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The Military

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."
Mars

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."
GNOME

GNOME 3.8 Released Featuring New "Classic" Mode 267

Hot on the heels of the Gtk+ 3.8 release comes GNOME 3.8. There are a few general UI improvements, but the highlight for many is the new Classic mode that replaces fallback. Instead of using code based on the old GNOME panel, Classic emulates the feel of GNOME 2 through Shell extensions (just like Linux Mint's Cinnamon interface). From the release notes: "Classic mode is a new feature for those people who prefer a more traditional desktop experience. Built entirely from GNOME 3 technologies, it adds a number of features such as an application menu, a places menu and a window switcher along the bottom of the screen. Each of these features can be used individually or in combination with other GNOME extensions."
Transportation

Submission + - UK Green Lights HS2 High Speed Rail Line (inhabitat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The United Kingdom has given the green light to the first phase of its proposed High Speed Two train line. In response to environmental concerns, the route for HS2 will now include extra tunneling in the first 90 miles, so not to disrupt the natural beauty of the English countryside. The first phase will connect London to Birmingham and could be functional by 2026.
Security

Submission + - Symantec Sued For Running Fake "Scareware" Scans (forbes.com)

Sparrowvsrevolution writes: James Gross, a resident of Washington State, filed what he intends to be a class action lawsuit against Symantec in a Northern District California court Tuesday, claiming that Symantec defrauds consumers by running fake scans on their machines, with results designed to bully users into upgrading to a paid version of the company’s software. “The scareware does not conduct any actual diagnostic testing on the computer,” the complaint reads. "Instead, Symantec intentionally designed its scareware to invariably report, in an extremely ominous manner, that harmful errors, privacy risks, and other computer problems exist on the user’s PC, regardless of the real condition of the consumer’s computer." Symantec denies those claims, but it has a history of using fearmongering tactics to bump up its sales. A notice it showed in 2010 to users whose subscriptions were ending in 2010 warned that "cybercriminals are about to clean out your bank account...Protect yourself now, or beg for mercy.”
Transportation

Submission + - In-Car Video Chat And 4G Streaming From OnStar (motorauthority.com)

thecarchik writes: At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, OnStar will reveal the latest on their system. This time, the system will be equipped in a Chevy Volt research vehicle, which seems to be a more appropriate vessel than a Buick for previewing your latest technology. In a press release teasing the appearance, OnStar said the system will offer such features as cloud-based streaming of information and entertainment, rear-seat infotainment management and video chat.

Video chat may sound like a terrifying feature for any car, but OnStar said in last year's CES press materials that the feature would only be enabled when the car is in park. Other features like video streaming would also be limited to the rear seat or to a parked vehicle. In addition to the 4G system, OnStar will show the latest in smart-charging technology. It will also make an announcement about its over-the-counter FMV system.

Android

Submission + - Gaining a Remote Shell on Android (viaforensics.com)

SharkLaser writes: The security of Android devices has come under scrunity in recent months. Android market place has been plagued with countless amount of trojaned apps and researchers have identified various root exploits and permissions leaks that can be exploited to, for example, send premium rate SMS's. Now researcher Thomas Cannon of ViaForensics is demonstrating a method for setting up remote shell on an Android device without using any exploits or vulnerabilities. The security hole is not new, and it has been pointed out for a number of years, but Google has still to fix it. The method works on various versions of Android, up to and including the newest Ice Cream Sandwich.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Assembling a desktop environment 1

paxcoder writes: Gnome Shell... is different. Very much so. The fallback was inadequate. I suspect that many people, like me, turned to the alternatives. My choice was LXDE, which worked ok, until (lx-)panel broke in the unstable branch of the distro that I use. Tired of using the terminal to run stuff, I replaced the standard panel with the one from Xfce. That made me realize that we really don't need a packaged desktop environment, there are pieces ready for assembly. If you customize your graphical environment, what elements do you use? Which window manager, file manager, panel(etc.) would you recommend? Do you have a panel with a hardware usage monitors, how do you switch between workspaces? Anything cool we might not know about?
Facebook

Cook's Magazine Claims Web Is Public Domain 565

Isarian writes with a story, as reported on Gawker and many other places, that "Cooks Source Magazine is being raked over the coals today as word spreads about its theft of a recipe from Monica Gaudio, a recipe author who discovered her recipe has been published without her knowledge. When confronting the publisher of the offending magazine, she was told, 'But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it!' In addition to the story passing around online, Cooks Source Magazine's Facebook page is being overwhelmed with posts by users glad to explain copyright law to the wayward publisher."
Image

Woman Jailed For Starting Office Fire To Leave Work Early 136

A Florida woman was sentenced to nine months in jail, followed by five years of probation, for starting an office fire so she could get out of work early. From the article: "Pasco sheriff's investigators said Michelle Perrino, 40, started a fire at Bayonet Point Oxygen on May 12, 2009. Perrino drew suspicion when she mentioned the fire's origin — a filing cabinet — during an employee meeting. Employees had not been told where the fire started." I hope she had the good sense to start the fire on Friday so she could have a long weekend.
Programming

Submission + - Rewrite app: costly, time-consuming, but worth it? (webnodes.com)

vlangber writes: Joel Spolsky wrote a famous blog post back in 2000 called "Things You Should Never Do, Part I", where he wrote the following: ".. the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make: They decided to rewrite the code from scratch." Here is a story about a software company that decided to rewrite their application from scratch, and their experiences from that process."
NB! I forgot to login the first time I posted this story earlier today. Could you please update the original story and link it to my user? Thanks!

Science

Submission + - UC Berkeley Asking Incoming Students For DNA (ktvu.com) 1

peterofoz writes: What could possibly go wrong?

The students will be asked to voluntarily submit a DNA sample. The cotton swabs will come with two bar code labels. One label will be put on the DNA sample and the other is kept for the students own records.

Next: Police subpoena DNA records to identify possible terror suspects. News at 11:00

Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Sues Salesforce.com Over Patents (cnet.com) 1

WrongSizeGlass writes: Cnet is reporting that Microsoft is suing Salesforce.com claiming it infringes on nine patents. "Microsoft has been a leader and innovator in the software industry for decades and continues to invest billions of dollars each year in bringing great software products and services to market" "We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard that investment, and therefore cannot stand idly by when others infringe our IP rights." Two of the patents in question are a "system and method for providing and displaying a Web page having an embedded menu" and a "method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display."
Science

Submission + - "Argonaut" Octopus Sucks Air Into Shell as Ballast (discovermagazine.com)

audiovideodisco writes: Even among octopuses, the Argonaut must be one of the coolest. It gets its nickname—"paper nautilus"—from the fragile shell the female assembles around herself after mating with the tiny male (whose tentacle/penis breaks off and remains in the female). For millennia, people have wondered what the shell was for; Aristotle thought the octopus used it as a boat and its tentacles as oars and sails.

Now scientists who managed to study Argonauts in the wild confirm a different hypothesis: that the octopus sucks air into its shell and uses it for ballast as it weaves its way through the ocean like a tiny submarine. The researchers' beautiful video and photographs show just how the Argonaut pulls off this trick. The regular (non-paper) nautilus also uses its shell for ballast, but the distant relationship between it and all octopuses suggests this is a case of convergent evolution.

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