Slashdot Mirror

Colin Smith writes "Rising levels of personal wealth in the nation of China means that the country now has over 100 million internet users, and the authorities are discovering just how difficult it is to place a dam against information in the digital age." From the article: "Only last week, the authorities threatened to shut down websites and blogs that failed to register with regulators in a new campaign to tighten controls on what the public can see online. The so-called Great Firewall of China is constantly being breached as citizens and the authorities play a cat and mouse game with the flow of information."

malkavian writes "The BBC has announced that it's going to be ceasing to host it's Cult TV Repository. At a meager 700,000 users per month, it was decided that this was no longer a significantly useful public resource, as the information was also available elsewhere on the net. Many people believe this to be a grievous mistake on the part of the BBC, to allow the history of their own broadcasting highlights to fragment, and possibly be lost like so much of its other content."

malkavian writes "The BBC has announced that it's going to be ceasing to host it's Cult TV Repository. At a meager 700,000 users per month, it was decided that this was no longer a significantly useful public resource, as the information was also available elsewhere on the net. Many people believe this to be a grievous mistake on the part of the BBC, to allow the history of their own broadcasting highlights to fragment, and possibly be lost like so much of its other content."

malkavian writes "The BBC has announced that it's going to be ceasing to host it's Cult TV Repository. At a meager 700,000 users per month, it was decided that this was no longer a significantly useful public resource, as the information was also available elsewhere on the net. Many people believe this to be a grievous mistake on the part of the BBC, to allow the history of their own broadcasting highlights to fragment, and possibly be lost like so much of its other content."

jahead writes "It looks like a lake has been seen on Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini probe. But don't get too excited yet. As mentioned by Elizabeth Turtle in the article, it could also be a dried up lake that left dark deposits."

Tsalg writes "The final report from the Stafford-Covey Commission concludes that out of the 15 recommendations they made, the 3 toughest technically are not met. The news was not official on the return-to-flight website but has been widely commented elsewhere. Says one of the task members: "It is NASA's job -- not the task force's -- to determine whether the risks are acceptable and whether it's safe for Discovery to fly." The commission said risk remained that pieces of foam and ice could break off and hit the shuttle at lift-off. It also said the orbiter had not been sufficiently hardened and it lacked an in-flight repair system.Nasa has been aiming to launch shuttle Discovery as early as 13 July."

ScentCone writes "After years of politicking, France has won the right to be the location for a $12 billion fusion research facility. The plant will use deuterium-from-seawater and a huge electromagnetic ring to produce the 100-million-C conditions in which researchers hope to produce viable fusion. The debate over whether this is even possible continues to rage. The ITER project started in 1985, and there has been a running fight over money and location since. France indicated that if Japan (one of the holdouts) didn't see it their way, they'd build a coalition of the willing and do it anyway. With financing and contracting agreements in place, the 10-year construction can begin." Coverage also available at MSNBC, the NYTimes, CNN, and the BBC.

gollum123 wrote to mention a BBC article which explains the low-hanging moon of the past few nights. From the article:"For the past few nights the moon has appeared larger than many people have seen it for almost 20 years. It is the world's largest optical illusion, and one of its most enduring mysteries. The mystery of the Moon Illusion, witnessed by millions of people this week, has puzzled great thinkers for centuries. There is still no agreed on explaination for why the moon appears bigger when it's on the horizon than when it's high in the night sky."

Spad writes "The BBC is reporting that people don't see downloading copyrighted material as theft, despite concerted efforts by the games, music and movie industries to convince them otherwise. The report, titled Fake Nation, claims that '[People] just don't see it as theft. They just see it as inevitable, particularly as new technologies become available...The purchase of counterfeit goods or illegal downloading are seen as normal leisure practices,' However, they also found that while people are generally not buying counterfeit software from dodgy dealers on street corners, they are still happy to purchase them from people they know at the office/pub/school in addition to downloading them. Nobody can really be that suprised by the 'popularity' of downloading pirated software, but I was a little thrown by the apparent willingness of people to pay for pirated copies of it."

lxt writes "A British tabloid newspaper managed to buy the personal details of over 1000 bank customers from an off-shore call centre based in Delhi. An IT worker at the call centre handed over details at £4.25 per customer, as well as credit card numbers and account passwords. He claimed could sell over 200,000 account details every month. The British police force has passed on details to Interpol and the Indian authorities, in an attempt to prosecute the individual. The BBC is also covering the story."

Bimo_Dude writes "The BBC News is reporting that ten percent of UK websites alienate Firefox users. From the article: 'While most people still use Microsoft's browser, Firefox is slowly making inroads. Its share of the browser market grew to 8% in May, up from 5.59% at the beginning of the year, according to US-based analysts NetApplications. Microsoft IE's share of the market dropped to 87.23% in May, compared to 90.31% in January.'"

karvind writes "BBC is running is an interview with Niklas Zennström, the internet entrepreneur behind both Kazaa and Skype, about how his two inventions came about, and how broadband and wireless devices are shaping his vision for the future. From the interview: "On the other hand, Skype, just like Kazaa and other software, are encouraging people to buy broadband connections.""

Qa32 writes "Computer scientists in the U.S. are developing a system which would allow people to convey a solid 3D recreation of themselves over the Internet. From the article: 'When you watch something created by claymation, it is a real object and it looks like it's moving itself. That's something like the idea we're doing... in our case, the idea is that you have computation in the 'clay', as though the clay can move itself.'"

goldfishy writes "If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth - even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated. Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is 'complementary' to the present. In theory, you could go back in time and meet your infant father but you could not kill him." From the article: "Quantum behaviour is governed by probabilities. Before something has actually been observed, there are a number of possibilities regarding its state. But once its state has been measured those possibilities shrink to one - uncertainty is eliminated."

jonerik writes "The BBC has an article on the current status of the once-popular cassette tape in the UK and elsewhere. It's been a long climb up and a long fall down for the audio format introduced by Dutch electronics giant Philips in 1963. Having sold 83 million units in the UK at their 1989 peak, cassettes sold just 900,000 units in the UK last year. And yet the cassette soldiers on in the West in niche applications - particularly in the audio book market - and in other countries where CD and MP3 penetration hasn't been as extensive. From the article: 'Keith Joplin, a Director of Research at the International Federation of Phonographic Industries, said that Turkey still sells 88 million cassettes a year, India 80 million, and that cassettes account for 50% of sales in these countries. In Saudi Arabia, it is 70%.'"

derek_farn writes "It looks like us lucky Brits will be getting a Dr Who christmas special, plus a third series has been commissioned. Those of you who get their news from the BBC web site will know that the current Dr Who, Christopher Eccleston, left after the first series and was replaced by the actor who recently played Casanova in a mini-series (not quite the same as the women wearing lycra in Star Trek, but we Brits are a bit more reserved)."

derek_farn writes "It looks like us lucky Brits will be getting a Dr Who christmas special, plus a third series has been commissioned. Those of you who get their news from the BBC web site will know that the current Dr Who, Christopher Eccleston, left after the first series and was replaced by the actor who recently played Casanova in a mini-series (not quite the same as the women wearing lycra in Star Trek, but we Brits are a bit more reserved)."

zebadee writes "The UK has given £25 million ($45 million) in funding toward storing CO2 under the North Sea. The article at the BBC has a discussion on how this will be achieved. Basically gases produced at the power station will be pumped into old oil and gas fields for long-term storage. This has the added effect of pressurising the wells, allowing better recovery of the contents."

jdfox writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft is censoring blogs on MSN China. The words 'freedom', 'democracy' and 'demonstration' are reportedly among the words being blocked. But the article also points out that Microsoft is not the first corporation to censor content when the Chinese government requests it." Slashdot covered this story a few days ago too.

Colin Smith writes "It looks like U.S. scientists are getting good at manipulating buckytubes. 'The world's smallest brushes, with bristles more than a thousand times finer than a human hair, have been created by researchers in the U.S.' This tells me that nanomaterials are moving from science to engineering."

OldBus writes "According to the BBC robotic bins and benches have been installed in Cambridge. According to the article, they 'move and chuckle' and 'sing when the sun comes out.'" From the article: "Mr Bogen hopes the cutting edge technology would help keep the bins and benches safe from theft. The Junction has a three year maintenance contract with Greyworld and plans to name all the bins and benches individually to make carrying out repairs easier."

JD writes "BBC News has an article about online censorship, blogs in particular. It points out that 'perhaps we need to accept that small gains and slight shifts in direction can make a difference to people's lives, and work for them instead of trying to blast down the walls of repression with a single blow.' Whittling away may be the only realistic way to see change happen."

nick_davison writes "The BBC is reporting that Microsoft has reached a deal with the Indonesian government on pirated software - which is believed to affect around 50,000 government PCs. Under the deal, Indonesia will pay $1 per copy and agree to buy legally in the future. Indonesia's information minister, Sofyan Djalil, said, "Microsoft is being realistic. They can't force developing countries like us to solely use legal software since we can't afford it. They want us to gradually reduce our use of it." Somehow it seems unlikely the same rules will be applied to developing companies and poorer individuals in the United States."

The BBC has the story of a young Chinese man who was slain over a virtual property dispute. His killer has been sentenced to life imprisonment. The Guardian Gamesblog has a deeper look at the situation with Terra Novan Ren Reynolds. From the article: "We're becoming a service property marketplace. Is this as good as a manufacturing economy? It doesn't have the moral solidity in a way. You can kind of see that shift in ethical terms. People would think that stealing an album in a shop is immoral, but stealing an mp3 isn't. The idea of property has become more intangible."

newfoundry writes "BBC News reports that Google hit $80bn on the NYSE yesterday, so is now worth more than Time Warner..."

Rodrigo Strauss writes "The Inquirer has the story that individual owners of websites and blogs must register with the government or face a shut-down. Apparently they will begin monitoring of all sites, both commercial and personal, beginning this month. Site owners have until the end of the month to register. The BBC has the story as well." From the BBC article: "'The internet has profited many people but it also has brought many problems, such as sex, violence and feudal superstitions and other harmful information that has seriously poisoned people's spirits,' said a statement on the MII website, explaining why the new rules were necessary."

karvind writes "BBC has an interesting story on the 50th birthday of atomic clocks. The first accurate caesium atomic clock was developed at the NPL in 1955 by Dr Louis Essen. And after 5 decades In September the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) used computer chip fabrication techniques to make a small atomic clock. The final development should see a battery-operated system about the size of a sugar lump. NIST also has a page on history of atomic clocks"

ring writes "The United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) has released a new atlas 'One Planet Many People: Atlas of our Changing Environment', to mark World Environment Day (WED). It compares and contrasts spectacular satellite images of the past few decades with contemporary ones." From the BBC article: "Among the transformations highlighted in the atlas are the huge growth of greenhouses in southern Spain, the rapid rise of shrimp farming in Asia and Latin America and the emergence of a giant, shadow puppet-shaped peninsula at the mouth of the Yellow River that has built up through transportation of sediment in the waters."

Rollie Hawk writes "The Tyrannosaurus rex has long been the darling of science fiction dinosaurs and has one of the most well-known skeletal designs among extinct creatures. But while even the most casual dinosaur enthusiast can identify the T. rex, until recently the sex of individual specimens was not discernable. Though dinosaurs are most known for their traits shared with modern reptiles, it is their kinship with birds that has finally revealed the sex of a T. rex fossil. To prepare for egg production, female birds develop a thick layer of medullary bone in their long bones, which acts as an extra source of eggshell calcium. According to Dr. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, the 'tyrant lizard king' appears to do the same thing. She explains that 'dinosaurs produced and shelled their eggs much more like modern birds than like modern crocodiles.'"

diamond writes "The BBC reports that 'scientists have extracted and decoded the DNA of a cave bear that died 40,000 years ago.' The sequencing technique could also work for Neanderthals. However, 'the idea of obtaining DNA from dinosaurs, depicted in the film Jurassic Park, remains science fiction.' Also reported by Nature Magazine."

stlhawkeye writes "The BBC is running an article which indicates that NASA has green-lit Phoenix, the next Mars mission. NASA also has some details on the mission, which is centered around locating water on the red planet. Originally planned as part of the 2001 Mars Surveyor mission, the lander would launch in 2007. Among the more interesting plans for the mission is a new type of camera to photograph the landing site just before touchdown, and a robotic arm to claw through three feet of soil. The lander would touchdown near the polar ice cap. The mission is characterized as the first 'scout' mission for possible manned landing in the future."

diodesign writes "BBC News has revealed that Linux and Apache power its popular news website, along with a modified DNS server and machine farms in New York and London. At peak times, the site serves over 4 million users and 50 million page impressions a day. It's a pretty well explained guide to producing a regularly updated content based website that scales well." From the article: "The technology which serves the site is designed to be as simple as possible. The simpler the site, the cheaper it is to run. There are fewer elements which can malfunction on big days; and there are fewer parts which can be compromised by someone trying to gain unauthorised access."

diodesign writes "BBC News has revealed that Linux and Apache power its popular news website, along with a modified DNS server and machine farms in New York and London. At peak times, the site serves over 4 million users and 50 million page impressions a day. It's a pretty well explained guide to producing a regularly updated content based website that scales well." From the article: "The technology which serves the site is designed to be as simple as possible. The simpler the site, the cheaper it is to run. There are fewer elements which can malfunction on big days; and there are fewer parts which can be compromised by someone trying to gain unauthorised access."

flosofl writes "The BBC has a report on oxytocin and its ability to skew our trust levels. 'The participants in the study played a game, in which they were split into "investors" and "trustees." The investors were then given credits and told they could chose whether to hand over zero, four, eight or 12 credits to their assigned trustee.' Some of the investors were given oxytocin via nasal spray. The results were surprising: 'Of 29 investors who were given oxytocin, 13 (45%) displayed "maximal trust" by choosing to invest highly, compared to six (21%) of the 29 investors who were given the dummy spray.' When the trustee was a computer, there was no difference between the two test groups."

Jigabug writes "There's a story over at Yahoo! News mentioning yesterday's approval by ICANN on a new .xxx TLD. Domains are currently planned to be offered at 60.00 each for registration. The .xxx joins the recently approved .jobs and .travel." From the article: "Adult-oriented sites, a $12 billion industry, probably could begin buying xxx addresses as early as fall or winter depending on ICM's plans, ICANN spokesman Kieran Baker said. The new pornography suffix was among 10 under consideration by the regulatory group..." CNN and the BBC have commentary as well.

ninjee writes "Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb. It is the only known drawing of a "nuke" made by Nazi experts and appears in a report held by a private archive. The researchers who brought it to light say the drawing is a rough schematic and does not imply the Nazis built, or were close to building, an atomic bomb. But a detail in the report hints some Nazi scientists may have been closer to that goal than was previously believed. The report containing the diagram is undated, but the researchers claim the evidence points to it being produced immediately after the end of the war in Europe. It deals with the work of German nuclear scientists during the war and lacks a title page, so there is no evidence of who composed it. One historian behind the discovery, Rainer Karlsch, caused a storm of controversy earlier this year when he claimed to have uncovered evidence the Nazis successfully tested a primitive nuclear device in the last days of WWII. A number of historians rejected the claim. The drawing is published in an article written for Physics World magazine by Karlsch and Mark Walker, professor of history at Union College in Schenectady, US."

jvchamary writes "Most biologists believe that Earth is currently undergoing its sixth mass extinction. The cause? Human activity, either directly (e.g. the Dodo) or indirectly (e.g. the Amazon rainforests). The disappearance 30,000-45,000 years ago of the Australian megafauna, large animals such as the marsupial lion, is often attributed to hunting by Aboriginal settlers. However, recent research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that it was more likely a shift in climate, rather than hunting, that caused the over-sized organisms to die-out (via Nature and the BBC)."

jvchamary writes "Most biologists believe that Earth is currently undergoing its sixth mass extinction. The cause? Human activity, either directly (e.g. the Dodo) or indirectly (e.g. the Amazon rainforests). The disappearance 30,000-45,000 years ago of the Australian megafauna, large animals such as the marsupial lion, is often attributed to hunting by Aboriginal settlers. However, recent research in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that it was more likely a shift in climate, rather than hunting, that caused the over-sized organisms to die-out (via Nature and the BBC)."

ATMosby writes "The BBC has an article that pretty much sums up everything you might need to know if you wanted to refine nuclear fuel and build some atomic weapons." From the article: "Uranium is the basic raw material of both civilian and military nuclear programmes. It is extracted from either open-cast pits or by underground mining. Although uranium occurs naturally all over the world, only a small fraction is found in concentrated ores. When certain atoms of uranium are split in a chain reaction, energy is released. This process is called nuclear fission."

RexDart writes "The BBC Online has profiled Duane DeFreitas, an adventurer and guide living in Guyana. He's three hours away from the nearest town (in the dry season; three days away when it's raining), yet has full internet access via satellite. His latest project: setting up Skype for phone service, as soon as he can import a microphone and speakers. Yet more proof that the internet is truly everywhere. Mind the jaguar."

An anonymous reader writes that "The BBC reports on recent theoretical physics research showing that wormholes may not be very useful for space or time travel. Wormholes with smooth or classical spacetimes appear to be unstable and fall apart quickly. Too bad for budding time travelers and space explorers!"

LiquidCoooled writes "Vodafone in the UK have released a mobile phone which caters to those people craving a simple handset. For far too long we have been overpowered by extras we don't need; this looks to be a very nice solution. These phones feature a large format screen and buttons and a simple interface making this phone more accessible to a larger audience." I'd sure prefer better sound and simpler menus to the useless camera and gimmicks built into my current phone.

sane? writes "Putting an aircraft down on a carrier in bad weather is the stuff of melodramatic Hollywood films. Automated systems for conventional aircraft and big carriers has been done for a while, but getting a hovering Harrier, helicopter, or future JSF to land on a pitching deck of a smaller ship is a different matter. This week QinetiQ demonstrated a complete autoland - a significant step towards making the future JSF work."

TheMster writes "The BBC is reporting on the UK government's latest policy to tackle obesity - through offering iPods and XBoxes to pupils. The lucky lads and lasses of 29 Glasgow secondary schools will be part of the pioneering scheme, which utilises the newly introduced swipe-card canteens to create a system of the 'better you eat, the bigger the treat'."

Terremoto writes "A student at west London's Brunel University has developed a shoe with a pedometer that controls the amount of time a TV will remain lit. If sufficient activity has not been achieved the TV remains uncooperative. The device is appropriately named, "Square-Eyes"."

Yesterday's Nintendo press conference was probably the most subdued and honest of the three major events this week. While they didn't have anything really earth-shattering to offer up, the Gameboy Micro, the Revolution's game-downloading capabilities, and the new Zelda Trailer were all welcome news from a company that has been very quiet of late. Commentary, photos, and speculation available from: Nintendo, Engadget, USAToday, GamesIndustry.biz, 1up.com, Gamespot, Cube.IGN, NYT, BBC, Gamasutra, and CNN. Specific coverage on the new Gameboy Micro is available from Gamasutra, GamesIndustry.biz, and CNN. My two cents about Nintendo's conference are available below. Last night I took in G4's E3 coverage, and their discussion of the Nintendo press conference struck a chord with me. This last console cycle, with the Gamecube, Nintendo really missed the boat. The GC wasn't released until many months after the PS2 was already in homes lighting up screens, and their attempts to carve out a market share were always muddled by confusing choices. The most confusing choice of the current generation, by far, was their almost complete refusal to participate in online gaming. While the Xbox sailed by with the Live service and the PS2 limped into the arena with the broadband adapter, the GC quietly sailed on with only Phantasy Star to break up its lonely voyage. At last year's E3 Nintendo very specifically said that they were not going to miss the boat this time. They were going to release the next console right around the same time as the other two companies and make sure their name was out there.

I have high hopes for the Revolution, but to be honest Nintendo's press conference was very underwhelming. Even given that the PS3 isn't going to be on store shelves for another year, what Sony showed on Monday was literally jaw-dropping. Even if there was some liberal use of pre-rendered footage in the presentation, the press conference put on by Sony was designed to fire the imagination and get people excited about the possibilities of the next generation. Nintendo offered us Nintendogs. And a new Game Boy Advanced. Yes, I think that downloading old games onto your Revolution is a cool idea, but a...uh...friend of mine tells me that I can emulate those games on my PC for free.

Perhaps all this is just worrywortism. Nintendo has never failed to be innovative in the past, and their support of the DS and quirky games like Warioware is proof that not everything has to be same-old same-old in this ever more business-like industry. They have more than a year to get their ducks in a row, but I'm afraid that Sony and Microsoft may have already beaten them to the punch. In the end, it's not just about making fun games. You have to sell them too.

An anonymous reader submits "It seems that the Royal Dragoon Guards in Iraq decided to make a spoof of a Tony Christie video, which was recently re-released by Peter Kay for Comic Relief. However, the video file was over 50MB and it took out various e-mail systems, including those at RAF Strike Command. Despite the inadvertant denial of service attack, the MoD said the spoof was 'brilliant.'"

Little Hamster writes "Five thousand households with broadband access has been selected for a trial of the BBC's new interactive Media Player. The trial will run from September to December, and users can 'time shift' and download selected BBC TV shows, radio programmes, regional programming and feature films. After seven days, the content will be automatically deleted from the user's computers. BBC will use this trial to iron out any outstanding rights issues and resolve teething difficulties with the technology ahead of a full launch next year." The BBC Press Office has a release about this as well.

The PlayStation 3 was unveiled yesterday afternoon in a press conference at Sony Pictures Studio. The event was full of beautiful demonstrations, specifications, and talk of the games of tomorrow. The machine is certainly impressive, with backwards compatibility, support for up to seven Bluetooth controllers, multiple HD signals, and intimate interactions with the PSP. Coverage, screenshots, and specs available from 1up.com, Gamespot, Joystiq, NYT, Voodoo Extreme, Gamespy, BBC, GamesIndustry.biz, Engadget, Anandtech, Kotaku, Gamasutra, and CNN Money. The only downside I see so far? The controller. Update: 05/18 21:35 GMT by Z : Gamespot has up a comprehensive look at the console based on what is known so far.

Maddog Batty writes "The mars rover Opportunity, which has been stuck in a sand dune since the end of April, is still going nowhere after wheel spinning attempts were made to free the probe. It did manage to move a very short distance as can be seen in the difference between these two images. Before this attempt the NASA JPL team were playing in their own sandpit trying to replicate the conditions on Mars. (older coverage)"