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Mars

Curiosity Finds Evidence of Ancient Surface Water 79

An anonymous reader writes "Curiosity has wheeled its way over to the low point in Yellowknife Bay and has found veined rocks, evidence that water once percolated through this area. Scientists are excited because it is the first evidence of precipitation of minerals and water. There is also cross bedding that can be seen, thin layers of rocks oriented in different directions. The grains are apparently too coarse for the wind to have created, alluding to flowing water. Even with this discovery, much is still not known about Mars' past." Rather than quickly moving along to Mount Sharp as planned, they're going to spend some time drilling into the rock.

Comment Re:A couple things that kept me from upgrading... (Score 2) 791

Can I just point out that you require an Apple ID to use a Mac or iDevice,

I don't know about Android or the iDevices, but for Macs you do not need an Apple ID. Yes, it does prompt you during the OS install, but you can skip that screen. Now, if you want to use their App Store for anything other than OS updates, then you do need an ID.

---Alex

Government

New Documents Detail FBI, Bank Crack Down On Occupy Wall Street 584

jvillain writes "The Guardian has up a story detailing the crack down on Occupy Wall Street (OWS). It goes on to show how the FBI, DHS, Terrorist Fusion Centers and the banks all worked together to stifle dissent. From the article: 'This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI's surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.' The next question is how many Americans are now listed as part of a 'terrorist group' by the government for their support of OWS?"
Earth

Drilling Begins At Lake Hidden Beneath Antarctic 131

New submitter stonetony writes with this excerpt from the BBC: "A team of 12 scientists and engineers has begun work at remote Lake Ellsworth. They are using a high-pressure hose and sterilised water at near boiling point to blast a passage through more than two miles of ice. The aim is to analyse ice waters isolated for up to 500,000 years. The team of 12 scientists and engineers is using sterilised water at near boiling point to blast a passage through the ice to waters isolated for up to half a million years. The process of opening a bore-hole is expected to last five days and will be followed by a rapid sampling operation before the ice refreezes."
Open Source

How To Use a Linux Virtual Private Server 303

Nerval's Lobster writes "Game developer David Bolton writes: 'For my development of Web games, I've hit a point where I need a Virtual Private Server. (For more on this see My Search for Game Hosting Begins.) I initially chose a Windows VPS because I know Windows best. A VPS is just an Internet-connected computer. "Virtual" means it may not be an actual physical computer, but a virtualized host, one of many, each running as if it were a real computer. Recently, though, I've run into a dead end, as it turns out that Couchbase doesn't support PHP on Windows. So I switched to a Linux VPS running Ubuntu server LTS 12-04. Since my main desktop PC runs Windows 7, the options to access the VPS are initially quite limited, and there's no remote desktop with a Linux server. My VPS is specified as 2 GB of ram, 2 CPUs and 80 GB of disk storage. The main problem with a VPS is that you have to self-manage it. It's maybe 90% set up for you, but you need the remaining 10%. You may have to install some software, edit a config file or two and occasionally bounce (stop then restart) daemons (Linux services), after editing their config files.'"

Comment Re:One consistent theme (Score 5, Interesting) 605

Just look at the Great Lakes. They stand at record levels.

Do you mean record lows or highs? Because the way it's written seems to indicate you think they're at record highs, and that is not the case at all. I am originally from Wisconsin, and dropping lake levels has been a concern for a long time and this year saw a record low for Lake Michigan. The states surrounding the lakes have been actively trying to protect and increase the lake levels, since they had been dropping for so long. Many states (read: the southwest) wanted to run a pipeline from the Great Lakes in order that Arizona can have green grass in their front yards. All of the Great Lake states (and eventually the feds) signed the Great Lakes Compact in order to protect the lakes. In effect, it requires that all water removed from the lakes must be returned.

Dropping lake levels has a significant economic impact on shipping in the midwest - measured in the billions of dollars (too lazy to find a citation for this, but I've read more than a few reports on this over the years).

As for the rest of your post, yes sea level are rising, but I think a 3 foot rise in sea levels in the short term is not terribly likely. The seas are rising, this is a problem, but I don't think it serves anyone to overstate the problem. A cm or two is a big enough problem as it is. 3 ft in the short term would be nothing short of catastrophic. Calm down, focus on the problem, readjust to the new data, and contribute to the conversation productively with your newfound context.

---Alex

Comment Re:Advert/Shill much? (Score 1) 515

I have been looking (albeit halfheartedly) for an alternative to Slashdot for quite some time. I know everyone likes to say that the "old days" were indeed the "good ol' days", and then someone counters that the "old days" weren't that good and everyone gives it their +1 Insightful while nodding sagely. But I have been coming to ./ for over 8 years now, and I do feel that the tone is different now. I'm not saying that every article and comment was a platter full of Unicorn meat cooked to perfection on a jelly bean grill, but the overall experience and community was superior to what we have today.

Aside from the state of comments, the last part of this gentle rant is against the editors. The incredibly poor level of editing has gotten to a point where it is simply insulting. Millions of people visit this site daily. The editors post about 20 summaries that are 1 paragraph long each, and they can't be bothered to proofread it for obvious spelling and grammar mistakes? Moving past basic English skills, there are still the dupes, asinine headlines that end in a question mark, feature links that don't go to the source, and inflammatory headlines written for clicks alone. Headlines and summaries set the tone, and discussion (often) follows that tone. If the editors take their jobs seriously and start writing for an audience of adults rather than appealing to rabid adolescent partisans, then perhaps this site will turn around. Here's hoping. Until then, I will keep searching, and will give Hacker News (as suggested by trancemission) a fair shake.

---Alex

Google

Nexus Q Stretches "Made in USA" Label 241

sl4shd0rk writes "Among the much ballyhooed tech at Google I/O last week was the Google Nexus Q. Google made an effort to proudly point out the device was "Made in the USA" and even had it stamped on the back of it. A tear-down at ifixit.com however, reveals the guts of the thing are mostly manufactured overseas at the expected locations (China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, et al). Wired also posted a tear-down in which they reveal a die-casting shop in Wisconsin is the source of the zinc housing, but certainly not the entire device as some news sources reported. It's great that Google decided to utilize the struggling U.S. manufacturing sector for this, but claiming the device is USA made, and being blatantly vague about its origins is quite misleading." How struggling the U.S. manufacturing sector is depends on who you ask and how you measure, remember.
Android

Samsung Appeals Apple's Injunction Against Galaxy Nexus 217

It will come as no surprise that Samsung has filed an appeal in response to the injunction granted to Apple against the Galaxy Nexus phone in the U.S.. From the article: "The motion, filed with the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, seeks a stay of the injunction for the duration of the appeal. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ordered the preliminary injunction on Friday, granting a motion Apple made in February that alleged Samsung infringed on several of its patents. The injunction, which would keep the Samsung device from being sold in stores in the U.S., can go into effect as soon as Apple posts a bond of nearly $96 million."

Comment Pointless article (Score 1) 243

This article is without merit and doesn't say much at all, though my favorite part is description of the "quote" he attributes to Jobs:

He [Jobs] told them something to the effect of

... and then just makes up the rest.

And not to rag on the author too much, but this "About Chris" profile simply makes me cringe.

Chris started at The Coffee Desk during its hey-day as an infrequent guest author who slowly grew to becoming a mainline contributor. He is a business grad student at USC who is very fluent with technology and the ever-evolving web, and has priceless contributions to Silicon News as a result. He is known for looking at the "big picture" of things, namely new technological trends, and analyzing them from a business perspective that so many IT professionals tend to glaze[sic] over in their focus on the technology's specifics.

From a guy with such tech "fluency," I expect a bit more.

---Alex

Comment Re:When can I get one on my desktop? (Score 3, Informative) 86

UIUC runs their own power plant, and I used to live in an apartment on campus not too far from it. That thing put off so much steam that every morning fog was rolling across the street in front of where I lived. If I remember correctly, they also use the steam to heat a lot of the buildings on campus as well, via steam tunnels under the streets. They leak a lot, so there were always a few places you could stop on the sidewalk to warm yourself up before walking the rest of the way to class. Most of this was on the older side of campus. I'm sure most UIUC Slashdot readers spent more of their time north of Green street in the engineering quad where everything is a lot newer ;-).

---Alex

China

Chinese Lab Speeds Through Genome Processing With GPUs 408

Eric Smalley writes "The world's largest genome sequencing center once needed four days to analyze data describing a human genome. Now it needs just six hours. The trick is servers built with graphics chips — the sort of processors that were originally designed to draw images on your personal computer. They're called graphics processing units, or GPUs — a term coined by chip giant Nvidia. This fall, BGI — a mega lab headquartered in Shenzhen, China — switched to servers that use GPUs built by Nvidia, and this slashed its genome analysis time by more than an order of magnitude."

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