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Space

Submission + - Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

pile0nades writes: "Orbiter is a Free As In Beer space flight sim. Ever wanted a game where you can fly to LEO, the Moon, Mars or whereever else you want? This is it, and it's done with realistic physics too. You can rendezvous and dock with ISS, reenter and land at Cape Canaveral. You can plot a course for Mars or any other planet using the TransX display. And there's no load screen between planets either. What's cool about this though, is if you go to Mars, you don't have to sit there for 6 months. There's a time acceleration feature that speeds up time by up to 100,000 x realtime (1 day goes by in less than a second), reducing the trip time to just a few minutes. It includes the Space Shuttle Atlantis, the futuristic DeltaGlider space plane, and the powerful cargo ship Shuttle-A (no relation to the Space Shuttle) as flyable ships, plus the tiny ShuttlePB (small personal ship) and the Dragonfly (for moving cargo and space station parts). Orbiter also has a huge number of addon ships and mods. Popular addons include the DeltaGliderIV, an advanced version of the stock DeltaGlider; OrbiterSound, which provides background and engine sounds; the Firefly from the movie Serenity; OuterPlanets, which adds many small moons of the outer planets not included in the base install. And yes, there's a Pluto addon too. For managing addon installs, I use the simple JoneSoft Generic Mod Enabler."
Internet Explorer

Submission + - See Who's Online Behind Your Browser

Anonymous Coward writes: "Me.dium is a window that reveals the hidden world of people and activity behind your browser. Through Me.dium, you can see your online world for the first time. All the websites that you see in the map are other sites that Me.dium is recommending for you based on what you are currently doing. Me.dium bases those recommendations on how your activity relates to the activity of other people using Me.dium."
Communications

Submission + - Sharks don't need sex to reproduce

j.leidner writes: "According to researcher from Ireland and the U.S., sharks don't need sex for reproduction. A lady shark in a zoo that provably had no sex produced a baby shark with "no paternal DNA" using a process known as "Parthenogenesis", the process that "occurs when an egg cell is triggered to develop as an embryo without the addition of any genetic material from a male sperm cell." The experiment publicized only today, was reportedly carried out in 2001, which raises the question of the academic reviewers didn't believe the findings for quite some time, or have secretly carried out their own experiments... Since Slashdot curiously doesn't have (need?) a "sex" category, I tag this message "Communications"..."
Networking

Submission + - Internet pioneer to oversee its redesign

HostAdmin writes: "Starting in 2010 and slated to cost $350M (which in government-speak probably means a few billions), the National Science Foundation wants to re-boot the internet. This has previously been kicked around on slashdot.

From The Business Week article: A government contractor that played a key role in the Internet's birth will oversee efforts to redesign the network from scratch.

The National Science Foundation announced Monday that BBN Technologies Inc. will get up to $10 million over four years to oversee the planning and design of the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI.

Many researchers want to rethink the Internet's underlying architecture, saying a "clean-slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet's birth in 1969."
GUI

Submission + - Top 5 OS X Style Dock Replacements for Linux

Dan the man writes: "Why lie about it? Linux right out of the box is lacking style. Even with the new Ubuntu and RedHat packages, people look at Linux as a Legacy Operating system because it 's style looks like something that Al gore would have used 20 years ago. Here you will find my reviews and videos of the top 5 OS X Style Dock Replacements for Linux. Check out the top 5 list here: http://pimpyourlinux.com/linux-feature-review/top- 5-os-x-style-dock-replacements-for-linux/"
Mozilla

Submission + - Why does Firefox crash so often?

s3x3s writes: "I switched over to the Firefox camp a long time ago, and as long as I can remember there has always been a processor/memory leak. Does anyone know why Mozilla has yet to address this after several releases? Or is this just the price one has to pay for using open source?"
It's funny.  Laugh.

Sinbad Rises From Wikipedia Grave 110

A Chicago Sun-Times article passed to us by an anonymous reader pointed out the fact that the comedian Sinbad is still alive. This is notable, only insofar as Wikipedia thought otherwise. "Rumors began circulating last weekend regarding the posting, said Sinbad, who first got a telephone call from his daughter. The gossip quieted, but a few days later the 50-year-old entertainer said phone calls, text messages and e-mails started pouring in by the hundreds. 'Saturday I rose from the dead and then died again,' the Los Angeles-based entertainer said in a phone interview." Based on the article he seemed fairly okay with the mixup: 'It's gonna be more commonplace as the Internet opens up more and more. It's not that strange.' Wikipedia didn't comment for the Times piece, nor has it contacted the entertainer about the incident.

Archive.org Sued By Colorado Woman 797

An anonymous reader writes "The Internet Archive is being 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."
Security

Submission + - Dutch e-voting manufacturer blackmailed government

vvpt writes: After the Dutch group 'We don't trust voting computers' showed how easy the Nedap voting computers can be manipulated the company is under heavy fire. An independent commission is investigating how the future of Dutch voting should look like (the outcome is expected by October but everyone knows it is going to be very different from now). Nedap knows they are toast unless they can lure the government into buying their stock. So company executive Jan Groenendaal told a Dutch minister: Buy my company or we will withdraw all our services for the next elections. Not an empty threat: 99% of all votes are cast on their equipment. Dutch elections are impossible without the help of Nedap. The blackmail is now revealed by 'We don't trust voting computers' after obtaining letters and e-mails between the government and Groenendaal through a successful FOIA request.
Biotech

Submission + - Coke and Pepsi Cook Your Liver?

beartenor1 writes: Science Daily is reporting that a team from the University of Barcelona (UB) has recently published a study in the journal Hepatology which provides clues to the molecular mechanism through which the fructose in beverages may alter lipid energy metabolism and cause fatty liver and metabolic syndrome. Is it time to ban high-fructose corn syrup?
Input Devices

Submission + - Play video games with your brain, eyes and muscles

jmke writes: At Cebit there was a device being demoed at the OCZ Booth which tracks movement of your eyes, monitors brain waves and picks up facial muscle movements, it uses these recorded signals to link them to input commands on the computer, allowing you to play Tetris or even a first person shooter like UT2004. Here is a live demo and more technical details on how this works. Will this technology change the way you interact with your PC?
Mars

Caves on Mars? 99

RockDoctor writes "The BBC is reporting that the photo-surveying of Mars has revealed seven suspected cave entrances in the Arsia Mons volcanic area. This has been hinted at before — long sinuous channels in the same region have been interpreted as collapsed 'lava tube' caves — but the scale of the suggested entrances (sheer drops of 80 to 130m from the surrounding surface) makes my troglodytic hands twitch for my abseiling gear."
Education

Submission + - Good Teaching Tools for the Kids

jdramer writes: I was recently asked by someone who home-schools her kids what kind of programs are available for teaching kids about what you can do with computers. She was thinking things like computer animation, drawing programs; basically anything that encourages creativity. So I'm wondering what programs are out there that would be good for young children in primary school?
Quake

Submission + - Open RT project Ray-tracing algorithms available

An anonymous reader writes: Ray-tracing is a technique that allowed Peter Jackson to make special effects look convincing in the Lord of the Rings. Now, Daniel Pohl, has used the new algorithms [develped by Professor Philipp Slusallek and co-workers from the University of Saarland] 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 being made available to anyone to use via the Open RT project. Graphics in computer games are typically rendered via a technique known as rasterisation which involves drawing all the elements of a scene using polygons. The scientists have shown that their series of ray-tracing algorithms can run on a high-end PC graphics card.

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