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NASA

Submission + - NASA's Mars Phoenix prepared for Launch

Submitted by
StaffInfection
StaffInfection writes: "On Earth, the Phoenix lander (http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/mission.php) is a table for four — about the size of a modest dinner table. On Mars it will soft land a suite of science instruments for studying the Martian Polar regolith. Phoenix is the rekindling of the Mars Surveyor Lander, twin to the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander (MPL, http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?M Code=MPL). After a one day delay in fueling of the Delta II-7925 (http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/delta/d elta2/delta2.htm) launch vehicle due to weather, Phoenix is prepared for launch on Saturday, July 4th, at 5:26 a.m. or 6:02 a.m EDT. The science payload will analyze the martian polar soil for water and mineral content and study the surrounding morphology and atmospheric conditions. Landing (animations at http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/newsArchive.php?p=4 &y=2007) will be a Viking style soft landing rather than the air bag system used on the Mars Pathfinder and Rover missions. All missions to Mars are challenging but Phoenix represents a last chance to rectify for the loss of MPL and Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999. A successful landing will present our first visit to the Martian Polar environment."
Censorship

Submission + - Pot plant pics lands MySpace teen in jail

Submitted by
paynesmanor
paynesmanor writes: "Authorities were monitoring the web for gang activity when they found a picture of a potted pot plant the lable read: "My Mary Jane thats growin in my closet right now", athorities also found, pictures of weapons, and other people showing gang signs. Athorities tracked the website creater to eighteen-year-old Moua Yang, who used his real name, and even posted a picture of himself. Athorities raided Yang's house and found the pot plant in the closet just like the photo showed. The teenage boy was arrested Monday, and has since been released. The teen faces felony charges of manufacturing marijuana and maintaining a drug trafficking place, he also faces two misdemeanor charges of possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Full story, can be found here. http://www.myfoxmilwaukee.com/myfox/pages/News/Det ail?contentId=2684798&version=1&locale=EN-US&layou tCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1 Or here, http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/tct/ 2007/03/15/0703150229.php"
United States

Submission + - How would you change America?

Submitted by
isntwargreat
isntwargreat writes: "Seems like Americans love to talk about making change in America, but there are some things (such of as the constitution, or the structure of the government) that are never touched on.... How would you change America if you could change just about anything? What are the obstacles that would prevent current American society from making these changes? Can democratic movements (such as the mass organization of people via the Internet) bring about these sorts of changes? If so, How??? And most importantly, since this is Slashdot, how does technology fit into all of it?"
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - SCO is a penny stock

Submitted by Subm
Subm writes: SCO closed below $1.00 every day this week for the first time, accompanied by news about their case that can't be helping them out.

The stock has been stable for some time, and they can always reverse split to remain listed. Nonetheless, you have to wonder, is it time to start shorting?
Businesses

Submission + - Those eBay ratings may not mean what you think

Submitted by
El_Oscuro
El_Oscuro writes: "For those of you who buy stuff on eBay, there is a new kind of scam A seller sells lots of cheap stuff (in this case, camera memory cards) to build up a a 99.9% positive rating, then starts selling expensive items (like $700 cameras). That is when the scam starts. Once they have acquired a positive rating and the trust of buyers, they start gyping people on the expensive items.

On amazon and other sites that have reviews, somethimes the auther of a book will give his book a glowing review.

If you are buying something expensive on eBay, make sure you read the seller reviews for similar items.

<PITA>

Unfortunately, TFA makes you create an account with washingtonpost.com to read it.

</PITA>"
User Journal

Journal Journal: [Z80] I have a toast rack! 2

Journal by Alioth

Well, I put it under the 'Z80' heading, because this will be a bit of rambling JE which will cover some of that.
Software

Selling Open Source Solutions to Upper Mgmt? 34

Posted by Cliff from the making-your-case-to-PHBs dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I am the single member of the IT department at a small nonprofit. We were looking to replace our commercial content management system with a custom combination of open source solutions (Lucene, Jackrabbit, etc). However, since I was the sole developer, progress was slow and we have little resources to recruit potential volunteers. Recently, we had a closed source, commercial vendor demo their version of a content management system, and immediately upper management was willing to go along with their proposal, even at the expense of project requirements. Although I understand and accept the decision (and am quite relieved I am not expected to deliver as the sole developer), I am interested to know if there are resources for promoting open source software in a manner like closed source, commercial software. If not, is this a challenge within the OS community? It seems that OS solutions are primarily promoted to technical implementors rather than upper management. Of course, many technical implementors do not have the marketing skills to promote open source, but are there resources to help us do so?"
Data Storage

Submission + - Nanoscale "Optical Antennas" enable 3.6TB

Submitted by
K7DAN
K7DAN writes: "How would you like to be able to put your entire DVD, music, video and picture collection plus more on a single disc? An article in MIT's Technology Review (http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18295/)r eveals that Harvard University electrical engineers Kenneth Crozier and Federico Capasso have found a way to achieve a data density of 3.6 terabytes on a single DVD-like disc using nanoscale "optical antennas" added to a commercially available laser. That's equivalent to 750 of today's 4.7-gigabyte recordable DVDs. The development of this technology seems perfectly timed to enable easy storage of large video files in HD format leaving Blu-ray and HD DVD in the dust."
Mars

Mars Rovers Moving After Winter Hibernation 82

Posted by Zonk from the kicking-the-dust-off dept.
jcasman writes to mention an article at Astronomy.com discussing the now on-the-move Mars rovers, which have been effectively in hibernation over the long Martian winter. Spirit has been stationary in the Columbia Hills area, just barely powered up and taking the finest panoramic shot of the planet to date. On the other side of the world, Opportunity has been skulking around the Victoria crater. Scientists have been getting to know the area before attempting to send Opportunity into the geographical feature itself. "Opportunity now is traversing Victoria's rim, and mission scientists are naming features they find after places visited by Ferdinand Magellan and his crew during the first circumnavigation of Earth. (Victoria Crater itself is named after the lone ship that completed Magellan's quest.) [Steve Squyres of Cornell University] and his team are committed to driving Opportunity into the crater eventually, if they're sure the rover will be safe -- in other words, that they can get it out again. Squyres is confident they can, and he thinks it will be sooner rather than later."
The Internet

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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.
Graphics

Submission + - Rays light up life-like graphics

Submitted by
TheDawgLives
TheDawgLives writes: "BBC News is carying a story of researchers from the University of Saarland in Germany that have developed new ray tracing algorithms that could revolutionize video games.
A video demonstration is also available.

From TFA:
Daniel Pohl, one of the researchers who has worked with Professor Slusallek, has used the algorithms to produce ray-traced versions of the Quake 3 and 4 video games. "It gives much higher image quality in shadows and reflections," said Mr Pohl. "You can even do reflections on reflections on reflections." This is something that would be impossible with traditional rendering techniques. The algorithms are well-suited to the next generation of PC chips that have multiple processing cores inside them. Separate cores could be used to model different rays to make good use of the available computer power, said Mr Pohl. The algorithms are being made available to anyone to use via the Open RT project."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Should a computer algorithm make health decisions?

Submitted by aeoneal
aeoneal writes: Scientific American discusses whether programs or humans are better at estimating the wishes of incapacitated patients. From the article:

Motherboard Knows Best: Should a Computer Make Life-or-Death Decisions? Researchers say computers, using a mathematical formula, can determine the wishes of incapacitated patients as well as—if not better—than their kin.

Just because a computer algorithm is a better predictor, it doesn't then follow that we should use it," says Dan Brock, director of medical ethics at Harvard Medical School. There are many other reasons for human surrogate decision makers, he adds, such as the fact that many patients want their family to have a say in what is perhaps the most important decision of their lives, regardless of accuracy.
From that perspective, if they do develop a highly accurate system for predicting patient wishes (right now it's accurate about two-thirds of the time), the crucial question then seems to be whether the patient's wishes or the family's come first. Arguing that the patient's wish would be to let the family chose seems perilously close to using sophistry to rationalize a desire for a human factor. But what does the /. community think?

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