dr0id - Slashdot User

Star Trek's Warp Drive Not Impossible 541

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 06, 2009 @07:04PM from the engage dept.

Trunks writes "No doubt trying to ride the hype train that's currently going for the new Star Trek film, Space.com has a new article detailing how warp drive may not be impossible to acheive. From the article: '"The idea is that you take a chunk of space-time and move it," said Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project. "The vehicle inside that bubble thinks that it's not moving at all. It's the space-time that's moving." One reason this idea seems credible is that scientists think it may already have happened. Some models suggest that space-time expanded at a rate faster than light speed during a period of rapid inflation shortly after the Big Bang. "If it could do it for the Big Bang, why not for our space drives?" Millis said.' Simple, right?"

Submission + - The Missing iPhone Feature -- Now at T-Mobile (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

tregetour

on Thursday July 05, 2007 @12:35PM

tregetour writes: "
Here's the basic idea. If you're willing to pay $10 a month on top of a regular T-Mobile voice plan, you get a special cellphone. When you're out and about, it works like any other phone; calls eat up your monthly minutes as usual.

But when it's in a Wi-Fi wireless Internet hot spot, this phone offers a huge bargain: all your calls are free. You use it and dial it the same as always — you still get call hold, caller ID, three-way calling and all the other features — but now your voice is carried by the Internet rather than the cellular airwaves.

Perhaps far more revolutionary than the iPhone. Full Article"

Submission + - Giant Dinosaur Bird Discovered (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Cyclist110 on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @11:33PM

Cyclist110 writes: The BBC has the story of the discovery, in Inner Mongolia, of a Dinosaur bird twice the size of a man and weighing in at over 3000 lbs. From the article: "Chinese researchers uncovered the fossilised remains of the flightless giant in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia. The researchers had originally thought they had found the bones of a tyrannosaur — the group of dinosaurs to which T. rex belongs — due to their large size."

Sure hope the Creation Museum has some PlayDough left over.

Submission + - Fed Panel: Privacy laws at fault at Virginia Tech (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

RickRussellTX

on Wednesday June 13, 2007 @11:06PM

RickRussellTX writes: "A panel of Bush administration officials, including several bureau chiefs, concludes that confusing privacy laws contributed to the Virgina Tech shootings. The report claims that confusion over student privacy and medical privacy laws "has limited the ability of these officials to prevent the kind of violence that occurred at Virginia Tech.""

Submission + - NYT Shines a Light on Firefox's Financial Sucess

Submitted by

NewsCloud

on Monday May 21, 2007 @03:03AM

NewsCloud writes: "Noam Cohen raises the issue of Mozilla's amazing financial success with Firefox's Google relationship.:

"Thanks to the Google agreement, the Mozilla Foundation went from revenue of nearly $6 million in 2004 to more than $52 million the next year [similar revenue is expected in 2006]...In 2005, the foundation created a subsidiary, the for-profit Mozilla Corporation,...mainly to deal with the tax and other issues related to the Google contract...By creating a corporation to run the Firefox project, Mozilla was committing to be less transparent. In part, that is because Google insists on the secrecy of "its arrangement and agreements," said board member Mitch Kapor.

The article compares this approach to Wikipedia's ongoing fundraisers and raises the issue of transparency in open source projects. i.e. should Firefox's 1,000 to 2,000 developers and 80,000 evangelists have full knowledge of how revenue is spent as well as the extent to which Google is able to influence strategy vs. other stakeholders."

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