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TSA Worker Jailed In Body Scan Rage Incident 352

Posted by samzenpus from the checking-out-your-package dept.
A TSA worker in Miami was arrested for aggravated battery after he attacked a co-worker for making fun of the size of his genitals. Rolando Negrin walked through one of the new body scanners during a recent training session and a supervisor started making fun of his manhood. From the article: "According to the police report, Negrin confronted one of his co-workers in an employee parking lot, where he hit him with a police baton on the arm and back."
Open Source

Open Source Developer Knighted 101

Posted by samzenpus from the knights-who-say-free dept.
unixfan writes "Georg Greve, developer of Open Document Format and active FOSS developer, has received a knighthood in Germany for his work. From the article: 'Some weeks ago I received news that the embassy in Berne had unsuccessfully been trying to contact me under FSFE's old office address in Zurich. This was a bit odd and unexpected. So you can probably understand my surprise to be told by the embassy upon contacting them that on 18 December 2009 I had been awarded the Cross of Merit on ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) by the Federal Republic of Germany. As you might expect, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I was, in fact, rather shaken. You could also say shocked. Quick Wikipedia research revealed this to be part of the orders of knighthood, making this a Knight's Cross.'"
Software

Tom's Hardware On the Current Stable of Office Apps For Linux 121

Posted by timothy from the everything-is-amazing-no-one-is-happy dept.
tc6669 writes "Tom's Hardware is continuing its coverage of easy-to-install Linux applications for new users coming from Windows with the latest installment, Office Apps. This segment covers office suites, word processors, spreadsheet apps, presentation software, simple database titles, desktop publishing, project management, financial software, and more. All of these applications are available in the Ubuntu, Fedora, or openSUSE repos or as .deb or .rpm packages. All of the links to download these applications are provided — even Windows .exe and Mac OS X .dmg files when available."
Intel

The Big Technical Mistakes of History 244

Posted by kdawson from the seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time dept.
An anonymous reader tips a PC Authority review of some of the biggest technical goofs of all time. "As any computer programmer will tell you, some of the most confusing and complex issues can stem from the simplest of errors. This article looking back at history's big technical mistakes includes some interesting trivia, such as NASA's failure to convert measurements to metric, resulting in the Mars Climate Orbiter being torn apart by the Martian atmosphere. Then there is the infamous Intel Pentium floating point fiasco, which cost the company $450m in direct costs, a battering on the world's stock exchanges, and a huge black mark on its reputation. Also on the list is Iridium, the global satellite phone network that promised to make phones work anywhere on the planet, but required 77 satellites to be launched into space."

Comment An Excellent Start (Score 3, Insightful) 184

by rebmemeR (#30938184) Attached to: Interview With a Convicted 419 Scammer
Dear Mr. Interviewer, I am Director of Research at The International Anti-Scam Association. Your interview of John is an excellent start toward uncovering the truth about these scams. There is so much more potential for investigating committed crimes and preventing future crimes. I would like to offer my services toward further interviewing John and his ilk. Let us cooperate toward this goal. The first thing we need to do is pretend to be scam victims. We will have to put up a little money at first to establish this, but this will open doors into dens of iniquity, providing ample opportunities for interviews. If this plan sounds good to you, please wire $1000 to my account (#2476-02) at The National Bank of Angola. Regards, Bruce L. Norris
Science

Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All 269

Posted by Soulskill from the act-now-while-supplies-last dept.
cremeglace writes with this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "You've heard the controversy. Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up the Earth — physicists say that's impossible — and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole." That said, they estimate the required energy for creating a black hole this way to be roughly "a quintillion times higher than the LHC's maximum"; though if one of the theories requiring compact extra dimensions is true, the energy could be lower.
Space

Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149

Posted by timothy from the love-the-gold-mylar dept.
krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."

Comment It's the Medium (Score 2, Interesting) 236

by rebmemeR (#30824222) Attached to: FTL Currents May Power Pulsar Beams
We know the speed of light in some mediums is less than c (see cherekov radiation). Is it possible the speed of light is greater than c in some mediums? You have to admit that a neutron star is pretty exotic stuff. What about negative-index metamaterials? Beyond that (and this may be non sequitur) maybe a concentration of "dark energy" has properties we don't understand.

Comment Lonely People Lower Their Standards (Score 1) 538

by rebmemeR (#30759124) Attached to: Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes
...and I'll bet he lowered his. Asylum reports Backus has had a girlfriend for six months. Or maybe his GF *is* an ET alien. Did you ever see Laliari in the movie Galaxy Quest? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-vccWZPSyQ @1:50 Backus asserts he is "mostly a heterosexual male". Why the ambiguity? Is he pondering that he's a lesbian trapped in a man's body? Woody Allen understood the Drake Equation: "The good thing about being bisexual is that it doubles your chance of a date on a Saturday night."

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