Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Government

As Nuclear Reactors Age, the Money To Close Them Lags 292

Posted by samzenpus from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
Harperdog writes "A worrying bit of news about nuclear reactors in the U.S. from the NYT: 'The operators of 20 of the nation's aging nuclear reactors, including some whose licenses expire soon, have not saved nearly enough money for prompt and proper dismantling. If it turns out that they must close, the owners intend to let them sit like industrial relics for 20 to 60 years or even longer while interest accrues in the reactors' retirement accounts.'"

Comment Experience is useful... (Score 1) 520

by krisher (#37513376) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: CS Grads Taking IT Jobs?

It probably won't help you land a development job, but the skills you can pick up in an IT job can be extremely useful. My first job out of college was working in a network operations center doing network and systems administration. We used to make fun of the developers that worked downstairs because half of them couldn't figure out how to install the tools they needed for their jobs. After landing a software engineering position, I turned around and used my experience to set up all sorts of infrastructure that helped manage our projects (e.g. new version control systems, continuous integration, issue tracking, shared storage, etc.) While the IT experience did not really help me get the job, it helped make me a key member of the team.
Education

Submission + - Catching exam cheats with a spectrum analyzer (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Police in Taiwan have used a set of spectrum analyzers to catch at least three people suspected of cheating on an exam by monitoring them for mobile phone signals. Officers used three FSH4 analyzers specially configured by the German manufacturer Rohde & Schwarz to monitor an exam in south Taiwan for prospective government workers."
Science

Submission + - Nobel Prize winner claims DNA performs quantum tel

Submitted by HJED
HJED writes: New Scientist is reporting that the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2008, Luc Montagnier is claiming that DNA can send 'electromagnetic imprints' of it self into distant cells and fluids which can then be used by enzymes to create copies of the original DNA. This would be equivalent to quantum teleportation.
Original paper is here[PDF].
NASA

Submission + - NASA Pitches Heavy Lift Vehicle to Congress (spacenews.com)

Submitted by BJ_Covert_Action
BJ_Covert_Action writes: Well, Congress demanded, last year, that NASA develop a budget plan and proposal for a new heavy lift vehicle in light of the Ares V cancellation. Recently, NASA gave Congress just what they wanted. On January 11th, Douglas Cooke pitched an interim report to Congressional members detailing the basic design concepts that would go into a new heavy lift vehicle. Congress required that the new heavy lift vehicle maximize the reuse of space shuttle components as part of its budget battle with President Obama last year. As a result, NASA basically copy-pasted the Ares V design into a new report and pitched it to Congress on the 11th. The proposed vehicle will require the five segment SRB's that were proposed for the Ares V rocket. It will utilize the SSME's for it's main liquid stage. It will reuse the shuttle external tank as the primary core for the liquid booster (the same tank design that is currently giving the Discovery shuttle launch so many problems). And it will utilize the new J-2X engine that NASA has been developing for the Ares V project as an upper stage. In other words, NASA proposed to Congress exactly what Congress asked for.

The catch is, NASA also admitted that they will not be able to complete the proposed rocket on the budget that Congress has given them. Neither will they be able to finish the rocket on time. Finally, NASA has commented that a current study being conducted by 13 independent contractors is still being conducted to determine if there is a better design out there that NASA has, 'overlooked.' NASA has stated that, should that study finds any alternate, interesting designs then, they will need to consider those seriously.
Software

Submission + - Software engineers have the best US jobs (wsj.com)

Submitted by D H NG
D H NG writes: According to a new study by CareerCast.com, software engineers have the best jobs of 2011 in the United States, based on factors such as income, working environment, stress, physical demands and job outlook, using Labor Department and Census data. Mid-level software engineers make between $87,000 and $132,000 a year, putting them in the top 25% of the 200 professions studied by income. Software engineers beat out last year's number one job, actuary, which came in third, behind mathematician.

Comment A good strategy (Score 4, Insightful) 71

by krisher (#25684037) Attached to: ODF Toolkit Announced

Sun and IBM are opening a community that will help propel adoption of the ODF standard by making the format more useful. By providing free libraries to access the data inside the documents, they encourage applications that consider the importance of the content, and minimize lock-in for a single presentation tool.
Software

Wayland, a New X Server For Linux 487

Posted by kdawson from the at-least-it's-not-called-Y dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Phoronix has a new article out on Wayland: A New X Server For Linux. One of Red Hat's engineers has started writing a new X11 server around today's needs and to eliminate the cruft that has been in this critical piece of free software for more than a decade. This new server is called Wayland and it is designed with newer hardware features like kernel mode-setting and a kernel memory manager for graphics. Wayland is also dramatically simpler to target for in development. A compositing manager is embedded into the Wayland server and ensures 'every frame is perfect' according to the project's leader."
Media

Submission + - Things not looking for the BBC's iPlayer (binaryfreedom.info)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The future of iPlayer, the BBC's new online on-demand system for delivering content is continuing to look bleaker. With ISPs threatening to throttle the content delivered through the BBC's iPlayer, consumers petitioning the UK government and the BBC to drop the DRM and Microsoft-only technology, and threatened legal action from the OSC, the last thing the BBC wanted today was street protests at their office and at the BBC Media Complex accompanied by a report issued by DefectiveByDesign about their association with Microsoft.
Privacy

China To Deploy World's Largest People Tracking Network 368

Posted by Zonk from the big-brother-goes-bigtime dept.
hackingbear writes "News.com reports that China is building the largest and most sophisticated people-tracking network in the world, all to track citizens in the city of Shenzhen. This network utilizes 20,000 intelligent digital cameras and RFID cards to keep track of the 12.4 million people living in the Southern port city. The key to the system is the new residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips. 'Data on the chip will include not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China's controversial "one child" policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.' While I lived in Shenzhen, there indeed were (and still are) plenty of crimes. One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping. Still, this will clearly raise the fear of human rights abuses. And ... 'one of the most startling aspects of this plan is that this project is mostly made possible by an American company with solid venture fundings.'"
Google

Submission + - Google shows cell phone prototype to vendors

Submitted by taoman1
taoman1 writes: Google Inc. has developed a prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail and Web browser software applications, according to a story published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.
Operating Systems

Submission + - Can Apple really penetrate the corporate world?

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Apple, long a ghost in the corporate-infrastructure mainstream, is beginning to cast a shadow as IT departments discover Mac platforms that are being transformed into realistic alternatives to Windows and Linux. A number of factors are helping raise the eyebrows of those responsible for upgrading desktops and servers: for example, Apple's shift to the Intel architecture; the inclusion of infrastructure and interoperability hooks, such as directory services in the Mac OS X Server; dual-boot capabilities; clustering and storage technology; third-party virtualization software; and comparison shopping, which is being fostered by migration costs and hardware overhauls associated with Microsoft's Vista. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/022707-mac-o s-going-corporate.html?page=1"
Security

Chinese Hack Attacks on DoD Networks Coordinated 295

Posted by Zonk from the man-your-battlestations dept.
An anonymous reader writes " The Naval Network Warfare Command says that Chinese hackers are relentlessly targeting Defense Department networks with cyber attacks. The 'volume, proficiency and sophistication' of the attacks supports the theory that the attacks are government supported. The motives of the attacks emanating from China include technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD network for future action. Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety."

Fly-by-Wireless Plane Takes to the Sky 376

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the dropped-connection-a-real-bummer dept.
galactic_grub writes to tell us that engineers in Portugal have built and flown a plane with no wires or mechanical connections between the major systems, only a wireless network. From the article: "Tests flights carried out in Portugal have shown that the system works well. Cristina Santos, at Minho University in Portugal, who developed the plane, says the aim is primarily to reduce weight and power requirements. 'Also, if you do not have the cables then the system is much more flexible to changes,' she says."

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Close