Praxiteles writes "A radar survey in 2000 found KV63, the tomb excavated near King Tutankhamen's tomb earlier this year. (KV stands for Valley of the Kings). Just announced is that this same radar survey shows an image of what appears to be a shaft to another tomb just 15 meters north of KV63. Will radar stratigraphy change the multi-millennial tradition of destructive excavation and open new opportunities in the search for buried treasure?"

JafSquared writes "As sites like MySpace.com gain popularity in young adults, schools all over are finding that taking measures to keep kids blocked out of these websites is becoming increasingly difficult. As this hype continues, proxy servers such as "Box of Prox" are springing up like wildfire. While system admins furiously work to diminish the strain placed on their school's local networks from sites like MySpace, these proxy sites are enabling easy access to restricted areas. However, schools aren't the only places that are feeling the heat. Proxies have also been becoming a bit of a complication in the workplace. To the more advanced user, the proxy server can become a tool for malicious intent as this article, delivering an anecdote with the termination of an employee, so poignantly details."

An anonymous reader writes "Ten years ago, NASA announced that the Martian meteorite ALH84001 showed evidence of life on Mars. The announcement made headlines around the world, and even prompted President Clinton to make a statement. Ten years later, most scientists believe that everything in the meteorite can be explained by non-biological processes. "We certainly have not convinced the community, and that's been a little bit disappointing," said David McKay, a scientist behind the 'life on Mars' paper. Unfortunately, David McKay's own brother is one of his critics. "He [David] got a little testy about the results we were getting," said Gordon McKay. "What we have shown is that it is possible to form these things inorganically.""

An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore sun (NSA watchers can't live without it) reports that the NSA worries about overloading the Baltimore energy grid if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ. This includes two multi million dollar supercomputers. Some systems are reportedly not getting the cooling they need. The temperature in NSA buildings is raised two degrees to conserve energy, according to the article. The NSA is Baltimore Gas and Electric`s (BGE) biggest customer the sun reports. Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage. The NSA does apparently not have the backup power generation capacity to power the whole facility during power outages. Some point a finger at a new mall build in the area, but a BGE spokesman says the mall is "fairly easily accommodated". Some sources say the problem was identified in the late 90`s. But "keeping the lights on" wasn't a priority. A $4 million computer upgrade to the system that allocates power was postponed for budgetary reasons. (the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion) The article reports that the budget documents for listening posts around the world report similar infrastructural problems, in the budgets for 07 as well as previous years. It should be noted that the huge "groundbreaker" IT infrastructure upgrade program is reportedly over budget and late, but not yet fully operational."

Geccie writes "CNet is reporting that Senators Patrick Leahy and Orin Hatch have proposed sweeping changes in the patent system in the form of the Patent Reform Act of 2006. Key features are the ability to challenge (postgrant opposition) with the Senate version being somewhat broader and better than the house version." From the article: "Specifically, it would shift to a 'first to file' method of awarding patents, which is already used in most foreign countries, instead of the existing 'first to invent' standard, which has been criticized as complicated to prove. Such a change has already earned backing from Jon Dudas, chief of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office."

j00bar writes "After Linus Torvalds' impassioned critiques of the second draft of GPLv3 and the community process the FSF has organized, Newsforge's Bruce Byfield discovered in conversations with the members of the GPLv3 committees that the committee members disagree; they believe not only has the FSF been responsive to the committees' feedback but also that the second draft includes some modifications in response to Torvalds' earlier criticisms." NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

IO ERROR writes "The mysterious phone number stations appearing on Craigslist for the last three months, which resembled their shortwave radio cousins, and which Slashdot reported on in June, were an experiment devised by security researcher Strom Carlson and a group of Los Angeles hackers to determine if encrypted messages could be passed using unwitting third parties to foil traffic analysis by hostile intelligence agencies. Carlson and the hackers presented their findings at DEFCON earlier today and gave away CDs with "Make your own Mein Fraulein station" kits and posted one final number station for people to try to decrypt."

mytrip writes to tell us that Google has announced that they will not be getting in on the digital music sales market anytime soon. Analysts have been predicting the response of a "GTunes" service for months but Chris Sacca, head of business development at Google, dispelled those rumors in a recent address at the annual National Association of Recording Merchandisers conference in Florida. Sacca emphasized the need for "ecosystem development" and partnerships within the industry stating that they were the "big opportunity" in the digital music business.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at the University of Florida have developed and built a system that can provide power, water and refrigeration from a single unit. This project, funded by the U.S. Army, will lead to units small enough to fit inside a military jet or a large truck. The prototype system is already more efficient than conventional turbines. And it is also environmentally friendly because it can use traditional fossil fuels as well as biomass-produced fuels or hydrogen and releases only small amounts of pollutants. This kind of system could be used as a mobile unit in case of hurricanes or wars. But it might also be connected to the normal power grid in fixed locations."

AppleLurker writes "In a recent interview with DVD newsroom an Apple employee talks WWDC rumors including the iPhone, Blu-ray, MacPro and the Apple Tablet. More realistic about what not to expect next week when Steve Jobs hits the stage." Apple's next move is always a hotbed of debate leading up to a product release and with all the rumors flying this year all bets are off until we see the checkered flag, so take with the requisite grain of salt.

If you grew up in the 80s, chances were you'd at least heard of the Nintendo Entertainment System. For those of us that read Nintendo Power, ate Nintendo cereal, and (ahem) for a brief time even wore a Nintendo hat, the NES experience was fairly powerful. As such, reading about Nintendo games is a perfectly logical step. 1up has a long piece looking at the World of Power book series, a series of novelizations of some of the most popular NES titles of the day. Castlvania, Master Blaster, and Metal Gear all received the literary treatment ... with varying degrees of success. From the article: "This trend toward whitewashing death and violence also extended the books' text. In Blaster Master, all the defeated 'underboss' characters that look like mutated animals turn out to be holographic projections placed over formless blobs. In Metal Gear, Solid Snake is described as a 'walking arsenal,' yet he only uses his various weapons to shoot locks off doors. In Ninja Gaiden, Ryu's father is shown losing a duel to the death in the game's prologue, and is said to have passed away in the book's early chapters. Yet he turns up at the very end of the book, very much alive. In Infiltrator, a double agent that is ordered to be sent away to be 'voided' has his fate described as either having his memory wiped, being exiled, or getting demoted." So, how many folks (besides me) actually read these thing?

Ada_Rules writes "I realize that the end of a story is not nearly as sexy as the beginning, but police in Nashua have dropped the wiretapping charges against a man that had recorded both video and audio from on his home security system. The man had brought a videotape to the police station to back up a claim that a detective was rude to him while on his property as part of an investigation. In addition, the police have determined that the man's complaint about the detective was justified."

nTrfAce writes "Defcon 14 is taking place right now in Las Vegas. You know it's serious when you see things like an IPV6 enabled refrigerator with an IP address of 1337:sec:badd:a22:DEF:C012::14. And of course using a rocket for war driving, er WarRocketing. And Joe Grand has created the absolutely coolest Defcon badge ever out of a PCB, PIC, and LEDs."

vitaly.friedman writes "What do you do when you're getting close to the limits of 2-dimensional optical technology? Well, how many dimensions do we have to work with?" From the Ars Technica article: "How much greater data density? In the Hitachi Maxell device, a single disc about 1 cm larger in diameter than a CD will buy you 300GB. By way of contrast, HD-DVD currently offers a maximum of 30GB on a 2-layer disc, and Blu-ray tops out at 50GB. Although upgrades are in the works that promise to increase the capacity of both of those formats, even the most pie-in-the-sky predictions fall short of what is planned for merely the first commercial generation of holographic storage. Future plans for that medium include boosting the capacity to 800GB in two years, and 1.6TB per disc by 2010."

pin_gween writes "The Mercury News has an AP wire that shows science uncovering history. 800 years ago a monk scrubbed the text off a goatskin parchment to write prayers. Nothing unusual there, except the parchment contained writings from a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest. Now scientists are using x-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, to cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. It takes 12 hours to scan one page, then the information is posted online."