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Submission + - Exoplanet Count Blasts Through the 1,000 Barrier (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: The first 1,000 exoplanets to be confirmed have been added to the Europe-based Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. For the last few weeks, astronomers (and the science media) have been waiting with bated breath as the confirmed exoplanet count tallied closer and closer to the 1,000 mark. Then, with the help of the Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (SuperWASP) collaboration, the number jumped from 999 to 1,010 overnight. All of the 11 worlds are classified as "hot-Jupiters" with orbital periods from less than 2 days to 8 days.

Comment Re:frosty (Score 1) 162

by Omnivorax (#40483219) Attached to: Atari Turns 40 Today
If you gave me half an hour to build up my health and collect "Extra [X] Potions", I could play indefinitely on one quarter. My record was 10 1/2 hours on the Wizard. The last half hour was spent suiciding, because the owners were trying to close the arcade.
Power

Submission + - China to Tap Combustible Ice as New Energy Source (inhabitat.com) 1

Submitted by lilbridge
lilbridge writes: Huge reserves of "combustible ice" — frozen methane and water, have been discovered in the tundra undra of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in China. Estimates show that there is enough combustible ice to provide 90 years worth of energy for China. Burning the combustible ice may be a far better alternative than letting it just melt, releasing tons of methane into the air.
IT

Submission + - The Long Shadow of Y2K

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "It seems like it was only yesterday when the entire world was abuzz about the looming catastrophe of Y2K that had us both panicked and prepared. Ten Years ago there were doomsday predictions that planes would fall from the sky and electric grids would go black, forced into obsolescence by the inability of computers to recognize the precise moment that 1999 rolled over to 2000 and for many it was a time to feel anxious about getting money out of bank accounts and fuel out of gas pumps. "Nobody really understood what impact it was going to have, when that clock rolled over and those digits went to zero. There was a lot of speculation they would reset back to 1900," says IT professional. Jake DeWoskin. The Y2K bug may have been IT's moment in the sun, but it also cast a long shadow in its wake as the years and months leading up to it were a hard slog for virtually everyone in IT, from project managers to programmers. "People were scared for their jobs and their reputations," says CIO Dick Hudson, Staffers feared that if they were fired for failing to remedy Y2K problems, the stigma would prevent them from ever getting a job in IT again. "Then there was the fear that someone like Computerworld would report it, and it would be on the front page," Hudson adds. Although IT executives across the globe were confident that they had the problem licked, a nagging fear followed them right up until New Year's Eve. While most people were out celebrating the turn of the century, IT executives and their staffs were either monitoring events in the office or standing by at home. Afterwards came the recriminations and backlash as an estimated $100 billion was spent nationwide for problems that turned out to be minimal. Others says the nonevent was evidence the Y2K effort was done right. "It was a no-win situation," says Paul Ingevaldson. "People said, 'You IT guys made this big deal about Y2K, and it was no big deal. You oversold this. You cried wolf.' ""

Submission + - What Would Have Entered the Public Domain Tomorrow (duke.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Casino Royale, Marilyn Monroe’s Playboy cover, The Adventures of Augie March, the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Crick & Watson’s Nature article decoding the double helix, Disney’s Peter Pan, The Crucible"... "How ironic that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, with its book burning firemen, was published in 1953 and would once have been entering the public domain on January 1, 2010. To quote James Boyle, "Bradbury’s firemen at least set fire to their own culture out of deep ideological commitment, vile though it may have been. We have set fire to our cultural record for no reason; even if we had wanted retrospectively to enrich the tiny number of beneficiaries whose work keeps commercial value beyond 56 years, we could have done so without these effects. The ironies are almost too painful to contemplate."
Idle

Submission + - From the Department of DUH! (foxnews.com)

Submitted by ectotherm
ectotherm writes: See the most obvious scientific discoveries of 2009, actually backed up by scientific studies. These include such no-brainers as 'Men are much more interested in casual sex than women.'

Comment Re:Overdrive (Score 1) 349

by Omnivorax (#25386069) Attached to: Watching Tonight's Presidential Debate Online
How is "Mickey" going to get a valid SSN# or driver's license number? Without one of those, most states (all, AFAIK) won't approve his voter registration.

ACORN and other voter registration groups are REQUIRED to submit all signed forms to the state, even if they're incomplete, obviously fraudulent, etc. They can flag suspected forms to call them to the state's attention, but the state makes the final call over whether the voter is legitimate--which is the way it should be. Otherwise, registration groups might throw out forms based on political party or other criteria.

If "Mickey" can vote, that means he either has a fake identity, or his registration was approved without state oversight. In neither case is the voter registration organization culpable.

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