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Space

It's Official: Voyager 1 Is an Interstellar Probe 218

Posted by timothy from the take-that-former-soviet-union dept.
astroengine writes "After a 35-year, 11-billion mile journey, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft left the solar system to become the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, new evidence from a team of scientists shows. 'It's kind of like landing on the moon. It's a milestone in history. Like all science, it's exploration. It's new knowledge,' long-time Voyager scientist Donald Gurnett, with the University of Iowa, told Discovery News. The first signs that the spacecraft had left the solar system's heliopause was a sudden drop in solar particles and a corresponding increase in cosmic rays in 2012, but this evidence alone wasn't conclusive. Through indirect means, scientist analyzing oscillations along the probe's 10-meter (33-foot) antennas were able to deduce that Voyager was traveling through a less dense medium — i.e. interstellar space." You can watch NASA's briefing on the probe's progress here.
Government

Liberal Saudi Web Forum Founder Sentenced To 600 Lashes and 7 Years In Prison 506

Posted by Soulskill from the take-a-moment-to-appreciate-free-speech dept.
cold fjord writes "Some reformers travel a harder road than others. The Seattle Times reports, 'The founder of a liberal-minded website in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes after angering Islamic authorities in the ultraconservative kingdom. ... Raif Badawi, through his website known as Free Saudi Liberals, had urged Saudis to share opinions about the role of religion in the country, which follows a strict form of Islam that includes harsh punishments for challenging customs. A judge in the Red Sea port of Jiddah imposed the sentences but dropped charges of apostasy, which could have brought a death sentence, the Al-Watan newspaper reported. Badawi has been held since June 2012.' More at details are available at the BBC, which informs us that 'The judge ordered that the 600 lashes be administered 150 at a time.' 'The lashes could be spread out but in Sharia this is a sign that the judge wants to insult him,' Badawi's lawyer said."
Crime

Submission + - U.S. Attorney Chided Swartz on Day of Suicide 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: 'The e-mail that Defendant Swartz’s supplemental memorandum cites as paramount to his fifth motion to suppress [evidence against him] is relevant, but not nearly as important as he tries to make it out to be,' quipped United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz in a court filing made on the same day Aaron Swartz committed suicide. In the 1-7-2011 e-mail Ortiz refers to, which was not produced for Swartz until Dec. 14th — almost two years after his 1-6-2011 arrest — a Secret Service agent reported to the Assistant U.S. Attorney that he was 'prepared to take custody anytime' of Swartz's laptop, although no one had yet sought a warrant to search the computer. In Prosecutor as Bully, Larry Lessig laments, 'They [JSTOR] declined to pursue their own action against Aaron, and they asked the government to drop its. MIT, to its great shame, was not as clear, and so the prosecutor had the excuse he needed to continue his war against the “criminal” who we who loved him knew as Aaron.' Swartz's family also had harsh words for MIT and prosecutors: 'Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney's office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron.' With MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest currently serving as a Trustee of JSTOR parent Ithaka as well as a Trustee of The MIT Corporation, one might have expected MIT to issue a statement similar to the let's-put-this-behind-us one JSTOR made on the Swartz case back in 2011.

Submission + - Aaron Swartz commits suicide (mit.edu)

Submitted by maijc
maijc writes: Computer activist Aaron H. Swartz committed suicide in New York City yesterday, Jan. 11, according to his uncle, Michael Wolf; Swartz, 26, was indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them. He is best know for co-authoring the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14 and was one of the three co-owners of the site Reddit.

Comment git-annex assistant (Score 1) 272

by jefurii (#42427067) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Easiest Way To Consolidate Household Media?

"go easy on the 'just apt-get FubarPackageInstaller.gzip and rd -m Arglebargle' stuff"...

So why is he asking Slashdot?

Seriously, git-annex assistant might be the solution for part of his problem. assistant is a pretty front end to git-annex which uses git to sync repositories of file metadata and several other means (rsync, etc) to schlep the files between repositories. It won't run on his Windows box but does run on OS X and might be easy enough for his wife to use.

Comment Re:$16,000 dollars in cash ... (Score 1) 936

by jefurii (#42274813) Attached to: New Hampshire Cops Use Taser On Woman Buying Too Many iPhones
Makes perfect sense to me. Most Chinese businesses I know here in LA are cash-only because they'd rather keep all the money instead of giving a share to the credit card and credit processing companies. Doesn't surprise me a bit that a non-English-speaking Chinese woman would want to shop with cash.
Android

Alibaba Says Google Threatened Acer With Banishment From Android 352

Posted by timothy from the they'd-have-to-use-windows-phone dept.
Spy Handler writes "In a Microsoft-esque move, Google threatened Acer with banishment from Android if it went ahead with its new cellphone project with Alibaba (China's version of Amazon), using an OS called Aliyun. Acer has remained silent on the issue, but Alibaba reports that they received notification from Google, stating 'if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorization with Acer.' A possible reason for Google's upset is that the Aliyun OS, which is not Android, can run Android apps as well as its own."

Comment Distance! (Score 1) 183

by jefurii (#39639055) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: The Very Best Paper Airplane?
I almost won a distance competition in Boy's Brigade in elementary school with this design. It was just a piece of paper crumpled up as tight as I could squeeze it (I think I stepped on it a couple times too) and thrown as hard as possible. The guy who came in second of course argued that it wasn't an airplane. I got some kind of award, though it might have been some kind of "outside the box" award.
NASA

DARPA Chooses Leader For 100-Year Starship Project 180

Posted by timothy from the make-it-so dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "With Nasa scaling back its manned space programs, the idea of a manned trip to the stars may sound audacious, but the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The goal is not to have the government fund the actual building of spacecraft destined for the stars, but rather to create a foundation that can last 100 years in order to help foster the research needed for interstellar travel. Now DARPA has provided $500,000 in seed money to help jumpstart the effort and chosen Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to go into space, to lead 100YSS. Jemison, who is also a physician and engineer, left NASA in 1993 after a six-year stint in which she served as science mission specialist aboard space shuttle Endeavour, becoming the first black woman to fly in space. Since leaving the space agency, she has been involved in education and outreach efforts and technology development. Rounding out her resume, Jemison also served as a medical officer for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and Liberia, is a professionally trained dancer, speaks Russian, Swahili and Japanese, and was the first real astronaut to make a cameo in an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation.' Jemison won the contract with her proposal titled 'An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond.'"

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 1) 312

by jefurii (#37272066) Attached to: Kernel.org Compromised

But I've always been told by the fanboys that Linux is inherently secure, right? So that's not possible.

A trojan startup file was added to the system start up scripts

But Linux has no viruses/trojans/malware, right?

To clarify, the kernel.org announcement says that trojan startup file was added to the server's startup scripts.

Comment Re:Buy more ram (Score 3, Insightful) 475

by jefurii (#35986400) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best Small-Footprint Modern Browser?

It's not ONLY a stick of ram. It's an indicator to your employer that you don't understand boundaries, roles, and responsibilities.

Wow, I'm glad I don't work at your company. I've been blessed with a sane IT guy where I work. When I said I needed a Linux desktop, he got me a bare PC, handed it over to me and said, "Your on your own". We get along great.

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