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The Military

Submission + - Warriors, not Geeks, run Cyber Command (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by koterica
koterica writes: The Washington Post is explains why the military prefers to have combat veterans rather than geeks running network security.

"It was supposed to be a war fighter unit, not a geek unit," said task force veteran Jason Healey, who had served as an Air Force signals intelligence officer. A fighter would understand, for instance, if an enemy had penetrated the networks and changed coordinates or target times, said Dusty Rhoads, a retired Air Force colonel and former F-117 pilot who recruited the original task force members. "A techie wouldn't have a clue," he said.

Submission + - Competitor threatens suit - counter DMCA takedown?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Zen Magnets, a maker of neodymium magnets, has been under assault by the much larger and better distributed Buckyballs, a maker of a nearly identical toy. After Zen Magnets listed a couple of eBay auctions with a set of Buckyballs and a set of their own, asking customers to decide which was higher quality, Buckyballs replied with a legal threat. Zen Magnets responded with an open video response, in which they presented the voicemail from Buckyballs and demonstrated their claims of quality through repeatable, factual tests, providing quantitative data to back up their assertions.

Soon after, Buckyballs CEO Jake Bronstein got the video taken down from Youtube via a DMCA takedown, despite the fact that the only elements not made by Zen Magnets are the voicemail he left and some images of himself, which are low resolution and publicly available online.

Zen Magnets is now asking for help as they don't know what to do. It's appalling and I can't imagine that it is infringing, but I am not a lawyer. What would you do in this scenario?

(I am affiliated with neither company, although Thinkgeek sells Buckyballs...Slashdot & ThinkGeek share a corporate overlord.)
Programming

Submission + - Facebook Competitor Diaspora Revealed: Sparse, But (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by
jamie
jamie writes: "A post has just gone up on Diaspora's blog revealing what the project actually looks like for the first time. While it's not yet ready to be released to the public, the open-source social networking project is giving the world a glimpse of what it looks like today and also releasing the project code, as promised.

At first glance, this preview version of Diaspora looks sparse, but clean. Oddly enough, with its big pictures and stream, it doesn't look unlike Apple's new Ping music social network mixed with yes, Facebook. A few features they note:"

Comment Old News (Score 2, Interesting) 184

by doctor_nation (#33534554) Attached to: Arms Regulations Damaging US Space Industry

Yeah, and this has been the case since, oh, 2001? Well, at least it seems that's when it started to be enforced more strictly. I've heard rumblings that the administration was going to change it, but who knows how likely that is.

Hmmm... I wonder if we could correlate the US's drop in space proficiency with when ITAR for space components started?
Editorial

Submission + - Scott Adams (almost) saves the planet (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In spite of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, his suspicious neighbors, Scott Adams builds himself a "green" house (as opposed to a greenhouse), and details his experience for those interested in following in his missteps.
NASA

Submission + - NASA Set to Launch Solar NanoSail into Space (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this year the Japanese space agency successfully deployed and used a solar sail to propel its spacecraft Ikaros, and now NASA announced plans this week for its own solar sail mission. This fall it will launch the NanoSail-D into orbit 400 miles up with a Minotaur IV rocket. Once deployed, it will orbit for 17 weeks, proving the technology and allowing astronomers to snap lots of photos.

Submission + - How DNA evidence creates victims of chance (newscientist.com)

Submitted by azoblue
azoblue writes: Even when analysts agree that someone could be a match for a piece of DNA evidence, the statistical weight assigned to that match can vary enormously, even by orders of magnitude. For instance, in one man's trial the DNA evidence statistic ranged from 1/95,000 to 1/13, depending on the different weighing methods used by the defense and the prosecution.
Books

Submission + - Will Amazon Put Advertisements in eBooks? (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: A book editor at Houghton Mifflin argues ebook advertising is "coming soon to a book near you." Amazon has filed a patent for advertisements on the Kindle, and the book editor joins with a business professor in today's Wall Street Journal to make the case for advertisements in ebooks. Book sales haven't increased over the last decade, and profits are being squeezed even lower by ebooks. According to another industry analyst, Amazon is being pressured to make ebook sales more profitable for publishers, party because Apple offers them more lucrative terms in Apple's iBookstore. One technology blog notes that Amazon's preference seems to be keeping book prices low, and wonders whether consumers would accept advertising if it meant that new ebooks were then free? Meanwhile, Ralph Lauren has confused the issue even more by publishing a "shoppable" children's storybook online, prompting a fierce reaction from one blog: "I hope it's the last. Books are one of the last refuges in our world from the constant cry by advertisers to spend money and fill our lives with unnecessary things."
Power

Submission + - Size Matters - The Rise of Small Nuclear Plants (theoildrum.com)

Submitted by ColdWetDog
ColdWetDog writes: The Oil Drum (one of the best sites to discuss the technical details of the Macondo Blowout) is typically focused on ramifications of petroleum use and in particular, the Peak Oil theory. They run short guest articles from time to time on various aspects of energy use and policies and today they have an interesting article on small nuclear reactors with a refreshing amount of technical details concerning their construction, use and fueling. The author's major thesis:

Pick up almost any book about nuclear energy and you will find that the prevailing wisdom is that nuclear plants must be very large in order to be competitive. This assumption is widely accepted, but, if its roots are understood, it can be effectively challenged.

Recently, however, a growing body of plant designers, utility companies, government agencies and financial players are recognizing that smaller plants can take advantage of greater opportunities to apply lessons learned, take advantage of the engineering and tooling savings possible with higher numbers of units and better meet customer needs in terms of capacity additions and financing. The resulting systems are a welcome addition to the nuclear power plant menu, which has previously been limited to one size — extra large.

Submission + - Adobe Putting PDF Reader in Sandbox

Submitted by
Captain Eloquence
Captain Eloquence writes: "The next major version of Adobe’s PDF Reader will feature new sandboxing technology aimed at curbing a surge in malicious hacker attacks. The initial sandbox implementation will isolate all “write” calls on Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003. Arkin believes this will mitigate the risk of exploits seeking to install malware on the user’s computer or otherwise change the computer’s file system or registry. In a future dot-release, the company plans to extend the sandbox to include read-only activities to protect against attackers seeking to read sensitive information on the user’s computer."
Youtube

Submission + - YouTube Gets A Vuvuzela Button (Seriously) (techcrunch.com) 1

Submitted by teh31337one
teh31337one writes: YouTube always has had a way with pranks. Some time in the last hour, the world’s largest video portal activated a new button on some videos that looks like a tiny soccer ball. Clicking it will activate an endless, incredibly annoying sound that sounds vaguely like a swarm of insects. Or, for anyone who has been watching the World Cup, like the dreaded Vuvuzela — an instrument commonly played in South Africa at football (soccer) games. South Africa is, of course, the host country for this year’s World Cup, and fans watching the games have been subjected to the vuvuzela’s mindless drone for hours on end.

The noise is so annoying that television networks have taken measures to filter it out, and guides have popped up showing viewers how to block it from their TV sets and computers.

I’m not seeing the button show up on all videos, but it is definitely appearing on some clips that aren’t soccer related. Here’s one that has it.
Mars

Submission + - Methane Eaters at Lost Hammer (astrobio.net)

Submitted by asukasoryu
asukasoryu writes: Researchers have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a highly unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's extreme North. The subzero water is so salty that it doesn't freeze despite the cold, and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface. Lyle Whyte, McGill University microbiologist, explains that the Lost Hammer spring supports microbial life, that the spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, and that therefore they too could support life.

This in the wake of Friday's article about possible methane-based life on Titan!
Idle

Submission + - Politically Correct Zoology (huffingtonpost.com)

Submitted by flynny51
flynny51 writes: Dr Dylan Evans of the School of Medicine, University College Cork Ireland has had a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counselling imposed upon him and as a result his application for tenure is likely to be denied for sharing an article from a peer reviewed journal on fellatio in fruit bats. (available here — http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007595 )

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