Comment Droid is better anyway (Score -1) 91
FP!
Astronomers Discover 33 Pairs of Waltzing Black Holes 101
Astronomers from UC Berkeley have identified 33 pairs of waltzing black holes, closing the gap somewhat between the observed population of super-massive black hole pairs and what had been predicted by theory. "Astronomical observations have shown that 1) nearly every galaxy has a central super-massive black hole (with a mass of a million to a billion times the mass of the Sun), and 2) galaxies commonly collide and merge to form new, more massive galaxies. As a consequence of these two observations, a merger between two galaxies should bring two super-massive black holes to the new, more massive galaxy formed from the merger. The two black holes gradually in-spiral toward the center of this galaxy, engaging in a gravitational tug-of-war with the surrounding stars. The result is a black hole dance, choreographed by Newton himself. Such a dance is expected to occur in our own Milky Way Galaxy in about 3 billion years, when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy."
Comment Re:Interesting ... (Score -1) 419
Autistics to test software? Oh look, now timothy and michael can have side jobs!
Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Comment What about... (Score -1, Offtopic) 92
Q: In Christianity, is pooping/farting/etc. moral?
A: There are many possible ways to answer this question. However, from a Christian perspective, most scholars would agree that it is not moral to poop and/or fart. This presents an interesting dilemma, since pooping and farting are physiological requirements of being a human... there's just no way to avoid it! The thing to remember is that we all fall short of the glory of God and that we all are sinners in need of redemption. The fact that we all poop and fart is just further proof of this.
Q: Did humans always poop and fart?
A: No. It is generally agreed that before the Fall from Grace, the digestive systems of human beings were perfect machines. When we ate food and drank liquids, our bodies were able to process all of the material with perfect efficiency, leaving no waste products to be removed. However, after Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, humans lost their perfection. Part of this process included the digestive system losing its ability to process food with 100% efficiency. Shortly after the successful temptation of Eve by Satan, over 6,000 years of human pooping and farting began.
Q: What about peeing?
A: Peeing is an excretory function and is just as immoral as pooping and farting.
Q: Why are the sexual organs used to pee?
A: To reinforce the evils of sex. If we are mindful of the fact that peeing is awful and immoral, then we are also mindful of the fact that other activities that involve the same organs are also awful and immoral. The Lord does not want these organs exposed to anybody (not even to yourself) and He certainly does not want them inserted into anybody, unless it can be demonstrated that a child is the intended result. Pursuant to this, it is necessary to remind each and every one of God's children that pooping, peeing, and sex are all evil, as are the sexual organs.
Q: If I am in church and I have to poop, what should I do?
A: Hold it! The fact that some misguided denominations have installed toilets in their churches does not mean that those toilets should be used! Can you imagine how impudent it is to sit down and void your bowels in a house of the Lord? Again, we must be very clear about this: We all poop, and there is no avoiding this. However, we are not mongrels with no control over our bodily functions! If you have to poop, fart, or pee, then hold it until you are in the privacy of your own home and there are no negative moral ramifications to your excretory actions!
We believe that toilets should be removed from all churches. If a voluntary request is not enough to make this happen, then we would support federal legislation banning certain types of plumbing from within 30 cubits of a church.
Q: When should I tell my children about pooping?
A: Well, obviously, they start doing it the day that they are born. They don't have to be taught how to do it. But there does come a time when children have to be taught about the immorality of pooping, farting, and peeing. Most experts suggest that the age of 6 or 7 is a good time for this lesson. This is the time when most children are apt to start experimenting with "pull my finger" games and other forms of Satanism.
LG High-Def TVs To Stream Netflix Videos 190
DJAdapt writes to tell us that LG has launched a new line of high definition TVs that will be capable of streaming Netflix videos with no additional hardware. This is just another in a long line of expansions from the once DVD rental service, which has expanded to the Roku set top box, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, and Linux platforms recently. "Piping movies directly to TV sets is the natural evolution of the video streaming service, said Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix. "The TV symbolizes the ultimate destination," he said. That idea -- shared by Sony Corp., which already streams feature films and TV shows directly to its Bravia televisions -- is still in its early stages. Netflix's streaming service taps a library of 12,000 titles, while the company's DVD menu numbers more than 100,000 titles. Hastings expects that gap will "definitely narrow" over time, but he noted that DVDs maintain an advantage over streaming, which is that "they are very profitable" for film studios."
Submission + - Worst. MySpace. Ever. (wylfwt.com)
Rich writes: "Ladies and gentlemen, if there is only ONE bad MySpace Profile you visit this entire year, you have to make it this one!
This is just awful!
A "friend" of this particular profile messaged us a message to add them. Why couldn't they just message us themselves? I will never know.
What I was about to see was just horrifying to look at, but, yet, at the same time, I just couldn't stop laughing...
http://wylfwt.com/home/daily-articles/myspace-people/chase-and-raina-watts-worst-myspace-ever"
This is just awful!
A "friend" of this particular profile messaged us a message to add them. Why couldn't they just message us themselves? I will never know.
What I was about to see was just horrifying to look at, but, yet, at the same time, I just couldn't stop laughing...
http://wylfwt.com/home/daily-articles/myspace-people/chase-and-raina-watts-worst-myspace-ever"
Submission + - Digg is relapsing! (digg.com)
diggisallmessedup writes: "Well that great story about the biggest BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on digg's homepage was great. But I don't give a **** about it showing up on the homepage again. Tons of stories are reappearing on digg. Check it out at digg.com if you have visited within the past week. What is wrong?!?!?!?!?!?"
Submission + - Is Human Cloning Inevitable : A UN Report (techluver.com)
Tech.Luver writes: "The international community faces a stark choice: outlaw human cloning or prepare for the creation of cloned humans, U.N. researchers said Saturday.
A report by the United Nations University's Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) says a ban on human cloning, coupled with freedom for nations to permit controlled therapeutic research, is the global community's best option.
Despite widespread consensus amongst nations regarding the desirability of banning reproductive cloning, efforts to negotiate an international convention ground to a halt due to fundamental divisions regarding so-called research or therapeutic cloning.
Research cloning, viewed by some as a possible source of new therapeutic remedies for degenerative diseases, see by others as unethical where it involves the production of embryos as a source of stem cells upon which such therapies are based.
( http://techluver.com/2007/11/10/is-human-reproductive-cloning-inevitable-a-un-report/ )"
Submission + - Facebook under Fire over Breastfeeding Photos (breastfeeding123.com) 4
NewsCloud writes: "Facebook continues to struggle with when to enforce its own terms of service. While the 78,240 group members who want Facebook to shut down the F*** Islam group are still frustrated, those concerned with photos of breastfeeding mothers can rest more easily. The site has recently come under fire for removing pictures of breastfeeding mothers, and banning users on the grounds that they'd uploaded "obscene content" to their profiles. Says Facebook, "Photos containing an exposed breast do violate our Terms and are removed." In response, more than 33,431 concerned Facebook users have created the "Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!" group. Apparently, scantily clad college co-eds, fine and dandy."
Submission + - Trojan found in brand new HD sold in Taiwan (taipeitimes.com)
GSGKT writes: "About 1800 of these brand new 300GB or 500GB external HD made for Maxtor in Thailand have Trojan Horse malwares (autorun.inf and ghost.pif) pre-installed. When the HD is in use, these will forward information on HD to two websites in Beijing, China): www.nice8.org or www.we168.org. Potential users of these large HD would be mid/small business, the military, and the government in Taiwan, although no one can prove this to be the continuing war/spying efforts on Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army. /. has a story on Russian Business Network moving to China recently (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/09/1957239). Together, these two stories make an interesting new cyber-crime model:
Infecting the HD at the manufacturing sites is far more efficient than to phish the end-users!"
Submission + - IRS Suffers Staggering Defeat
Free Man writes: From WeThePeopleFoundation.org:
" Around noon on Monday, September 17th, a Las Vegas federal jury returned its verdict refusing to convict nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with. The charges included income tax evasion, willful failure to file and conspiracy to evade taxes.
The four-month trial centered around the family businesses of Robert Kahre who paid numerous workers for their labor with circulating gold and silver U.S. coins, and did not report the wages. The payments took place over several years, allegedly totaling at least $114 million dollars.
On September 20, 2007, three days after the federal trial's dramatic conclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal, reportedly under a degree of public pressure, ran its first (and last) story about the outcome of the trial. To this day, with exception of the single article by the Review Journal, no major media entity has published a news story regarding the outcome of this important federal criminal tax case.
The censorship of this important news story is, unfortunately, not unexpected given the continuing, worldwide onslaught against the U.S. "dollar" — specifically the Federal Reserve variety, and the ever growing numbers of Federal Reserve Notes required to trade for an actual ounce of silver, gold, oil, or for that matter, anything.
In short, this failed prosecution has coalesced and exposed truths our Government desperately needs to hide from the People: the truth about our money, the truth about our (privately-owned) central bank, and the truth about the fraudulent nature of the operation and enforcement of the federal income tax system.
Read the April, 2005 DOJ press release announcing the prosecution.
Read the 9/20 story by the Review Journal about the trial.
"
To read more go to http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2007-09-30.htm
" Around noon on Monday, September 17th, a Las Vegas federal jury returned its verdict refusing to convict nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with. The charges included income tax evasion, willful failure to file and conspiracy to evade taxes.
The four-month trial centered around the family businesses of Robert Kahre who paid numerous workers for their labor with circulating gold and silver U.S. coins, and did not report the wages. The payments took place over several years, allegedly totaling at least $114 million dollars.
On September 20, 2007, three days after the federal trial's dramatic conclusion, the Las Vegas Review Journal, reportedly under a degree of public pressure, ran its first (and last) story about the outcome of the trial. To this day, with exception of the single article by the Review Journal, no major media entity has published a news story regarding the outcome of this important federal criminal tax case.
The censorship of this important news story is, unfortunately, not unexpected given the continuing, worldwide onslaught against the U.S. "dollar" — specifically the Federal Reserve variety, and the ever growing numbers of Federal Reserve Notes required to trade for an actual ounce of silver, gold, oil, or for that matter, anything.
In short, this failed prosecution has coalesced and exposed truths our Government desperately needs to hide from the People: the truth about our money, the truth about our (privately-owned) central bank, and the truth about the fraudulent nature of the operation and enforcement of the federal income tax system.
Read the April, 2005 DOJ press release announcing the prosecution.
Read the 9/20 story by the Review Journal about the trial.
"
To read more go to http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2007-09-30.htm
Submission + - eBay launches desktop application (networkworld.com)
jbrodkin writes: "eBay today launched a new desktop application that ties directly into the eBay Web site, making it easier for buyers to keep track of items and make new bids. The appropriately named eBay Desktop lets users receive alerts about new listings of products they are interested in, reminders before specific listings expire, or alerts when they are outbid. Users can receive alerts and submit new bids even if they have closed both their browser window and the desktop application.
"Users don't have to proactively go to their browser to find out what's going on, and they don't have to rely on e-mail, which as tons or problems to begin with," says Alan Lewis, the eBay Desktop product manager."
Submission + - OpenSource Revenue Model Flawed 4
An anonymous reader writes: If the standard revenue model for OpenSource software is to charge for the support of the software, what incentive is there to produce truly reliable products? Obviously if the software worked perfectly and easily there would be little need for product support.
Competition alone is clearly not enough to ensure companies pursue perfection. As the current closed source market shows, consumers are more than happy to use buggy, poorly designed wares as long as its familiar and common place.
Competition alone is clearly not enough to ensure companies pursue perfection. As the current closed source market shows, consumers are more than happy to use buggy, poorly designed wares as long as its familiar and common place.
Excel 2007 Multiplication Bug 806
tibbar66 writes with news of a serious multiplication bug in Excel 2007, which has been reported to the company. The example that first came to light is =850*77.1 — which gives a result of 100,000 instead of the correct 65,535. It seems that any formula that should evaluate to 65,535 will act strangely. One poster in the forum noted these behaviors: "Suppose the formula is in A1. =A1+1 returns 100,001, which appears to show the formula is in fact 100,000... =A1*2 returns 131,070, as if A1 had 65,535 (which it should have been). =A1*1 keeps it at 100,000. =A1-1 returns 65,534. =A1/1 is still 100,000. =A1/2 returns 32767.5."
