goodbadorugly - Slashdot User

Antarctic Ice Bridge Finally Breaks Off 505

Posted by timothy on Monday April 06, 2009 @12:50AM from the invest-in-arizona-beaches dept.

GreennMann writes "An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, the Wilkins shelf has been retreating since the 1990s. Researchers regarded the ice bridge as an important barrier, holding the remnant shelf structure in place. Its removal will allow ice to move more freely between Charcot and Latady islands, into the open ocean."

Homebrew Microcontroller Laptop, Made of Wood 159

Posted by timothy on Tuesday March 17, 2009 @11:33AM from the logically-if-she's-made-of-wood dept.

Brietech writes "This is a homebrew laptop project based on a Picaxe microcontroller. It has 16kb of RAM, 256kb of storage, sound and a self-hosted development environment! It has a simple CLI, file-system, 'EMAXE' text editor and a programming language called 'Chris#.' Oh, and yes, it runs Linaxe."

Sniping Could Be the Next Killer iPod App 461

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 20, 2009 @03:31PM from the pull-up-your-kill-list dept.

An anonymous Coward writes "Knights Armament Corp. who supply sniper rifles to the US military have developed a iPod Touch mounting system and software for the US Army M110 sniper rifle system. The use of off the shelf hardware no doubt cut costs and allowed rapid development of this system." If it automatically played a theme song after every head shot, this would be the coolest rifle accessory ever.

Four Threats For '09 You Haven't Heard of 126

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday January 02, 2009 @03:02PM from the fear-mongering dept.

ancientribe writes "Security experts are cautiously on the lookout for some lesser-known but potentially lethal threats that could be more difficult to prepare for and defend against in 2009. These aren't your typical enterprise hack attacks. They're mainly large-scale Internet threats — attacks that knock out sections of the Internet infrastructure, radical extremist hackers, Web attacks that adversely affect online ad revenue, and even the unthinkable: human casualties as a result of a cyberattack." Also known as the new group of things the fear mongers will use to make you do their bidding.

Canadian Fined For Videoing Movie In Theatre 382

Posted by kdawson on Saturday November 15, 2008 @09:54PM from the duct-tape-it dept.

canadian_right writes "A Calgary man was fined $1,495 and banned from theaters for a year in the first conviction under a new Canadian law making recording a movie in a theater a crime. Until the new law took effect in 2007, prosecutors had to show evidence of distribution to get a conviction; now, recording without permission is sufficient. The Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association was disappointed that jail time was not given." The man was also banned for a year from possessing any video recording equipment, even a video-capable cellphone, outside of his home.

Inside View of Epic, Preparing Gears of War 2 106

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 27, 2008 @06:38PM from the cool-kids-club dept.

Subm writes "Lamborghinis, motion-capture rooms, secret new weapons — these are a few things included in the profile of Epic Games and its Design Director, Cliff Bleszinski. 'A Microsoft employee who works closely with Epic described the company as having a "band dynamic." Staff turnover is low, and many of Epic's most senior employees have been friends for more than a decade. This does not seem a very long time until one sits in on an Epic meeting and realizes that anyone over the age of thirty-five achieves the temporal stature of Methuselah. Epic's recent growth is regarded with wary gratitude by many of its employees, though some miss the old days, when, as Sweeney put it, "we were just a bunch of kids who had some cool ideas and were doing neat things."'"

Full Facial Transplant Is One Step Closer 113

Posted by timothy on Saturday August 23, 2008 @06:59PM from the get-in-line-for-jolie-lips dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "A Chinese medical team led by Shuzhong Guo of the Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an has successfully completed the first transplant to include facial bone in a transplant on a man whose face was slashed by a bear. The Chinese graft included muscles, nerves, blood vessels, cartilage and skin and included an intact salivary gland, another first. Two years after the procedure, the man can eat, drink and speak, thanks to the gradual fusing of transplanted nerves and muscles with what remained of the patient's own. This transplant together with the another ground breaking transplant last year by French doctors that removed a huge tumor that had completely infiltrated and disfigured their patient's face, now sets the stage for a full facial transplant."

Antarctica Once Abutted Death Valley 182

Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 13, 2008 @08:04PM from the may-i-borrow-some-grey-poupon dept.

Science News has a story of strange bedfellows. It seems that Antarctica was once adjacent to what is now the American Southwest, some 800 million years ago. Earth's continents then formed a supercontinent called Rodinia, predating Pangaea by some 550 million years. "...the ratios of neodymium isotopes in the ancient sediments in the Transantarctic Mountains are the same as those in what was then Laurentia, says Goodge. Also, the hafnium isotope ratios in the 1.44-billion-year-old zircons found in East Antarctica match those of the zircons found in the distinctive granites now found primarily in North America. Finally, the researchers note, the ratios of various isotopes and elements in a basketball-sized chunk of granite found in East Antarctica — a chunk ripped by a glacier from bedrock now smothered by thick ice, the team speculates — match those of granite found only in what was southwestern Laurentia, which today is the American Southwest."

Homer Simpson and the Kimya Botnet 83

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday July 12, 2008 @09:14AM from the why-you-little dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As all hardcore Simpsons fans know, Chunkylover53@aol.com was revealed to be Homer Simpsons' email address in one particular episode, registered by one of the shows writers, who would reply to fans as Homer himself. After a flood of messages, 'Homer' signed off — seemingly forever. Well in the last few days, security company Facetime Communications reports that anyone who had Homer on their AIM buddy list would have noticed his sudden reappearance. Unfortunately for all, he appears to have been hacked and pushing malware links which deposit those unlucky enough to run the file into a Turkish Botnet. The message claims the file is a 'web exclusive' episode of the TV show — an interesting way of targeting a specific group of fans who would assume Homers return would only coincide with something special like (say) a TV episode just for them. What I want to know is, is Homer smart enough to run an AV scan?"

Firefox 3 Hits Release Candidate 2 395

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 05, 2008 @07:37AM from the unleash-the-upgrades dept.

Barence noted that Firefox has announced release candidate 2 of their highly popular web browser. You can read the release notes while you download. And since my copy just finished downloading, I guess I'll go install it. I hope I don't have any

Windows 7 Won't Have Compact "MinWin" Kernel 580

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @07:04AM from the starting-over-is-hard-to-do dept.

An anonymous reader points us to an interview Microsoft's Windows 7 development chief, Steven Sinofsky, did with CNet. He reveals that Windows 7 will be a further evolution of Vista, and will lose the rumored MinWin kernel. "We're very clear that drivers and software that work on Windows Vista are going to work really well on Windows 7; in fact, they'll work the same. We're going to not introduce additional compatibilities, particularly in the driver model. Windows Vista was about improving those things. We are going to build on the success and the strength of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, and that has all of this work that you've been talking about. The key there is that the kernel in Windows Server 08 is an evolution of the kernel in Windows Vista, and then Windows 7 will be a further evolution of that kernel as well."

Comment Re:Another movie slashvertisment (Score 2, Insightful) 199

by goodbadorugly on Friday May 02, 2008 @09:03PM (#23281696) Attached to: Raytheon Exoskeleton Brings "Iron Man" to Life

have to agree. the movie is pure popcorn entertainment (saw it last night), you go to these kinds of movies to have fun, not be intellectually manhandled. Its sad to see that the simple pleasures of a summer blockbuster can be totally lost on some people.

Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality Is Already Gone 378

Posted by kdawson on Sunday April 13, 2008 @05:13PM from the it's-not-your-internet-sonny dept.

Virgin Media CEO Says Net Neutrality is "A Load of Bollocks". Anyone here been shaken down by their Internet Service Provider? "The new CEO of Virgin Media is putting his cards on the table early, branding net neutrality 'a load of bollocks' and claiming he's already doing deals to deliver some people's content faster than others... If you aren't prepared to cough up the extra cash, he says he'll put you in the Internet 'bus lane.'"

Matrix-Like VR Coming in the Near Future? 249

Posted by Zonk on Thursday April 03, 2008 @05:11PM from the can't-see-anything-bad-happening-there. dept.

Anonymongoose writes "A researcher at Brookhaven National Lab reckons it could be just a few years before computers can pass through the uncanny valley. The article refers to this as a 'Graphics Turing Test': 'a computer can be considered intelligent if it can create an artificial world capable of fooling a person into believing it is the real thing.' Michael McGuigan has been performing some interesting experiments using Brookhaven's Blue Gene/L supercomputer and has shown that it can produce realistic lighting effects in real time. McGuigan's original research paper (pdf) is available online."

UK Police Want DNA of 'Potential Offenders' 578

Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 16, 2008 @05:29PM from the when-everyone-is-special-nobody-is dept.

mrogers writes "British police want to collect DNA samples from children as young as five who 'exhibit behavior indicating they may become criminals in later life'. A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers argued that since some schools already take pupils' fingerprints, the collection and permanent storage of DNA samples was the logical next step. And of course, if anyone argues that branding naughty five-year-olds as lifelong criminals will stigmatize them, the proposed solution will be to take samples from all children."

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