PhyrePhox - Slashdot User

United States Begins Flying Stealth Bombers Over South Korea 567

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 28, 2013 @08:01PM from the nice-day-for-a-flight dept.

skade88 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the United States has started flying B-2 stealth bomber runs over South Korea as a show of force to North Korea. The bombers flew 6,500 miles to bomb a South Korean island with mock explosives. Earlier this month the U.S. Military ran mock B-52 bombing runs over the same South Korean island. The U.S. military says it shows that it can execute precision bombing runs at will with little notice needed. The U.S. also reaffirmed their commitment to protecting its allies in the region. The North Koreans have been making threats to turn South Korea into a sea of fire. North Korea has also made threats claiming they will nuke the United States' mainland."

4-Billion-Pixel Panorama View From Curiosity Rover 101

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday March 28, 2013 @06:59PM from the take-a-look dept.

A reader points out that there is a great new panorama made from shots from the Curiosity Rover. "Sweep your gaze around Gale Crater on Mars, where NASA's Curiosity rover is currently exploring, with this 4-billion-pixel panorama stitched together from 295 images. ...The entire image stretches 90,000 by 45,000 pixels and uses pictures taken by the rover's two MastCams. The best way to enjoy it is to go into fullscreen mode and slowly soak up the scenery — from the distant high edges of the crater to the enormous and looming Mount Sharp, the rover's eventual destination."

Comment RMS offers a dissenting view on x. AKA Monday. (Score 1) 1452

by PhyrePhox on Monday October 10, 2011 @08:52AM (#37661748) Attached to: Richard Stallman's Dissenting View of Steve Jobs

I'm not Jobs' defender, but it seems to me that, as a society, we seem to want our heroes to be perfect (or at least to conform to our ideas of "right"-ness), and a lot of contention about legacy revolves around discussion of whether these folks "deserve" to be lauded. There was a book last year that implied that Ghandi was a homosexual. Which, of course, caused a real outcry in India, but to my point: who cares? Mr. Jobs had a child that he allegedly denied for many years; as a family man, that offends me much more than his complicity in the Foxconn suicides. Now there I am, projecting my values on him; but as far as I can tell, he wasn't required to follow my guidelines for living. Can we agree that those of us who use computers or portable music players or smartphones, or those of us who take our kids to see CG movies have been influenced by his work? I personally think I would have hated working for him, but I used products from his company every day.

Could Betelgeuse Go Boom? 383

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 11, 2009 @09:22PM from the betelgeuse-betelgeuse-betelgeuse-winona dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The answer is No. In space, nobody can hear you scream. However, it might go supernova in the near future, if it hasn't already. I wanna see that, even if it would permanently disfigure Orion. Ka freaking bam!"

CoS Bigwig Likens Wikipedia Ban to Nazis' Yellow Star Decree 567

Posted by timothy on Monday June 01, 2009 @07:12AM from the stable-sane-leadership-cuckoo-cuckoo dept.

We mentioned on Thursday that Wikipedia has banned edits originating from certain IP addresses belonging to the Church of Scientology; reader newtley writes now that Scientology leader (CEO and Chairman of the Board of the linked, but legally separate, Religious Technology Center) David Miscavige calls the ban "a 'despicable hate crime,' and asks, 'What's next, will Scientologists have to wear yellow, six-pointed stars on our clothing?' During World War II, Hitler forced Jewish men, women and children to wear a a yellow cloth star bearing the word Jude to brand them in the streets of Europe, and in the Nazi death camps."

New Moon Found In Saturn's G-Ring 102

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @07:58PM from the ring-herder dept.

caffiend666 writes "Scientists have announced a new moon has been found hidden in the G Ring of Saturn. The discovery was announced Tuesday in a notice by the International Astronomical Union. This is one of over five dozen moons, and is only a third of a mile wide. No word yet on a name for the new moon; I vote Cowboy Neal."

Whistleblower Claims NSA Spied On Everyone, Targeted Media 717

Posted by timothy on Thursday January 22, 2009 @01:08PM from the puzzle-palace dept.

JCWDenton writes "Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists."

Toshiba To OEM Laptops With OpenSolaris 226

Posted by kdawson on Friday December 19, 2008 @09:03AM from the good-news-for-lem-fans dept.

ruphus13 writes to tell us of Sun's latest attempt to drive OpenSolaris adoption. The company has inked a deal to pre-install OpenSolaris on Toshiba laptops. "Slowly but surely, major laptop vendors are taking to the idea of shipping systems with pre-loaded open source operating systems. The latest case in point is Toshiba — one of the longest-standing players in the market for portable computers — and its new plan to pre-install Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris on its laptops. The machines are supposed to ship in early 2009."

Russian Hopes To Cash In On Emoticons 213

Posted by timothy on Friday December 12, 2008 @07:17AM from the but-cyrillic-is-full-of-emoticons dept.

drewmoney writes "According to a BBC article, Entrepreneur Oleg Teterin said the trademark for the ';-)' emoticon was granted to him by Russia's federal patent agency. 'Legal use will be possible after buying an annual licence from us,' he was quoted by the newspaper Kommersant as saying. 'It won't cost that much — tens of thousands of dollars,' added the businessman, who is president of Superfone, a company that sells advertising on mobile phones. The president of Russian social networking site odnoklassniki.ru, Nikita Sherman said: 'You're not likely to find any retards in Russia who'll pay Superfone for the use of emoticons.'" Teterin may have gotten the idea by catching up on some old news about Despair, Inc., which in May 2000 was awarded a US trademark on the "frowny" emoticon (Slashdot story).

Botnets As "eWMDs" 172

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @07:21PM from the trying-to-wake-sleeping-policymakers dept.

John Kelly writes "The current issue of Policy Review has a paper by an American computer scientist and the recent Permanent Undersecretary of Defense for Estonia. Drawing on the Estonian cyber attacks a year and a half ago, as well as other recent examples, they argue that botnets are the major problem. They propose that botnets should be designated as 'eWMDs' — electronic weapons of mass destruction. The paper also proposes a list of reforms that would help to limit the scale and impact of future botnet attacks, beginning with defining and outlawing spam, internationally." Many of the proposed solutions are common-sensical and won't be news to this audience, but it is interesting to see the botnet threat painted in such stark terms for readers of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review. For a more comprehensive overview of cyber-security threats, listen to NPR's interview with security experts on the occasion of the release of a new report, "Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency," which recommends creating a cyber-security czar reporting to the President.

21 Million German Bank Accounts For Sale 302

Posted by kdawson on Monday December 08, 2008 @09:28PM from the black-marks dept.

anerva writes "Black market criminals are offering to sell details on 21 million German bank accounts for €12M ($15.3M), according to an investigative report (German; Google translation) published Saturday. In November reporters for WirtschaftsWoche (Economic Week) had a face-to-face meeting with criminals in a Hamburg hotel, according to the magazine. Posing as buyers working for a gambling business, the journalists were able to strike a price of €0.55 per record, or €12M for all the data. They were given a CD containing the 1.2 million accounts when they asked for assurances that the information they would be buying was legitimate." 21 million is three in four existing German bank accounts.

Replacing a Personal Rack-Mounted Server? 108

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 15, 2008 @11:40AM from the microsourcing dept.

Starky writes "Many moons ago, I cobbled together a 1U rack mount from parts which has since been diligently serving up my homepage and web sites for family and friends. It's a truly "Mom and Pop Shop" setup, running on a rack secluded in a closet at home over a DSL line. At the time, I was able to piggyback my order on a large order placed by a company for which I was working, allowing me to get a substantial discount. Now, the time has come to consider a replacement. However, I no longer work at a company that orders chassis and chips by the dozen. I would like to get a rack-mountable chassis, but don't know where to go as a lowly individual consumer looking for a box with minimal specifications (1 processor, dual drives, and 1G RAM is about all I need) at a reasonable price. Any recommendation from Slashdotters who maintain their own rigs?"

Data Center In a Shoe Box 146

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday April 28, 2008 @12:01PM from the size-matters dept.

eldavojohn writes "How would you like to have a data center that uses just 14.5 watts and weighs 255g? It's also only as big as a shoe box! The Register looks at a few solutions to network area storage that make buying a dedicated data server on a rack look like a relic of the past. Yes, it runs Linux."

Identical Twins Not Identical After All 159

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday February 21, 2008 @03:56AM from the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Contrary to previous beliefs, identical twins are not genetically identical. Researchers studied 19 pairs of monozygotic, or identical, twins and found differences in copy number variation in DNA which occurs when a set of coding letters in DNA are missing, or when extra copies of segments of DNA are produced. In most cases, variation in the number of copies likely has no impact on health or development but in others, it may be one factor in the likelihood of developing a disease (pdf). "Those differences may point the way to better understanding of genetic diseases when we study so-called discordant monozygotic twins....a pair of twins where one twin has a disorder and the other does not," says Carl Bruder, Ph.D. "If twin A develops Parkinson's and twin B does not, the region of their genome where they show differences is a target for further investigation to discover the basic genetic underpinnings of the disease.""

Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back 751

Posted by kdawson on Sunday January 13, 2008 @01:23AM from the what-goes-around-comes-ariynd dept.

theodp writes "Time reports that vinyl records are suddenly cool again. Vinyl has a warmer, more nuanced sound than CDs or MP3s; records feature large album covers with imaginative graphics, pullout photos, and liner notes. 'Bad sound on an iPod has had an impact on a lot of people going back to vinyl,' says 15-year-old David MacRunnel, who owns more than 1,000 records."

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