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Submission + - Three years in jail for receiving an image of fisting? 1

Submitted by
wwwrench
wwwrench writes: "In the UK, it may be illegal to receive an emailed image of legal and consensual sex. The Crown Prosecutation Service is currently trying a man for receiving an image of two people fisting. Under the U.K.'s 2008 obsenity law it is illegal to view a pornographic image of extreme sex, even if the image depicts a legal act. Questions have been raised about the motives for the case, as the defendent is openly gay, and used to prosecute corrupt police officers. Although the case has been virtually ignored by the media, this is also the first trail in the U.K. where one of the lawyers has been allowed to tweet during the trial (under the hashtag #porntrial).""

Submission + - 4D is so yesterday, what about 5D and up? (ef.gy)

Submitted by
jyujin
jyujin writes: "Ever notice in certain university maths lectures that certain things just ought to be great do visualise, but nobody ever bothered to do it? One of those was higher dimensional geometry. For some reason there's a lot of talk about n-cubes and the like, but you'll be lucky to find Youtube videos about it. So here's a nice little programme for you to get dirty with on your Mac that let's you view a lot of the common primitives in higher dimensional geometry and just play with them. Sure helped me get the gist of 4D rotations and beyond."
Mars

Submission + - Curiosity Rover landed on Mars Successfully and started sending Images of Mars. (blogspot.in)

Submitted by
Qualitypointtech
Qualitypointtech writes: "Nasa's has announced that Curiosity Rover has landed on Mars Safely. U.S President Barack Obama on Curiosity: "Tonight, on the planet Mars, the United States of America made history."
You can see below the Reaction of MSL (Mars Science Laboratory) Team after learning that Mars Curiosity rover has landed safely on Mars."
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Sci-Fi writers of the past predict life in 2012 (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: As part of the L, Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future award in 1987, a group of science fiction luminaries put together a text “time capsule” of their predictions about life in the far off year of 2012. Including such names as Orson Scott Card, Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, Algis Budrys and Frederik Pohl, it gives us an interesting glimpse into how those living in the age before smartphones, tablets, Wi-Fi and on-demand streaming episodes of Community thought the future might turn out.
Crime

Submission + - Amazon Ecommerce SVP Victim of $165K Petty Theft

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Last time Slashdot checked in on zit-popping Amazon Ecommerce Platform Sr. VP Brian Valentine, it was about the ex-Sr. Microsoft VP's decision to ditch his Vista role for a pot of Amazon gold. Now, GeekWire reports that Valentine was swindled out of $165,000 by a Tom Petty booking agent impersonator, and the FBI is on the case. The $165,000 was half of the $330,000 that Valentine had agreed to pay to have Petty play at his wedding. But there's no need to cry for Valentine, who still had enough time and deep enough pockets to pay the real Tom Petty's management company to have the rock star perform for his bride, a former Amazon exec who is apparently quite the fan.

Submission + - Greenland ice sheet not going anywhere in a hurry....stop building that Ark. (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
bricko
bricko writes: "Doom-laden predictions that the seas are set to rise by a metre or more this century due to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet are well off the mark, a team of scientists has announced in a new study of the matter.

According to Kjaer and his colleagues, the scenarios which predict huge melting and massive resultant sea-level rises are flawed because they rely on a very limited amount of information spanning just a few recent years: the Greenland ice has only been intensively studied for a relatively short period of time. This has led scientists to assume that rapid melting seen lately will carry on uninterrupted, pouring gigatonnes of water into the world's oceans and inundating coastal areas around the planet.

But this is mistaken: it now emerges that periods of rapid melting like the one just seen have happened in the past — but then, rather than continuing, the apparently runaway melting simply stopped.

A related study examining old aerial photos of the Greenland ice was published in June, revealing that in the 1930s the glaciers there were retreating even faster than they are today: but again, the process subsequently stopped on its own. ®

In otherwords.....oops."
Mars

Submission + - India set to launch Mars mission in 2013 (google.com) 3

Submitted by susmit
susmit writes: A 320-tonne Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket will be used to carry the orbiter spaceship, blasting off from the ISRO launch site at Sriharikota in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

Another senior official at ISRO, requesting anonymity, estimated the cost of the mission at 4.0-5.0 billion rupees ($70-90 million dollars).

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-s-space-mission-to-send-a-satellite-to-mars-251031

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hd99KnEv9_zDol2DMuZIuVr-qB7g?docId=CNG.9a3b132f11893ca20b522fb446b69f9b.321
The Internet

Submission + - US will Oppose Bid to Hand Control of Internet to United Nations (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: The United States has said that it is going to oppose and reject any proposal that might seek handing over control of the internet to the United Nations at the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) convened by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) from December 3 to 14, 2012. United States is going to submit first group of proposals about changes to the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) treaty today, which hasn’t been revised since the 1988. The treaty is due for revision not only because it needs a modern touch but because fundamentally there have been major changes in the telecommunications world like adoption of packet switching over circuit switching, cellular roaming and broadening of the Internet. Many nations, as per leaked proposals, are of the view point that control of the internet's technical specifications should be relinquished from a select group of non-profit US companies and be given to UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). This hasn’t gone down well with the United States and Terry Kramer, head of the US delegation to the WCIT, believes that the current multi-stakeholder structure is working well and is effectively maintaining the health of the Internet. "The United States believes that the existing multi-stakeholder institutions, incorporating industry and civil society, have functioned effectively and will continue to ensure the health and growth of the internet and all of its benefits," he said.
Firefox

Submission + - More Firefox OS Images Surface (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by
twoheadedboy
twoheadedboy writes: "More pictures have leaked out of Mozilla HQ, showing us what Firefox OS is likely to look like. Many are hoping the open source operating system will challenge iOS and Android, but from these images it doesn't look as if it will offer anything radically different."
Crime

Submission + - Identity theft may cost IRS $21B over next 5 years (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: A new audit of the Internal Revenue Service has found the agency paid refunds to criminals who filed false tax returns, in some cases on behalf of people who had died, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which is part of the U.S. Treasury. The IRS stands to lose as much as $21 billion in revenue over the next five years due to identity theft, according to TIGTA's audit, dated July 19 but publicized on Thursday.
Google

Submission + - Google Doublesizes Its Finnish Server Farm (www.hs.fi)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Google reported about plans to expand its Hamina, Finland operations, taking second production hall of the refurbished paper mill into use. The company said that it would invest 150M € to put the plan into action. Alterations are expected to lead to the creation of mere 25 new jobs, while the construction work will employ 500 people. The close proximity of Russia for online business and the cool climate of Finland are still seen as important factors. Director Dieter Kern believes that the Hamina facility will also attract other data technology companies to the area. President of Finland Sauli Niinistö was invited to visit the expansion process and was given a wall picture featuring a HTML snippet.
Java

Submission + - Microsoft: Windows, Mac Malware Gets In Via Adobe, Java, Office

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has been doing some research into all the recent cross-platform malware that attacks Windows, Macs, and sometimes even Linux. The company has concluded that current attacks exploit third-party vulnerabilities in software on these platforms. There are two ways the malicious code is being delivered, according to the software giant: via the Web and via e-mail attachments. More specifically, Microsoft has found cybercriminals are currently leveraging 12 vulnerabilities in Java, seven in Adobe Flash, three in Adobe PDF applications, and three in Microsoft Office (one in Excel, two in Word). All of these can be used to target and attack multiple platforms. Since Java had the most, Microsoft has recommended that you update it or kill it.
Space

Submission + - GPU supercomputer could crunch exabyte of data for Square Kilometre Array (techrepublic.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers on the Square Kilometre Array project to build the world's largest radio telescope believe that a GPU cluster could be suited to stitching together the more than an exabyte of data that will be gathered by the telescope each day after its completion in 2024. One of the project heads said that graphics cards could be cut out for the job because of their high I/O and core count, adding that a conventional CPU-based supercomputer doesn't have the necessary I/O bandwidth to do the work.

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