of them this year.
Programming

Submission + - Agile Still Struggling to Gain Acceptance (drdobbs.com)

CowboyRobot writes: "According to a new Serena survey, "Somewhere around half of software application programmers using Agile development methodologies believe that their work is not being put through an adequate level of testing. To compound this state of affairs, as few as a quarter of project leads and/or development managers view this as a problem."

The survey also shows that only 49% of respondents say their company is using Agile, and of those, about half claim to be happy with their current Agile projects."

Republicans

Submission + - Rep. Paul Broun says scientists are tools of the devil (talkingpointsmemo.com) 2

another random user writes: Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet last month.

All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell.

And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior

According to Broun, the scientific plot was primarily concerned with hiding the true age of the Earth. Broun serves on the House Science Committee, which came under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.

You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,

he said.

I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.


Space

Submission + - Virgin Galactic's Quiet News

RocketAcademy writes: "While all eyes were focused on SpaceX, which is preparing for another launch to the International Space Station, Virgin Galactic quietly put out a press release.

Virgin Galactic has acquired full ownership of The SpaceShip Company, which will build production versions of SpaceShip Two. Ownership was previously shared with Scaled Composites, which built SpaceShip One and is building the SpaceShip Two prototype.

There have been rumors of strained relations between Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites. This news, which was not announced until after the close of business Friday, raises some interesting questions about Virgin's relationship with Scaled and its plans for the future."
Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla To Bug Firefox Users With Old Adobe Reader, Flash, Silverlight

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today announced it will soon start prompting Firefox users to upgrade select old plugins. This will only affect Windows users, and three plugins: Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Microsoft Silverlight. Mozilla says Firefox users will “soon see a notification urging them to update” when they visit a web page that uses the plugins.

Submission + - French Bees Produce Blue and Green Honey (reuters.com)

jones_supa writes: Since August, beekeepers around the town of Ribeauville in the region of Alsace, France have seen their bees starting to produce honey in an odd blue or green color. Mystified, the beekeepers embarked on an investigation and discovered that a biogas plant 4 km away has been processing waste from a plant producing colorful M&M candies. Subsequently the bees had been carrying the waste to their nests. Agrivalor, the company operating the biogas plant, said it had tried to address the problem after being notified of it by the beekeepers. 'We discovered the problem at the same time they did. We quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,' told Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor.
The Internet

Submission + - The Internet accounts for 5.1 million US jobs and 3.7% of GDP

lpress writes: "A Harvard Business School study sponsored by the Interactive Advertising Bureau shows that the ad-supported Internet is responsible for 5.1 million jobs in the US — two million direct and 3.1 million indirect. They report that the Internet accounted for 3.7% of 2011 GDP.

The research, development and procurement that launched the Internet back in the 1970s and 1980s cost the US taxpayers $124.5 million at the time — not a bad investment!"
NASA

Submission + - NASA Prepares for Space Surgery and Zero Gravity Blood

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Draining an infected abscess is a straightforward procedure on Earth but on a spaceship travelling to the moon or Mars, it could kill everyone on board. Now Rebecca Rosen writes that if humans are to one day go to Mars, one logistical hurdle that will need to be overcome is what to do if one of the crew members has a medical emergency and needs surgery. "Based on statistical probability, there is a high likelihood of trauma or a medical emergency on a deep space mission," says Carnegie Mellon professor James Antaki. It's not just a matter of whether you'll have the expertise on board to carry out such a task: Surgery in zero gravity presents its own set of potentially deadly complications because in zero gravity, blood and bodily fluids will not just stay put, in the body where they belong but could contaminate the entire cabin, threatening everybody on board. This week, NASA is testing a device known as the Aqueous Immersion Surgical System (AISS) that could possibly make space surgery possible. Designed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Louisville, AISS is a domed box that can fit over a wound. When filled with a sterile saline solution, a water-tight seal is created that prevents fluids from escaping. It can also be used to collect blood for possible reuse. "You won't have a blood bank in space," says James Burgess who came up with the concept for AISS, "so if there is bleeding you want to save as much blood as you can.""
Idle

Submission + - Your Facebook Likes As A Hug (i-programmer.info)

mikejuk writes: Next time you’re dreaming up ways to make the users of your apps feel loved and wanted, think a little more wildly. How about giving them an actual hug?
That’s what MIT researchers Melissa Chow and her colleagues Andy Payne and Phil Seaton at MIT have come up with — a jacket that hugs the wearer when one of their friends ‘likes’ one of their posts on Facebook. The Like-A-Hug vest is described as receiving a signal when a Facebook friend "likes" a post, then fills with air to give the wearer the sensation of being hugged.
I’m not sure they’ve really thought this one through.For one thing, have they thought of the reaction of passersby when the jacket suddenly starts inflating when you are standing in line at an ATM or waiting for a bus? And what about when you are packed tightly together on a metro train in the rush hour and the hug is shared by four or more other people?
It does widen the whole concept of the user interface though, doesn’t it?

Supercomputing

Submission + - A Supercomputer For Everyone? (kickstarter.com) 1

leptonhead writes: The people of the internet have successfully funded a number of high-risk high-return projects though Kickstarter. A recent trend is the funding of cheap electronics platforms such as the TinyDuino, a microsocopic Arduino compatible embedded platform. In the spirit of bringing traditionally very expensive hardware to the masses, Parallella is a project which aims to deliver a 64-core credit-card size "supercomputer" for 199USD. Funding options also include a $99 16-core computer based on the previous editions of the platform. The project has reached about 25% of its minimum funding target during its first week, and has about three weeks to go.
Programming

Submission + - cHTeMeLe is a board game about HTML (geek.com)

An anonymous reader writes: cHTeMeLe is a board game about writing HTML5 code. In cHTeMeLe, players endorse their favorite web browser (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, or IE) and then score points by correctly laying out HTML tags, while also trying to bug or crash their opponents’ code.

Despite cHTeMeLe’s technical theme, its developers claim you don’t need any web programming experience to play. The game takes web design standards and boils them down into game rules that even children can learn. To help less technical players keep everything straight, the tag cards use syntax highlighting that different parts of code have unique colors — just like an Integrated Developer Environment. No one is going to completely pick up HTML5 purely by playing cHTeMeLe, but it does have some educational value for understanding basic tags and how they fit together.

The Internet

Submission + - Suspicion that Kim Dotcom was being spied on for longer than admitted (nzherald.co.nz)

another random user writes: Kim Dotcom's internet connection was being diverted inside New Zealand weeks before the Government Communications Security Bureau says it started spying on him.

The New Zealand Herald has obtained details showing Telecom engineers and staff at its technology services company Gen-I were investigating irregularities with his internet connection in November.

The revelation has raised suspicion that Mr Dotcom was victim to earlier spying than the GCSB has admitted. It has brought fresh calls for an inquiry amid claims of the spy agency's role in the international "Five Eyes" Echelon Network.

Piracy

Submission + - Sweden Returns Passport to Piratebay Co-Founder 1

An anonymous reader writes: In August, Piratebay co-founder Fredrik Neij had his Swedish passport revoked from the Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok. After an appeal the revocation was dismissed today, ruling that the embassy cannot take away his passport. The full ruling can be read here.

Submission + - Transporting Computers by Cargo Ship 2

JabrTheHut writes: I'll be packing up and moving to another continent soon. Everything I own will be packed up into boxes and loaded onto a cargo container, which in turn will be loaded onto a ship and will sail from Northern Europe, through the Equator and then to it's final destination. It will be in transit for up to 8 weeks. What do I need to do to ensure my stuff survives the trip? I've got anti-static bags and silica gel for graphics cards and hard disks, which won't be in the computers, mostly, when they move, and some of what I own will be crated in order to protect both against physical damage and humidity. I'll throw in a couple of packets of silica gel into each box or crate. Clothes get moth balls. But what have I missed? Will the printer ink survive? Do I have to worry about batteries? What haven't I thought of?

Submission + - Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Jailbroken (paritynews.com)

hypnosec writes: Amazon’s latest Kindle Paperwhite is now officially jailbroken giving users the ability to do things like turning their eReaders into weather station display and connecting serially to Raspberry Pi. To jailbreak the Paperwhite, the user would need to copy a file over to the root directory of the e-Reader and restart the device. The Kindle Paperwhite jailbreak is based out of a previously known hack used on the Kindle Touch.

Submission + - A spreadsheet is blamed for UK rail bid fiasco

Bruce66423 writes: As a sometime computer programmer who was always very sniffy about the quality of the stuff being knocked up by amateurs aka power users, the current claim in http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/05/west-coast-civil-servant-transport that it was a messed up spreadsheet that caused a multimillion pound fiasco is very satisfying. 'The key mechanism... mixed up real and inflated financial figures and contained elements of double counting'.

Those are dangerous toys we've let the children have! [Full disclosure — I didn't leave the industry because of redundancy]
Security

Submission + - Pwnie Express Announces Enterprise Pentesting Appliance (thepowerbase.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Pwnie Express is at it again, this time announcing an "Enterprise Pentesting Appliance": essentially a decently powerful Intel machine running Pwnie's customized build of Ubuntu they are now calling "Pwnix".

But with a price tag of nearly 3,000 USD, government and big businesses need only apply.

Apple

Submission + - Tasteless in Seattle: Steve Jobs Flash Mob

theodp writes: File this one under it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time. The Filter digital agency decided to show off their Steve Jobs spirit on the first anniversary of Jobs' death by declaring Friday Steve Jobs dress-up day. But where things really took a turn for the worse was in Seattle, where Filter employees took it to the local Apple Store where they formed a Flash Mob of Steve Jobs dress-alikes dancing Gangham Style. Hey, even our best of intentions sometimes go awry.

Submission + - Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Functionally Illiterate (tor.com)

iluvcapra writes: Ryan Britt at Tor.com makes a bit of analysis that I think we'd have some fun with, in agreement or otherwise:

Not once in any Star Wars movie does someone pick up a book or newspaper, magazine, literary journal, or chapbook handmade by an aspiring Jawa poet. [...]As early as the 1990s-era expanded Star Wars books and comic books, we’re introduced to ancient Jedi “texts” called holocrons, which are basically talking holographic video recordings. Just how long has the Star Wars universe been reliant on fancy technology to transfer information as opposed to the written word? Is it possible that a good number of people in Star Wars are completely illiterate?

Read the whole thing,

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