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Space

Submission + - The Case for Private Property Rights on Other Worl (associatedcontent.com)

Submitted by
MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: "With all the talk of the commercialization of space, very few people are discussing a potential stumbling block that has to be dealt with before humans return to the Moon. Under the Outer Space Treaty, drawn up in the mid 1960s, it is very nearly impossible to own anything on any celestial body such as the Moon. There is no body of international law, readily accepted by most nations, that even governs private ownership of land, mineral rights, or even human built infrastructure on the Moon or any other body in the Solar System."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Locating Linux-loyal Laptops (itwire.com)

Submitted by
davidmwilliams
davidmwilliams writes: "Linux can bring new life to old laptops, and is a great choice for brand new systems in its own right. However, with few major vendors making laptops that ship with Linux out of the factory, how can you be sure the laptop you're eyeing off will run your favourite distro rather than the proprietary OS it comes with? Here's our guide to finding out! http://digg.com/linux_unix/Locating_Linux_loyal_Laptops"
The Courts

Submission + - RIAA Trying to Hide Info on Download Expenses

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The RIAA is refusing to provide defendant's attorneys with the record companies' expenses-per-download in UMG v. Lindor, in Brooklyn. Although the Court ruled last November that Ms. Lindor is permitted to prove her allegation that the damages sought by the RIAA are "unconstitutionally excessive and disproportionate to any actual damages that may have been sustained", the RIAA is refusing to turn over any information about its expenses, needed to calculate the "actual damages". Ms. Lindor's attorneys have filed a motion to compel (pdf) the RIAA to turn over the information. Although the record companies had similarly tried to hide their revenue figures, they later conceded in papers their lawyers had publicly filed with the Court that the revenues were in the range of 70 cents per download, and eventually entered into a stipulation relating the to the actual numbers, which were kept confidential."
Portables

Submission + - Best Computerless VOIP Phone 1

Submitted by bjorniac
bjorniac writes: After a series of unfortunate events I am no longer willing to tolerate my phone service provider. It seems that a number of devices that connect directly to a wireless router are available allowing the user to cut out the telephony parasites. Do any Slashdotters have recommendations/horror stories to share?
Security

Submission + - Backdoor in PGP Whole Disk Encryption (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by A non-mouse Coward
A non-mouse Coward writes: PGP Corp's Whole Disk Encryption suite has an intentional backdoor accessible via the command line, whereby administrators or any user who knows the passphrase for a volume key can disable the boot-up passphrase prompt altogether. Apparently this "feature" is not documented in any way beyond the enterprise customer support pages and is kept secret for only those organizations needing an automated reboot process that won't hang on the boot guard screen. Even running the typical " — help" switch to the command line yields no knowledge of its existence. What's worse, that PGP Corp built this intentional backdoor feature, or that they barely documented it, keeping it quiet from their customers who want the highest amount of security for their laptops?
Graphics

Submission + - GIMP 2 for Photographers

Submitted by
Jon Allen
Jon Allen writes: "Gimp 2 for Photographers
Book review by Jon Allen (JJ)
Book homepage: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1933952032/

A glance through any photography magazine will confirm that Adobe Photoshop is the accepted standard image editing software, offering almost unparalleled power and conrol over your images. However, costing more than many DSLR cameras, for non-professionals it can be a very hard purchase to justify (and of course for Linux users this is a moot point, as Photoshop is not available for their platform).

Luckily, the free software community has provided us with an alternative. The GIMP, or Gnu Image Manipulation Program, offers a huge amount of the power of Photoshop but is available at no cost. Additionally GIMP is cross-platform, available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix.

The one downside to using GIMP is that most magazines and photography books use Photoshop in their articles and tutorials, so if you do choose GIMP there's a bit more of a learning curve. Now once you're used to GIMP you'll find that many of Photoshop's features have equivalents, albeit with a different user interface, but getting that inital level of experience and familiarity with the software can be rather difficult. The GIMP does come with a manual, but it is really more of a reference guide and while very comprehensive it is not particuarly friendly for new users.

GIMP 2 for Photographers aims to rectify this.

Written clearly from a photographer's point of view (the author is a photographer who also teaches image editing), this book takes a task-oriented approach, looking at the types of editing operations that a photographer would require and then showing how to perform each task in the GIMP.

Rather helpfully, the GIMP software (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) is included on the book's accompanying CD. This means that you can follow each tutorial using the exact same version of software as the author, which really helps to build confidence that you're doing everything right.

I already have GIMP installed on OS X, so to test out the instructions in the book I performed an installation from the CD on a clean Microsoft Windows XP machine.

The exact filenames of the installation packages on the CD differ slightly from those in the accompanying README file, but the instructions in the book do list the correct files and after following this procedure the installation went without a hitch. The setup files do not ask any overly 'techy' questions, so it literally took less than 5 minutes to set up a fully working system.

As well as the GIMP application, the CD also includes all of the sample images used in the book, and for each editing tutorial the "final" image is provided so you can check your own work against the expected result.

Even more usefully, the CD contains an electronic copy of the complete book as a PDF file, so you can keep it on your laptop as a reference guide, invaluable when editing images on location (or on holiday!).

I'd have to say that this is without a doubt the most useful CD I've ever recieved with a book. Providing the applications and example files is good, giving readers instant gratification without needing to deal with downloads and websites (which may well have changed after the book went to press). But including the complete book on the CD as well is nothing short of a masterstroke, and something I'd love to see other publishers adopt.

So, the CD gets full marks but what about the book itself?

After showing how to install the software, the author takes us through basic GIMP operations — opening and saving files, cropping, resizing images, and printing. Once these basics are out of the way, the book moves on to a series of examples based on "real-life" image editing scenarios.

These examples are very well chosen, both in the fact that the vast majority of the technques shown are genuinely useful, but also in the way that they are ordered. Each example introduces a new feature of the software, building up your knowledge as you work through the book. By the end you can expect to be skilled not only in "standard" editing — adjusting colour balance, fixing red-eye, removing dust spots, and so on — but also in compositing, perspective correction, lighting and shadow effects, and building panoramic images.

Between the examples there is a good amount of more "reference" type material, with detailed descriptions of the various menus, toolbars, and dialogs you will encounter while using the software. Combined with lots of well-labelled screenshots this strikes a very good balance, ensuring that even after going through all the tutorials you'll still get value from the book as something to refer back to.

Overall the quality of the writing and general production standard is very high indeed. There are some points where it is noticable that the book was originally published in German, but this never becomes a stumbling block to the reader's understanding. Most importantly though, the author employs the "show, don't tell" philosophy throughout which is key to successful teaching.

In conclusion, I would have no hesitation in recommending GIMP 2 for Photographers to anyone with more than a passing interest in improving their photos. And even if you already use image editing software, the book is well worth a read — I have been using GIMP for several years and still learned a great deal. The accompanying CD is the icing on the cake, making GIMP 2 for Photographers a simply essential purchase."
Biotech

Submission + - Cure for cancer may be ready in two years (newscientist.com)

Submitted by GnarlyDoug
GnarlyDoug writes: Dr Zheng Cui has, through a stroke of luck, found that the granulocytes from some mice are up to 50 times better at fighting cancer than others. He has cured mice with simple transfusions of granulocytes. These cells seem to recognize almost all cancer lines, are extremely effective even in advanced cases, and and the resistance seems to last for the life of the mouse. So not only does this treatment cure many cancers, but it also provides resistance to future cancers as well.

Evidence suggests that this should hold true for humans as well. Because this is based on blood transfusions, a technology already long established, this could be ready to so very soon. The go-ahead for a human trial has already been given, and if it pans out then this could be available in as little as two years time. Some simple tests to find people with the resistant strain of blood and then a system of transfusions is all that is needed to get this started.

If it pans out, we may be looking at a general cure for cancer within a few years time.
Power

Submission + - 16 Reasons Why It's Time for a Four Day Work Week (theoildrum.com)

Submitted by
Prof. Goose
Prof. Goose writes: "The notion of our standard work week here in America has remained largely the same since 1938. That was the year the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, standardizing the eight hour work day and the 40 hour work week. Each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday workers all over the country wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast and go to work. But the notion that the majority of the workforce should keep these hours is based on nothing more than an idea put forth but the Federal government almost 70 years ago. To be sure it was an improvement in the lives of many Americans who were at the time forced to work 10+ hours a day, sometimes 6 days of the week. So a 40 hour work week was seen as an upgrade in the lives of many of U.S. citizens. 8 is a nice round number; one third of each 24 hour day. In theory it leaves 8 hours for sleep and 8 hours for other activities like eating, bathing, raising children and enjoying life. But the notion that we should work for 5 of these days in a row before taking 2 for ourselves is, as best I can tell, rather arbitrary.

The idea of a shorter work week is not a new one to anyone old enough to have lived through the energy shocks of the 1970's. It should be fairly obvious to anyone interested in conserving oil that reducing the number of daily commutes per week would reduce the overall demand for oil. There are about 133 million workers in America. Around 80% of them get to work by driving alone in a car. The average commute covers about 16 miles each way.

So let's stop and do some math...and I'll try to argue for 16 reasons why a four day work week is a good idea.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2996"
Power

Submission + - Salt water as fuel? (post-gazette.com) 1

Submitted by axehind
axehind writes: For obvious reasons, scientists long have thought that salt water couldn't be burned.So when an Erie man announced he'd ignited salt water with the radio-frequency generator he'd invented, some thought it a was a hoax. John Kanzius, a Washington County native, tried to desalinate seawater with a generator he developed to treat cancer, and it caused a flash in the test tube. Maybe this has some potential to be the next fuel..
Space

Submission + - Russian tested father of all bombs (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by mathfeel
mathfeel writes: The unchristened bomb is said to have efficiency and power commensurable to that of nuclear weapon, but it is also environmentally friendly. Its deadly power mostly came from supersonic shockwave and high temperature. Could this usher in a new round of arms race between east and west? Stay tuned.

p.s. didn't find any matching topic to file under...
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Ebay seller sues Autodesk for $10 million dollars

Submitted by jonniesmokes
jonniesmokes writes: Tim Vernor mostly sells comic books online, but when he found an old copy of Autocad R14 at a garage sale and tried to sell it on ebay, he incurred the wrath of Autodesk. They would like to make sure people buy new copies (at $4000 each) rather than get an old copy and so they use the DMCA to have ebay pull the listings. Tim decided, after getting kicked around by Autodesk, to kick back a little. Read about it here here and here.
AMD

Submission + - AMD releases 900 pages of ATI GPU specs (x.org)

Submitted by
Mad Merlin
Mad Merlin writes: "AMD has just released over 900 pages worth of ATI GPU specifications for R500 and R600 series graphics cards. These specifications will greatly expediate development of quality open source drivers for these graphics cards, and AMD should be applauded for this effort. Additionally, AMD has also released fglrx 8.41.7 which brings support for the HD2000 series graphics cards, and also improves the 3D performance of the R300, R400 and R500 series by 50-90% in comparison to previous fglrx releases."
Education

Submission + - Exercise unleashes a bounce bras can't handle

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Whether women are said to be flat-chested or big-busted, ordinary bras fall short when it comes to supporting bouncing breasts, a new study claims. And during exercise, women's breasts bounce more than previously estimated, moving a vertical distance of up to around eight inches compared with a past maximum measurement of six inches. The bouncing, in some cases with breasts weighing 20 pounds or more, can prove painful and damaging to the limited natural support system.

Read Full Story Here

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