Slashdot Mirror
Domain: uct.ac.za
Stories and comments across the archive that link to uct.ac.za.
Stories · 8
-
University of Cape Town Team Breaks World Water Rocketry Record (uct.ac.za)
New submitter Cycliclogic writes: A team of engineers based at the University of Cape Town recently had their record breaking flights of their water powered rocket Ascension III ratified by the Water Rocket Achievement World Record Association. This record is for a single stage rocket power purely on pressurized water. Two launches must be completed within two hours, the record being set at the mean above-ground altitude of the two flights. The record now stands at a whopping 2723 Feet (830m). You can watch videos of the launches here. (Warning: they're loud.) -
Historical Carbon Emissions From Dragons In Middle Earth
An anonymous reader writes "The climate of Middle Earth has recently been under the spotlight, with the current and future climate of Middle Earth simulated using the HadCM3L General Circulation Model. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been little work investigating the historical carbon emissions of Middle Earth. Specifically, what impact has the demise of dragons had on carbon emissions? To shed some light on this question, we start by considering the carbon footprint of the antagonist, Smaug." Smaug is surprisingly environmentally friendly. -
One of the Coolest Places In the Universe
phantomflanflinger writes "The Cern Laboratory, home of the Large Hadron Collider, is fast becoming one of the coolest places in the Universe. According to news.bbc.co.uk, the Large Hadron Collider is entering the final stages of being lowered to a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (-271C; -456F) — colder than deep space. The LHC aims to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang and continue the search for the Higgs boson." -
Looking for Quark-Gluon Plasma?
uctbruce writes "Following the June press release from Brookhaven National Lab, nuclear physicists from around the world are discussing the results of the 4 RHIC experiments (PHOBOS, STAR, PHENIX and BRAHMS), the New York Times ran an article on the Quark Matter conference in Oakland. Have we re-created the first microseconds of the big bang in the lab? (Have a look at the Google cluster of stories)" -
.NET or CORBA?
DavidTurner queries: "My company is developing software to integrate various hardware systems and present a unified interface, plus system-level interaction. Essentially, an object hierarchy plus supporting services - clients, servers and drivers. We wish to replace our proprietary protocol with a standardized distributed object system. The choice has boiled down to .NET versus CORBA+GTK. We want interface contracts, OpenGL support, and embeddable forms (widgets). We also want rapid development. Which would you choose? Has anyone actually field-tested the relative merits of the two paths?" -
Nasubi - The Ultimate Survivor
Skip writes: "Although it was broadcast in 1998, I don't think many people outside of Japan have heard of Nasubi. In this reality program a young comedian was locked naked and alone in a tiny apartment with a stack of magazines ,postcards and pens. He then had to survive solely living off prizes he won in competitions (hence the magazines and postcards). It took him over a year to reach his goal of a million Yen worth of prizes. He received no help from the producers and went long stretches (sometimes 2 weeks!) without eating. Compared to this Survivor is like Club Med." -
Slashback: Recusement, Homecoming, Cubism
More on the conflict of interest in the 2600 / DeCSS case. More on the South African penguins trapped in a world of petroleum, currents and love beneath the panopticon world of satellite observation. And congratulations to Distributed.Net for setting in place their new milestone. All below!Why no, gentlemen, I see no conflict of interest. You may recall reading that Lewis Kaplan, the judge in the DeCSS trial underway in New York right now, consulted for Time-Warner, raising questions about conflict of interest. Jim Tyre of The Censorware Project writes: "Yesterday, CT posted a piece on 2600's attempt to disqualify Judge Kaplan in the New York DeCSS trial. Last night, Kaplan's 51 page Order denying the motion made it to the Net. No doubt he spent the weekend writing it, putting him in a nice mood for when trial commenced yesteday. Interesting reading for those who like to slog through such things."
The first 1000 days. emerson writes "According to their RC5-64 Stats Page, distributed.net's RC5-64 project turns 1000 days old today (July 18th; the stats page will show 1000 days when today's stats are digested and displayed tomorrow), with just over 28% of the keyspace checked out. Makes me feel pretty safe about RC5-64 versus brute-force attacks ..." Oskuro writes: "Today is the 1000th day distributed.net is searching for a winning key on RSA's RC5-64 contest. In that long time, the 28% of the keyspace has been tested, so there's a long way to go still. Maybe you want to download a client and start crunching for Team Slashdot?" Note: this means that as of today (day 1001), the stats reflect the 1000-day figure.
Wish I had scientists helping find me a mate ... John B. Hayes writes "Yahoo! News has a great story on an heroic high-tech penguin and his surviving the impossible. I wonder if there is a deeper meaning here... I mean, he made it 600 miles without a re-boot; ok, so there were some unexpected obstacles to deal with and the programmer had to step in, but that's the beauty of it. I'm charged!" cvd6262 writes "It seems that all's weel that ends well. Our Beloved Jackass Pequin, Peter, arrived home. I quote from the site: 'At 0456 this morning, Peter's satellite tag reported that he was at 33 48 S 18 22 E. Wait a moment. Those are the coordinates for Robben Island. Peter is home.' Now he only has to find a suitable Jackass Penquin mate."
All the same, I think I'd prefer some privacy. Oostendorpophile writes "I got this email today:
'Thank you for your inquiries into the FBI's "Carnivore". We have received many inquiries, many Kudos and many sneers for what has been in the news in the last couple weeks. Much of the information that the press has published has been inaccurate or misleading. Earthlink takes the following stance (in quotes below).
"We do not allow the installation of Carnivore on our network because it has the potential to compromise the privacy of our legitimate users and the performance of our network. We have an internal solution which allows us to comply with court orders without the presence of government personnel or equipment in our buildings. The government accepts this solution since they still receive the requested information about the criminal suspect, and we sleep well knowing that our customers are safe from unauthorized surveillance."
Sincerely,
Mary Youngblood
Privacy Policy
Earthlink/Mindspring Abuse Team Manager'"This isn't the most satisfying possible answer, but at least it's nicer than block committees and "an enthusiastic welcome to the nice gentlemen who'll be sharing the building with us" ... Earthlink / Mindspring is one of the largest if not the largest ISP, though -- will smaller ISPs be able to stare down Carnivore as well?
And Apple Legal hasn't said a thing about this yet? Hollis writes "After months of discussion and work, linuxppc.org has been rewritten and is hosted at penguinppc.org. The new site has a slick design and lots of new content... check it out." And today's announcement of the new cube PowerMac puts a different light on the criticism Ryan Meader received for posting about such a thing on MacOS Rumors. It's a good thing to be wrong about! Dual G4 in a cube. Linux on PPC. Repeat.
-
Slashback: life-support, petrol, gender, tunes
Back for more already? Good. Today's early dinner of information includes humble pie baked by NASA, quantities of penguins rescued from roiling in oil, a morsel about sex discrimination in the computer world, and a take-out order of XF86 for the diners in our Slackware booth.Absolutely no danger whatsoever at all. Contradicting the BBC story reported last week on Slashdot, NASA officials deny that a 1997 shuttle mission was ever in danger because of communication interruptions. Signal 11 writes: "NASA has a press release out which refuses a previous story from the BBC stating that an unknown 'hacker' was able to disrupt communications between mission control and the shuttle." Aardwolf64 pointed to MSNBC coverage of the NASA denial.
The NASA release reads, in part:
"NASA's Inspector General's office found that during the STS-86 mission in September of 1997, the transmission of routine medical information was slightly delayed due to a computer hacker. However, the transmission was successfully completed.
At no time was communication between NASA and the astronauts compromised. The communication interruption occurred between internal ground-based computer systems."
Fly away little birdies! Fly away! Errr, swim away, little birdies! Swim away! Errr ... come back later! An unnamed correspondent writes: "follow up on recent story about penguins caught in oil spill. After being cleaned, the penguins were flown to Port Elizabeth and released to swim the +/- 800 km's back to Cape Town. This will give enviromnetal cleaners a short space of time to clean the oil from the beaches where they live. Two of the penguins are being tracked. This site tracks their progress via satellite. Can't someone novelize this rescue attempt under the title "Penguin's Progress"?
Sir, please stop hitting me with the 'No Discrimination' sign. fegg writes: "Emmett recently posted a story in which there was a reference to an AP article which discussed gender bias as regards women and computer science. This was put -- I thought cavalierly --i nto the "this-has-nothing-to-do-with-gender-dammit dept." Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that it has everything to do with gender or, at least, how the world is presented to young boys and girls.
This is a rather important topic to me, especially now that I have two daughters (not to mention a wife who is a professional computer scientist). I view this as a must read for anyone who wants to develop a reasonable understanding of why there is such an imbalance of men and women in computing.
The gender bias situation is real, and it has been known for quite a while by many in education and technology circles. I would like to refer the Slashdot community to Ellen Spertus, who, in 1991, wrote "Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?" Particularly compelling, IMHO, is the piece therein on stereotyping.
Spertus's "Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering" provides an excellent set of pointers for people interested in this topic."
Isn't this what killed John Belushi? strredwolf writes "If you haven't heard, XFree86 4.0.1 is out in full force, with binaries and docs online. Slackware users can get the "Slackballs" via the Linux Mafia, along with other goodies." (Here's the direct link to the 4.0.1 files, but linuxmafia.org is worth exploring anyhow. Warning: it is an unabashed Pro-Slack Zone.)
This would be worth more than my car. Dredd13 writes "Empeg, Ltd., a UK company, shipped the first of its Mark 2 MP3 car-stereo to customers this past week. This is the same stereo that runs Linux and has won awards. The Mark2 is expected to be a full production run, (as opposed to the initial Mark1, which only had about 300 units) with enough to satisfy ample demand. As a former MkI owner (and one of the guys who got a Mark2 today from Mr. FedEx), I can say its worth every penny!" Slashdot's been following the Empeg saga for a while now; check out this item Rob posted in 1998. I hope they can bring the price down a bit, to better compete with the various mainstream MP3 players now emerging.