Submission + - Dead People Scientists Keep Messing With (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 09, 2011 @05:26PM

An anonymous reader writes: Some historical figures are just too interesting to leave alone, even when they're supposed to be moldering in the grave. That's why medical researchers dug up Tycho Brahe, bombarded Napoleon's hair with neutrons in a nuclear reactor, and did everything they could think of to King Tut. Discover Magazine has 8 stories of delayed diagnoses and extreme postmortems.

Submission + - Can World Governments Veto Your Domain Name? (tmcnet.com) 1

Submitted by AugstWest on Wednesday February 09, 2011 @02:05PM

AugstWest writes: There's been talk recently of the Obama administration wanting the right to shoot down possible TLDs, but it looks like things may be going even a step further — According to this article by Laura Stotler, "the NTIA is asking for the power to object to any proposed Internet address for any reason." What happens if, say, the government of Germany decides they don't like your domain name? ICANN's had its share of bureaucratic nightmares, what happens when world governments also have a say?

Submission + - NASA Invents New Technique For Finding Alien Life (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider on Wednesday February 09, 2011 @01:22PM

RedEaredSlider writes: Researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have come up with an idea to improve on an old standby of space exploration instruments and improve the odds of finding life, if any, on Mars.

By adding a laser and an ion funnel to a mass spectrometer, it is possible to analyze the elements from the Martian surface directly, without the complex handling samples usually need. ...
The new version uses a two-step technique. First it shoots a laser at the sample's surface. This creates a plume of molecules and ions. To get the ions into the mass spectrometer, the new system uses an ion funnel. The ion funnel uses conductive, progressively smaller electrodes in the shape of a ring that attract the ions, effectively vacuuming them into the mass spectrometer.

Comment Re:Opposite Experience with Adobe Download (Score 1) 348

by windex on Friday December 31, 2010 @02:51PM (#34723402) Attached to: Beware of Using Google Or OpenDNS For iTunes

I have not read a more ignorant comment on how DNS works on slashdot in my entire history of reading slashdot.

Akamai is doing DNS geolocation. The solution is to use a combination of DNS geolocation combined with http redirects (also based on client IP geolocation) to attempt to find a good close server. If an end-user is using a remote DNS server. This can even be mostly invisible with a CDN like Akamai. DNS servers do not decide which 'Akamai' IP to give anyone. Akamai's forward resolving DNS servers return a response they have crafted as 'close' to the requesting DNS caching server (e.g. Google DNS, OpenDNS, your ISP, etc). The caching server caches the result and sends it to the DNS client on your local system. End of story. DNS does not forward or proxy the DNS client's address through the caching server to the forward resolving server. Ever.

For the record, using Akamai DNS *without* their CDN service (e.g. load balance/geolocate only) when redundant sites, AnyCast, and BGP should be standard operating procedure in enterprise network deployments is fucking stupid.

Submission + - Pre does not get US tethering either (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by fermion on Monday June 15, 2009 @12:58PM

fermion writes: The Register is reporting that the Pre Dev Wiki has been sent a note asking it to stop discussing tethering. Evidently Sprint is none to eager to have users tether the game changing tetherable smart phone. The development forum is evidently eager to avoid lawsuits, so has rapidly agreed. Perhaps, like the iPhone, the Pre is going have a vigorous underground. What is interesting is that the Pre, like the iPhone(allegedly), can be tethered in the non-US domain, but even those customers are being denied apparently lawful information to satisfy the US exclusive agents.

Journal SPAM: 5-Year-Old Boy Detained as US National Security Threat 1

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Wednesday January 09, 2008 @10:33PM

It's a case of a mistaken identity for a 5-year-old boy from Normandy Park. He had trouble boarding a plane because someone with the same name is wanted by the federal government. "When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dilling

Submission + - Judge Says RIAA "Disingenuous", Decision S

Submitted by

NewYorkCountryLawyer

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @12:27PM

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Judge Lee R. West in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has rejected the arguments made by the RIAA in support of its "reconsideration" motion in Capitol v. Foster as "disingenuous" and "not true", and accused the RIAA of "questionable motives". In the decision (pdf), reaffirming his earlier decision that defendant Debbie Foster's is entitled to be reimbursed for her attorneys fees, the Court, among other things, emphasized the Supreme Court's holding in Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc. that "because copyright law ultimately serves the purpose of enriching the general public through access to creative works, it is peculiarly important that the boundaries of copyright law be demarcated as clearly as possible. Thus, a defendant seeking to advance meritorious copyright defenses should be encouraged to litigate them to the same extent that plaintiffs are encouraged to litigate meritorious infringement claims." Judge West also noted that he had found the RIAA's claims against the defendant to be "untested and marginal" and its "motives to be questionable in light of the facts of the case"; that the RIAA's primary argument for its motion — that the earlier decision had failed to list the "Fogerty factors" — was belied by unpublished opinions in which the RIAA had itself been involved; that the RIAA's argument that it could have proved a case against Ms. Foster had it not dropped the case was "disingenuous"; and that the RIAA's factual statements about the settlement history of the case were "not true". This is the same case in which an amicus brief had been filed by the ACLU, Public Citizen, EFF, AALL, and ACLU-Oklahoma in support of the attorneys fees motion, the RIAA questioned the reasonableness of Ms. Foster's lawyer's fees and was then ordered to turn over its own attorneys billing records, which ruling it complied with only reluctantly."

Human Head Offices Destroyed, Company Bands Together 49

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @12:26PM from the warning-games-may-be-flammable dept.

Yesterday, Gamasutra reported the sad news that the offices of Human Head studios were destroyed in a fire. Based out of Madison, Wisconsin, the indie developer recently signed up to do the next Mark Ecko game, riding high on their success with Prey from last year. Today, thankfully, Next Generation has the news that the company has survived more or less intact. "[Office Manager Carol] Smith said, 'I work with an incredible group of guys, and as soon as we got over the shock of oh my gosh, we had a fire--what if we lost data, what if we lost art? ...the next words out of everybody's mouths were, What can we do to help?' An update on Human Head's website confirmed that there were no injuries in the blaze that occurred at 2:30 a.m. on Friday and that the Prey developer 'suffered no significant data loss.'"

Feed Another Day, Another Set Of Prior Art Discovered Against Verizon's VoIP Patents (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @10:52AM

It seems like every day people discover even more prior art concerning the patents Verizon is using to cut off Vonage. First there was evidence from the VoIP forum that came out before Verizon applied for its patents. Then people turned up some evidence of a patent from 3Com that predates the Verizon patents that appears to cover the same thing. Now, Jeff Pulver has been reminded that the work he did on Free World Dialup (FWD) also appears to predate Verizon's patents by quite some time. Of course, all this prior art is great... but it likely comes way too late for Vonage. The process to get the Patent Office to even begin reviewing the patents in question will take some time, as will various responses and reviews. So don't think that just because there's a ton of prior art means that the patents are toast. Of course, the fact that these patents were granted in the first place despite all this prior art should get people to question how the patent office (doesn't) work, but it seems that few people are actually interested in digging deep into that question.