Kevertje - Slashdot User

Submission + - Earth Bacteria Hitch A Ride To The Stars

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:02AM

An anonymous reader writes: Space.com has an article on how old rocket stages are carrying bacteria from Earth to interstellar space. The four upper rocket stages were used to boost deep space probes Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10 and New Horizons. The spacecraft were sterilized, but the rocket stages were not, and they now carry the bacteria of the engineers who handled them. If the rocket stages hit a habitable planet, and the bacteria survive the journey, they would be able to reproduce and colonize the planet.

Think Tank Report On the State of Open Source 110

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @07:49AM from the looking-in-the-mirror dept.

AlexGr writes to recommend an account of a meeting a couple of months back of representatives from more than 100 software companies discussing the state of open source software. The outcome is outlined in a 16-page report, 2007 Open Source Think Tank: The Future of Commercial Open Source (PDF). Among the surprising conclusions: participants noted a growing similarity in methods between open source and proprietary software development. They predicted some kind of convergence, where the best of both approaches gets adopted in each camp.

Comment Re:Not surprisingly, I disagree (Score 1) 740

by Kevertje on Sunday February 11, 2007 @08:18AM (#17971374) Attached to: Teens Prosecuted For Racy Photos

I don't think that there's an ugly precedent in this case. Allowing the kids to keep those pictures of themselves does not mean that it suddenly becomes legal for them to sell those pictures. After all, there is still a law against selling/buying those pictures. And if the court really wanted to prevent anyone from profiting over those images, they could give the kids a slap on the wrist and make them delete the photographs.

Either way, it would be illegal for either of them to sell the pictures if they ever need money. The kids' lives wouldn't be wasted and if the pics ever got out, the one responsible could still be punished.

Wikipedia Covers April Fool's Hoaxes 129

Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 01, 2006 @08:25PM from the check-out-what-you-missed dept.

vladd_rom writes "Wikipedia maintains an up to date list with April Fools hoaxes from this year. The list already includes hundreds of entries. Among the most popular, one could find Google Romance, a new Google.com project, Google Browser, as well as Yahoo!'s desire to buy all Web 2.0 companies on the web. However, it seems that this year hoaxes will be more interconnected: the wiki page already includes some websites that announced that they have been bought by Yahoo!, and linked to Yahoo!'s blog post from their pages."

Lab Produces 3.6 Billion Degree Gas 594

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 08, 2006 @09:48PM from the hotter-than-the-sun dept.

starexplorer2001 writes "LiveScience is reporting how scientists at Sandia's Z laboratory have produced superheated gas exceeding temperatures of 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit (2 billion kelvins). That's hotter than the interior of our sun, which is only 15 million degrees F. And they don't know how they did it. Do we want anything that hot on our planet?"

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