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Space

Submission + - Water on Mars?

Submitted by Thalin
Thalin writes: NASA has announced today that data from the Mars Global Surveyor indicates photographic evidence for the existence of liquid, flowing water on Mars.
NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years. "These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PS3 Firmware 1.30 released

Submitted by wanderers_id
wanderers_id writes: I just turned on my PS3 to note that firmware 1.30 is available. The official site http://www.us.playstation.com/ps3/network/updates does not have anything up about the new firmware. At the time I was trying to test new network settings, and it errored giving me new network settings saying that I needed to update to firmware 1.30. Is anyone else uncomfortable with a forced install without being able to look at what they are changing?
Space

Submission + - Water Flowing on Mars Is Filmed: NASA

Submitted by
MajorBytes
MajorBytes writes: "Water flows on Mars. In one image, a shining snake of light flows from a hidden spring into a crater's depression, an orbiting camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor catching sunlight reflected by the evaporating liquid. In another, a smear of ice grows mysteriously over a period of years, expanding like a slow-motion inkblot over the red planet's parched landscape. More of the story here.... http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2006/12/flowing_wate r_o.html"
Security

Submission + - Laptop theft from Nationwide exposes 11m accounts

Submitted by Gandalf_the_Beardy
Gandalf_the_Beardy writes: The BBC reports "Eleven million Nationwide customers may have been put at risk of identity crime after an employee's laptop was stolen. The computer with customer information on it was stolen during a domestic burglary three months ago. But details of the serious security lapse are only just emerging." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/616 0054.stm
Enlightenment

Journal Journal: Welcome back to those halcyon days of yesteryear! 5

Journal by Red Warrior

Ten years. Wow. Doesn't seem nearly so long ago.

Hurts different than it did then. Sharp, stabbing pain then. More of a diffuse something or the other now.

Shrug.

Nothing actually enlightened to say. Just wanted to mark the date.
Guess that's icon fraud? :-?

Oh, and I made it home in one piece. No thanks to NorthWest Airlines.
The bastards.
Privacy

Submission + - Stolen laptop puts eleven million at rsik

Submitted by
rgbecker
rgbecker writes: "The BBC today reported here that 11 million people have been put at risk of ID theft after a laptop was stolen. In a radio interview Nationwide's MD claimed that police advice prevented him from revealing what kind of details had been contained on the stolen laptop. He also claimed that there was no risk of pin numbers becomin public or of financial loss. If as additionally claimed the laptop was secure why the three month delay and why the reticence on disclosing exactly what information was stored on the machine."

9 Billion-Year-Old "Dark Energy" Reported 118

Posted by Zonk from the leaving-it-there-for-safekeeping dept.
loid_void writes to mention a New York Times article about the discovery that dark energy, or antigravity, was present at the formation of the universe. A team of 'dark energy prospectors' at the Space Telescope Science Institute theorizes that this may have directed the evolution of the cosmos. By observing supernova activity almost 8 billion years in the past, the team was able to study whether or not dark energy has changed over the millennia. From the article: "The data suggest that, in fact, dark energy has changed little, if at all, over the course of cosmic history. Though hardly conclusive, that finding lends more support to what has become the conventional theory, that the source of cosmic antigravity is the cosmological constant, a sort of fudge factor that Einstein inserted into his cosmological equations in 1917 to represent a cosmic repulsion embedded in space. Although Einstein later abandoned the cosmological constant, calling it a blunder, it would not go away. It is the one theorized form of dark energy that does not change with time. Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology who was not on the team, said: 'Had they found the evolution was not constant, that would have been an incredibly earthshaking discovery. They looked where no one had been able to look before.'"
NES (Games)

Submission + - Chiptunes Improvisation finds home at Juilliard

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Tonight, the prestigious Juilliard School will host the next concert of improvisation team smop(), a group that performs music exclusively on video game controllers (steering wheels, joysticks, and gamepads). They're using a NES as a synth, and even controlling the same pipe organ of Juilliard's roboRecital of yesteryear. In their own pompous words:

"For too long, terrestrial music has been bound by the limitations of human minds. Now smop() is ushering in a new epoch in the history of civilization, an epoch which calls for a union of human improvisation with the thunderous cogitations of seriously big-league digital computers. Human interaction with smop()'s programmery will not be limited by the obsolete musical machines of the past (e.g. xylophone, pennywhistle); instead smop() exclusively uses joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels, and other devices originally designed for digital interactive gaming. Performed entirely on such devices by red-jumpsuit-clad terrans, this concert will feature Paul Hall's Holtkamp pipe organ, a Nintendo Entertainment System rigged as an instrument, and other gadgetry. At last, the revolution has begun."
OS X

Submission + - Leopard vs Vista 4: Naked Sales

Submitted by
Rockgod
Rockgod writes: "From the article:
The vast majority of PCs come with Windows pre-installed, and actually can't be sold without it. Leading PC hardware makers can't freely advertise PCs sold without Windows, or with an alternative OS such as Linux, without having to pay Microsoft significantly more for every other OEM license they ship. That's why all name brand PCs prominently repeat their own version of the cult-like phrase "Dell recommends Windows XP Professional," as if there were a choice in the matter and they thought it would be helpful to provide some guidance.
Also from the article:
Apple's current Get a Mac advertising campaign doesn't compare Mac OS X to Windows, it compares the complete experience of a Mac with that of a PC. After all, Windows is only half of what's wrong with the PC as a product. This strategy also allows Apple to highlight Mac advantages without specifically drawing attention to Windows, avoiding the common marketing mistake of inadvertently creating brand recognition for rival products.
"
Input Devices

Submission + - Clue to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Found

Submitted by Yetihehe
Yetihehe writes: Researchers at Mayo Clinic used powerful microscopes to look inside the carpal tunnels of patients with carpal tunnel syndrome and suggest that violently or repeatedly moving adjacent fingers in different directions may lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. From article:
In all of the carpal tunnel syndrome patients, the researchers found, the connective tissues appeared to be damaged, causing bulky fibers and scar tissue. As might be expected if the damage were the result of injury, the worst damage occurs nearest to the tendon.
If these findings are confirmed, this may lead to new treatments for CTS
Unix

Submission + - Interview with Rob Savoye of the Gnash Project

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With Sun opening up Java under the GPL and Adobe contributing source code for Flash to the Mozilla Foundation it seems like a lot of big companies are embracing the open source movement. Ryan Stewart of ZDNet interviewed Rob Savoye, the lead developer on Gnash, an open source alternative to the Flash Player. In the interview Rob talks about the future of Gnash and what the goals of the project are.

Should Google Go Nuclear? 419

Posted by Zonk from the gooboom dept.
Baldrson writes "One of the founders of the US Tokamak fusion program, Dr. Robert W. Bussard, gave a lecture at Google recently now appearing as a Google video titled 'Should Google Go Nuclear?'. In it, he presents his recent breakthrough electrostatic confinement fusion device which, he claims, produced several orders of magnitude higher fusion power than earlier electrostatic confinement devices. According to Bussard, it did so repeatably during several runs until it blew up due to mechanical stress degradation. He's looking for $200M funding, the first million or so of which goes to rebuilding a more robust demonstrator within the first year. He claims the scaling laws are so favorable that the initial full scale reactor would burn boron-11 — the cleanest fusion reaction otherwise unattainable. He has some fairly disturbing things to say in this video, as well as elsewhere, about the US fusion program which he co-founded."
Space

Submission + - 9 Billion-Year-Old 'Dark Energy' Reported

Submitted by
loid_void
loid_void writes: "From the NYTimes: A group of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that billions of years before this mysterious antigravity overcame cosmic gravity and sent the galaxies scooting apart like muscle cars departing a tollbooth, it was already present in space, affecting the evolution of the cosmos. A team of "dark energy prospectors," who peered back nine billion years with the Hubble and were able to discern the nascent effects of antigravity. The group reported their observations at a news conference yesterday and in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal."
Displays

Submission + - DIY 41-inch uHDTV (3,150 x 1,680) ~ $650

Submitted by
acfou
acfou writes: "http://www.instructables.com/id/EXLOGYUZR9EUMVDT56 / looked for ages to find a way to play movies across multiple ROTATED monitors; found the following software called MatrixDvD player to play DVDs across all screens; others may have been looking for the same judging from various forum postings. beta download at http://www.xj-spark.com/ pictures and videos of the 3 monitor setup in action — THREE 20 inch BenQ monitors (1,680 x 1,050) in portrait next to each other to give 3,150 x 1,680 — for use as computer monitor or 41 inch LCD TV."

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