longacre writes "An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available."

uyguremre writes "After a little over a year and a half in the making, the developers of MythTV announced that MythTV 0.22 is now available. There have been a lot of large changes since 0.21, including a port from Qt v3 to Qt v4 and a major UI rewrite to convert to MythTV's new MythUI user interface libary. As always, this release adds support for some new hardware, in this case VDPAU video acceleration, DVB-S2, and the Hauppauge HD-PVR. The MythUI toolkit allows themes much greater control over the user interface and today we're announcing a competition to design new themes for MythTV. With the new release comes a theming competition too. For a more complete list of changes and new features, read the Release Notes on the wiki."

k33l0r writes "The European Commission is confident that all major cellphone companies have reached an agreement on a standard cellphone charger for consumers within the EU. 'People will not have to throw away their charger whenever they buy a new phone,' said EU Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Apple, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments have all signed the agreement."

layabout writes "We've seen tremendous advances in user interfaces over the past few years. Unfortunately, those UIs and supporting infrastructure exclude the disabled. In the same timeframe there has been virtually no advance in accessibility capabilities. It's the same old sticky keys, unicorn stick, speech recognition, text-to-speech that kind-of, sort-of, works except when you need to work with with real applications. Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year — some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing and using many if not all mobile computing devices. My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled? By spending time now building the interfaces and tools that will enable them to use computers more easily, you will also be ensuring your own ability to use them in the future." Follow the link for more background on this reader's query.

net_shaman writes in with word of a Seattle man who was arrested for taking a photo of an ATM being serviced. "Today I was shopping at the downtown Seattle REI. I was about to buy a Thule hitch mount bike rack. They were out of the piece that locks the bike rack into the hitch. So I was in the customer service line to special order one. It was a long line and while I was waiting, I saw two of guys (employees of Loomis, as I later learned) refilling the ATM. I walked over and took a picture with my iPhone of them and more interestingly of the open ATM. I took the picture because I'm fascinated by the insides of things that we don't normally get to see. ... That was when Officer GE Abed (#6270) spun me around and put handcuffs on me."

Kelson writes "Google's Mountain View headquarters has fields that need to be kept clear of fire hazards. This year instead of mowing them, they took a low-carbon approach: they hired a herd of goats to eat the grass for a week. 'It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers,' wrote Dan Hoffman."

Hugh Pickens writes "MSNBC reports that in 1969, Walter T. Davey, an aeronautical engineer at North American Rockwell, discovered he was being overpaid by roughly 2 cents an hour, or one-third of 1 percent of his pay. Davey submitted the discovery to his superiors and suggested a simple fix. 'It was so simple to correct,' said Davey, a 79-year-old retired Air Force colonel, 'just change a few digits in the coding software.' The Project on Government Oversight, which reviewed Davey's findings last year, estimated the change could save taxpayers $270 million a year. Multiply by 40 years — the length of time since Davey made his discovery — and the figure grows to an astounding $10.8 billion. Legislators ignored Davey's letters, federal auditors deferred to Congress, and lobbyists 'descended on it and tore it into a piece of Swiss cheese' but legislators aren't eager to challenge the powerful defense lobby about a figure that's a relative pittance in the overall defense budget — even if it exceeds $100 million annually. 'A lot of people have taken advantage of the system to reap as much in taxpayer dollars as possible,' says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight. 'But when you're going up against the contractor lobby — whether you're an individual across the country or a public interest group or a government employee — it's a tough road.'"

Barence was one of several readers to send in word that the UK Home Office checked whether its interpretation of the law suited Phorm, before issuing advice on the legality of the controversial advertising service. The Home Office and Phorm entered a dialogue about the company's services back in August 2007, at Phorm's request. In an email sent to Phorm in January 2008, a Home Office official writes: 'I should be grateful if you would review the attached document, and let me know what you think.' After Phorm made deletions and amendments to the document, the Home Office sent another email to the company stating: 'If we agree this, and this becomes our position do you think your clients and their prospective partners will be comforted.' From the BBC: "Baroness Sue Miller, Liberal Democrat spokeswoman on Home Affairs, told BBC News: 'My jaw dropped when I saw the Freedom of Information exchanges. ... Anything the Home Office now says about Phorm is completely tainted.'"