Raver32 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hunt for elusive Sasquatch (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Thursday June 28, 2007 @07:57AM

Raver32 writes: "Researchers will visit Michigan's Upper Peninsula next month to search for evidence of the hairy manlike creature known as "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch." The expedition will centre in eastern Marquette County, following the most recent Bigfoot eyewitness account, said Matthew Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. "We'll be looking for evidence supporting a presence.... We hope to meet local people who might have seen a Sasquatch or heard of someone else who had an encounter," Mr. Moneymaker told the Daily Press of Escanaba. Most experts consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes, but there are a number of authors and researchers who think the stories could be true."

Submission + - Nintendo opens up the Wii (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Thursday June 28, 2007 @07:51AM

Raver32 writes: "Nintendo Co. has opened its blockbuster Wii game system to independent video-game developers for the first time, the company announced Wednesday. Nintendo said it will let individuals and outside game studios create and sell downloadable Wii games with a tool called WiiWare. Gamers will be able to purchase the games through the console's Wii Shop channel starting in early 2008. Perrin Kaplan, a Nintendo spokeswoman, said the game-creation kit is designed for people with at least some knowledge of computer programming. Developers can start designing games using a PC but must complete them on the Wii console, Kaplan said. "Independent developers armed with small budgets and big ideas will be able to get their original games into the marketplace to see if we can find the next smash hit," said Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, in a statement."

Submission + - Dentist helps solve mummy mystery (thestar.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Thursday June 28, 2007 @07:46AM

Raver32 writes: "Egyptian archaeologists say they have identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, the only woman to rule ancient Egypt while the kingdom was at the height of its power. The mummy was discovered more than a century ago in a humble tomb in the famed Valley of the Kings, but suspicion it was the female pharaoh was hard to prove. New CT scans of the mummy and its internal organs confirm its identity, said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's chief archaeologist."

Submission + - EBay resumes Google ads (thestar.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Tuesday June 26, 2007 @07:29AM

Raver32 writes: "After a spat between two of the world's largest Internet companies, online auctioneer eBay Inc. resumed running advertising through Google Inc. on Friday. EBay pulled ads from the world's most popular search engine late June 11 in what the auction company billed as an experiment to determine the most effective means of getting customers to visit the shopping site. The move, however, had smacked of blatant retaliation as it coincided with a June 14 party that Google had been planning to siphon attention from eBay's annual user celebration in Boston. In the past week, eBay — one of the biggest buyers using Google's AdWords marketing program — increased advertising on Google rivals, including Yahoo Inc., IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s Ask.com and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN.com. EBay spokesperson Hani Durzy said the experiment proved that eBay didn't need to spend as much on Google ads, which generally run to the right of Google's regular search results."

Submission + - Net radio battles royalty ruling with silence (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Tuesday June 26, 2007 @07:22AM

Raver32 writes: "To paraphrase a well-used joke: if an Internet radio station falls in cyberspace, does anybody hear it? That's the question many online radio listeners around the world will try to answer after U.S. Internet radio stations will go offline Tuesday to protest an upcoming royalty rate hike threatening to wipe out Internet radio. So far, 45 radio stations representing thousands of channels have agreed to go silent or play a series of public service announcements to fight against a ruling made by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board last March that raises royalty payments by 300 to 1,200 per cent, retroactive to June 2006. The ruling, which will go into effect on July 15, is expected to cost large webcasters such as Yahoo and Real Networks millions of dollars, drive smaller websites like Pandora.com and Live365.com out of business and leave a large chunk of the 72 million Net radio listeners in the dark."

Submission + - Playing World of Warcraft Competitively, for Money (qj.net)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @03:01PM

Raver32 writes: "t was recently announced that World of Warcraft will be featured in the Championship Gaming Series (CGS) World Championship. Every World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade player on the European and North American servers have a chance to be drafted for the upcoming season. Blizzard Entertainment's Community Manager Vaneck posted a message on the WoW Europe forums regarding this very topic and the details on how to be a part of it. The system is quite simple really with a two on two ladder for the eliminations from June 19 to July 3, with the top five teams in each division heading up the qualifiers. This phase along with the drafting is rather complicated so here's exactly how Vaneck described it. Qualifiers: Following the end of the ladder phase of the tournament on July 3, the five top-ranked teams from each battlegroup will be selected to participate in the qualifiers, as discussed above. Each of these teams will be copied to a private realm in the corresponding region (Europe and North America), where they will compete with the other qualifying teams from that region's battlegroups. The qualifier round will run from July 9 to July 17 and will utilize the same ranking system as the ladders. At the end of the qualifier round, the top 8 teams from Europe and North America will be chosen to participate in the live CGS tournament at BlizzCon and subsequent draft."

Submission + - Hacking a Tractor-Trailer's Load

Submitted by ancientribe on Monday June 25, 2007 @02:26PM

ancientribe writes: Researchers have discovered that they can easily hack electronic product code (EPC) labels on products being transported on 18-wheeler tractor-trailers. EPC, the heir apparent to bar coding, provides unique RFID tags for each item, rather than just the vendor and class of product as bar codes do. This opens the door for attackers to lift detailed information about what a particular truck is hauling and where, as well as to actually manipulate the data. The underlying problem — aside from the thin walls of these rigs and the fact that truckers have to park and rest in public areas — is that RFID security is a lot like the typical home WLAN: companies often leave their system in default mode, with easily guessed passwords.

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=127 561&WT.svl=news1_1

Submission + - Warez veteran 'bandido' gets four years in prison (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @01:02PM

Raver32 writes: "The co-leader of one of the oldest and most famous Internet software cracking and warez trading groups was sentenced today to 51 months in prison on one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, US authorities announced today. In one of the first ever extraditions for an intellectual property offense, Hew Raymond Griffiths, a 44-year old British national living in Bateau Bay, Australia, was brought to the United States in February 2007 to face criminal charges in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Griffiths, known by his nom-de-guerre 'bandido' pleaded guilty on April 20, 2007, before US District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton."

Submission + - X Prize Cup Announces Lunar Lander Competitors (space.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @12:31PM

Raver32 writes: "The X Prize Foundation announced Thursday the name of eight of the nine competitors in this year's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge to be held this October during the Wirefly X Prize Cup and Holloman Air and Space Expo. The number of teams competing for the $2 million purse increased from four teams to nine. Sponsored by NASA's Centennial Challenges Program, the event is designed to accelerate commercial development of technology that can ferry cargo and humans between the Moon's surface and lunar orbit. "We are excited by the number of teams competing this year and their overall level of sophistication," Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation said in a statement. "We fully expect to award the $2 million purse this year in what will prove to be an exhilarating showdown between a number of very qualified teams." The 2007 Wirefly X PRIZE Cup and Holloman Air and Space Expo will be held October 27-28 at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, NM."

Submission + - iPhone buzz building into frenzy (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @11:49AM

Raver32 writes: "The hype around Apple Inc.'s upcoming iPhone is abundantly clear. So is the hysteria. But how the iPhone will leave its historical mark after Friday's launch is to be seen. Will the gadget — which triples as a cell phone, iPod media player and a wireless Web device — be as "revolutionary" as Apple CEO Steve Jobs has claimed? Even if the product flops for some reason or stays limited to the high-end corner of the smart phone market, the iPhone has already jolted the industry, showing that it is not just the body and outwardly beauty of the handset that counts, but what's inside."

Submission + - Scientist Calls Mars a Terraforming Target (space.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @07:48AM

Raver32 writes: "Mars will be transformed into a shirt-sleeve, habitable world for humanity before century's end, made livable by thawing out the coldish climes of the red planet and altering its now carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere. How best to carry out a fast-paced, decade by decade planetary facelift of Mars — a technique called "terraforming" — has been outlined by Lowell Wood, a noted physicist and recent retiree of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a long-time Visiting Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Lowell presented his eye-opening Mars manifesto at Flight School, held here June 20-22 at the Aspen Institute, laying out a scientific plan to "experiment on a planet we're not living on.""

Submission + - Hopes Dashed for Life on Distant Planet (space.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @07:41AM

Raver32 writes: "Scientists earlier this year announced they had found a small, rocky planet located just far enough from its star to sustain liquid water on its surface, and thus possibly support life. Turns out the scientists might have picked the right star for hosting a habitable world, but got the planet wrong. The world known as Gliese 581c is probably too hot to support liquid water or life, new computer models suggest, but conditions on its neighbor, Gliese 581d, might be just right."

Submission + - Google seeks help in fighting Internet censorship (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Monday June 25, 2007 @07:35AM

Raver32 writes: "Once relatively indifferent to government affairs, Google Inc. is seeking help inside the Beltway to fight the rise of Web censorship worldwide. The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs. Google sees the dramatic increase in government Net censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms. "It's fair to say that censorship is the No. 1 barrier to trade that we face," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's director of public policy and government affairs. A Google spokesman said Monday that McLaughlin has met with officials from the U.S. Trade Representative's office several times this year to discuss the issue."

Submission + - Domain Name 'business.com' - only $400 million (theglobeandmail.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Friday June 22, 2007 @01:07PM

Raver32 writes: "According to an ad... er, story that ran in the Wall Street Journal today, the domain name/business known as Business.com is on the block and could fetch as much as $400-million. Where did the paper come up with that number? Good question. The reporter says that it came from "people familiar with the matter," which could mean anything from "the lawyer brokering the deal" to "my neighbour, who is in the domain-parking business." Ashkan Karbasfrooshan at HipMojo, who knows a thing or two about advertising, argues that this isn't just another dot-com bubblicious domain-name scam, since Business.com has actual revenues and has cash flow (or EBITDA, which is short for "earnings before bad stuff") of $15-million. He even takes Adario Strange of Wired's Epicenter blog to task in a comment for making it look like the domain itself is for sale at a price of $400-million. But really, would whoever buys the site (assuming Dow Jones or the NYT really want to) actually keep any of that pay-per-click, link-spam directory-scam business? I doubt it. And 25 times EBITDA is a heck of a multiple for any business like that, let alone a domain name."

Submission + - Newborn manta ray dies in Japan (thestar.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Friday June 22, 2007 @12:11PM

Raver32 writes: "A baby manta ray thought to have been the world's first ever bred in captivity was found dead in a tank at a Japanese aquarium on Thursday, less than five days after it was born. The baby manta's death may have been caused by harassment and injury by its father, Kyodo news agency said, citing a statement released by the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. "Since this was the world's first to be bred in captivity, we were taking great pains with its care, but unfortunately we were not able to rear it for a long time," the aquarium said on its Web site."

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