Comment This truly is the end of an era (Score 1) 344
I used to read everything that came with roblimoâ(TM)s username attached because it was likely to be good.
Whatever Happened To Second Life? 209
Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."
Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88
Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."
The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."
Comment Amen (Score 1) 383
At least someone at CNN still thinks they're in the news business. Everyone else seems to be thoroughly convinced that it is better to be in the entertainment business. If I want to know what @stinky has to say, i can follow them directly in Twitter.
Comment I'll pay (Score 2, Insightful) 703
Here in the US, my only source of news is NPR, and I pay for that every year by 'subscribing' to my local station during their pledge drives. I'll gladly subscribe to the BBC to get my world news from a world class organization, if that's what it takes to keep Murdoch and his minions away.
Could the Cloud Derail a $300 Million Data Center? 109
1sockchuck writes "The cloud computing debate has come into focus for taxpayers in Washington state, where a proposed $300 million project to build a data center in Olympia for the state's IT operations is coming under scrutiny. Two legislators are urging the state to shift applications to the cloud instead, noting that two of the largest cloud computing providers (Microsoft and Amazon) are based in the state. The critics say the data center project is driven by an interest in local construction and 'fails to seriously explore the larger strategic question facing government technology today.'"
Submission + - Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable? (vortex.com)
Lauren Weinstein writes: "Even though your cable company may claim that a channel is in a digital tier that you're paying for, they may be sending it to you in analog form, with associated negative effects. Surprise!
Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable? — Lauren —"
Submission + - Stealthy Windows update raises serious concerns
UniversalVM writes: What is the single biggest issue that bothers open source advocates about proprietary software? It is probably the ability of the vendor to pull stunts like this.
Windows has stealthily updated components of the operating system using its update service. The update will not be flagged even if you have set up your update to notify you and only execute if permitted.
The weak explanation seems to be a great exercise in circular logic "Had we failed to update the service automatically, users would not have been able to successfully check for updates and, in turn, users would not have had updates installed automatically or received expected notifications." News.com is reporting that all of the updated files on both XP and Vista appears to be in windows update itself. This is information that was independently uncovered by users and still not released by Microsoft.
More interestingly could this be construed as a hacking of Windows users' systems? Does the EULA specify that Microsoft has the right to silently break into my machine, change components of the operating system and ignore any settings that explicitly prohibit this sort of behavior? Seems like a good argument could be made for Microsoft breaking into a system without the users' permission.
The weak explanation seems to be a great exercise in circular logic "Had we failed to update the service automatically, users would not have been able to successfully check for updates and, in turn, users would not have had updates installed automatically or received expected notifications." News.com is reporting that all of the updated files on both XP and Vista appears to be in windows update itself. This is information that was independently uncovered by users and still not released by Microsoft.
More interestingly could this be construed as a hacking of Windows users' systems? Does the EULA specify that Microsoft has the right to silently break into my machine, change components of the operating system and ignore any settings that explicitly prohibit this sort of behavior? Seems like a good argument could be made for Microsoft breaking into a system without the users' permission.
Astronomer Offers Theory Into 400-Year-Old Lunar Mystery 66
webdoodle writes "An astronomer at Columbia University thinks he has solved a 400-year-old mystery: the origin of strange optical flashes seen on the moon's surface. These spots, called 'Transient Lunar Phenomenon' (TLP) by the astronomy community, have confused moon-gazers since the time of ancient scientists. Arlin Crotts now thinks that TLPs are something called 'outgassing', a process where trapped gasses escape to the lunar atmosphere. 'To arrive at his theory, Crotts correlated TLPs with known gas outbursts from the lunar surface as seen by several spacecraft, particularly NASA's Apollo 15 mission in 1971 and the robotic Lunar Prospector in 1998. What he discovered was a remarkable similarity in the pattern of outgassing event locations recorded by spacecraft across the face of the moon and reported TLP sites.'"
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