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Earth

Submission + - Our Lazy Solar Dynamo: Hello Dalton Minimum? (wildwildweather.com)

Submitted by tetrahedrassface
tetrahedrassface writes: Solar maximum is supposed to be occurring, and everything from satellite communications, to your toaster, or radio could be affected. The only problem is that this just isn't happening, and NASA continues to revise down the original prediction. In fact the new prediction for Solar Cycle 24 is a lot smaller and now is pegged at almost 40% of what was predicted. Recently, two scientists at the National Solar Observatory have followed the lead of a prominent Russian scientist, who forecast a dearth of sunspots, and subsequent cooling of Earth for the next several cycles almost five years ago. With Britain currently experiencing the coldest winter in over 300 years, and no new sunspots for the last week, are we heading for a Dalton Minimum, or worse still, yet another Maunder?
Democrats

Democrats Crowdsourcing To Vote Palin In Primaries 1128

Posted by timothy from the can-you-see-the-primary-from-here? dept.
SharpieMarker writes "In what could be the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing project ever, Democrats are beginning to organize to purposely vote for Palin in the 2012 Republican primaries. Their theory is by having Palin as an opponent, Obama will have the best odds at winning reelection. Recent polls have shown that Obama comfortably leads Palin by 10-20 points, but Obama is statistically tied with Romney and barely ahead of Huckabee. They even have a state-by-state primary voting guide to help Democrats navigate various states' rules for voting Palin in Republican primaries."
Games

Submission + - PC gamers crush console brethren in teamwork compo (escapistmagazine.com)

Submitted by
l_bratch
l_bratch writes: "Since December 22nd DICE have been running a competition between each target platform of their latest Battlefield expansion — Bad Company 2: Vietnam. Players were required to complete a large number of "team actions" in game, in order to unlock a hidden, remastered version of the Operation Hastings map from the original Battlefield: Vietnam. PC gamers have completed the task, whereas gamers on both console platforms are only about half way there."

Submission + - One tip enough to put name on terrorist watch list (washingtonpost.com) 1

Submitted by Frosty Piss
Frosty Piss writes: As a result of the US Government’s complete failure to investigate credible warnings about "Underwear Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from none other than Abdulmutallab’s father, senior American counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip can lead to a name being placed on the watch list. But civil liberties groups warn that it is now even more likely that individuals who pose no threat will be swept up in the America’s security apparatus, leading to potential violations of their privacy and making it difficult for them to travel. 'They are secret lists with no way for people to petition to get off or even to know if they're on,' said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Comment Technology is not always for the best. (Score 1) 804

by mortalmatt (#34708686) Attached to: Should Colleges Ban Classroom Laptop Use?
I study engineering in the UK, and at my University there is no culture of bringing laptops into lectures. There are no rules against it, but it would probably be frowned upon if someone did it. Everyone handwrites their notes on paper. Many people will afterwards scan their notes into a computer, type them up, or rewrite them on paper more neatly as I like to do (bad handwriting when writing quickly in lectures). I do not think that there would be any benefit to adding a laptop to the lecture stage, as I know that it would be a huge distraction. It would probably mean that I had neater notes, but who are we kidding? I would inevitably get distracted and start doing other things in the background which would hamper my learning. Just like answering a text in class, it distracts from the lecture. Anyway, the process of typing up the notes afterwards (or whatever other variation you do) will help reinforce the learning.
Security

Submission + - Sophisticated New Android Trojan Discovered (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Security researchers have discovered a new sophisticated Trojan that has emerged in China that is affecting Android devices which can compromise a significant amount of personal data on a user’s phone and send it to remote servers.

Researchers from Lookout Mobile which discovered the Trojan, say the mobile malware is “The most sophisticated Android malware we’ve seen to date, Geinimi is also the first Android malware in the wild that displays botnet-like capabilities. Once the malware is installed on a user’s phone, it has the potential to receive commands from a remote server that allow the owner of that server to control the phone.”

What makes the Trojan different than most “standard” mobile malware is that Geinimi is being “grafted” onto repackaged versions of legitimate applications, primarily games, and distributed in third-party Chinese Android app markets...
The Media

Is Wired Hiding Key Evidence On Bradley Manning? 381

Posted by CmdrTaco from the also-who-killed-jfk dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon that for more than six months, Wired's Senior Editor Kevin Poulsen has possessed but refuses to publish the key evidence in the arrest of US Army PFC Bradley Manning for allegedly acting as WikiLeaks' source. 'In late May, Adrian Lamo — at the same time he was working with the FBI as a government informant against Manning — gave Poulsen what he purported to be the full chat logs between Manning and Lamo in which the Army Private allegedly confessed to having been the source for the various cables, documents and video which WikiLeaks released throughout this year,' writes Greenwald. Wired has only published about 25% of the logs writes Greenwald and Poulsen's concealment of the chat logs is actively blinding journalists who have been attempting to learn what Manning did and did not do. 'Whether by design or effect, Kevin Poulsen and Wired have played a critical role in concealing the truth from the public about the Manning arrest,' concludes Greenwald. 'This has long ago left the realm of mere journalistic failure and stands as one of the most egregious examples of active truth-hiding by a "journalist" I've ever seen.'"

Comment There is just too much Linux! (Score 1) 948

by mortalmatt (#28152313) Attached to: Harsh Words From Google On Linux Development
I used linux (open suse with kde) for the first time recently, installing it on a machine that had previously been running the win 7 beta. Apart from the fact that I found it totally impossible to get sound from it despite spending almost 2 hours installing drivers (which are near impossible to find for linux) I just found it to be less useable overall (than any of the windows systems or mac osx). I had been considering giving it to my parents to replace their windows machine, but I quickly realised that they would be unable to use it. I think that considering there is such a good community behind all of the linux distros the effort would be much better used on creating a single more customizable distro. It would be far easier on the software devs as well. At the moment they cant be bothered realeasing software for such a small percentage of users and it is damaging the image of linux.
Cellphones

Classic Doom Coming To the iPhone Next Month 90

Posted by Soulskill from the hurt-me-plenty dept.
Two months after releasing an iPhone port of Wolfenstein 3D, id's John Carmack brings an update to the similar effort underway to bring classic Doom to the iPhone as well. He provides some detailed information on the development process, and says they're aiming for a release some time next month. "One of the things I love about open sourcing the old games is that Doom has been ported to practically everything with a 32 bit processor, from toasters to supercomputers. We hear from a lot of companies that have moved the old games onto various set top boxes and PDAs, and want licenses to sell them. We generally come to some terms in the five figure range for obscure platforms, but it is always with a bit of a sigh. The game runs, and the demo playbacks look good, but there is a distinct lack of actually caring about the game play itself. Making Doom run on a new platform is only a couple days of work. Making it a really good game on a platform that doesn't have a keyboard and mouse or an excess of processing power is an honest development effort."

Comment While they are at it... (Score 1) 580

by mortalmatt (#27886619) Attached to: German Gov To Ban Paintballing After Shooting
While they are engaging in all this moral spelunking why do the Germans not just go ahead and ban karting which 'trivializes' the dangers of driving. Or ban parachuting which 'trivializes' the dangers of gravity. Or while they are at it, they could ban fun which 'trivializes' life in Germany these days which the government wants to make as dull as possible until you are shot to death by a psychotic teenager.

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