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United States

Submission + - US Department of Defense Stops Religious Crusade? (latimes.com)

Submitted by
Banan Tarr
Banan Tarr writes: "The LA Times reports here that the United States Department of Defense has put a stop to the Pentagon-supported "Military Crusade" — a program created by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up. This comes a week after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation discovered intent to distribute "Freedom Packages" to US sodliers in Iraq. What were in these packages? Bibles, written in English and Arabic, and an apocalyptic computer game in which the main characters were "Sodliers for Christ". These packages were never delivered. But could they be a sign of things truly being out of hand in today's administration? Or is this an exmaple of checks and balances at work?"
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista: More like Titanic II than ME II (earthweb.com)

Submitted by
Johnboy71
Johnboy71 writes: "In this article, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes compares Redmond's leaky new software vessel to the famed sailing ship of yore. Incompatibilities with exisiting software and hardware are so numerous that it (the software, not the sunken ship) requires a full system upgrade to actually work. Consequently, he says, "If you really want Vista, and want it to work properly, then the cost of that is likely to be far more than the cost of the upgrade." Hey Adrian, I've got an idea, why not switch OS all together?"
Movies

Submission + - Paramount, Dreamworks go HD-DVD exclusive (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Paramount, Dreamworks go HD-DVD exclusive. Animation and film studios will release movies exclusively in HD DVD format, despite higher sales of rival Blu-Ray.
Space

Submission + - Voyager 2 30 years (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
Mick Ohrberg
Mick Ohrberg writes: "The Voyager 2 spacecraft (part of the ongoing Voyager Mission) today celebrates 30 years of faithful service, by far surpassing the 4 years that was its inteded lifespan. Voyager 2 is today 7.8 billion miles from the sun, placing it almost as far out as the heliopause. At the speed of light that's about 12 hours away, and it's clocking about 1 million miles per day. Voyager 1, launched a couple of weeks after Voyager 2, is at 9.7 billion miles from the sun the farthest man-made object. So when are we going to get around to sending up Voyager 6?"
Communications

Submission + - Optimizing chip manufacturing at MIT

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to MIT researchers, computer chips used inside high-speed communication devices have become so small that tiny variations that appear during chip fabrication can make a big difference in performance.' So they've developed a model to predict variation in circuit performance and maximize the number of chips working within the specifications.' This model could be used by the semiconductor industry to optimize chip designs and reduce costs. Read more for additional references."
Communications

Submission + - 9th Circuit Very Skeptical of NSA Surveillance (mercurynews.com)

Submitted by iluvcapra
iluvcapra writes: Yesterday before a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the US government argued that two class action lawsuits against the government and AT&T should be dismissed, because to litigate them in open court would cause the revelation of state secrets. The lawsuits allege that the government has installed a vast system of electronic surveillance gear at internet gateways along the US west coast to monitor all internet traffic, and that this information is monitored without a warrant, even when both endpoints are domestic. The panel was extremely skeptical of the governments argument:

"Is it the government's position that when the country is engaged in a war, that the power of the executive when it comes to wiretapping is unchecked?" asked 83-year-old Judge Harry Pregerson, one of the court's staunchest liberals, of a Bush administration lawyer. "The king can do no wrong, is that what it comes down to?"


The government was unwilling to even provide a sworn affadavit that the eavesdropping was only of foreign correspondence. If the 9th Circuit allows the lawsuits to proceed, the government will appeal to the US Supreme Court.
Movies

Submission + - Bad Movie Physics Hurt Scientific Understanding (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "A paper published by UCF researchers claims that bad movie physics hurt students' understanding of real world physics. From the article, "Some people really do believe a bus traveling 70 mph can clear a 50-foot gap in a freeway, as depicted in the movie Speed." The professors published this paper out of fear that society will pay the price. One of the authors commented on advancements in the past years "All the luxuries we have today, the modern conveniences, are a result of the science research that went on in the '60s during the space race. It didn't just happen. It took people doing hard science to do it." I commented on the physics of the most recent Die Hard having problems detracting from my enjoyment of the movie but is it really the root of a growing problem of poor science & math among students?"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - 1,700 PDFs of video game manuals go online (textfiles.com)

Submitted by
Christopher Blanc
Christopher Blanc writes: "If you were saying to yourself "Now, where can I browse over 1,700 arcade manuals in PDF format?", your prayers were just answered. This is over three gigabytes of manuals, schematics, and general information about arcade machines, scanned in by an anonymous army of dedicated people, and going back up to 30 years.

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/000454.html"
Music

Submission + - AllofMp3.com owner acquitted, faces expenses (cnn.com)

Submitted by
Christopher Blanc
Christopher Blanc writes: "A Russian court found the former boss of music download Web site www.allofmp3.com not guilty of breaching copyright on Wednesday in a case considered a crucial test of Russia's commitment to fighting piracy. This implies Russia has a different view of copyright/IP than the West with its longer tradition of capitalism.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/biztech/08/15/russia. site.reut/index.html"
Media

Submission + - SciAm.com is looking for a few good videos

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Wanted to let you know that Scientific American.com (www.sciam.com) is now accepting user-generated, science-related videos on its site. Thought you might want to link to SciAm Video (http://www.sciam.com/page.cfm) to let your readers know. FYI — In case you are unfamiliar, Scientific American.com (sciam.com), which debuted in 1996, has grown into a dynamic online resource that provides coverage of the latest in science and technology as well as health news articles from current and past issues, podcasts, Web site exclusives, daily science news, blogs and weekly polls. It has become a leading online science, health and technology destination with more than 1,700,000 visitors per month.
Security

Submission + - Hosting Customers Say No To Shared Servers (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
narramissic
narramissic writes: "A survey of 3000 customers of hosting company Rackspace found that 87% were unwilling to share a server with other customers, with a majority of those surveyed saying that virtualization is not ready for mission-critical apps. Customers cited security and performance as top concerns. And Rackspace's platform products director Nicholas Keller agrees. From the ITworld article:

'We believe we have the right technology, people and processes to mitigate the security risk,' he said. 'But on performance, we agree with our customers — the technology is still maturing.'

In particular, he claimed that today's hypervisors don't have the technology to traffic-shape their network usage, so having several VMs contending for the same heavily-used network connection can be a problem.
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