Hertne - Slashdot User

What Parrots Tell Us About the Evolution of Birds 62

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 24, 2008 @11:15PM from the norwegian-blue dept.

GrrlScientist writes "One of the most contentious issues among scientists who study the evolution of birds is identifying precisely when the modern birds (Neornithes) first appeared. This is due to conflicts between the fossil record and molecular dating methodologies. But there is another way to address this discrepancy. Because the evolution of parrots and cockatoos reflects the evolution of the birds (Aves) themselves, studying the psittaciformes offers compelling insights into this mystery. Further, because psittaciformes generally are not migratory and because they tend to occupy discrete ranges, their ancient patterns of diversification are easier to discern than for many other taxonomic orders of birds that have dispersed widely."

Storing Photons In a Solid State Device 68

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 24, 2008 @04:43PM from the next-year-in-vending-machines dept.

bondisthebest writes in with a report from IEEE Spectrum: "Physicists in Switzerland, led by Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva, reported last week in Nature that they have made a solid-state device capable of storing photons for as long as 1 microsecond. The invention will aid in the development of light-based quantum-cryptography networks, which are theoretically impervious to hacking but are currently limited in range to a few dozen kilometers, primarily because of a lack of a suitable way to store the quantum state of photons."

MS Issues Critical SQL Server Flaw Warning 69

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 24, 2008 @03:19PM from the you-should-have-fixed-it-over-festivus dept.

silent wire writes "ZDNet is reporting on a pre-patch security advisory from Microsoft warning about an unpatched remote code execution vulnerability affecting its SQL Server line. Exploit code is publicly available so affected users should pay special attention to the workarounds from Microsoft."

Watergate "Deep Throat" Mark Felt Dead At 95 126

Posted by kdawson on Saturday December 20, 2008 @04:42PM from the linda-lovelace-in-mourning dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "W. Mark Felt Sr., 95, associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal, better known as 'Deep Throat,' the most famous anonymous source in American history, died at his home in Santa Rosa, California. Felt secretly guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to pursue the story of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office buildings, and later of the Nixon administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies. 'It's impossible to exaggerate how high the stakes were in Watergate,' wrote Felt in his 2006 book A G-Man's Life. 'We faced no simple burglary, but an assault on government institutions, an attack on the FBI's integrity, and unrelenting pressure to unravel one of the greatest political scandals in our nation's history.' No one knows exactly what prompted Felt to leak the information from the Watergate probe to the press. He was passed over for the post of FBI director after Hoover's death in 1972, a crushing career disappointment. 'People will debate for a long time whether I did the right thing by helping Woodward. The bottom line is that we did get the whole truth out, and isn't that what the FBI is supposed to do?'"

The Wackiest Technology Tales of 2008 97

Posted by timothy on Sunday December 14, 2008 @11:11PM from the hindsight-is-much-better-than-20/20 dept.

coondoggie writes "Despite the daily drumbeat of new and improved hardware or software, the tech industry isn't all bits and bytes. Some interesting things happen along the way too. Like floating data centers, space geekonauts, shape shifting robots and weird bedfellows (like Microsoft and Jerry Seinfeld). What we include here is an example of what we thought were the best, slightly off-center stories of 2008."

Huge iPhone Cut-and-Paste Tool Security Flaw 85

Posted by timothy on Saturday December 13, 2008 @11:59PM from the a-sircam-you-can-pay-for dept.

Harry writes "I'm using Pastebud, the new third-party copy-and-paste solution for the iPhone. It's extremely clever, using a Web-based clipboard to get around the fact that Apple doesn't provide one on the phone. Unfortunately, it seems to be giving users access to e-mails that other Pastebud users send to their clipboards. This has happened to me repeatedly and is being reported by other users in Pastebud's Get Satisfaction support forum. Pastebud is operational and still doing this as I write, even though a message at Get Satisfaction says they're working on the problem."

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