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Hardware

Submission + - Stephen Fry and DVD Jon back USB Sniffer Project (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: bushing and pytey of the iPhone DevTeam and Team Twiizers have created a Kickstarter project to fund the build of an open-source/open-hardware high-speed USB protocol analyzer. The board features a high-speed USB 2.0 sniffer that will help with the reverse engineering of proprietary USB hardware, the project has gained the backing from two high-profile individuals Jon Lech Johansen (DVD Jon) and Actor and Comedian Stephen Fry
NASA

Critics Call For NASA TV To "Liven Up" 305

Posted by Soulskill from the have-the-ISS-astronauts-vote-each-other-off-the-station dept.
An article in the LA Times calls NASA out for failing to make broadcasts on their dedicated television network as entertaining as they can be. The author, David Ferrell, complains that fascinating subject matter is often fraught with boring commentary and frequent, extended silences, making most people quickly lose interest. Quoting: "Witness one recent segment about the recovery of a Soyuz capsule upon its return to Earth. The dark, bullet-like object landed in the featureless steppes of Kazakhstan, about 50 miles outside the unheard-of town of Arkalyk. Coverage consisted of video shot from an all-terrain vehicle approaching it — mostly soundless footage of tall grass going by — with an occasional word by an unnamed commentator. 'You can see the antenna that deployed shortly after landing,' the commentator said in that deadpan tone shared by scientists and golf announcers. The camera chronicled the tedious extraction of three crew members weakened by spending six months in orbit; they were loaded one by one onto stretchers. 'Again, a rather methodical process,' the commentator noted, as if grasping for something — anything — to say. Later: 'The official landing time has been revised to 1:15 and 34 seconds a.m., Central Time. The official time was recorded at the Russian Mission Control Center . . . by the Russian flight-control team.' ... Where is Carl Sagan when you need him?"
Power

10 IT Power-Saving Myths Debunked 359

Posted by timothy from the replace-all-leds-with-cfls dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld examines 10 power-saving assumptions IT has been operating under in its quest to rein in energy costs vs. the permanent energy crisis. Under scrutiny, most such assumptions wither. From true CPU efficiency, to the life span effect of power-down frequency on servers, to SSD power consumption, to switching to DC in the datacenter, get the facts before setting your IT energy strategy."
Movies

Submission + - Jack Valenti Dead at 85

Submitted by NeuroManson
NeuroManson writes: Long time nemesis to nerds everywhere, Jack Valenti, passed away today following a stroke. Not sure whether to dance a merry jig yet, but "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead" springs to mind.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18339220/

LOS ANGELES — Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday. He was 85.

Valenti had a stroke in March and was hospitalized for several weeks at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore.

He died of complications from the stroke at his Washington, D.C., home, said Seth Oster of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Movies

Submission + - Jack Valenti dead at 85.

Submitted by Unlikely_Hero
Unlikely_Hero writes: Jack Valenti, one of the copyright industry's most aggressive lobbyists, has died at the Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore, Maryland. How will he be remembered 50 years from now? As the man who lead hollywood away from the Hays Code which prohibited most violence and frank discussion of sex or as the crusader of the MPAA obsessed with the 'danger' of copyright infringement? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18339220/
Movies

Submission + - Jack Valenti is dead

Submitted by
mangu
mangu writes: "Ex-MPAA president Jack Valenti died today at the age of 85.

"Jack was a showman, a gentleman, an orator and a passionate champion of this country, its movies and the enduring freedoms that made both so important to this world," his successor, Dan Glickman, said in a written statement announcing Valenti's death. "He also embodied the theatricality of our industry with his conviction, quick wit and boundless energy. In a very real sense, he was the ultimate leading man."
"
Movies

Submission + - Jack Valenti dead

Submitted by
Widowwolf
Widowwolf writes: "WASHINGTON (CNN) — Jack Valenti, the longtime head of the Motion Picture Association of America, has died at age 85, the association announced Thursday. Valenti suffered a stroke "recently," said a representative at the Motion Picture Association of America, which he led for 38 years. No cause of death was immediately announced. Valenti was central to creating the MPAA rating system — now G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17 — as a way to rate films' appropriateness for certain age groups. Valenti was a life member of the Directors Guild of America and a member of the board of trustees of the American Film Institute"
Space

Submission + - Stephen Hawking Flies Weightless

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "Free of his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Thursday fulfilled a dream of floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to further space adventures.

The 65-year-old was the first person with a disability to experience the flight by Zero Gravity Corp., which has flown about 2,700 people out of Florida since late 2004 and began offering the flights in Las Vegas this week.

"As you can imagine, I'm very excited," Hawking told reporters before the flight. "I have been wheelchair bound for almost four decades. The chance to float free in zero-g will be wonderful."

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/26/ap365909 6.html"
Movies

Submission + - Jack Valenti has passed away

Submitted by norminator
norminator writes: Jack Valenti, head of the MPAA for 38 years, passed away this afternoon in his home. Valenti is known among the Slashdot community as a man who did not believe in fair use, including backing up your digital media. From a Slashdot article four years ago: "In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless."
Google

Submission + - My life according to Google

Submitted by
melki0r
melki0r writes: "George Orwell would have loved this. He missed for only 23 years. Insted of 1984 we're getting the Big Brother (a.k.a. Google) in 2007.
Do you want every step of your web-based life traced and stored in one place?
Well you can have it all for free. Google just announced a new service: Google Web History. Not only that it stores all pages that you visited, but it also stores all the videos you viewed, images, even sponsored links.
So it's the works! Everything you've ever seen on the net will be stored in one place.
Now this thing can be useful. Don't get me wrong. But on the other hand, if your Google Account gets compromised, your whole life kinda gets compromised.
Read on!"
Space

Submission + - Theoretical Physics to be Turned on its Ear?

Submitted by
Bad Labrador
Bad Labrador writes: "Slashdot readers may remember an article and a powerpoint presentation delivered by Alexander Franklin Mayer last year entitled "The Many Directions of Time". In it, he postulates a slight modification to General Relativity, actually correcting an error Einstein apparently made. According to Mayer, correcting this error accounts for a large number of "anomalies" in observations, including a small but persistent error in GPS locations, the apparent acceleration and deacceleration of the Voyager spacecraft and so on. The blockbusting part is when the change is applied to cosmology — according to Mayer, the expanding universe, the Hubble constant and the "big Bang" theory are no more. They are artefacts of his discovery — gravitational transverse red shift. The Universe is not expanding. The book is freely available for download at http://afmayer.net/index.html Happy Slashdotting."

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