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Christmas Cheer

North Korea Threatens South Korea Over Christmas Lights 441

Posted by samzenpus from the you're-a-mean-one-mr.-jong-il dept.
K7DAN writes "North Korea warned South Korea on Sunday of 'unexpected consequences' if Seoul displays Christmas lights near the tense border, and vowed to retaliate for what it called 'psychological warfare.' From the article: 'The tree-shaped, 30 metre-high steel structure on Aegibong hill - some 3km (2 miles) from the border - was illuminated by thousands of small light bulbs last year. It could be seen from the North's major city of Kaesong across the border, according to media reports. Pyongyang has previously accused Seoul of using the tree to spread the Christian message to people inside the secular state.'"
Games

LEGO Universe To Shut Down 121

Posted by Soulskill from the it-never-worked-with-my-knockoff-building-blocks-anyway dept.
CmdrStone writes "The Universe is ending in the eyes of LEGO. (Cheap pun, I know.) From the announcement: 'We are very sad to announce that LEGO Universe will be closing on January 31, 2012. This was a very difficult decision to make, but unfortunately LEGO Universe has not been able to attract the number of members needed to keep the game open.' It's too bad; I enjoyed playing this game with my kids. Open sourcing the game would be nice."
First Person Shooters (Games)

Tremulous Switching To Xbox Live, Exclusively 43

Posted by timothy from the console-yourself dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Darklegion Development and Microsoft have apparently been working on a new version of Tremulous for the Xbox 360. Timbor, project founder and a main developer of Tremulous, said this in a recent announcement: 'What does this mean for you? You will now be able to play Tremulous on Xbox Live with thousands of other gamers, earning achievements and showing off your gaming skill. In the best interest of maintaining a steady and secure Tremulous playerbase, Tremulous is going to be exclusively available for Xbox Live. Existing infrastructure will no longer receive official support. Players who have already been playing for at least three months can apply for a €5/$7 coupon as a show of our appreciation of your enthusiasm so far! What does this mean for the community? Hopefully nothing! While the production of Tremulous switches from its current open source development to a closed source environment handled by the very capable and experienced Microsoft engineers, the efforts of the community will still be valued. In this collaboration we have made it very clear that the Tremulous community is very important to the game, and Microsoft agrees with us on this point. We are confident that this move will not stifle the creative output of the community.'"
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - What to do with a hundred hard drives? 3

Submitted by
Makoto916
Makoto916 writes: "In five years with my current employer as the IT administrator I've amassed a sizable cabinet of discarded hard drives; just shy of 100 in fact. All of the drives range in size from 20GB up to 300GB. They've all been stored in anti-stat bags and spot checks of even the oldest ones show that that most all of them still work. Individually they're mostly useless for our line of work which is digital video production. However, the collective storage potential is quite significant. They are of varying size and speeds, but the one commonality is they're all IDE.

In the Slashdot community's opinion, what is the best way to approach connecting all of these devices and realizing their storage potential? On a budget of course.

Now I'd never use such an array for critical data storage, but it certainly would be useful as a massive backup array to our existing SAN that does store critical data.

I have several spare and functioning PCs, but not nearly enough to utilize their internal IDE controllers; even with multiple add-in controllers it still wouldn't be enough. Not to mention the nightmare of managing a bunch of independent PCs.

I've looked into ATA Over Ethernet and there's a lot of potential there, but current 15 to 20 bay AoE cabinets are expensive and single device enclosures are so rare that they're also expensive. Are there any hardware hackers out there that have crafted their own home-brew AoE systems? Could they scale to 100 drives? Is there a better way?"
Security

Submission + - Leaning Tower of Pisa Secure for 300 More Years

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Medieval architects only got as far as the third floor of the tower of Pisa before it began to lean in 1178 and by 1990 it had tilted more than four meters off its true vertical, with conservationists estimating that the entire 14,500-ton structure would collapse "some time between 2030 and 2040." Now the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been stabilized and declared safe for at least another three centuries after it was anchored to cables and lead counterweights while 70 tons of soil was removed from the north side — away from the lean — and cement was injected into the ground to relieve the pressure. The tilt has now returned to where it was in the early 19th century and architects say there was never any intention to straighten the 56m tower, only to stop it sinking further. Nicholas Shrady, author "Tilt: A Skewed History of the Tower of Pisa" says that the tower was destined to tilt from the outset because of the decision to build the tower "on what is essentially a former bog" and that the tower has previously come close to collapsing in 1838, 1934, and 1995. Although Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped cannon balls from the tower in a gravity experiment, Shrady says the myth is the "result of the overripe imagination of Galileo's secretary and first biographer, Vincenzo Viviani.""
Security

Submission + - Smart phones 'bigger security risk' than laptops (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "A recent survey of 300 senior IT staff found that 94% fear PDAs present a security risk, just above the 88% who highlighted mobile storage devices as a worry. Nearly eight in 10 said laptops were an issue. Only four in 10 had encrypted data on their laptops, and the remainder said the information was "not worth" protecting. A key danger with PDAs was that over half of IT executives surveyed were "not bothering" to enter a password when they used their phone. Peter Mitteregger, European VP at the company, said: "Companies need to regain control of these devices and the data that they are carrying, or risk finding their investment in securing the enterprise misplaced and woefully inadequate." Is this just iPhone fear-factor stuff? Do you think the passwords execs could remember would help with securing PDAs and smart phones?"
Space

Submission + - SPAM: Ghostly ring found circling dead star

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "An international team of scientists has found a strange ring around a dead star by using images taken by NASA's Spitzer space telescope. This star, called SGR 1900+14, belongs to a class of objects known as magnetars. According to NASA, a magnetar is 'a highly magnetized neutron star and the remnant of a brilliant supernova explosion signaling the death throes of a massive star.' So far, about a dozen magnetars have been found. An amazing thing about these stellar objects is their magnetic field. One of the researchers said that 'magnetars possess magnetic fields a million billion times stronger than the magnetic field of the Earth.' But read more for additional references and a spectacular picture showing this ghostly ring extending seven light-years across around the magnetar."

Comment What I look for in an older subnotebook... (Score 5, Funny) 250

by mrbluze (#23456576) Attached to: What to Seek in an Older Subnotebook?
  • Likes to talk, humorous, friendly.
  • Likes movies, walks along the beach at sunset, and recharging by an open fireplace.
  • Likes cooking.
  • Has own job.
  • Light enough to carry with one hand.
  • Happy with all positions, including upside-down and backwards.
  • Color is not important to me, but dress sense is.
  • Looking for casual to long term commitment. Emphasis on fun.

Comment Re:Who really benefits? (Score 5, Funny) 240

by Anonymous Coward (#23451288) Attached to: Dag Wieers Scoffs at Coordinated Linux Release Proposal

try this lot [microsoft.com]. Their disto still seems fairly popular though

Tell me about it, been trying to get this one working for ages. Firstly, my friend tells me it's only available on bittorrent, instead of just downloading it from their site. Which is a bit weird, but whatever.

Where I'm really having trouble is with the package manager. How do I add a software repository in that add/remove programs thing? It doesn't seem to mention what type of packages are compatible with it either. Am guessing RPM or DEB, but which is it, maybe someone could enlighten me?

To be honest, I'm about to give up on this Windows thing, it's just not ready for the mainstream.
Space

Submission + - Why Life on Mars May Foretell Our Doom 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Nick Bostrom has a long article that is well worth reading with an interesting interpretation why on the failure of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) for the past half a century is good news and why the discovery of life on Mars could foretell our doom. Bostrom postulates a "Great Filter," which can be thought of as a probability barrier and consists of one or more evolutionary transitions or steps that must be traversed at great odds in order for an Earth-like planet to produce a civilization capable of exploring distant solar systems. The Great Filter must be sufficiently powerful that even with many billions of rolls of the dice, one ends up with nothing: no aliens, no spacecraft, no signals. If the filter is in our past, there must be some extremely improbable step in the sequence of events whereby an Earth-like planet gives rise to an intelligent species and it follows that we are most likely the only technologically advanced civilization in our galaxy. But if the Great Filter is still ahead of us, that would mean that some great improbability prevents almost all civilizations at our current stage of technological development from progressing to the point where they engage in large-scale space colonization — perhaps some very powerful weapons technology that causes its extinction. If we discover life-forms on Mars, the effect would be to shift the probability against the hypothesis that the Great Filter is behind us. If Mars is found to be barren, we would have some grounds for hope that all or most of the Great Filter is in our past and in that case, we may have a significant chance of one day growing into something greater than we are now."
The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: FBI bulks up digital forensic network

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The FBI this week said it was opening two new US Regional Computer Forensics Laboratories where examiners are conducting a growing number forensic examinations of digital media, in support of an investigation and/or prosecution of a federal, state, or local crime. With the addition of the new facilities in Los Angeles and Albuquerque, the FBI will have 16 RCFLs nationwide. And they are needed: During 2007, RCFL experts conducted 4,634 exams, processing 1,288 terabytes of information. A total of 76,581 digital devices were examined (the most popular media by far — CDs, coming in at 37,424; followed by hard disk drives at 17,378; floppy disks at 11,781; and DVDs at 4,374). The number of CDs, cell phones, and flash media devices examined doubled from the previous year. [spam URL stripped]"
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