Sometimes you don't want the pot of gold.

prototypo writes "The Free Lance-Star newspaper is reporting that the Navy Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia has successfully demonstrated an 8-megajoule electromagnetic rail gun. A 32-megajoule version is due to be tested in June. A 64-megajoule version is anticipated to extend the range of naval gunfire (currently about 15 nautical miles for a 5-inch naval gun) to more than 200 nautical miles by 2020. The projectiles are small, but go so fast that have enough kinetic punch to replace a Tomahawk missile at a fraction of the cost. In the final version, they will apex at 95 miles altitude, well into space. These systems were initially part of Reagan's SDI program ("Star Wars"). An interesting tidbit in the article is that the rail gun is only expected to fire ten times or less per day, presumably because of the amount of electricity needed. I guess we now need a warp core to power them."

timmit was one of many readers to point out the story of a stolen Sidekick, writing with this excerpt from the site: ""When my friend realized that she had left the Sidekick in the taxi she asked me to immediately send a message to the phone saying that we would give a reward for the phone. There was no response. After a day of waiting, she had to go to the store and spend over $300 on a new Sidekick. When she put her SIM card in, she saw that the person(s) that had taken the phone had not only signed on to AOL leaving their name and password in the phone, but they had taken pictures of themselves." I can sympathize, after someone with the address Rmluckyguy@aol.com tried to sell me back the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car last year in Philadelphia. I hope Evan has better luck.

theberf writes "On June 6, 2006 the experimental IPv6 network, the 6bone, will be shut down. All 3FFE:: addresses will revert to the IANA and should no longer be used. All IPv6 traffic should now be using production IPv6 addresses delegated by Regional Internet Registries. The 6Bone has been in operation for 10 years." Here's some more information about "IPv6 day."

MojoKid writes "Dual Graphics in Notebooks have been in development for a long time now but very few Notebook vendors have actually brought products to market. Recently, NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce 7900 series enabled manufacturers like Alienware the ability to configure Dual GPU SLI systems in a Notebook form factor. HotHardware has a world's first look at the Alienware m9700 Aurora, that comes equipped with a pair of GeForce 7900 MXM modules in a Desktop Replacement form factor. With a 2.4GHz AMD Turion64 processor, SLI and a 17" panel, this machine has more horsepower and features than many high end Desktop setups."

Billosaur writes "BBC News is reporting that the password to the dreaded Archiveus virus has been discovered and is now available to anyone who needs it. Archiveus is a 'ransomware' virus, which combines files from the My Documents folder on Windows machines and exchanges them for a single, password-protected file, which it will not unlock unless a password is given. The user would normally be required to pay the extortionist money in order to receive the password, but apparently the virus writer made one small, critical error in coding: placing the password in the code. BTW, the 30-digit password locking the files is mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw."

Boudewijn Rempt writes "Amazon's recommendation system recommended me "Open Source Game Development: Qt Games for KDE, PDA's and Windows" when I was looking for an introduction to OpenGL. While it does contain two chapters on OpenGL, there's much, much more. It's not just an introduction to writing open source games, it's a complete introduction to participating in open source projects like KDE." Read the rest of Boudewijn's review.

Marc writes "As far as I know, this is the first time that Intel has talked about what we can expect from its new gaming CPU, Core 2 Extreme. For once, there is no word on power consumption on this new chip, but Intel talks about raw speed and a 40% gain over the current 3.73 GHz Extreme Edition 965 - which would be rather impressive and could indicate a problem for AMD. In this interview with TG Daily, Intel also claims that a Core 2 Extreme-based enthusiast PC will leave the pixel power of a Playstation 3 in the dust. Gamers, this appears to become the most exciting year for you in a long time!"

Tryllekunstner writes "The guys at the Google Press Center presented upcoming Google technologies at a press conference. Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone. Google Trends builds on the Google Zeitgeist to help users find facts and trends related to Google usage around the world. Google Notebook is a simple way for users to save and organize their thoughts when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from the pages they're browsing, save them to an online 'notebook' that is accessible from any computer, and share them with others. Also, Google Desktop 4 is also mentioned." Googleblog has an outline of the new services.

So, over the years, Rob, as only true friends do, has managed to cause my inbox to explode over the years. Now, it's payback time. That's right, our very own CmdrTaco is turning 30 today. I highly encourage you to drop him an e-mail at (remove the spam parts) maldaSPAM@SPAMslashdot.org. And of course, birthday presents of single malt scotch can be sent c/o of me. I'll...uh...make sure he gets them.

Wired is reporting that the winners for the 2006 Webby Awards have been announced and the usual suspects have dominated the scene. From the article: "With a record 65 award categories, this year's Webby honorees ranged from well-known sites like the (Washington Post, a popular vote winner for best newspaper site, to more obscure newcomers, like Remember Segregation, named best home page. As in years past, the honoree list included several winners of multiple awards, along with perennial favorites that have won Webbys previously."

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist is reporting on a robotic tentacle developed thanks to funding from military agency DARPA. From the video it looks to have a lot of potential, I can almost feel it fastening around my ankle right now."

houseofmore writes "After many years of development, Bram Moolenaar, creator of Vim, today announced version 7 of the widely used editor. New features included spell checking in up to 50 languages, intelligent completion, tab pages, extended undo branches and much more. Downloads available here for Unix, Windows, Mac and more."