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Comment Whatever worked in the past (Score 1) 364

Is probably good now.

When I was in college I had a PDA (Visor Edge) that I took all my handwritten notes on. It allowed for backup to my desktop after class, lightened the load of carrying a dozen notebooks, and I could add spreadsheets and other data along with it. For any overhead slides I brought a digital camera. Why copy manually what can be copied digitally? The other students thought I was cheating, the professors thought it was ingenious.

These days I would probably find it hard to replicate the old Graffiti input since typing on my phone isn't quite the same (bluetooth keyboard?) but it worked for me and I would try to keep that paradigm as closely as I can.

Space

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."

Comment At last! (Score 1) 378

I welcome the addition and support for this. As a "front end" developer I get all kinds of requests for non-standard fonts to be used. They pay the bills so we do it; all as images. Changing a site from one color to another requires reworking dozens to hundreds of images. If all I have to do is embed their dumb fonts, I can go back to complaining about their color choices instead of mountains of work it'll cause me ;)
Transportation

Submission + - General Motors: Driverless cars ready by 2018

Gregor Stipicic writes: " Cars that drive themselves — even parking at their destination — could be ready for sale within a decade, General Motors Corp. executives say. "This is not science fiction," Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development, said in a recent interview. GM plans to use an inexpensive computer chip and an antenna to link vehicles equipped with driverless technologies. The first use likely would be on highways; people would have the option to choose a driverless mode while they still would control the vehicle on local streets, Burns said. He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018. "
The Internet

Submission + - Four Root DNS Servers Go IPv6 On February 4th

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes: "On February 4th, IANA will add AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of the four root servers. With this transition, it will finally be possible for two internet hosts to communicate without using IPv4 at all. Certain obsolete software may face compatibility problems due to the change, but those issues are addressed in an ICANN report [PDF]."
Space

Submission + - Russia to Build New Spacecraft by 2020 (techluver.com)

Tech.Luver writes: "Russia has launched a project to create a new generation of spacecraft and boosters, the head of national space administration said on Friday, making clear that they would not appear on orbit before 2020. "A tender to design a new booster and spaceship has been announced," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Roskosmos chief Anatoly Perminov as saying. Leadership in space exploration was an issue of national pride in the Soviet Union, which was the first to launch a satellite and a human into space. Although badly hit in the years of post-Soviet political and economic turmoil, the space sector remains one of a few where Russia remains competitive and on which it pins hopes to diversify its economy heavily reliant on oil and gas exports. ( http://techluver.com/2007/11/09/russia-to-build-new-spacecraft-by-2020/ )"
Censorship

Submission + - How to Dodge the Chinese Internet Censor (eweek.com)

eweekhickins writes: "A report written by a tech worker in China describes the pervasive censorship, abetted by ample manpower and funding estimated at $27 billion in U.S. dollars. The author, Mr. Tao, also writes that plenty of Chinese are finding ways to resist censorship, and offers tips on how to keep evading Big GeGe (that's older brother). Not surprisingly, self-censorship is very prevalent. Also not surprisingly, the authorities are starting to catch on to things like RSS feeds. It's another race for survival between the tiny mammals and the lumbering dinosaurs."
Privacy

Submission + - Bill would let ID theft victims seek restitution (news.com)

verybadradio writes: "A bipartisan bill that would let victims of identity theft seek restitution for money and time they spent repairing their credit history was introduced on Tuesday in the Senate.

The legislation would also give federal prosecutors more tools to combat identity theft and cybercrime, according to sponsors Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania."

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