krou - Slashdot User

Submission + - Space Archaeology Uncovers Lost Pyramids (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @04:26AM

krou writes: A new technique dubbed "space archaeology" using satellites and infra-red imaging has helped uncover 17 new pyramids in Egypt, as well as some 1,000 tombs, and 3,000 ancient settlements. The mud bricks used to build Egyptian structures means it has a different density to the surrounding soil, and thus shows up in the images. Dr Sarah Parcak, who pioneered the technique, said that "Indiana Jones is old school, we've moved on from Indy, sorry Harrison Ford."

Submission + - OFT Targets Twitter, Blog Endorsements (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Sunday January 09, 2011 @06:16PM

krou writes: The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is cracking down 'on Twitter users and bloggers using their online presence to endorse products and companies without clearly stating their relationship with the brand'. They described such endorsements, including 'comments about services and products on blogs and microblogs such as Twitter', as 'deceptive' under fair trading rules. While the US Federal Trade Commission already requires such endorsements to be labelled with "ad" or "spon", the UK doesn't have any such requirement. In relation to this, the OFT has launched an investigation into Handpicked Media, because the OFT is 'insisting that it must clearly state when promotional comments have been paid for'.

Submission + - BBC Astronomer Misses Meteor During Live Show (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Thursday January 06, 2011 @08:30AM

krou writes: BBC astronomer Mark Thompson wasn't having a good night for the BBC's Stargazing Live show. He turned to the camera to complain of poor cloud visibility and a lack of activity in the sky ... only for a meteor to shoot past in the background. A rather sheepish Thompson said, 'I must admit I was oblivious to it. I think I'm probably the only person in the entire country who didn't see it.' (YouTube video of the original live footage).

Submission + - Google's next challenge: spam results (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @08:33AM

krou writes: The Guardian's tech blog is running an interesting piece on Google's next big challenge, which is dealing with the spammers it helped create. 'Google is the 900-pound gorilla of search, with around 90% of the market (excluding China and Russia), and there's an entire industry which has grown up specifically around tickling the gorilla to make it happy and enrich the ticklers.' They quote Paul Kedrosky who notes that 'Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you're done. On the web, no-one knows you're a content-grinder.' Whether searching for reviews, products, businesses, or even conducting academic research, scraper sites are ranking higher than original content. The article speculates that Google may try fix the problem but, from Google's perspective, most of these type of sites use AdSense ads, and generate revenue for Google (89% of clicks come from the first page of results), so Google may not have an incentive to change things too much. Alternatively, people could stop using Google, 'because its search is damn well broken ... The question is whether it would be visible enough — that is, whether enough people would do it — that it would show up on Google's radar and be made a priority.'

Submission + - CIA Launches WTF (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Wednesday December 22, 2010 @08:45AM

krou writes: In an effort to investigate the impact of the leaked diplomatic cables, the CIA have launched the Wikileaks Task Force, commonly referred to at CIA headquarters as "WTF". 'The Washington Post said the panel was being led by the CIA's counter-intelligence centre, although it has drawn in two dozen members from departments across the agency.' Although the agency has not seen much of its own information leaked in the cables, some revelations (such as spying at the UN) originated from direct requests by the CIA. The Guardian notes that, 'WTF is more commonly associated with the Facebook and Twitter profiles of teenagers than secret agency committees. Given that its expanded version is usually an expression of extreme disbelief, perhaps the term is apt for the CIA's investigation.'

Submission + - Fighting ad blockers with captcha ads (newscientist.com) 1

Submitted by krou on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:52AM

krou writes: Living in an ad-free internet thanks to ad blockers? That could be a thing of the past if software firm NuCatcha has their way: make captchas into ads. 'Instead of the traditional squiggly word that users have to decipher, the new system shows them a video advert with a short message scrolling across it. The user has to identify and retype part of the message to proceed. Companies including Electronic Arts, Wrigley and Disney have already signed up.'

Submission + - Look For AI, Not Aliens (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Monday August 23, 2010 @04:47AM

krou writes: Writing in Acta Astronautica, Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that we should be looking for 'sentient machines' rather than biological life. In an interview with the BBC, he said, "If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you. But within a few hundred years of inventing radio — at least if we're any example — you invent thinking machines; we're probably going to do that in this century. So you've invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you... a 'biological' intelligence." As a result, he says "we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out."

Submission + - Obama Wants Allies To Go After Wikileaks (thedailybeast.com) 1

Submitted by krou on Wednesday August 11, 2010 @10:53AM

krou writes: Coming on the back of human rights groups criticising Wikileaks, American officials are saying that the Obama administration is pressuring allies such as Australia, Britain, and Germany to open criminal investigations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and to try limit his ability to travel. 'It’s not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking. It’s U.K. troops, it’s German troops, it’s Australian troops—all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,' said one American diplomatic official, who added that other governments should 'review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.'

Submission + - 16 Years Jail For Videotaping Police? (mclu.org)

Submitted by krou on Monday July 26, 2010 @06:33PM

krou writes: The ACLU of Maryland is defending Anthony Graber, who potentially faces sixteen years in prison if found guilty of violating state wiretap laws because he recorded video of an officer drawing a gun during a traffic stop. ... Once [the Maryland State Police] learned of the video on YouTube, Graber's parents house was raided, searched, and four of his computers were confiscated. Graber was arrested, booked and jailed. Their actions are a calculated method of intimidation. Another person has since been similarly charged under the same statute. The wiretap law being used to charge Anthony Graber is intended to protect private communication between two parties. According to David Rocah, the ACLU attorney handling Mr. Graber's case, "To charge Graber with violating the law, you would have to conclude that a police officer on a public road, wearing a badge and a uniform, performing his official duty, pulling someone over, somehow has a right to privacy when it comes to the conversation he has with the motorist."

Submission + - First full-sky image from Planck (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by krou on Monday July 05, 2010 @08:02AM

krou writes: Six months of work has produced a remarkable full-sky map from Planck.
It shows what is visible beyond the Earth to instruments that are sensitive to light at very long wavelengths — much longer than what we can sense with our eyes. Researchers say it is a remarkable dataset that will help them understand better how the Universe came to look the way it does now. "It's a spectacular picture; it's a thing of beauty," Dr Jan Tauber, the European Space Agency's (Esa) Planck project scientist, told BBC News. ... Of particular note are the huge streamers of cold dust that reach thousands of light-years above and below the galactic plane. "What you see is the structure of our galaxy in gas and dust, which tells us an awful lot about what is going on in the neighbourhood of the Sun; and it tells us a lot about the way galaxies form when we compare this to other galaxies," observed Professor Andrew Jaffe, a Planck team member from Imperial College London, UK.

The ESA have more news here, with a higher-res JPG available.

Submission + - UK Government to axe hundreds of websites (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by krou on Friday June 25, 2010 @07:35AM

krou writes: The UK government is to review all of its 820 websites after the Central Office of Information revealed that for 2009-2010, the government spent '£94m on website development and running costs and £32m on web staff', which each site visitor representing a cost of £11.78 to the government. 'The UK Trade and Investment website averaged 28,000 users per month but cost over £4m ... 16% of government departments did not know how their own websites were being used by tax payers, and almost a quarter were not aware of the running costs.' There was also anecdotal evidence of departments bidding against each other for search terms on Google. The review is to be carried out by Cabinet Minister Francis Maude, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander, and Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox.

Submission + - US experiment hints at 'multiple God particles' (bbc.co.uk) 1

Submitted by krou on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @07:27AM

krou writes: Recent results from the Dzero experiment at the Tevatron particle accelerator suggest that those looking for a single Higgs boson particle should, in fact, be looking for five particles, and the data gathered may point to new laws beyond the Standard Model. 'The DZero results showed much more significant "asymmetry" of matter and anti-matter — beyond what could be explained by the Standard Model. Bogdan Dobrescu, Adam Martin and Patrick J Fox from Fermilab say this large asymmetry effect can be accounted for by the existence of multiple Higgs bosons. They say the data point to five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges. Three would have a neutral charge and one each would have a negative and positive electric charge. This is known as the two-Higgs doublet model.'

Submission + - UK Government spending details published (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Friday June 04, 2010 @07:34AM

krou writes: The UK government has released a treasure trove of public spending data in an effort to lift what Prime Minister David Cameron calls the government's "cloak of secrecy". 'The first two tranches of data are from 2008/09 and 2009/10. The Combined Online Information System (Coins) includes what departments were authorised to spend, what they actually spent and what they are forecast to spend in future.' Since the government admits that "some degree of technical competence" will be needed to use the files, they have asked the Open Knowledge Foundation to help make it "more accessible", and have also promised "more accessible formats" by August. The datasets can be downloaded from data.gov.uk.

Submission + - Mars500 mission begins (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by krou on Thursday June 03, 2010 @08:18AM

krou writes: The six participants in the Mars500 project have entered their sealed facility. The project, which lasts for 18 months, is designed to try and simulate a mission to mission to Mars, completely isolated and cut off from the outside world, with a '20-minute, one-way time-delay in communications to mirror the real lag in sending messages over the vast distance between Mars and Earth.' They also have limited consumables, with everything required being loaded onboard from the start. You can follow developments via the blog, or the twitter feed of Diego Urbina, one of the would-be cosmonauts.

Submission + - Police investigating virtual furniture theft (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by krou on Wednesday June 02, 2010 @05:43AM

krou writes: Finnish police are involved in the investigation of up to 400 cases of theft from virtual world Habbo Hotel, with some users reporting the loss of up to €1000 of virtual furniture and other items. Users were targeted using a phishing scam that used fake webpages to capture usernames and passwords. There is no mention as to whether or not the thieves made off with the bath towels, gowns, shampoo bottles, and soaps.

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