user24 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hawking Enjoys Zero-G Ride

Submitted by

user24

on Saturday April 28, 2007 @09:45AM

user24 writes: "TimesOnline reports: "For more than 40 years, Stephen Hawking has studied the mysteries of the universe from his wheelchair. Last night, he broke free of his disability and indulged his passion for gravitational phenomena in a finely stage-managed operation 32,000 feet above the Atlantic.

"It was amazing," he said after he returned from his experience of weightlessness. "The zero-g bit was wonderful . . . I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come."""

Submission + - Escort agency launches virgin service for geeks

Submitted by 6Yankee on Saturday April 21, 2007 @12:35PM

6Yankee writes: A Dutch escort agency is offering a "virgin service" — and most of the customers work in IT. Says boss Zoe Vialet: "They are very sweet but are afraid of seeking contact with other people. They mean it very well but are very scared." In what might be considered a very cunning move, the three-hour-minimum appointment includes — a bath.

Submission + - New approach to building intelligent machines

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 21, 2007 @12:34PM

An anonymous reader writes: The site is very crude, but there are lots of interesting articles. Evidently this fellow wants to work on developing a model for how the brain works — with the intent of building truly intelligent machines. He's requesting support for his research by selling a share in any profits that result from his theory.

Submission + - Gunman Kills NASA Worker and Himself

Submitted by hsdpa on Saturday April 21, 2007 @06:40AM

hsdpa writes: "A NASA engineer Friday shot and killed another engineer and then turned the gun on himself at the Johnson Space Center, police and NASA officials said."

Submission + - Atlantis destroyed by a tsunami ?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 20, 2007 @07:55PM

An anonymous reader writes: Research on the Greek island of Crete suggests that one of Europe's earliest civilisation [Alantis], which flourished until about 3,500 years ago, was destroyed by a giant tsunami. From the article: "The ancient Minoans were building palaces, paved streets and sewers, while most Europeans were still living in primitive huts. But around 1500BC the people who spawned the myths of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth abruptly disappeared. Now the mystery of their cataclysmic end may finally have been solved. A group of scientists have uncovered new evidence that the island of Crete was hit by a massive tsunami at the same time that Minoan culture disappeared. "The geo-archaeological deposits contain a number of distinct tsunami signatures," says Dutch-born geologist Professor Hendrik Bruins of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. "Minoan building material, pottery and cups along with food residue such as isolated animal bones were mixed up with rounded beach pebbles and sea shells and microscopic marine fauna. "The latter can only have been scooped up from the sea-bed by one mechanism — a powerful tsunami, dumping all these materials together in a destructive swoop," says Professor Bruins. The deposits are up to seven metres above sea level, well above the normal reach of storm waves. "An event of ferocious force hit the coast of Crete and this wasn't just a Mediterranean storm," says Professor Bruins. The wave would have been as powerful as the one that devastated the coastlines of Thailand and Sri Lanka on Boxing day 2004 leading to the loss of over 250,000 lives. But if this evidence is so clear why has it not been discovered before now? Tsunami expert Costas Synolakis, from the University of Southern California, says that the study of ancient tsunamis is in its infancy and people have not, until now, really known what to look for.

Submission + - Researchers win $10000 in OS X Security Challenge

Submitted by crackman on Friday April 20, 2007 @06:57PM

crackman writes: Today at the CanSecWest security conference, Shane Macaulay demonstrated a client side vulnerability and exploit developed overnight by Dino Dai Zovi of Matasano Security to win the PWN 2 0WN contest. The pair walks away with the recently raised bounty of $10000 as well as the MacBook used in the demonstration. Matasano has promised details of the vulnerability will be disclosed at a later date.

Submission + - MySpace takes on Google News and Digg

Submitted by cyberianpan on Thursday April 19, 2007 @12:44PM

cyberianpan writes: MySpace is going into the news business with a service that will scour the internet for news stories and let users vote on which ones receive the most exposure. This approach blends elements of Google News and sites such as Digg and Netscape, which rely on readers to submit stories and determine their prominence
This could be the holy grail of internet news, not merely will you be able to tap into the wisdom of the crowds but ultimately your recommended stories could be influenced/suggested by your friend's taste/choices or better still your hero's. Myspace may then become the dominant internet portal.

Submission + - Technical and Legal Hypothesis of Turnitin.com

Submitted by Don'tTakeMyPaperPlease on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @05:42PM

Don'tTakeMyPaperPlease writes: I was excited when I read that some students were taking Turnitin.com to court regarding the company's use of the students' copyrighted papers. I've always felt that the service was quite possibly infringing on students' copyrights and we may finally find out if that is, legally, the case. Here is one theory of how the service operates based on Turnitin.com's assertions, and the resulting implications under copyright law.

Submission + - AMD's New DRM

Submitted by

DefectiveByDesign

on Wednesday April 11, 2007 @05:09PM

DefectiveByDesign writes: "Remember how AMD said they'd make use of ATI's GPU technology to make better technology? Well, not all change is progress. InfoWorld is reporting that AMD plans to block access to the framebuffer in hardware to help enforce DRM schemes, such as allowing more restricted playback of Sony Blu-Ray disks. They can pry my print screen key out of my cold, dead hands."

Submission + - Student starts firefox campaign

Submitted by rascher on Sunday April 08, 2007 @04:28PM

rascher writes: James F. Beckner, a student at ASU, has started a campaign to "raise firefox awareness". Backed by the Mozilla foundation, he has received a lot of firefox-embalmed swag and is giving it away in a raffle. Says Beckner, "The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness of Firefox and to get people to switch over to Firefox." My reaction is, what's the point? Firefox is great, and I'm glad people are getting excited about it, but its just a web browser. Seems like he should spend his efforts on learning something useful about the HTTP protocol or submitting a patch instead of evangelizing — on the whole, this doesn't help the stereotype of the brash and overzealous OSS fanatic.

Submission + - Google's new product plagiarizes its Chinese rival

Submitted by

yaohua2000

on Sunday April 08, 2007 @10:14AM

yaohua2000 writes: "Google's laboratory in China launched its first product last week that enables the user enter Chinese characters, but the user soon found the data Google used was actually copied from its Chinese rival Sogou. Google has evaded the question about software similarities."

Submission + - Supreme Court to Hear 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' Monday

Submitted by

theodp

on Sunday March 18, 2007 @05:52AM

theodp writes: "In 2002, 18-year-old Joseph Frederick held up a 14-foot banner saying 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' as the Olympic torch passed by his Juneau high school, sparking a feud with the principal that heads to the Supreme Court on Monday. Legal experts say Morse v. Frederick could be the most significant case on student free speech since the days of Vietnam War protests."

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16, 2007 @05:59PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Archive is beind sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to "opt in" before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search.

Submission + - A United Federation of Planet Earth

Submitted by

UltimaGuy

on Friday March 16, 2007 @02:48PM

UltimaGuy writes: "Fourteen space agencies around the world have agreed to coordinate their space exploration efforts, paving the way for truly planet-wide collaboration in space science. The agencies involved are from Italy, Japan, China, Britain, France, America, India, Korea, Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Germany, Australia and ESA, the European Space Agency. Will this be the beginning of a new era in space exploration ?"

Submission + - MP3 Patent Troubles

Submitted by

Vengance Daemon

on Friday February 23, 2007 @07:08PM

Vengance Daemon writes: "The New York Times and many other sources are reporting that Microsoft lost the patent case regarding "...the way the Windows Media Player software from Microsoft plays audio files using MP3..." They go on to say "If the ruling stands, Apple and hundreds of other companies that make products that play MP3 files, including portable players, computers and software, could also face demands to pay royalties to Alcatel."

At first glance, it appears that Fedora, and the other distributions that did not include MP3 capabilities in their products because of patent concerns were quite right. Ogg Vorbis works great for music, and many commercial players support it."

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