dfiguero - Slashdot User

Submission + - Russia working to claim Arctic (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Crazy Taco on Thursday August 02, 2007 @07:13PM

Crazy Taco writes: Two deep-diving Russian mini-submarines descended more than 2 1/2 miles under North Pole ice to stake a flag on the ocean floor Thursday, part of a quest to bolster Russian claims to much of the Arctic's oil-and-mineral wealth.

So, according to Russian thought in this article, does the United States just get the moon then? After all, we went there and planted our flag. Should that be ours? Should we just give in and accept that the Russians get the Arctic for planting a flag, since that gives us the moon (which is WAY better in the long run)?

Submission + - Magnetic Brain Stimulator to replace ECG

Submitted by

u-bend

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:32AM

u-bend writes: "There's a story at Wired about a new magnetic brain stimulation technology that's expected to soon gain FDA approval. Much less invasive than electroconvulsive therapy, the device stimulates the cortex and associated blood vessels by being placed on the patient's head, in a procedure so mild that patients can get in their cars afterward and drive back to work: 'TMS works by creating an electromagnetic pulse that doesn't disturb the skull or scalp, but can reach two to three centimeters into the brain to stimulate the prefrontal cortex and paralimbic blood flow, increasing the serotonin output and the dopamine and norepinephrine functions.'
The question is, does it work through tinfoil hats as well?"

Submission + - 80GB PS3 an "Option" for Other Regions, Sa

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:31AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Following yesterday's announcement that the long-rumoured 80GB PS3 would be hitting South Korean territories on June 19th, Sony Computer Entertainment has issued a statement revealing that they company may consider releasing this model outside of Korea at some point. According to company spokesperson Satoshi Fukuoka, "It could be an option to introduce it in other regions but it needs to be decided by each region.""

Submission + - Another black eye for XM Radio

Submitted by

hairygenes

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:29AM

hairygenes writes: "XM Radio has had degraded or no signal for millions of subscribers since yesterday. They report via e-mail that the signal loss was due to a software upgrade that resulted in loss of signal from one of the two satellites. The latest e-mail tells subs that we will have signal again sometime by midday, having missed the "early morning" deadline set in the e-mail sent last night..."

Submission + - Xen beats VMware to native 64-bit punch

Submitted by

Virtualization_Dork

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:24AM

Virtualization_Dork writes: "Version 3.1 of the open-source Xen hypervisor, official word of which is imminently expected, now runs natively in 64-bit, making it possible to run any supported operating system in 64-bit or 32-bit mode, including key 64-bit applications like Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Exchange 2007 and Microsoft SQL Server 2007.

Read more at SearchServerVirtualization.com."

Submission + - US Immigration Bill Discriminatory to Skilled Work

Submitted by

aacool

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:23AM

aacool writes: "After months and months of deliberations, multiple bills and fake anger over illegal immigration, the Senate announced its so called grand bargain immigration bill and the message from the US Senate to legal, skill based immigrants was, "so long suckers!"

Submission + - "First" OpenOffice virus emerges

Submitted by

NZheretic

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:19AM

NZheretic writes: "According to APCmag the "First" cross platform OpenOffice.org virus "SB/Badbunny-A" has been emailed directly to Sophos from the virus developers. It has not yet been seen in the wild.

Despite Sun's OpenOffice.org developer Malte Timmermann's claims to the contrary this kind of embedded scripting attack represents a real threat to OpenOffice.org users.

Back in June 2000 when Sun first announced the open sourcing of OpenOffice.org the twelfth email to the open discussion list put forward a two part solution for to provide OpenOffice users with Safe(r) Scripting using restricted mode execution by default and access by signed digital certificates. In October 2000 the issue of treating security as an "add-on" feature rather than a "system property" was again raised. Is it time to now introduce such measures to the OpenOffice.org Core to greatly reduce any future risk from scripted infections?"

Submission + - Visual Effects Society Releases Top 50 List

Submitted by theguru on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:17AM

theguru writes: The Visual Effects Society has released it's list of the 50 most influential visual effects films of all time. Star Wars tops the list along with other effects blockbusters from the recent past, but there are some surprising classics on there that some readers may have overlooked. PDF link here. Let the debates about what they left off begin...

Submission + - RIAA, Supremes, want free radio play banned

Submitted by goombah99 on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:13AM

goombah99 writes: The LA times reports the RIAA and several artists' groups are getting ready to push Congress to repeal the exemption on royalties for radio play of recorded music. No this is not a headline from the Onion. And No that's not the supreme court but the singing group. The Times points out that "performance royalties are collected from traditional radio stations in nearly all major industrialized countries, but U.S. musicians and record companies can't because there is no similar royalty on the books here." Of course the original exemption was given because radio play is what drives records sales. Indeed it was those "top-40" radio stations that made the Supremes' music famous, and thus valuable, to begin with. But of course a similar statement might be made about internet radio which now must pay royalties. My suggestion is that the radio stations offer to pay the royalties in kind with free air play of music.

Submission + - New York City mandates 100% hybrid taxis by 2012

Submitted by The Fun Guy on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:10AM

The Fun Guy writes: The New York Times is reporting that all of the taxis in New York City City must be gasoline hybrids by 2012:

In addition to making the yellow cab brigade entirely green within five years, the city will require all new vehicles entering the fleet after October 2008 to achieve a minimum of 25 miles per gallon. A year later, all new vehicles must get 30 miles per gallon and be hybrid.
Shifting the taxi fleet to hybrids is part of Bloomberg's wider sustainability plan for the city, which includes a goal of a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.

ISPs Hate P2P Video On-Demand Services 231

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @11:08AM from the two-great-tastes-that-hate-each-other dept.

Scrumptious writes "CNET is running an article that highlights the problems associated with video on-demand services that rely on P2P technology to distribute content. The article points out that ISPs who throttle traffic on current generation broadband, and negate network neutrality by using packet shaping technology, are hindering any possible adoption of the services offered nervously by content companies. Many broadband consumers are unaware of how hindered a service they may receive because of the horrendous constraints enforced by telephone network operators. This was a topic widely covered in 2006 in the US, but is now practiced as a common method within the United Kingdom."

Submission + - Linux tool identifies software "hotness"

Submitted by

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:52AM

An anonymous reader writes: "Computer Science researchers at Virginia Tech have set their sights on determining software "hotness". In 2006, Prof. Kirk W. Cameron, director of the SCAPE Laboratory and an Associate Professor at VT, began a project to determine just how much heat software produces. Prof. Cameron and student Hari K. Pyla designed a software tool called Tempest (for Temperature Estimator) that creates a thermal profile of an application and correlates temperatures obtained from thermal sensors in the system to source code."

Read more at: http://www.cs.vt.edu/whatsnews/how_hot_is_your_cod e__2.html

Submission + - Stolen laptop contains NU student / alumni SSNs

Submitted by

omeomi

on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:28AM

omeomi writes: "For the third time since 2005, students and alumni of Northwestern University have been exposed to identity theft. In a letter dated May 11, 2007, the Associate Provost for University Enrollment contacted an undisclosed number of potential victims, informing them of the theft of a laptop computer from the Office of Financial Aid, containing student and alumni records. A petition website has been set up in an attempt to convince the Northwestern University administration to better secure student and alumni information."

Site Claims to Reveal 'Tattle-tales' 565

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:19AM from the true-capitalism-in-action dept.

Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"

Submission + - XM service outage continues for second day

Submitted by Maximum Prophet on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @10:18AM

Maximum Prophet writes: From the Why DRM is Bad For You department. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18799252/

A software glitch cut service to an unspecified number of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.'s customers on Monday, the company said. "Some customers are not receiving a signal," said Chance Patterson, XM's vice president of corporate affairs. "We don't know the exact number, but some."

Can't they just turn off the encryption until they get everything corrected? GPS works that way. Call it a free sample day so that you don't have to admit to a mistake and you're gold.

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