Decades-Old Soviet Reflector Spotted On the Moon 147

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 26, 2010 @05:16PM from the always-in-the-last-place-you-look dept.

cremeglace writes "No one had seen a laser reflector that Soviet scientists had left on the moon almost 40 years ago, despite years of searching. Turns out searchers had been looking kilometers in the wrong direction. On 22 April, a team of physicists finally saw an incredibly faint flash from the reflector, which was ferried across the lunar surface by the Lunokhod 1 rover. The find comes thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which last month imaged a large area where the rover was reported to have been left. Then the researchers, led by Tom Murphy of the University of California, San Diego, could search one football-field-size area at a time until they got a reflection."

South Korea Announces Daily MMO Blackouts For Youths 148

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 12, 2010 @05:55PM from the probably-just-making-more-time-for-starcraft dept.

eldavojohn writes "GamePolitics reports that South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has announced two new policies that will force underage gamers to pick a six-hour block of time (midnight-6 AM,1-7 AM, or 2-8 AM) where they will not be able to play 19 online role-playing games. While it targets most popular MMORPGs, some popular games like Lineage were left off the list."

Apple Removes Wi-Fi Finders From App Store 461

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 04, 2010 @09:30PM from the you've-been-very-very-naughty dept.

jasonbrown writes "Apple on Thursday began removing another category of apps from its iPhone App Store. This time, it's not porn, it's Wi-Fi. Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder."

Space Photos Taken From Shed Stun Astronomers 149

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 23, 2010 @04:03AM from the love-the-gold-mylar dept.

krou writes "Amateur astronomer Peter Shah has stunned astronomers around the world with amazing photos of the universe taken from his garden shed. Shah spent £20,000 on the equipment, hooking up a telescope in his shed to his home computer, and the results are being compared to images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 'Most men like to putter about in their garden shed,' said Shah, 'but mine is a bit more high tech than most. I have fitted it with a sliding roof so I can sit in comfort and look at the heavens. I have a very modest set up, but it just goes to show that a window to the universe is there for all of us – even with the smallest budgets. I had to be patient and take the images over a period of several months because the skies in Britain are often clouded over and you need clear conditions.' His images include the Monkey's head nebula, M33 Pinwheel Galaxy, Andromeda Galaxy and the Flaming Star Nebula, and are being put together for a book."

Comment Netrek is still good (Score 1) 460

by C. Alan on Sunday October 11, 2009 @11:22PM (#29715345) Attached to: Linux Games For Non-Gamers?

Netrek is pretty fun, and you can just drop in a server when you have 10 or 15 minutes to kill. It is the ORIGINAL on-line game, and still lots of fun.

One of my recent favorites is just plain old desktop defender. Its flash based.

Comment There is a Traffic Engineering Term for this.... (Score 1) 736

by C. Alan on Friday April 11, 2008 @09:33PM (#23043258) Attached to: Cities Tampering With Traffic Lights To Generate Revenue

It is called a "dilemma zone". As it has been pointed out before, it is possible for the yellow light to be too short for you to safely stop before you reach the intersection. This is not a good Traffic Engineering Practice, and endangers the public.

I forget the exact equation, but timing a yellow light goes something like this: 0.5 seconds + the time it takes the design vehicle to cover the distance it takes to stop. If the yellow light is shorter than this, then it would be nearly physically impossible for you to stop before you reached the intersection.

If you get one of these tickets, I think getting it dismissed would be a simple matter of getting the light timing for the signal (the jurisdiction controlling the light should have this on file), and then have a registered traffic engineer do the yellow light length calculations, and hopefully the judge would have enough brains to throw the ticket out, and put the city on notice that the practice is dangerous.