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Stories · 602
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BSOD Makes Appearance at Olympic Opening Ceremonies
Whiteox writes "A BSOD was projected onto the roof of the National Stadium during the grand finale to the four-hour spectacular at the Olympics. Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing chose to go with XP instead of Vista because of the complexity of the IT functions at the Games. His comment on Vista? 'If it's not stable, it could have some problems,' he said. Evidently Bill Gates attended the opening ceremony, so he must have witnessed it."
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SpaceX Launch Failure Due To Timing Problem
FleaPlus writes "Private orbital spaceflight company SpaceX recently announced that last weekend's Falcon 1 rocket launch failure was caused by a collision between the first and second stage of their rocket. This was due to a timing problem, when their brand-new engine design produced residual thrust for 1.5 seconds longer than expected; they're currently working to fix the problem and launch again, perhaps as early as next month. In a recent interview with Wired, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remarked on their efforts: "Optimism, pessimism, f-ck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.""
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Face-Swapping Software To Protect Privacy
(0d0 writes "Some researchers at Columbia University's Computer Vision Labratory have developed software to automatically replace faces in batches of photos. Practical applications include protecting the identities of people in Google's Street View, coupling it with a digital camera's burst mode to create a perfect group photo, or protecting the identities of witnesses or law enforcement and military personnel. Other links to coverage include Boing Boing, American Public Media, and New Scientist."
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Inside the Lego Factory
An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has a fascinating report and video tour inside the Lego factory, which is full of robots and controlled by a mainframe. 'This video shows something that very few people have had the opportunity to witness: the inside of the Lego factory, with no barriers or secrets. I filmed every step in the creation of the brick. From the raw granulate stored in massive silos to the molding machines to the gigantic storage cathedrals to the decoration and packaging warehouses, you will be able to see absolutely everything, including the most guarded secret of the company: the brick molds themselves.'"
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Newly Discovered Young Galaxy Creates 4,000 Stars Per Year
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found a galaxy producing an average of up to 4,000 stars per year. They contrast this with the Milky Way, which only produces an average of 10 each year. Nicknamed "Baby Boom," it is a young starburst galaxy, and its stellar birth rate conflicts with a commonly accepted model for the growth of a galaxy. Quoting: "'The question now is whether the majority of the very most massive galaxies form very early in the universe like the Baby Boom galaxy, or whether this is an exceptional case. Answering this question will help us determine to what degree the Hierarchical Model of galaxy formation still holds true,' [said Peter Capak of NASA's Spitzer Science Center] 'The incredible star-formation activity we have observed suggests that we may be witnessing, for the first time, the formation of one of the most massive elliptical galaxies in the universe,' said co-author Nick Scoville of Caltech, the principal investigator of the Cosmic Evolution Survey,
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RIAA's SafeNet Caught In a Lie
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "For the past 2 years, the RIAA and its attack dog SafeNet (formerly known as MediaSentry) have been trying to avoid disclosure in UMG v. Lindor by telling the judge that MediaSentry is NOT an expert, that it does not use any technical expertise to get the 'evidence', and that it does only 'what any other Kazaa user does'. We have just discovered that in administrative proceedings in Michigan, attacking it for engaging in the business of investigation without a license, MediaSentry has taken the exact opposite position, comparing itself to chemical engineers, surveyors, physicians, geologists, and other expert witnesses who rely on their technical expertise. Today we went public with some of the contradictions. Now let's hope Michigan's Department of Labor and Economic Growth finds out about it."
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Net Neutrality vs. Technical Reality
penciling_in writes "CircleID has a post by Richard Bennett, one of the panelists in the recent Innovation forum on open access and net neutrality — where Google announced their upcoming throttling detector. From the article: 'My name is Richard Bennett and I'm a network engineer. I've built networking products for 30 years and contributed to a dozen networking standards, including Ethernet and Wi-Fi. I was one of the witnesses at the FCC hearing at Harvard, and I wrote one of the dueling Op-Ed's on net neutrality that ran in the Mercury News the day of the Stanford hearing. I'm opposed to net neutrality regulations because they foreclose some engineering options that we're going to need for the Internet to become the one true general-purpose network that links all of us to each other, connects all our devices to all our information, and makes the world a better place. Let me explain ...' This article is great insight for anyone for or against net neutrality."
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Quick Review of Penny Arcade Game
Now that it has been in general circulation for a while, Kotaku has a nice simple review of the good, the bad, and the ugly in the new Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. "When you've been making fun of the video game industry as long as Penny Arcade's Jerry 'Tycho' Holkins and Mike 'Gabe' Krahulik have been, deciding to create your own game is one ballsy move. You have to know that every review site you've ever trashed and every developer you've viciously sodomized with your barbed wit is watching your every move, desperate to see you stumble so they can get in a few licks."
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Supernova Birth Observed From Orbiting Telescope
FiReaNGeL writes "Astronomers have seen the aftermath of spectacular stellar explosions known as supernovae before, but no one had witnessed a star dying in real time — until now. While looking at another object in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, using NASA's orbiting Swift telescope, scientists detected an extremely luminous blast of X-rays released by a supernova explosion. They alerted 8 other telescopes to turn their eyes on this first-of-its-kind event. 'We were looking at another, older supernova in the galaxy, when the one now known as SN 2008D went off. We would have missed it if it weren't for Swift's real-time capabilities, wide field of view, and numerous instruments.'" Bad Astronomy has an excellent, well-illustrated story about the discovery as well. I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property contributes a link to the BBC's coverage, and adds a nugget gleaned from Ars Technica: "SN 2007uy's collapse caused an X-ray burst of about 10^39 joules, most likely due to the 'shock break out' when the energy of the core's collapse finally reached the neutron star's surface."
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ISP Sued By Irish RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "An ISP in Ireland has been sued by the Big Four record labels because its subscribers have engaged in P2P sharing of the record companies' song files. The record companies claim the ISP should be buying Audible Magic's CopySense, the software being peddled by the RIAA's expert witness, which supposedly would filter out copyright infringement. Of course, not everyone agrees."
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RIAA Expert Witness Called "Borderline Incompetent"
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Prof. Johan Pouwelse of Delft University — one of the world's foremost experts on the science of P2P file sharing and the very same Prof. Pouwelse who stopped the RIAA's Netherlands counterpart in its tracks back in 2005 — has submitted an expert witness report characterizing the work of the RIAA's expert, Dr. Doug Jacobson, as 'borderline incompetence.' The report (PDF), filed in UMG v. Lindor, pointed out, among other things, that the steps needed to be taken in a copyright infringement investigation were not taken, that Jacobson's work lacked 'in-depth analysis' and 'proper scientific scrutiny,' that Jacobson's reports were 'factually erroneous,' and that they were contradicted by his own deposition testimony. This is the first expert witness report of which we are aware since the Free Software Foundation announced that it would be coming to the aid of RIAA defendants."
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Full Lunar Eclipse for the Americas on Wednesday
KingArthur10 writes "It will be the last lunar eclipse until December 2010, and it should be spectacular. Shades of turquoise and red will pour over the moon's surface as it moves into the Earth's shadow around 8:43pm EST. As NASA reports: 'Transiting the shadow's core takes about an hour. The first hints of red appear around 10 pm EST (7 pm PST), heralding a profusion of coppery hues that roll across the Moon's surface enveloping every crater, mountain and moon rock, only to fade away again after 11 pm EST (8 pm PST). No special filter or telescope is required to see this spectacular event. It is a bright and leisurely display visible from cities and countryside alike. While you're watching, be alert for another color: turquoise. Observers of several recent lunar eclipses have reported a flash of turquoise bracketing the red of totality ... The source of the turquoise is ozone.' So, all of you amateur astronomers need to get out there and take pictures. It might be worthwhile sharing them on sites like SpaceWeather or Flickr so that our Asian, European, African, and Australian brethren can witness the sight as well."
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Ethics In IT
chiefloko writes "I am presently taking a Business Ethics class while earning my MBA. For my final paper topic I have chosen 'Ethics within the Information Technology realm.' Over the past 13 years I have worked for three corporations and have seen everything from the typical BOFH to ungodly pirated software use. I also bore witness to a remote user logging in to a poorly administrated Sun station, finding out s/he was root, and then reading co-workers' emails. I am interested in what the norm is for ethics in the IT world and some of the stories and outcomes."
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14-Year-Old Turns Tram System Into Personal Train Set
F-3582 writes "By modifying a TV remote a 14-year-old boy from Lodz, Poland, managed to gain control over the junctions of the tracks. According to The Register the boy had 'trespassed in tram depots to gather information needed to build the device. [...] Transport command and control systems are commonly designed by engineers with little exposure or knowledge about security using commodity electronics and a little native wit.' Four trams derailed in the process injuring a number of passengers. The boy is now looking at 'charges at a special juvenile court of endangering public safety.'"
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Rails Bigwig Rails on Rails Community
Zed Shaw, creator of the popular Mongrel HTTP daemon / library, has decided it was high time to tear into the Ruby/Rails community for many different complaints that he has been collecting over the last few years. "Rails is a Ghetto" is Shaw's self-proclaimed exit strategy from the Rails community. "This is that rant. It is part of my grand exit strategy from the Ruby and Rails community. I don't want to be a 'Ruby guy' anymore, and will probably start getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months. I've got about three or four more projects in the works that will use all of those and not much Ruby planned. This rant is full of stories about companies and people who've either pissed in my cheerios somehow or screwed over friends. I can back all of them up from emails, IRC chat logs, or with witnesses. Nothing in here is a lie unless it's really obviously a lie through exaggeration, and there's a lot of my opinion as well."
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Chance for a Tunguska Sized Impact on Mars
Multiple users have written to tell us of an LA Times report that an asteroid may hit Mars on January 30th. The asteroid is roughly 160 feet across, and JPL-based researchers say that it will have a 1-in-75 chance of striking Mars. Those odds are very high for this type of event, and scientists are hoping to witness an impact of a similar scope to the Tunguska disaster. From the LA Times: "Because scientists have never observed an asteroid impact -- the closest thing being the 1994 collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter -- such a collision on Mars would produce a 'scientific bonanza,' Chesley said."
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Black Hole Blasts Neighbor Galaxy with Deadly Jet
butterwise writes to mention that astronomers have, for the first time, witnessed a super-massive black hole hitting a nearby galaxy with a "death-star-like" beam of energy. The story also has a video with simulations, pictures, and explanations. "The 'death star galaxy,' as NASA astronomers called it, could obliterate the atmospheres of planets but also trigger the birth of stars in the wake of its destructive beam. Fortunately, the cosmic violence is a safe distance from our own neck of the cosmos."
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CDN Forces Reactor Online Against Safety Regulations
Socguy writes "The Canadian government has passed legislation that will reopen an Ontario nuclear reactor that produces most of the world's supply of critical medical isotopes, even though the site has been shut down for safety maintenance. Witnesses and experts were called in to the House to face questions about safety concerns and all parties eventually voiced support for the bill, which would effectively suspend CNSC's oversight role for 120 days. The Chalk River reactor ceased operating on Nov. 18. Pressure on the government to restart operations began to build after delays in the shutdown of the government-run site, which generates two-thirds of the world's radioisotopes, began to cause a critical shortage of radioisotopes."
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FSF Reaches Out to RIAA Victims
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In what has been termed the ''RIAA's worst nightmare', the Free Software Foundation has announced that it is coming to the aid of the victims of RIAA lawsuits, by establishing an Expert Witness Defense Fund to assist defendants in RIAA cases. The purpose of the fund is 'to help provide computer expert witnesses to combat RIAA's ongoing lawsuits, and to defend against the RIAA's attempt to redefine copyright law.' The funds will be used to pay fees and/or expenses of technical expert witnesses, forensic examiners, and other technical consultants assisting individuals named as defendants in non-commercial, peer-to-peer file sharing cases brought by the RIAA, EMI, SONY BMG, Vivendi Universal, and Warner Bros. Records, and their affiliated companies, such as Interscope, Arista, UMG, Fonovisa, Motown, Atlantic, Priority, and others."
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MySpace Makes Plans for Online Gaming Channel
News Corp's MySpace has announced a partnership with Oberon Media to bring casual games to their social network. MySpace Games will allow users to include diversions right on their web spaces. "MySpace is looking to tap into the fast-growing market for "casual gaming" -- five-minute distractions that appeal to audiences of all ages by letting them test their wits against other online players. MySpace Games is expected to launch in 2008, the companies said." Though almost certainly not as in-depth, this sounds like it has overtones of Metaplace.
