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Rocket Racing League Showcases New X-Racers 39

Posted by kdawson from the participatory-spectator-sport dept.
FleaPlus writes "The Rocket Racing League demonstrated two of their new 'Mark III' X-Racer rocketplanes at an air show in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Besides making for a fun show, the League also pushes the boundaries for reusable and easily maintainable rocket engines. (The X-Racer's liquid oxygen and ethanol rocket engine was made by John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace, which recently released a video showcasing some of the rockets they've launched and landed in the past year.)"

Submission + - NYTimes Offers Look into Chinese Hacker Underworld

Submitted by beachels416
beachels416 writes: The NYTimes has gained access to a Chinese hacker-for-profit, referred to as Majia, and observed him during one of his nightly "sessions." From the article: "Oddly, Majia said his parents did not know that he was hacking at night. But at one point, he explained the intricacies of computer hacking and stealing data while his mother stood nearby, listening silently, while offering a guest oranges and candy." Additionally, at one point he speaks about the recent Google attacks, and claims to have particular knowledge of the exact vector used. Nothing too new, but an interesting read nevertheless.

Submission + - Ireland's Blasphemy law comes in to effect. (blasphemy.ie)

Submitted by stereoroid
stereoroid writes: As of January 1, it is a crime in Ireland to commit Blasphemy. The law was changed in July 2009 to fill a gap in the Irish Constitution, which states that it is a crime but does not define what it is, an omission highlighted in a Supreme Court decision in 1999. A July story in the Irish Independent described the situation in more detail. The story has also been covered in The Guardian (UK) today.

To mark the occasion, Atheist Ireland published a list of 25 blasphemous quotations on the blasphemy.ie website, from such controversial figures as Bjork, Frank Zappa, Richard Dawkins, Randy Newman, and Pope Benedict XVI. (The last-mentioned was quoting a 14th Century Byzantine Emperor, but that's no excuse.)
Games

Girl Gamers More Hardcore Than Guys 284

Posted by Soulskill from the takes-time-to-collect-all-those-pretty-hats dept.
TheClockworkSoul writes "Scientific American reports on a study published this month in the Journal of Communication, which found that women who engage in a role-playing game online actually commit more time on average than the male players do. The authors surveyed 7,000 players logged in to EverQuest II (PDF), and found that the average age of the gamers surveyed was 31, and that playing time tended to increase with age. Interestingly, however, the female gamers not only tended to log more time online (29 hours per week versus 25 for the males), but were also more likely to lie about how much they really play."
Programming

When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay? 426

Posted by Soulskill from the stop-watching-me-think dept.
jammag writes "A veteran developer looks back — in irritation — at those times he had to work late and his unskilled manager stayed too, just to look over his shoulder and add worry and fret to the process. Now, that same developer is a manager himself — and recently stayed late to ride herd over late-working developers. 'And guess what? Yep, I hadn't coded in years and never in the language he had to work with.' Yet now he understood: his own butt was on the line, so he was staying put. Still, does it really help developers to have management hovering on a late evening, even if the boss handles pizza delivery?"
Transportation

Submission + - A Requiem for Saab

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that auto enthusiasts across the country are dismayed by the news that General Motors is planning to shut down Saab, the Swedish carmaker it bought two decades ago, after a deal to sell it fell apart. Even with its modest and steadily declining sales, Saab, an acronym for Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, or Swedish Airplane Company, long stood out as a powerful brand in spite of itself. “It wasn’t designed to be a fashion statement,” says Ron Pinelli, president of Autodata, which tracks industry statistics. “It was designed to provide transportation under miserable weather conditions.” Many Saab owners consider the brand’s glory days to be the 1980s, when Americans began buying cars again after a recession and energy crisis. “The cars were communicative,” says Pinelli. “They didn’t try to numb the experience like cars do today.” The cars had odd touches and appealed to those who appreciate the unconventional. Swedish engineers assumed drivers would be wearing gloves, so they designed big buttons for the dashboard. Though the cars were compact, with long hoods and short rear ends, there was plenty of headroom inside. Now Saab, a brand that once had one of the clearest identities in the industry, seems headed for extinction just as automakers are searching for more distinctive designs to help set them apart. “It’s a shame that Saab is a victim,” adds Pinelli ."
Math

Insurgent Attacks Follow Mathematical Pattern 181

Posted by Soulskill from the news-from-terminus dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Nature reports that data collected on the timing of attacks and number of casualties from more than 54,000 events across nine insurgent wars, including those fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2008 and in Sierra Leone between 1994 and 2003, suggest that insurgencies have a common underlying pattern that may allow the timing of attacks and the number of casualties to be predicted. By plotting the distribution of the frequency and size of events, the team found that insurgent wars follow an approximate power law, in which the frequency of attacks decreases with increasing attack size to the power of 2.5. This means that for any insurgent war, an attack with 10 casualties is 316 times more likely to occur than one with 100 casualties (316 is 10 to the power of 2.5). 'We found that the way in which humans do insurgent wars — that is, the number of casualties and the timing of events — is universal,' says team leader Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami in Florida. 'This changes the way we think insurgency works.' To explain what was driving this common pattern, the researchers created a mathematical model which assumes that insurgent groups form and fragment when they sense danger, and strike in well-timed bursts to maximize their media exposure. Johnson is now working to predict how the insurgency in Afghanistan might respond to the influx of foreign troops recently announced by US President Barack Obama. 'We do observe a complicated pattern that has to do with the way humans do violence in some collective way,' adds Johnson."

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