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Comment Re:Why still depend on observation? (Score 1) 186

by NotmyNick (#26144401) Attached to: Convergent Evolution Upends Honeyeaters' Taxonomy

And after reading a paper about how most arthropods may actually hybrids between two or more original animals, I completely gave up on that idea. Some people think that an insect and its larvae were originally two separate animals. So on which branch of the tree do you place the hybrid ?

Are you sure you parsed that correctly? "Some people originally believed that an insect and its larvae were two separate animals" and "some people think that an insect and its larvae were originally two separate animals" are two non-equivalent statements. I do know that there have been some species where the adults were so morphologically distinct and so divergent in lifestyle and habitat from the larvae that the connection had never been made between the two until recently. What exactly would be the mechanism for two species to glom together such that one becomes the progenitor for the other?
Image

Students Are Always Half Right In Pittsburgh 881

Posted by samzenpus from the think-of-the-children dept.
Pittsburgh Public Schools officials have enacted a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work. District spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying. If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester. The district and teachers union issued a joint memo to ensure staff members' compliance with the policy, which was already on the books but enforced only at some schools. At this rate, it won't be long before schools institute double extra credit Mondays and Fridays to ensure students don't take three day weekends.
Space

Saturn's Rings May Be Very Old 125

Posted by CmdrTaco from the even-older-than-bob dept.
Kristina from Science News writes "Combining computer simulations with data about the way starlight shines through Saturn's rings suggests the individual grains are big and thus could have been around a good 4 billion years, not the mere 10 million to 100 million previously suspected. What may have thrown earlier observations off is the chance that the grains aren't evenly distributed, but clump here and spread out there."
Microsoft

Microsoft To Buy Back $40bn of Its Shares 345

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that's-a-lotta-shares dept.
phantomflanflinger writes "As you may have heard already, Microsoft have announced their intentions to buy back $40 billion in stock from their investors, in the biggest single buy-back plan in business history. The announcement has given Microsoft shares a small gain but they still stand significantly below their level in January — before Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo!. The announcement of the plan has also created new speculation about a now-or-never deal with Yahoo!."
Security

US Responsible For the Majority of Cyber Attacks 205

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we're-number-one-we're-number-one dept.
Amber G5 writes "SecureWorks published the locations of the computers from which the greatest number of cyber attacks were attempted against its clients in 2008. The United States topped the list with 20.6 million attempted attacks originating from computers within the country, and China ran second with 7.7 million attempted attacks emanating from computers within its borders. This was followed by Brazil with over 166,987 attempted attacks, South Korea with 162,289, Poland with 153,205, Japan with 142,346, Russia with 130,572, Taiwan with 124,997, Germany with 110,493, and Canada with 107,483."
The Internet

Scam-Linked ISP Intercage / Atrivo Gets Shut Out 102

Posted by timothy from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out dept.
alphadogg writes with this excerpt from Network World: "The lifeline linking notorious service provider Intercage to the rest of the Internet has been severed. Intercage, which has also done business under the name Atrivo, was knocked offline late Saturday night when the last upstream provider connecting it to the Internet's backbone, Pacific Internet Exchange, terminated Intercage's service. Intercage president Emil Kacperski said Pacific did not tell him why his company had been knocked offline, but he believes it was in response to pressure from Spamhaus, a volunteer-run antispam group, which has been highly critical of Intercage's business practices."
Privacy

Homeland Security Department Testing "Pre-Crime" Detector 580

Posted by timothy from the when-dowsing-meets-voight-kampff dept.
holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports that the Department of Homeland Security recently tested something called Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST) — a battery of sensors that determine whether someone is a security threat from a distance. Sensors look at facial expressions, body heat and can measure pulse and breathing rate from a distance. In trials using 140 volunteers those told to act suspicious were detected with 'about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception,' says a DHS spokesman."
Patents

EU Patent Staff Go On Strike 116

Posted by timothy from the stop-exploiting-me dept.
h4rm0ny writes "Last Friday, staff at the European Patent Office went on strike. They protested outside for several hours and issued a statement claiming that 'the organisation is decentralising and focusing on granting as many patents as possible to gain financially from fees generated.' They also declared this as being disastrous for innovation and that their campaign was not for better wages, but for better quality patents. Meanwhile, an article on it discusses the US's own approach to dealing with the increasing flood of patent applications: a community patent project to help identify prior art. It might sound like a grass-roots scheme, and maybe it is, but those roots include such patent behemoths as IBM. So it looks like on both sides of the Atlantic, some signs of sanity might be emerging in the patent world from those people right in the thick of it." Note, this was a half-day strike, not ongoing.
Bug

OpenSUSE Beta Can Brick Intel e1000e Network Cards 129

Posted by timothy from the price-of-progress dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Some Intel cards don't just not work with the new OpenSUSE beta, they can get bricked as well. Check your hardware before you install!" The only card mentioned as affected is the Intel e1000e, and it's not just OpenSUSE for which this card is a problem, according to this short article: "Bug reports for Fedora 9 and 10 and Linux Kernel 2.6.27rc1 match the symptoms reported by SUSE users."
Mars

Mars Rover's Epic Trek For the Crater Endeavor 145

Posted by timothy from the endeavor-endeavor dept.
Smivs writes "The BBC reports that NASA is to send its Mars rover Opportunity on a two-year trek to try to reach a crater called Endeavour. The robot will have to move about 11km to get to its new target — a distance that would double what it has already achieved on the planet. Endeavour is much bigger than anything investigated to date, and will allow a broader range of rocks to be studied. Detailed satellite imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will help pick out the best route ahead; and new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path. Opportunity has just emerged from the 800m-wide Victoria Crater. Endeavour, by comparison, is 22km across."
Media

Bad Signs For Blu-ray 1276

Posted by timothy from the anguish-languish dept.
Ian Lamont writes "More than six months after HD-DVD gave up the ghost, there are several signs that Sony's rival Blu-ray format is struggling to gain consumer acceptance. According to recent sales data from Nielsen, market share for Blu-ray discs in the U.S. is declining, and Sony and its Blu-ray partners are trying several tactics to boost the format — including free trial discs bundled into magazines and cheap Blu-ray players that cost less than $200."
Software

Submission + - Google Earth for Star Gazing (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
Placid
Placid writes: "According to BBC News, a new add-on for Google Earth has been released, that allows users to view the constellations of Andromeda, Hydra and Vulpecula. From the article:
"Sky will allow astronomers a chance to glide through images of more than one million stars and 200 million galaxies. Optional layers allow users to explore images from the Hubble Space Telescope as well as animations of lunar cycles."
This latest add-on seems to be another product of the agreement made between NASA and Google in December 2006 that was designed to "put the most useful of NASA's information on the internet"; which ultimately created Google Moon and Google Mars."
The Courts

Submission + - Mininova.org Beats .com Scammer in Domain Dispute

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mininova.org has won the transfer of the mininova.com domain in a dispute, and successfully put a scammer out of business. The .com scammer has been a thorn in the side of mininova for a long time. Thousands of people who signed up at mininova.com were charged money without ever receiving something in return.

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