Slashdot Mirror

Barbarian writes: "CNN reports that a Russian Submarine has launched a rocket containing a solar sail payload sucessfully. The mission is a 30 minute sub-orbital test. space.com has more details on the craft." Our earlier story. Another submitter noted that today is the 25th anniversary of the landing of the Viking 1 Mars probe. JPL has a Mars site, which is not responding as I write this. Maybe the Martians got to it. :)

Barbarian writes: "CNN reports that a Russian Submarine has launched a rocket containing a solar sail payload sucessfully. The mission is a 30 minute sub-orbital test. space.com has more details on the craft." Our earlier story. Another submitter noted that today is the 25th anniversary of the landing of the Viking 1 Mars probe. JPL has a Mars site, which is not responding as I write this. Maybe the Martians got to it. :)

Kagato writes: "CNN reports here that Sony and WB have come to an agreements for Digital Content Control via cable. Even worse, Fox and Disney are making the rounds to get Content Control into over-the-air broadcasts. "...a controversial notion, since over-the-air is, by its literal definition, free and clear." It should be noted 80% of US households use cable/DBS." So when AOL/Time-Warner says you can record a show, you can. I'm sure we can all be happy with that much freedom.

Kagato writes: "CNN reports here that Sony and WB have come to an agreements for Digital Content Control via cable. Even worse, Fox and Disney are making the rounds to get Content Control into over-the-air broadcasts. "...a controversial notion, since over-the-air is, by its literal definition, free and clear." It should be noted 80% of US households use cable/DBS." So when AOL/Time-Warner says you can record a show, you can. I'm sure we can all be happy with that much freedom.

chopkins1 writes: "Toshiba has managed to squeeze 5GB of storage space into a PCMCIA Type II SAN disk. I'll take this over a Sony Memory Stick any day. Faster storage and faster copy to and from a computer. Considering that I'm about to get a camcorder that supports both, I think my decision is made (128M Memory Stick for $240US or Toshiba 5G for $400US), I'm going for the Type II card." As the article points out, that's more than typical DVD.

abh writes " CNN is reporting on the Emmy nominations, apparently there is a new category for reality-based TV (such as Survivor), and none other than Junkyard Wars got a nomination." Junkyard Wars rocks - excellent recognition of good stuff. The Daily Show was nominated as well, and deserves it, IMHO.

abh writes " CNN is reporting on the Emmy nominations, apparently there is a new category for reality-based TV (such as Survivor), and none other than Junkyard Wars got a nomination." Junkyard Wars rocks - excellent recognition of good stuff. The Daily Show was nominated as well, and deserves it, IMHO.

Masem writes: "Articles at CNET and CNN say that Judge Patel has ordered Napster to remain offline until they can offer 100% blockage of copyrighted songs by the plaintiff record companies. Napster officials said that they can guarentee 99% complience, but Patel says this is not good enough. Napster is arguing that this order violated the appeals court's ruling, and are appealling it."

iammichael writes "Scientists scouring the Atlantic Ocean have found huge towers of stone (the tallest ever) that they've named the "The Lost City" since they are located on a seafloor mountain named Atlantis Massif. Read about it on Yahoo news or CNN"

Reader tempestdata indicates this CNN story, writing: "It appears Microsoft is facing quite a bit of opposition for its new licensing program." It looks like Redmond is granting a one-fiscal-year reprieve to the many companies who were caught off-guard by the announcement of new Microsoft licensing plans. Perhaps some of those companies would be interested in the new KDE 2.2.beta1 -- at least KDE and GNOME don't seem likely to institute monthly subscription fees.

NaturePhotog writes: "CNN has an intriguing article on using Playstations running Linux to give people in developing nations access to information on health issues such as AIDS, clean water, etc. Playstations are cheap compared with PCs, hook up to a TV set, they're rugged, and could be hooked up via satellites using Globalstar phones. Ship along some of those low-cost solar panels discussed earlier on /., and you'd have a pretty sweet setup you can use almost anywhere. For serious research, of course..." And as neema points out, Sony isn't the only choice here: "Using the modem port, students from Nagoya University hooked up a homemade IDE board and installed a hard drive. The Dreamcast is running NetBSD for the Dreamcast." Here are the instructions (with schematics) on how to add a hard drive to your Dreamcast.

NaturePhotog writes: "CNN has an intriguing article on using Playstations running Linux to give people in developing nations access to information on health issues such as AIDS, clean water, etc. Playstations are cheap compared with PCs, hook up to a TV set, they're rugged, and could be hooked up via satellites using Globalstar phones. Ship along some of those low-cost solar panels discussed earlier on /., and you'd have a pretty sweet setup you can use almost anywhere. For serious research, of course..." And as neema points out, Sony isn't the only choice here: "Using the modem port, students from Nagoya University hooked up a homemade IDE board and installed a hard drive. The Dreamcast is running NetBSD for the Dreamcast." Here are the instructions (with schematics) on how to add a hard drive to your Dreamcast.

Rabenwolf writes: "Since we are closing in on Mars, Hubble is able to get better and better pictures of the planet, the newest one with a resolution of 10 miles! There is a story on CNN.com as well."

foldedspace writes: "CNN.com has a story about the information that casinos collect about their customers. They're even bragging about it. 6TB on 9 million customers at the Mirage!"

foldedspace writes: "CNN.com has a story about the information that casinos collect about their customers. They're even bragging about it. 6TB on 9 million customers at the Mirage!"

The Dev writes: "According to this story Netpliance 'greed to pay a civil penalty of $100,000 and reimburse some customers who had been charged Internet access fees before they used the service.' This is probably in response to their tactics after it was discovered that the I-Opener made a cool portable Linux workstation." It didn't take after the realization of its possibilities as a slim linux box for Netpliance to start charging people whether or not they signed up for their service.

flewp points to this CNN story about yet another bit of evidence for life on the red planet, writing: "Basically, two Mars probes have found similiarities between Mars rocks and terrestrial rocks found in desert environments. Some real promising stuff for the supporters of martian life. Essentially, the organisms (if there) take metals from the atmosphere and oxidize them, and make them stick using secretions, leaving a varnish like surface on the rock." The evidence here is pretty thin (ha!), but interesting.

kcurtis points to this CNN story about using cameras to scan people walking in the streets and matching them to mug shots. I'm no privacy freak, but this would be a bit unnerving. What if I happen to look like some murderer or DMCA offender?" This is the same technology that Superbowl attendees were unknowingly subjected to as well. Not to worry -- you're considered innocent until matched by face-recognition software. Yep, this is a duplicate story - naughty Tim!

Your recommended daily dose of insanity. FattyBoeBatty writes "Napster has been sued again, but this time it's by a company that makes meditation music -- and for once it's not about copyrights. They're afraid that without their company's warning labels, unsuspecting Napster users will be lulled to sleep by the tranquil melodies and will fall asleep at inopportune times (i.e. driving, operating heavy machinery, etc.)" A bunch of people submitted this story about Clonaid, a group of people wearing tin-foil hats who want to clone a human (and whose leader will give speeches for a measly $100,000). Finally, Hacky writes: "Security Service MI5 once planned to recruit a team of specially-trained gerbils as a secret weapon to sniff out spies, it has been revealed."

Everyone and their brother sent in this unsurprising news: the Appeals Court handling the Microsoft anti-trust case has overturned the break-up decision. A few story URLs: CNet, BBC, ABC, AP, Reuters, MSNBC. The decision is available in .pdf format. A brief summary: the Findings of Fact (Microsoft's conduct, etc.) are still in place, but Judge Jackson's evaluation of those facts and the penalty he imposed are thrown out. A new District Judge will examine the case, starting from the Findings of Fact. Update 2h later by J : Dan Gillmor's analysis is good. So is this Washington Post column, which is insightful except it doesn't go far enough. It also shows MS CEO Steve Ballmer's attitude even before today's ruling: "Is there any limit to what you think you can put into the operating system at all?" "...as a matter of law, no, I don't think so..."

beanerspace writes: "It's a crap shoot, but some time around 3:00am EST tonight, put down the mouse and take a lookup the Big Dipper's tail. CNN, in an article entitled Meteor shower could be feast for eyes and ears reported that tonights display might be worth your while."

Saint Aardvark the Carpeted writes: "CNN reports here that they're jumping into the satellite launching business by building a spaceport on Christmas Island. At only 10 degrees from the equator, the location offers cheaper launches for the launch vehicles, which the government has already agreed to buy from Russia in May."

pgpckt writes: "The Supreme Court has ruled in a 7-2 decision that freelance writers retain control over whether or not their writing gets distributed on the Internet.. This decision gives writers more control as to what mediums their art gets distributed in, and helps to ensure royalties for publication in multiple forums."

dlkf writes "CNN is talking about the possibility of life on several of Jupiter's moons. The researchers theorize that it is possible for Callisto, Ganymede and Europa to be able to build up enough oxygen in their subsurface salt water oceans to support life."

dlkf writes "CNN is talking about the possibility of life on several of Jupiter's moons. The researchers theorize that it is possible for Callisto, Ganymede and Europa to be able to build up enough oxygen in their subsurface salt water oceans to support life."

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), while joining Rep. Gephardt (D-MO) in a discussion of how Democrats are the "guardians of the New Economy," noted that opt-out is better, because it gives companies their first ammendment right to contact you. I agree, companies do have a right to contact me. But they should be required to pay "postage" for that right. I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime. Still less then a stamp, but it'd make me a few hundred bucks a month for my time, bandwidth, and hardware costs. Spammers take away my property and happiness. Isn't that a right too? And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day. Thank god for mail filters.

Peter Kuhns writes: "Awesome article about Big Brother using USGS satellite photos to ferret out a fraudulent farming company that scammed insurance companies over lost crops. The USGS apparantly takes lots of infrared (re:remote sensing) photos of the entire nation and stores this data going back a number of years. This is a big wake up call to farmers, the government, and potentially the USGS, who could suddenly be in the business of big business." Another very cool use of USGS data is drawmap, which I discovered a few months ago.

dlkf writes: "CNN has an article that talks about Raytheon Aircraft's plans for a new business jet. They intend to make the fuselage out of molded carbon-fiber instead of aluminum. Thats the same stuff used in tennis racquets, golf clubs and some military aircraft. This should make the fuselage 30% lighter, reduce the cost of the plane by 25% and use less than half the parts of its traditional aluminum counterparts."

jeffthompson writes "Images from the Mars Global Surveyor show formations near the equator that were possibly made by ice inder the surface. And there's a chance the ice is still there which would be a prime place to look for microbes."

Section8 writes: "As if Microsoft wasn't pushing on so many other fronts already (see Part 1 and Part 2), now it seems that Microsoft is seeking to place itself in total control of what format we use on the Internet to view anything. This article in the Wall Street Journal gives some interesting facts about what Microsoft is trying to do out there. Great quote from AOL rep: "[it is] Microsoft's intention to gain as much control over music on the Internet as they have over operating systems on the computer desktop, and we couldn't accept that"." AOL's merger with Time-Warner has given them greater incentive to not use Microsoft's media format... There's also a report on the AOL/Microsoft talks published by AOL.

iamklerck writes: "According to this CNN story, the Canadian robot arm attached to the International Space Station is now working perfectly. Apparently, the arm worked fine when they tried it again. This means the US will be able to launch its $164 million dollar airlock."

Don Calamari writes "Confirmed from Fox, season one of the Simpsons are going to be released in a DVD boxed set on September 25. This has been a big week for Homer with this and his legendary catch phrase DOH! finally being added to the Oxford English dictionary." The 13 episode season will be only like $40. I don't think the show hit it's stride until 2nd or 3rd seasons, but still, shows like this deserve to be released on DVD. I'm irritated with the decision not to show the actors recording voices. Screw the illusion of the characters, this is what DVD releases of TV shows are for! The fans crave this stuff!

Recently we've had several sure signs that the Apocalypse is upon us. It's always a bit murky interpreting portents and omens, but I think these are clear indicators of impending doom. One, songs about instant messaging. Two, D'oh is now an official part of the English language. Three, square watermelon. I don't know how it could get any clearer than that: we're doomed.

Scoria writes: "CNN dot com reports that the Houston based company Encounter 2001 will ship a part of your DNA to space in 2003 for $50. They're apparently hoping that aliens will find the "message" that they send. The ship will use solar sails the size of a football field as its primary accelerator and will take fifteen years to pass Pluto, at which point it will be travelling at 7.8 miles a second. Pioneer 10, alternately, is currently moving at 7.605936 miles (12.24 km)/sec. There are 4.5 million total slots, go make sure that there are in fact geeks in space!"

xpccx writes: "There's an article over at CNN about the possibility that early man hunted large animals ( like mammoths ) into extinction. "New work by American and Australian researchers is adding weight to the theory, while undercutting the notion that climate change and not human influence was the cause."" Update: 06/14 03:32 PM by H : This is touched on in Guns, Germs and Steel, which I highly recommend. This has been the going theory with many (most?) historians as to why the megafauna in Australia, the Americas all disappeared within a couple thousand years of the appearance of humans. Considering they had survived countless millenia before our arrival, I'm inclined to think that the two events might just kinda be linked.

BlueTurnip writes: "In this story, CNN reports that a U.S. federal judge has agreed to hear a case involving foreign courts to rule against U.S. companies doing business in the U.S. A while back, a French court ruled that Yahoo! must remove Nazi-related materials from its online auction sites. Yahoo! removed the items from its French web site, but left the items available on its U.S. site. A French judge ruled that wasn't good enough, and Yahoo! was forced to remove the offending materials from its American site as well. Now, a U.S. federal judge has agreed to hear the case and decide on foreign jurisdiction over U.S. companies." Yahoo! already decided to block many types of auctions, but at issue is here is who gets to decide what a web site may carry.

MacRonin writes: "In an important declaration of the constitutional limits on new privacy-threatening technology, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the use by the police of a thermal imaging device to detect patterns of heat coming from a private home is a search that requires a warrant. The court said further that the warrant requirement would apply not only to the relatively crude device at issue but also to any "more sophisticated systems" in use or in development that let the police gain knowledge that in the past would have been impossible without a physical entry into the home. "We must take the long view, from the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment forward," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for a 5-to-4 majority that cut across the court's usual ideological division. Justice Scalia said that to take any other approach "would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology, including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home." There is coverage in the: New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN. This older piece has a little background."

hph writes: "CNN.com reports that 'The Pentagon believes it has found a way to give its old computers away to American schools and still protect information locked in the machines' hard drives.'" I hope this story amuses you all as much as it did me.

hph writes: "CNN.com reports that 'The Pentagon believes it has found a way to give its old computers away to American schools and still protect information locked in the machines' hard drives.'" I hope this story amuses you all as much as it did me.

Anonymous Coward writes "Paraphrasing this article from CNN: An astronomer and a science teacher for the deaf and blind have teamed up to make Hubble images accessible to the unsighted as well as the sighted. Hubble images are presented in full color, with raised plastic overlays. Information is written in text and braille. Each image has it's own key so that visually impaired readers know which texture represents which color or object. The blind sutudents who helped refine the book were excited to have this type of information presented to them. Early Hubble images helped persuade me to pursue an advanced degree in astronomy. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to be blind from birth and "feel" space. I'm sure it's much different than a sighted person's interpretation of space, but probably no less spectacular."

SloppyElvis writes: "Millie, The University of Tennessee's cloned cow, has been found dead in her pasture. Spokespersons for the University report the cause of death is unknown.CNN.com has the story. Studied individuals would attribute this and the sundry other cloned-animal deaths to DNA telomere degradation. During mitosis (cell-division), the far ends of the chromosomes are known to degrade and shorten. By the time an animal reaches adulthood, this degradation is significant, and it is transferred to the cloned offspring. Many speculate that when these frayed ends reach a terminal length, your time is up, so to speak. On March 9, 2001, MSNBC reported, "Hundreds of couples have volunteered for an experiment to create cloned children despite strong religious and scientific opposition". I wonder how these people would feel when their clones simply expired? Does anybody remember Blade Runner?"

An Anonymous Coward writes: "This article describes a book recently published which allows blind people to "see" images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope." Looks like a very cool coffee table book.

Alien54 writes: "As reported in CNN, a hi-tech shanty town has arisen in Madrid, Spain, complete with pirated utilities and computer access. Known locally as El Campamento de Esperanza (The Camp of Hope), it is now a village of about 1,200 inhabitants, with libraries, bars, hot showers and cafeterias serving daily meals. They are skilled engineers and technicians, formerly employed by Sintel Telecommunications, a Spanish telecom company that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. With a mixture of ingenuity and tenacity, the workers have transformed their claim to $10 million in unpaid wages and refusal to accept forced resignations into a national issue, by squatting on the property where they used to work." Such a thing could never exist in the U.S. for longer than it took to load up the tear gas grenade launchers.

Alien54 writes: "As reported in CNN, a hi-tech shanty town has arisen in Madrid, Spain, complete with pirated utilities and computer access. Known locally as El Campamento de Esperanza (The Camp of Hope), it is now a village of about 1,200 inhabitants, with libraries, bars, hot showers and cafeterias serving daily meals. They are skilled engineers and technicians, formerly employed by Sintel Telecommunications, a Spanish telecom company that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000. With a mixture of ingenuity and tenacity, the workers have transformed their claim to $10 million in unpaid wages and refusal to accept forced resignations into a national issue, by squatting on the property where they used to work." Such a thing could never exist in the U.S. for longer than it took to load up the tear gas grenade launchers.

mooneyguy writes: "In a report on cnn.com, the world's first paying space tourist is now saying that astronauts and cosmonauts spent too much time on mundane tasks and too little time on real research. Dennis Tito said, "Most science in space is being conducted by unmanned vehicles. In my view, there is limited amount of science that takes place on the international space station..." It reads as a rather sweeping condemnation of human presence in space, based on a very brief glimpse of life on a structure still under construction. Oh yeah, he's still publically feuding with NASA, too."

Galvatron writes "The Maori people of New Zealand are suing Lego for creating a polynesian-themed game without their permission, according to CNN. Ridiculous? You bet. But it's just one example of the kind of thing the Hague Convention could make possible."

Galvatron writes "The Maori people of New Zealand are suing Lego for creating a polynesian-themed game without their permission, according to CNN. Ridiculous? You bet. But it's just one example of the kind of thing the Hague Convention could make possible."

Mdog writes: "CNN has a really cool story on a "golden galaxy" recently discovered by the Hubble telescope. It has a purple halo, dude! Largish yummy pic."

Mdog writes: "CNN has a really cool story on a "golden galaxy" recently discovered by the Hubble telescope. It has a purple halo, dude! Largish yummy pic."

We've been deluged with Echelon stories today, although as far as I can tell, there was no real news about it whatsoever. The committee examining Echelon met today, and that was apparently enough of an excuse for news agencies to report stories based on the draft report that was leaked last week. (The final report isn't due to be presented until September - it doesn't appear that today's committee meeting actually released anything.) News stories from here and there: CNN, BBC, Computerworld... well, I'll skip the non-English ones. And if you're wondering what this "Echelon" thing is, there's a handy guide.