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Comment Re:Saturday Night Specials (Score 1) 117

by Kilroy_here (#49851961) Attached to: Intel Security Scares Ransomware Script Kiddie Out of Business

So how much of the work does the eventual owner have to do on the firearm? If you want to register a kit car as a custom vehicle you have to have put a certain number of hours into it, as I recall, or maybe a percentage of the total hours.

The part that gets the serial number from the manufacturer is considered the firearm. In the case of an AR style rifle this would be the lower receiver, For a 1911 handgun this would be the frame. As to how much work has to be done .. 20% or more. This is why many companies will sell 80% complete parts along with the jigs and drills / mills to complete them. So for an AR the upper receiver, stock, buffer tube, trigger group, bolt carrier group etc can all be purchased complete and as long as you do the 20% to finish the blank receiver you have a legal firearm with no manufacturer record and no serial number. As long as this weapon is intended for personal use this is entirely legal.

Submission + - Virtual Telescope Readies to Image Black Hole's 'Ring of Fire' (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: With the addition of a telescope at the southern-most point of Earth, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) now spans the diameter of our planet and, when the vast project goes online, astronomers will get their first glimpse of the bright ring surrounding a supermassive black hole. Using a method known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, astronomers can combine the observing power of many telescopes situated at distant locations around the planet. The distance between those observatories, known as the “baseline,” then mimics a virtual telescope of that diameter. Now, in an attempt to make direct observations of the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, located at a powerful radio emission source called Sagittarius A*, the South Pole Telescope (SPT) at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has been linked to the EHT and the stage is set for a historic new era of exploring the most extreme objects in the known universe. “Now that we’ve done VLBI with the SPT, the Event Horizon Telescope really does span the whole Earth, from the Submillimeter Telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona, to California, Hawaii, Chile, Mexico, Spain and the South Pole,” said Dan Marrone of the University of Arizona. “The baselines to SPT give us two to three times more resolution than our past arrays, which is absolutely crucial to the goals of the EHT. To verify the existence of an event horizon, the ‘edge’ of a black hole, and more generally to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, we need a very detailed picture of a black hole. With the full EHT, we should be able to do this.”

Comment Re:Fingers crossed for artificial vertebrae (Score 2) 41

by Kilroy_here (#46291381) Attached to: Paralyzed Woman Walks Again With 3D-Printed Robotic Exoskeleton
Well for one thing the spinal cord lies within the lamina of the vertebrae thus preventing an easy replacement of a damaged vertebrae. This alone makes it rather impractical to replace them. As someone who has had the lamina of L-3 - L-5 removed due to having numerous disk herniated I know a little about it. Now if you had suggested 3d printed disks I would think it very possible.

Submission + - Yup, there's already someone lined up to buy the iPhone 6 (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Last year ahead of Apple’s iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c launch, lines began forming outside Apple stores weeks in advance. At the time, we thought it was pretty crazy that anyone would line up that far in advance to buy a cell phone — but now we know what crazy really looks like. A Japanese man named “Yoppy” says he has already lined up to buy Apple’s unannounced iPhone 6, which isn’t expected to launch for another seven months...

Submission + - Sophisticated Spy Tool 'The Mask' Rages Undetected for 7 Years (wired.com)

Submitted by thomst
thomst writes: Kim Zetter of Wired's Threat Level reports that Kaspersky Labs discovered a Spanish-language spyware application that employs "uses techniques and code that surpass any nation-state spyware previously spotted in the wild." The malware, dubbed "The Mask" by Kaspersky's researchers, targeted targeted government agencies, diplomatic offices, embassies, companies in the oil, gas and energy industries, and research organizations and activists had been loose on the Internet since at least 2007, before it was shut down last month. It infected its targets via a malicious website that contained exploits — among which were the Adobe Flash player vulnerability CVE-2012-0773 — that affected both Windows and Linux machines. Users were directed to the site via spearphishing emails.

Comment Re:Why not just fill the mine? (Score 1) 172

by Kilroy_here (#45919661) Attached to: How Do You Move a City?

No, not in Sweden. The local people are going to have no say unless they pull an ethnic-minorities card - for instance if the town were a Suomi sacred site or something.

The fact that most people there are Suomi and that its in the far north (which in Sweden means Hicks a-la Bob and Doug Mackenzie) indicates that Swedes in the south will not give a rats ass what hardship it causes.

FTFY and the Mackenzie brothers were from Canada not Sweden. Obviously you must be thinking about the Muppets and the Swedish chef.

Submission + - Playing StarCraft Could Boost Your Cognitive Flexibility (psychologytoday.com)

Submitted by briglass
briglass writes: Imagine being a total non-gamer and then suddenly playing an hour of StarCraft a day for almost two months. A new study of mine demonstrates that a group of female gaming novices (seriously novice, as in 0 to 1 hour of gaming per week novice) demonstrated increased cognitive flexibility after playing StarCraft, a sort of fast-paced chess on steroids — the control group played The Sims. It's been well known that video gaming can lead to psychological benefits, such as faster perceptual information processing after playing first-person shooter games. But this new study, published in PLOS ONE, shows that video gaming can also affect higher-level cognitive functions. The StarCraft game was customized to be adaptive and remain challenging as the newly minted gamers honed their skills, and in-game behavior was recorded to determine what aspects of StarCraft leads to the boost in flexibility.

Submission + - Why the Internet Needs Cognitive Protocols

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: We keep hearing that the "Internet of Things" is coming–that day when we'll all have not just smart phones but also smart refrigerators, smart alarm clocks, and smart roads and bridges. A new article in IEEE Spectrum magazine makes the argument that this won't happen unless engineers do some serious rethinking of how the Internet's basic routing architecture works. The author, Anthony Liotta, offers some interesting solutions based on two networks in the human body: the autonomic nervous system and the cognitive brain.
Piracy

Call of Duty: Black Ops the Most Pirated Game of the Year 5

Posted by Soulskill from the five-button-discount dept.
Torrentfreak reports that after calculating download frequency for pirated copies of popular video games, Call of Duty: Black Ops has won the dubious honor of being the most pirated game of 2010. The PC version of the game was torrented roughly 4,270,000 times, and the Xbox 360 version was downloaded an additional 930,000 times. (The most pirated Wii game was Super Mario Galaxy 2, and Dante's Inferno somehow managed to accrue the most downloads of Xbox 360 games.) Fortunately for Activision, the game has still made over $1 billion in sales, and its 20,000,000+ players have racked up over 600,000,000 man-hours of play time since the game's launch in early November.
Games

Blizzard Seeking Console Devs For 'Diablo-Related Concept' 58

Posted by Soulskill from the strict-inevitabilities dept.
Eurogamer reports that a number of Blizzard job listings went up today for top-level console developers. The listings were posted under the Diablo 3 heading, leading to speculation about a console port of the upcoming game. A Blizzard representative soon responded, saying, "... we’re currently exploring a Diablo-related concept for consoles. As we’ve said in the past, with proper care the gameplay could suit the console platform, and we’re interested in seeing what talent out there might be interested in contributing to such a project. To further reiterate what’s posted on the home page: this is not an announcement of a console title. We are first and foremost developing Diablo III for Windows and Mac PCs, and we have no intention of allowing a console interpretation to delay or otherwise affect the release of the game." Having played Diablo 3 at Blizzcon, I can say that the game would very easily make the transition to consoles. An Xbox 360 or PS3 controller would almost perfectly fit all necessary gameplay functions. That said, they could just as easily be porting one of the older games, building a new mini-game to get their feet wet, or getting started on Diablo 4. Time will tell.
PC Games (Games)

Spore-Inspired Action RPG Darkspore Announced 86

Posted by Soulskill from the say-what-now dept.
Today Electronic Arts announced Darkspore, an action RPG in development from Maxis that is inspired by Spore's creature creator technology. The game is due to launch in February 2011, and a teaser is available on the official website. A more descriptive video is available from EA's live demo (start at 8:25). Quoting Joystiq: "...Darkspore will let up to three players traverse 'several' planets cooperatively, and while there will be PvP in the finished product, Maxis isn't providing details just yet. The basics will be the same whether going in solo or as a team: You'll be able to choose from a number (again, no specifics yet) of pre-created melee, ranged and support creatures that can have their stats and abilities augmented by equipment. ... When choosing to beam down from your starship to a planet, you will see a lineup of enemy types that you'll encounter. This gives you and your friends enough information to decide which three characters from your collection you'll want to deploy. The trio can then be switched between on the fly, albeit with a brief cool-down period afterward. The idea is to use the characters' various abilities strategically against what the Left 4 Dead-inspired 'AI director' decides to toss your way."

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