Drew_9999 - Slashdot User

A Hyper-Velocity Impact In the Asteroid Belt? 114

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 19, 2010 @11:38AM from the i-played-that-game dept.

astroengine writes "Astronomers have spotted something rather odd in the asteroid belt. It looks like a comet, but it's got a circular orbit, similar to an asteroid. Whether it's an asteroid or a comet, it has a long, comet-like tail, suggesting something is being vented into space. Some experts think it could be a very rare comet/asteroid hybrid being heated by the sun, but there's an even more exciting possibility: It could be the first ever observation of two asteroids colliding in the asteroid belt."

EA Shutting Down Video Game Servers Prematurely 341

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @07:42AM from the sixty-dollar-yearly-fee dept.

Spacezilla writes "EA is dropping the bomb on a number of their video game servers, shutting down the online fun for many of their Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3 games. Not only is the inclusion of PS3 and Xbox 360 titles odd, the date the games were released is even more surprising. Yes, Madden 07 and 08 are included in the shutdown... but Madden 09 on all consoles as well?"

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:11PM from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.

Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."

Submission + - Color Changing Polymer Microspheres

Submitted by LuxuryYacht on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @12:42AM

LuxuryYacht writes: A research team led by a chemist at the University of California, Riverside has fabricated microscopic polymer beads that change color instantly and reversibly when external magnetic fields acting upon the microspheres change orientation.

The beads or "magnetochromatic microspheres" have excellent structural stability. They also are highly compatible with various types of dispersion media such as water, alcohol, hexane and even polymer solutions, allowing them to retain magnetically tunable colors in a variety of chemical environments.

Applications of the new material include display type units such as rewritable or reusable signage, posters, papers and labels, and other magnetically activated security features. The new material also can be used to make environmentally friendly pigments for paints and cosmetics, as well as ink materials for color printing. Video of rotating microspheres

Comment Re:alteration illegal?? (Score 1) 529

by Drew_9999 on Saturday May 17, 2008 @12:25AM (#23443254) Attached to: Senators OK $1 Billion for Online Child Porn Fight

What modern techniques are you talking about that make it so hard to alter pictures without getting caught?

Submission + - Cyber criminals turn to P2P for DoS attacks

Submitted by thefickler on Friday July 20, 2007 @06:14PM

thefickler writes: Cyber criminals are finding new ways of launching denial of service (DoS) attacks, according to security company Prolexic, which says it recently "mitigated" a huge peer-to-peer (P2P) DoS attack using 200,000 computers. The individual computers in the peer-to-peer attack detected by Prolexic were each only sending small amounts of data, but at any given time, up to 80,000 connections were being opened.

"Analysis of the attack showed that the attacking computers were not a normal botnet," Prolexic said.

"Instead, the attacking computers were simply running a popular peer-to-peer file sharing client that had been told by the P2P hub server to also connect to a victim.

Huge Martian Dust Storm Threatens Rovers 164

Posted by Zonk on Friday July 20, 2007 @06:01PM from the sit-tight-little-robots dept.

Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that a severe ongoing dust storm on the Red Planet has blocked 99 percent of the direct sunlight that powers the Opportunity rover. If these conditions persist for too long, it could finally bring an end to the marathon mission of this robot geologist, and perhaps of its partner Spirit as well. 'Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity's solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust in the air reduced the panels' daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic arm, cameras and spectrometers to study the site where Opportunity is located ... A possible outcome of this storm is that one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or even disabled. Engineers will assess the capability of each rover after the storm clears.'"

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