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Communications

FCC Guidance On Radio For Commercial Space Operations Falls Short 48

RocketAcademy writes "The Federal Communications Commission has issued a Public Notice to help commercial space companies obtain use of communications frequencies for launch, operations, and reentry. Commercial space companies can obtain the use of government frequencies on a temporary, non-interference basis through the FCC's Experimental Authorization process. Experimental Authorizations are valid for a six-month period from the date of grant and are renewable, but applicants must obtain a new authorization for each launch and must apply 90 days in advance. Unfortunately, this requirement does not meet the needs of suborbital launch providers who expect to fly several times per day and schedule launches as needed, on very short notice."

Comment Re:Bought a Lytro (Score 1) 79

While it is technically stereoscopic 3D, my HTC evo 3D takes and displays 3D photos and videos at a decent quality and resolution as long as the lighting isn't too dim. I'm not sure what you mean by "realistic 3D". Do you mean to have the ability to rotate the photo and view from multiple vantage points? Because AFAICT that would require a snapshot from more than one perspective (ie the evo 3d - and that only supplies two shots. For a good example, consider bullet time from "The Matrix"). If you want the ability to take a photo of something and rotate it 360 degrees, you need a shot of it from more than a one or two angles.

Comment Re:FYI (Score 2, Informative) 98

I'm a courier and I work all sides of Chicago. While I must admit 25th and Washington isn't exactly the first place I would choose to hang out, areas around 51st and western make me way more nervous (and that's not even actually going into the neighborhoods around there).

Comment Re:Use LED LCD TV instead -- not really (Score 2) 242

At those kinds of rates solar/wind power starts to look rather enticing. There are numerous home-brew solutions that could allow you to cut that bill down significantly. Some low-cost solar panels and a battery bank that kicks on during peak usage hours for example. This doesn't make sense everywhere but at $0.40/kWh, it might be something to consider. Of course, there will be upfront costs and I'm lazy and only do math out of necessity, but I'm willing to bet that the turnaround on such a project could be at or around ten years if you choose your materials wisely and do most of the work yourself. I'm a tad off-topic here, but that just seems crazy. Also, please excuse my extensive abuse of commas.

Comment Haven't read a word of TFA (Score 1) 264

But I can emphatically say: "no". Excuse my grammar. I have a P4 HT clocking around 3.4ghz. I would overclock it if the mobo wasn't an HP OEM and what-have-you. I also have a 1Gb Nvidia card. My point is that my computer meets the minimum specs for prettymuch every modern game sans the CPU. You simply can't run a newer game on a single core machine without serious gameplay consequences. If I had even a core 2 duo, the rest of my setup would beat the shit out of games like crysis. So, once again: a new GPU will only make your textures look really awesome at 3 FPS.
Idle

Submission + - Japanese Cops Collar Malware-Carrying Cat (net-security.org)

Orome1 writes: "When imagining law enforcement officers investigating and searching for cyber criminals or evidence about their activities, the last thing that you can probably envision is them searching for a stray cat. But that was exactly what detectives of Japan's National Police Agency recently did as the last step in a complex "treasure hunt" started on New Year’s Day by a person (persons?) who is allegedly the mastermind behind the so-called “Remote Control Virus”. The malware in question was instrumental in staging a continuous campaign of death and bomb threats sent to airline companies, kindergartens, schools, law offices, broadcasting networks and shrines."
Ruby

Submission + - Ruby on Rails SQL Injection Flaw has Serious Real-Life Consequences

vikingpower writes: "As a previous Slashdot story already reported, Ruby on Rails was recently reported to suffer from a major SQL injection flaw. This has prompted the Dutch government to take the one and only national site for citizens' digital identification offline ( link in Dutch ), here is the English-language placeholder page for the now-offline site. This means that 16 million Dutch citizens can not authenticate themselves anymore with government instances, and that those same government instances can not communicate anything to those same citizens anymore."
Science

Submission + - Fireflies Bring Us Brighter LEDs (gizmag.com)

Zothecula writes: Fireflies have helped an international team of scientists get over 50 percent more light out of existing LED bulbs. It was discovered that in the Photuris genus of firefly, scales in the insect's exoskeleton possess optical qualities that boost the amount of bioluminescence that can shine through. Those same qualities were found to dramatically increase the light output of an LED bulb.
China

7 Jailed In 'Kidney For iPad' Case In China 100

hackingbear writes "In China, the whole team of medical staff and their brokers were sentenced to jail yesterday over their involvement in the case of a teenager who sold a kidney to buy an iPhone and iPad. He Wei, who organized the illegal transaction in April 2011, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment by the Beihu District People's Court in Chenzhou City. The court added that the defendants had paid compensation worth more than 1.47 million yuan (~ US $237,000) to Wang. Ministry of Health statistics show that about 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only 10,000 operations are performed each year."

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