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Comment ATTENTION (Score 2, Funny) 392

by feder (#30403836) Attached to: How To Build a Quantum Propulsion Machine

THIS SOUNDS LIKE A REACTIONLESS DRIVE. NOW THAT I HAVE PROPERLY CATEGORIZED IT FOR YOU, YOU CAN JUST GO STRAIGHT ON TO BEING SKEPTICAL, SINCE EVERYONE KNOWS REACTIONLESS DRIVES ARE BALONY. THIS HAS BEEN A SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF THE STATUS QUO IN ENGINEERING. THANK YOU.

(We had to bribe Slashdot editors to let us write the above in all caps. They are total suckers for lower-case letters. It's a fetish of theirs, probably. Poor little letters. Cut to CmdrTaco doing a lower-case 'a' in the butt. Oh, ffs, will this filter ever let me through? rthwerg erg qergqegqerg qerg qegqegqreghqer gqer gq erg qer gqe gqergqergeqrgerg)

Comment Re:It'll never happen (Score 1) 554

by feder (#28677081) Attached to: NASA Plans To De-Orbit ISS In 2016

Hey, wait a minute - aren't they installing a new ion drive on the thing (VASIMR)? Just set it at full speed ahead, and leave it to some alien civilization to find it... (yeah, yeah, I know, escape velocity and all - they can do gravity assist or something)
Data Storage

How Does Flash Media Fail? 357

Posted by kdawson from the in-the-pan dept.
bhodge writes "Aside from the obvious 'it stops working' answer, how does flash media — such as USB, SD, and CF — fail? Unlike with traditional hard drive, where anyone who's worked with computers for a while knows what a drive failure looks like, I don't know anyone who has experienced such a failure with flash. I've haven't been able to find more than scant evidence of what such failures look like at the OS level. The one account I have found detailed using a small USB drive for /var/log storage; it failed very quickly, and then utterly (0 byte unformatted device), after five years of service in the role. This runs contrary to other anecdotal claims that you should still be able to read the media after you can no longer write to it. So my question is: what have you seen of the nature of flash media failure, if anything?"
Media

Boxee Launches New API 69

Posted by Soulskill from the take-that-hulu dept.
A recent post on the boxee blog announces the release of a new, fully documented API that will allow developers to create and share new apps and plugins. "The new boxee API enables developers to build sophisticated applications (such as the Pandora and RadioTime apps) using a set of API calls in Python and writing the GUI using XML. ... Users can install new applications via the boxee App Box, the beginnings of our app store. Unlike other app stores, boxee does not want to be a gate keeper (or bottleneck) in deciding which applications are published so anyone can become a publisher." A complete description is available at their developers page. I'm sure this will help in their ongoing battle with Hulu.
Security

Cybercrime-As-a-Service Takes Off 113

Posted by timothy from the no-need-for-subtlety dept.
pnorth writes "Malware writers that sell toolkits online for as little as $400 will now configure and host the attacks as a service for another $50, according to email offers cited by security experts. A technical account manager at authentication firm Vasco said that cyber crime is becoming so business-like that online offerings of malicious code often include support and maintenance services. He said 'it was inevitable that services would be sold to people who bought the malware toolkits but didn't know how to configure them. Not only can you buy configuration as a service now, you can have the malware operated for you, too.'"
Announcements

Fermilab Not Dead Yet, Discovers Rare Single Top Quark 194

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the emphasis-on-the-operating dept.
Several sources are reporting that in spite of LHC hype, Fermilab's Tevatron has produced another feat for scientific discovery. Currently the world's most powerful operating particle accelerator, the Tevatron has allowed researchers to observe a rare single Top Quark. "Previously, top quarks had only been observed when produced by the strong nuclear force. That interaction leads to the production of pairs of top quarks. The production of single top quarks, which involves the weak nuclear force and is harder to identify experimentally, has now been observed, almost 14 years to the day of the top quark discovery in 1995."

Comment The Semantic Wiki (Score 1) 478

by feder (#18013854) Attached to: Is Wikipedia Failing?
How should Wikipedia face these challenges? Scrap the current monolithic article model, and begin publishing incremental edits in XML instead.

This way, independent third-parties could serve customized edit filters of the main Wikipedia database. For instance, one site could serve only articles composed of edits made by scholars. Another site could serve only articles composed of edits approved by a board of editors whose particular editorial style you like. Yet another site could serve edits based on mass moderation. And yet another site could allow you to select from all the available edits to an article in order to tailor the exact article which meets your particular demands. Companies like Google could mirror the edit database and apply their own proprietary search and ranking technologies. Contributors could discuss and evaluate single edits in detail, and so on.

Wikis has opened up editing. Now let's open up viewing as well.

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