Slashdot Mirror
Domain: penguinradio.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to penguinradio.com.
Stories · 13
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New Ocean being Formed in Africa
PenguinRadio writes "The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on a 37-mile long fissure that split open in September in the Afar desert in Ethiopia that could be the start of a new ocean forming. The fissure, which grew 8 meters wide in 3 weeks following an earthquake on Sept 14, is now splitting at about 0.8 inches per year, would eventually lead to Ethiopia eastern portions becoming an island in a million years or so. The findings were presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting taking place in San Francisco this week. The BBC reports that formation of a ocean basin is the first step toward developing an ocean, but that it will be millions of years before that could occur." -
Older Gamers Getting Attention
PenguinRadio writes "The Washington Post is writing about Barbara St. Hilaire, a 69-year-old grandma and a fanatic video game player. Apparently, the 'AARP generation' of gamers accounts for about 19 percent of all computer and console gamers. St. Hilaire is, on the internet, Old Grandma Hard Core (previously mentioned on Slashdot). The OGHC blog has gotten a ton of traffic in recent weeks, has been featured on Web sites around the world, and has been hired as a 'senior reporter' for MTV.com to talk about games." From the article: "There is an AARP generation of gamers, a group that logs on to Gamegeezers.com and would qualify for a senior citizen discount if game stores offered them. ... They play a variety of games -- from laid-back, relaxing fare such as solitaire and mah-jongg, to first-person shooters (military-themed titles are hits)." -
Internet Accessible Home Security Systems?
PenguinRadio asks: "I'm about to embark on trip and while the thousands of dollars of computers are protected by a PIX firewall and whatnot from viruses, I'm now kind of wondering about the physical security of my 'server room' that I've built in my house. Basically, an Internet accessible burglar/fire alarm. Has anyone found a good residential security system that can be remotely checked or monitored from the other side of the world? I'd especially like the capability of look in on any security cameras (rather than setting up a simple webcam) and monitor any alarm logs. ADT and Brinks didn't seem to have anything readily visible on their website, and I'm not quite up for an X-10 version of a security system." -
Russians Order Mobile Phone Encryption Removed
PenguinRadio writes "The Moscow Times is reporting that Russian security officers (The FSB, formerly the KGB) ordered all mobile phone providers to switch off their encryption systems for 24 hours, so the police could eavesdrop on all calls. An alert, either an exclamation point or an unlocked padlock, was sent to the phones in question. This is the second time such an order was given - the last time was after the hostage crisis involving Chechnya fighters in a Moscow theater. At least the Russian has the courtesy to warn all their phone users that this was going on. Not sure what the standard FBI procedure is on something like this..." -
US Army to Try Out New, Anime-based Uniforms
PenguinRadio writes "This is being reported in a few places, most notably USA Today which has an article about the US Army teaming up with MIT to develop a new nanotechnology-based outfit for our soldiers that can detect bio hazards, injury, and other funky things. The 5 year, $50 million grant also wants to look at bending light around the uniform to create some sort of invisibility." CNET has another story. The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies has its own web page, of course. -
Sleeping with the Fishes
PenguinRadio writes: "I know it's not about Linux or Msoft or anything else techie related, but the photo of a big red NYC subway car being pushed into the ocean was cool enough that I thought I should send it in to slashdot. Take a look at the BBC's story on how an artificial reef is being created out of old red subway cars. As they said in the godfather "he sleeps with the fishes."" Note that it's more for economic reasons than concern for the poor ocean critters. -
Iceman Murdered by Arrow in the Back
PenguinRadio writes: "The Washington Post has taken a break from the Chandra Levy case to report on a recently discovered murder of a 5,300 year old iceman. The iceman was discovered about ten years ago in the snow covered Alps near Italy, but it was unknown until today how he died. Scientists used a CT scan to discover an arrowhead embedded in his back. Being stabbed in the back is not a recent dot.com kind of thing." Somehow it's inspiring to see just how long we've been killing each other. This story is great in so many ways. -
Robot Plane Makes Unaided U.S.-Australia Crossing
PenguinRadio writes: "Yahoo Australia is reporting an unmanned U.S. aircraft recently flew from the US to Australia, smashing an endurance record for remotely controlled aircraft. The Global Hawk reconnaissance jet arrived in Adelaide 14 minutes ahead of schedule after a non-stop flight of more than 23 hours. The Air Force has some pictures and more news on their site as well." Update: 04/24 7:26 AM by michael : This is a follow-up to our story a few days ago. -
X-43 Scramjet Rollout
PenguinRadio writes: "The Washington Post is reporting that NASA is readying the X-43 space plane for a 10 second test flight, after which is will plunge into the ocean and not be recovered. The X-43 is an unmanned aircraft (there are three of them) that is used as a testing bed for hypersonic aircraft and may lead to a commercial version in about 20 years or so. Anybody got an extra wet suit?" See also the Reuters article on the same subject, and our previous story about an Australian version. -
Webcasters Have To Pay
penguinradio writes "News.com is reporting that the Copyright office is going to require webcasters to pay fees for the songs they choose to play over the net. This has been a grey area of law for some time, but now it seems that this decision will move the case into the courts (where both sides were hesitant to enter for fear of losing the case)." Basically, this means that radio stations have to be pay an additional fee to broadcast over the Internet, as well as their current payment for "on-air" broadcasting. -
Slashback: Titanium, Art, Israel
A long outing this time -- a litany of updates and corrections for your edification and amusement. Microsoft apps that run on Free OSes? An art contest that you won't have to go through your high-strung middle-school art teacher for (and is judged by the family Johansen)? A titanium tank which could fall from the sky? All this and more, if you're willing to read on.You want fries with that software? If the recent report of Microsoft porting apps to *nix, intrigued you, see Paul Thurrott's piece in Windows 2000 Magazine (yes, there is such a thing). Thurrott says, in part: "I can't tell you that the port is going to produce actual products. But I can tell you that Microsoft is looking into it. No, I don't think it's smart. No, it's not what I'd do. But yes, I believe it's true. So why would Microsoft try to port its desktop applications to a platform that has absolutely no desktop market share? I've no idea." Too bad for Microsoft Linux has "absolutely no desktop market share."
Silly! The sky isn't falling! It's just sinking a little each day ... Johann writes "Here is a follow up story to last week's NY Times article which was debated here on Slashdot. The article states that 'Open water at the top of the world isn't evidence that the North Pole is melting, as an article this month in The New York Times suggested.' There are numerous quotes in the article that do suggest that global warming is fact, not fiction."
To which the dapper and elegant Party Remover adds: "The Associated Press reports that a recent New York Times story about liquid water at the North Pole was rather overstating the seriousness of the situation. It seems that the Arctic Ocean is typically 10% ice-free during the summer." And the wording of the correction is amusing, for those of us easily amused.
Getcher doo-dads! Red-hot, computer-generated doo-dads! Get 'em while they're hot, ladies and gents ... ussphoenix writes: "Regarding the /. story about Computer Makes Robot Offspring, here is an article in the journal Nature describing the system. There are also mpegs of the virtual machines and the corresponding real machines moving!"
Next week we explain the buggy-whip makers' case, too. breillysf writes: "Eric Sinrod has condensed the complicated legal issues surrounding 2600's hyperlinking ruling. You can read the article here: Upside Counsel DeCSS article. The article is concise and not filled with legal jargon. A good contribution for those with little time to understand the fundamentals of the case."
And on the DeCSS note, Jim Tyre writes "Tom Vogt, a defendant in the California DeCSS lawsuit brought by DVD CCA, has started DeArt, the DeCSS Art Contest, to further explore the expressive aspects of DeCSS. Original creations only, obviously must be related to DeCSS. The contest runs through Dec. 31, and there will be prizes. Tom and Jon Johansen are the current judges, Emmanuel Goldstein has been asked to be an additional judge. Time for Slashdotters to express their creativity in a new way." I think the most strategic contest area would be performance art. Since it must be digitized, a video recorder would be necessary, I guess. Anyone here watched Roger and Me?[grin]
And if you're feeling less artistic, don't worry: Carpman writes, "I have set up a project to create a letter to congress about the DMCA and its effects. I'm running this like an open source project, you submit, it gets reviewed, and added. Also, you can submit stand alone letters to send allong with the big letter. The page is here." Of course, note the verb sense of "carp" and this makes perfect sense ...
Oh, no, you must have misunderstood. What we meant was something totally different. thebaron writes "Here is a interesting back-pedaling by Sony in this article. One should think before opening mouth and inserting [one's] own foot, even if you're a company exec." Or perhaps especially then. As roblimo pointed out recently, big companies have trouble tying their collective shoelaces sometimes, never mind effecting their own conspiracies.
Hit that high hat, swing that hook! PenguinRadio writes: "The Washington Post notes in Tuesday's paper that Motorola has begun the necessary reporting to certain government agencies so that they can burn up the $4 billion in Iridium satellites. Interesting in this announcements is the fact that their engineers feels certain pieces of the birds may actually reach the Earth and not burn up completely. Most notably a 2 foot by 3 foot titanium fuel tank may make it through the atmosphere. Wanna bet we see it on e-bay if it does fall to earth?"
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Iridium Hardware May Burn
Someone from PenguinRadio was one of the first contributors to write about what may be the ultimate fate of the Iridium network: "For those who were wondering what would happen to all the Iridium satellites that are floating around in space, reports out today say they will be brought down into the atmosphere in a massive burn out. The flames should be just about as cool as watching $5 billion in cash burn in a big bonfire pit, which, coincidentially, is how much it cost to put them up." Or $7 billion, depending on who's counting. Divided by 66 satellites, that equals one very expensive meteor shower. -
U.S. Post Office and E-mail
PenguinRadio writes "The Post Office, masters of innovation and cutting edge technology, are now moving into cyberspace in a big way. The Washington Post is reporting a new effort to move the snail mail carriers into the electronic age, with a number of new proposals including assigning an e-mail address to every physical address in the United States." I'm reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer discovers that the Post Office is obsolete.