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Comment Re:I'm glad I never bought HRD (Score 2) 177

Without getting into the behavior of the people who sell HRD, which is reprehensible, the software does a whole lot more than digital modes. You can use it control most radios built in the 21st century, track satellites, operate an antenna rotator and a shit-ton of other stuff. It doesn't always work without some coaxing on the part of the user, but it's there. I used the free version (pre-6.x) of HRD for years until the crappy Windows XP box I cobbled together specifically to run it died and I switched my shack computer to a Linux box.
User Journal

Journal Journal: So Long, Slashdot 2

Journal by gyrogeerloose

The time has come to say goodbye to Slashdot. Slashdot and I had a good run together but, as all too often happens with relationships, we've grown apart.

Submission + - Discovery Threatens Fan Site That It Also Promotes (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It seems that the lawyers and the marketing people at The Discovery Channel don't talk to each other much. The marketing people behind the show "The Deadliest Catch" have been supporting a fan community called DeadliestCatchTV.com for a while now. They've regularly sent the site info, free clips, previews and information about the show. On top of that, they link to it from the official site, including it in a list of "fan sites" as a part of the "Discovery Network," and even will frame the site with the show's own dashboard for those who click through. Discovery's lawyers, on the other hand have threatened to sue the site out of existence and have demanded that the owner hand over the domain name — which he is going to do, because he doesn't have the money to fight this. While there may be a trademark issue (which could be easily resolved with a free license), the lawyers are also making the ridiculous argument that posting the videos Discovery sent him to post are copyright infringement. They're also claiming that embedding the official Discovery Channel YouTube videos (which have embedding turned on) is copyright infringement. This is exactly how you turns lots of fans into people who hate your entire channel.
Transportation

Submission + - Just 1 out of 16 Hybrids Pays Back in Gas Savings (greencarreports.com)

Submitted by thecarchik
thecarchik writes: One of the criticisms of hybrid cars has historically been that there's no payback, especially given the cheap gasoline prices in the U.S.
The extra money you spend on a hybrid isn't returned in gas savings, say critics. Well, that may be true, especially when regular gasoline is averaging $2.77 a gallon this week. But as we often point out, most people don't buy hybrids for payback--they buy them to make a statement about wanting to drive green . Nevertheless, a Canadian study has now looked at the question of hybrid payback in a country whose gasoline is more expensive than ours (roughly $3.70 per gallon this week), with surprising results.

The British Columbia Automobile Association projected the fuel costs of 16 hybrids over five years against their purchase price and financing fees. In a study released in late July, only a single one of the 16 hybrids cost less to buy and run than its gasoline counterpart.
The Courts

Submission + - FTC busts domain name scammers (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The Federal Trade Commission said today that it had permanently killed the operations of a group that it said posed as domain name registrars and convinced thousands of US consumers, small businesses and non-profit organizations to pay bogus bills by leading them to believe they would lose their Web site addresses if they didn't.
Government

Submission + - MP wants official email address kept private (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by nk497
nk497 writes: An MP in the UK has had his official email address removed from the parliamentary website, because he's tired of getting "nuisance" emails via online campaign websites. Conservative MP Dominic Raab had his @parliamentary.uk email address removed from his official House of Commons listing after a spat with online lobby group 38 Degrees. "Just processing the emails from your website absorbs a disproportionate amount of time and effort, which we may wish to spend on higher priorities, such as helping constituents in real need or other local or Parliamentary business," he said, threatening to report the group to the government's data and privacy watchdog if they didn't remove the details from their own website. 38 Degrees says Raab gave them his personal email address during the election: "it's only since he became a member of parliament with a taxpayer funded email address that he's now said he doesn't want to hear from people," unless they're willing to shell out for a stamp to write him a letter. The lobby group said Raab likely averaged fewer than two emails from their site each day.
Earth

Submission + - Stephen Hawking's Warning: Abandon Earth Or Die (bigthink.com)

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: According to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it's time to free ourselves from Mother Earth. "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space," Hawking tells Big Think. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn't have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let's hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load."
Science

Submission + - The "net generation" isn't. Old guys wrong again (spiegel.de)

Submitted by Kanel
Kanel writes: Kids that grew up with the internet are not the "digital natives" consultants have made us believe. They'r ok with the net but they don't care much about web 2.0 and find plenty of other things more important than the internet.
Consultants and book-writers, mostly old guys, have called for the education system to be re-modelled to suit this new generation, but they never conducted surveys to see if this "generation @" were anything like what they had envisioned. Turns out children who have known the net their whole life are not particularly skilled at it, nor do they live their life on-line.
Businesses

Submission + - Microsoft, Intel Get Pass on Higher H-1B Fees

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Criticizing companies that outsource high-paying American jobs, Senator Charles Schumer described Indian IT company Infosys as a 'chop shop'. The comments came as the Senate scrambled to fund the $600MM Mexican Border Security Bill by hiking application fees for H-1B and L-1 visas. The Senate measure increases H-1B visa fees by $2,000 per application on firms that have 50% or more of their employees on this visa. Schumer pointed out the bill would not affect high-tech companies such as Intel or Microsoft, although they are among the biggest beneficiaries of the H-1B program.
Biotech

Submission + - Genetically Modified Canola Spreads to Wild Plants (npr.org) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: A research team conducting a survey has found that about 86% of wild canola plants in North Dakota have genetically modified genes in them and 'two samples contained multiple genes from different species of genetically modified plants.' Canola usually has little competition when cultivated but does not fare well in the wild. The Roundup Ready and Liberty Link strains of genetically modified canola appear to be crossing over to wild plants and helping it survive. The University of Arkansas team claims that the ease in which genetically modified canola has 'escaped' into the wild should be noted by seed makers like Mansanto because this is proof that it will happen.

Submission + - TorrentReactor buys and renames a Russian town. (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by baronvoncarson
baronvoncarson writes: Just saw this over at Torrent Freak. They are reporting that TorrentReactor has purchased a small Russian town. Costing $148,000, TorrentReactor have renamed the town after themself and plan on building infrastructure within the town.

Torrent Freak writes;
"With the financial injection from TorrentReactor the people of Gar (now the people of TorrentReactor) will be able to get connected to the Internet. Right now, there are only three computers available in the entire town, and just one is connected to the Internet via a dial-up connection.

“Most of it will be split among villagers and the rest will be used to re-equip the local school, repair roads, purchase agricultural equipment and machinery. Also torrentreactor.net company decided to pay for broadband Internet connection in the settlement which will result in about 900,000 rubles ($30,000) because there are no networks nearby,” TorrentReactor says."
Google

Submission + - What Are Google and Verizon Up To? (nytimes.com)

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: Robert X. Cringley has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he contends that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon but without actually compromising net neutrality by beginning to co-locate some of their portable data centers with Verizon network hubs. "With servers so close to users, Google could not only send its data faster but also avoid sending it over the Internet backbone that connects service providers and for which they all pay," writes Cringley. "This would save space for other traffic — and money for both Verizon and Google, as their backbone bills decline (wishful thinking, but theoretically possible). Net neutrality would be not only intact, but enhanced." So why won't Google and Verizon admit what they're up to? "If my guess is right, then I would think they’re silent because it’s a secret. They’d rather their competitors not know until a few hundred shipping containers are in place — and suddenly YouTube looks more like HBO."
America Online

Submission + - Is AOL finally crashing and burning? (marketwatch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AOL's disastrous quarterly report showed cash from continuing operations was down 44% from a year ago (while "adjusted operating income" was down 37%), as it continues a rocky transition from monthly subscription fees into advertising. (Their quarterly report also notes "the cessation of large-scale access subscriber acquisition campaigns" — investor-speak for the fact that AOL will finally stop mass mailings of free trial accounts.) Unfortunately, AOL's advertising business "did even worse. Its revenues declined by $110 million...every single segment is down." AOL has already lost 86% of the 30 million subscribers it reported in 2001 — down to just 4.3 million — but advertising hasn't yet filled the gap (possibly because many AOL ads had been displayed to the users AOL no longer has). But at least, as one technology blogger notes, AOL has finally released a mobile application, "In the new definition of 'late to the party'."
Space

Submission + - New spacecraft set for dangerous Jupiter trip

Submitted by solaGratia
solaGratia writes: It's the most heavily armored spacecraft ever launched to another planet. But it isn't headed into battle. Instead, it will be flying in one of the deadliest regions of the solar system: Jupiter's magnetosphere. "It's like sticking your head inside a microwave," he said. That's why the craft has to be armored; exposure to that much radiation without shielding would fry the electronics. The craft is Juno, and it's the first mission to Jupiter since Galileo was launched in 1986. It's one of the more wide-ranging studies of the giant planet.
Earth

Submission + - 100 sq-mile ice sheet breaks off Arctic glacier (cnn.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: The 260 square-kilometer (100 square miles) ice island separated from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland early on Thursday, researchers based at the University of Delaware said.

The ice island, which is about half the height of the Empire State Building, is the biggest piece of ice to break away from the Arctic icecap since 1962 and amounts to a quarter of the Petermann 70-kilometer floating ice shelf, according to research leader Andreas Muenchow.

Environmentalists say ice melt is being caused by global warming with Arctic temperatures in the 1990s reaching their warmest level of any decade in at least 2,000 years, according to a study published in 2009.

Current trends could see the Arctic Ocean become ice free in summer months within decades, researchers predict.

CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/07/greenland.ice.island/index.html

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