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US Finally Backs International Space "Code of Conduct" Jan 19 2012 10:54:00	Slashdot
US Finally Backs International Space "Code of Conduct" coondoggie writes "Perhaps it was the concern that the nearly 14 ton Russian Mars probe would land smack-dab on the White House or maybe they just came to their senses, but the U.S. State Department today said it would indeed work with the European Union and other countries to develop a formal space code of conduct. Of particular concern is the growing amount of space trash and how the world can go about eliminating or controlling the problem. There is also the desire to keep space free of milit... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Spider Silk Cape Goes On Display Jan 19 2012 09:00:00	Slashdot
Spider Silk Cape Goes On Display fangmcgee writes "Before anyone asks, no, it's not bulletproof. But that doesn't mean that the glistening yellow cape—the world's largest garment made entirely from spider silk—isn't a massive feat of engineering to be marveled. Now on public display for the first time at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the textile gets its unearthly gleam from the undyed filaments of the golden orb spider, a species of arachnid commonly found in Madagascar."Read more of this story at... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Supercomputer Cools Off Using Groundwater Jan 19 2012 08:41:00	Slashdot
Supercomputer Cools Off Using Groundwater gManZboy writes "The Department of Energy is no stranger to supercomputers, and its Pacific Northwest National Lab has proven that it can continue to be an innovator in the field by using what the lab calls a unique groundwater-fed cooling system in the lab's newest supercomputer, Olympus. The novel cooling system translates normal groundwater into big savings for the new 162 teraflop supercomputer, which is being used in energy, chemical, and fluid dynamics research. The setup translates into 7... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Google Fiber Work Hung Up In Kansas City Jan 19 2012 06:38:00	Slashdot
Google Fiber Work Hung Up In Kansas City alphadogg writes "When Google announced last spring that Kansas City, Kan., had landed the tech company's much-pursued super-speed Internet project, the company gushed about the local utility poles. Now it turns out that differences over where and how to hang wires on those poles, and what fees or installation costs may be required, have created a troublesome bump in plans to launch the project." Read the full article on Slashdot »
BBC Show Stargazing Live Leads To Exoplanet Discovery Jan 19 2012 04:32:00	Slashdot
BBC Show Stargazing Live Leads To Exoplanet Discovery arnodf writes "Tonight BBC's show stargazing live ended after three days of live astronomy with comedian Dara Ó Briain and professor Brian Cox. Throughout the show they were trying to make the viewers help in finding an exoplanet via Zooniverse. Thanks to the program they managed to get 1,084,760 classifications in 48 hours and two volunteers discovered an exoplanet which now bears their name. From the planethunters website: 'Thanks to your help and BBC Stargazing, we managed 1,084,760 clas... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Intel Offers Protection Plan For Overclockers Jan 19 2012 04:17:00	Slashdot
Intel Offers Protection Plan For Overclockers MojoKid writes "Intel today unveiled a pilot program that provides warranty protection to overclockers in the event they get a little bit overzealous with pushing the pedal to the metal. For a fee, Intel will provide a one-time replacement of certain processors that are damaged by overclocking and/or over-volting. It's completely optional and in addition to the original three-year standard warranty that already applies to Intel's retail boxed processors. Intel isn't yet ready to flat-out endorse... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Fake IPad 2s Made of Clay Sold At Canadian Stores Jan 19 2012 02:55:00	Slashdot
Fake IPad 2s Made of Clay Sold At Canadian Stores SpuriousLogic writes in with a link to a story about some Canadian consumers who thought they were getting an iPad 2 but instead got the makings of the world's oldest tablets. "As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off. The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But t... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Site Aims To Be the "Google" of the Underweb Jan 19 2012 02:35:00	Slashdot
Site Aims To Be the "Google" of the Underweb tsu doh nimh writes "A new service in the cyber underground aims to be the Google search of underground Web sites, connecting buyers to a vast sea of shops that offer an array of dodgy goods and services, from stolen credit card numbers to identity information and anonymity tools. From the story: 'A glut of data breaches and stolen card numbers has spawned dozens of stores that sell the information. The trouble is that each shop requires users to create accounts and sign in before they can searc... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Printing a Home: The Case For Contour Crafting Jan 19 2012 01:00:00	Slashdot
Printing a Home: The Case For Contour Crafting ambermichelle wrote in with a link to a story about the possibility that the home of the future might be printed instead of built. "It can take anywhere from six weeks to six months to build a 2,800-square-foot, two-story house in the U.S., mostly because human beings do all the work. Within the next five years, chances are that 3D printing (also known by the less catchy but more inclusive term additive manufacturing) will have become so advanced that we will be able to upload design specificati... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Silver Solution Ink Makes Faster Flexible Circuits Jan 19 2012 00:31:00	Slashdot
Silver Solution Ink Makes Faster Flexible Circuits judgecorp writes "Silver-based compounds dissolved in ammonia could make finer and more flexible circuits, according to researchers at the University of Illinois. Existing inkjet based circuit printing systems use particles which are less predictable. The silver-based ink remains dissolved until the ammonia evaporates, and can be delivered through 100nm nozzles. In all senses, it's a better solution." Read the full article on Slashdot »
US Supreme Court Upholds Removal of Works From Public D... Jan 19 2012 00:00:00	Slashdot
US Supreme Court Upholds Removal of Works From Public Domain langelgjm writes "While much of the web is focused on the SOPA and PIPA blackout, supporters of the public domain today quietly lost a protracted struggle that began back in 2001. The Supreme Court, in a 6-2 decision, rejected the argument that Congress did not have the power to convey copyright upon works that were already in the public domain. The suit was originally filed to challenge provisions that the U.S. adopted when signing the TRIPs agreement. Justices Breyer and Alito dissented, argui... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Astronomers Planning To Image Milky Way's Central Black... Jan 18 2012 23:56:00	Slashdot
Astronomers Planning To Image Milky Way's Central Black Hole 99luftballon writes "Astronomers are planning the Event Horizon Telescope project in Arizona on Wednesday — and say in three or four years they should be able to image the ring of matter around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The black hole is 26,000 light years away, but should be large enough to check if Einstein got his equations right." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Jerry Yang Resigns From Yahoo Jan 18 2012 23:30:00	Slashdot
Jerry Yang Resigns From Yahoo PattonPending writes "It seems that the long tenure of Jerry Yang at Yahoo has ended. Yahoo's board released a letter that Yang wrote announcing his retirement, saying, in part: 'My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thom... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Will Secure Boot Cripple Linux Compatibility? Jan 18 2012 23:14:00	Slashdot
Will Secure Boot Cripple Linux Compatibility? MojoMax writes "The advent of Windows 8 is drawing ever nearer and recently we have learned that ARM devices installed with Windows 8 will not be able to disable the UEFI secure boot feature that many of us are deeply concerned about. However, UEFI is still a very real danger to Linux and the freedom to use whichever OS you chose. Regardless of information for OEMs to enable customers to install their own keys, such as that published by the Linux Foundation, there are still very serious and as y... Read the full article on Slashdot »
CES Recap: Gadgets and Blisters Jan 18 2012 23:00:00	Slashdot
CES Recap: Gadgets and Blisters I was in Las Vegas last week to see the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. (Officially, it's the International Consumer Electronics Show, but no one calls it "ICES.") I've been to CES just a few times before, but usually as the finish line of a marathon drive from Seattle, rather than a plane flight from Tennessee as it was this time around. I've also never arrived with an armload of video equipment, which brings its own hassles. (Did you notice our videos?) Following are a few thoughts about the e... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Ask Slashdot: What Can You Do About SOPA and PIPA? Jan 18 2012 14:03:00	Slashdot
Ask Slashdot: What Can You Do About SOPA and PIPA? Wednesday is here, and with it sites around the internet are going under temporary blackout to protest two pieces of legislation currently making their way through the U.S. Congress: the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect-IP Act (PIPA). Wikipedia, reddit, the Free Software Foundation, Google, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, imgur, Mozilla, and many others have all made major changes to their sites or shut down altogether in protest. These sites, as well as technology experts (PDF)... Read the full article on Slashdot »
SOPA and PIPA So Far Jan 18 2012 13:55:00	Slashdot
SOPA and PIPA So Far Since their inception SOPA and PIPA have raised concerns about blacklisting from online freedom advocates, and tech industry giants. Law professors worry that they could stifle growth and innovation. Other's have warned that the legislation would hurt scientific debate and open discourse on the internet. SOPA and PIPA are not without support however. In fact a wide variety of companies have backed the proposed laws, bringing together an eclectic group. After months of debate, the removal of one ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Research In Motion To Be Sold, Possibly To Samsung Jan 18 2012 13:13:00	Slashdot
Research In Motion To Be Sold, Possibly To Samsung New submitter ve6ay writes "The talk of the tech world over the past day is that RIM, struggling mightily in these last months, was in talks to be bought either partially or wholly by Samsung. Sources at the Boy Genius Report indicate that while RIM may be trying to sell, it is asking way too much for itself." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Cloud Computing Democratizes Digital Animation Jan 18 2012 10:12:00	Slashdot
Cloud Computing Democratizes Digital Animation kenekaplan writes "John McNeil is the chief creative officer and founder of a digital arts and communication company based in Berkeley, CA. After turning to Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing service for the first time to finish animation under tight deadline, he was impressed by how it would let him compete with bigger studios. He said, 'Cloud computing is the first truly democratic, accessible technology that potentially gives everyone a supercomputer...it's a game changer. I could never compete... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Samsung Reinvents Windows (Not the OS) With Touchscreen... Jan 18 2012 07:11:00	Slashdot
Samsung Reinvents Windows (Not the OS) With Touchscreen Display An anonymous reader writes "If you want a large, interactive display on your wall, typically you have to make space for it by moving any pictures out of the way, and finding room next to any shelves or lighting you have installed. Samsung's idea is to remove that problem by creating a transparent display that replaces an actual window, or at least sit over the top of one. The display uses ambient light during the day and then can switch over to a more traditional black background as a night time... Read the full article on Slashdot »
June 6 Is World IPv6 Day 2012: This Time For Keeps Jan 18 2012 05:01:00	Slashdot
June 6 Is World IPv6 Day 2012: This Time For Keeps An anonymous reader writes "On 8 June 2011 many companies (big and small) enabled IPv6 to their main web sites by published AAAA records; 24 hours later, almost all of them disabled it after the test was done. This year, on June 6th, many of those same companies (Google, Bing, Facebook) will be enabling IPv6 again, but this time there won't be any going back. In addition to content providers, several ISPs are also participating: Comcast, AT&T, XS4ALL, KDDI, and others. CDNs Akamai and Limeli... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Multicellular Life Evolves In Months, In a Lab Jan 18 2012 02:56:00	Slashdot
Multicellular Life Evolves In Months, In a Lab ananyo writes "The origin of multicellular life, one of the most important developments in Earth's history, could have occurred with surprising speed, U.S. researchers have shown. In the lab, a single-celled yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) took less than 60 days to evolve into many-celled clusters that behaved as individuals. The clusters even developed a primitive division of labor, with some cells dying so that others could grow and reproduce. Multicellular life has evolved independently at l... Read the full article on Slashdot »
New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals Jan 18 2012 01:45:00	Slashdot
New Mexico Is Stretching, GPS Reveals Velcroman1 writes "New Mexico's borders are gradually gaining girth, according to the Albuquerque Journal. It's not much, and it's not happening very fast — the state is getting about an inch wider every 40 years — but the state is unquestionably expanding, according to University of Colorado geophysicist Henry Berglund and his colleagues. Using a collection of 25 extra-precise GPS receivers planted across New Mexico and Colorado, Berglund determined that the cities of Albuquerque an... Read the full article on Slashdot »
PS4: What Sony Should and Shouldn't Do Jan 18 2012 00:49:00	Slashdot
PS4: What Sony Should and Shouldn't Do donniebaseball23 writes "As a follow-up to his piece on Xbox 720, veteran games journalist Chris Morris has put together some thoughtful advice on what Sony needs to do (and needs to avoid) to ensure that the next generation PlayStation is a success. In particular, Morris notes that Sony must 'look beyond games' to create a fully fledged entertainment hub: 'Nintendo has been pretty adamant that it has little interest in content beyond games. Microsoft seems to be rushing to embrace the set top b... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Hackers Steal $6.7M In Bank Cyber Heist Jan 18 2012 00:05:00	Slashdot
Hackers Steal $6.7M In Bank Cyber Heist Orome1 writes "A perfectly planned and coordinated bank robbery was executed during the first three days of the new year in Johannesburg, and left the targeted South African Postbank — part of the nation's Post Office service — with a loss of some $6.7 million. The cyber gang behind the heist was obviously very well informed about the post office's IT systems, and began preparing the ground for the heist a few months before, by opening accounts in post offices across the country and ... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Martian Rocks Land In Morocco Jan 17 2012 23:23:00	Slashdot
Martian Rocks Land In Morocco Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists have confirmed chemically a recent and rare invasion from Mars with 15 pounds of fresh Martian rocks falling in Morocco last July. A special committee of meteorite experts, which includes some NASA scientists, confirmed the test results Tuesday certifying that the meteorites recently collected came from Mars. The biggest rock weighs more than 2 pounds. Astronomers think that millions of years ago something big smashed into Mars that sent fragments hurtling through... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Is Climate Change the New Evolution? Jan 17 2012 22:40:00	Slashdot
Is Climate Change the New Evolution? sciencehabit writes "Is climate change education the new evolution, threatened in U.S. school districts and state education standards by well-organized interest groups? A growing number of education advocates believe so, and yesterday, the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which fights the teaching of creationism, announced that it's going to take on climate change denial as well." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Apple Intends To 'Digitally Destroy' Textbook Publishing Jan 17 2012 21:57:00	Slashdot
Apple Intends To 'Digitally Destroy' Textbook Publishing bonch writes "Apple is expected to announce e-book creation and social interaction tools at their January 19 media event taking place in New York, the heart of the publishing industry. Along with expanded interactivity features such as test-taking, the event is expected to showcase an ePub 3-compatible 'Garageband for e-books' to address the lack of simple digital publishing tools. Steve Jobs reportedly considered textbook publishing to be 'an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruct... Read the full article on Slashdot »
A Copyright Nightmare Jan 17 2012 21:15:00	Slashdot
A Copyright Nightmare New submitter forkfail writes "If further proof were needed that copyright law was out of control in the U.S., it can be found in the fact that it costs 10 dollars to view Martin Luther King's famous Dream Speech. You might think you could find it on YouTube or other public venues, given its importance in American history. But no — the rights are firmly locked away until 2038." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Forget Space Beer, Order Meteorite Wine Instead Jan 17 2012 20:53:00	Slashdot
Forget Space Beer, Order Meteorite Wine Instead astroengine writes "Chances are, when you pop open a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, you expect to savor certain aromatic flavors, or 'notes,' depending on the wine: fruit forward, perhaps, with hints of pepper and leathery tannins, and just the faintest whiff of... meteorite??? At least that's what you'd savor if you were drinking a bottle of Meteorite, possibly the very first wine on the market aged with a meteorite that fell to Earth from space. It's the brainchild of Ian Hutcheon, an Englishma... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Tackling Open Source's Gender Issues Jan 17 2012 20:32:00	Slashdot
Tackling Open Source's Gender Issues angry tapir writes "Women's participation in open source development is at a far lower level than women's participation in proprietary software development. One of the groups that aims to change this is the Ada Initiative: A non-profit organization formed last year. I recently caught up with its two founders, Linux kernel developer Valerie Aurora and comp sci PhD student Mary Gardiner, to discuss the project." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Israel Faces Escalating Cyberwar Jan 17 2012 19:50:00	Slashdot
Israel Faces Escalating Cyberwar New submitter 9re9 writes "The NY Times describes what may be the beginning of an actual cyberwar between a pro-Palestinian group and Israeli companies, specifically El Al and the Tel Aviv stock exchange. From the article: 'A hacker identifying himself as oxOmar, already notorious for posting the details of more than 20,000 Israeli credit cards, sent an overnight warning to Israel's Ynet news outlet that a group of pro-Palestinian cyberattackers called Nightmare planned to bring down the sites i... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Tizen Gets Boost From Bada Merger Jan 17 2012 19:26:00	Slashdot
Tizen Gets Boost From Bada Merger LinuxScribe writes "As predicted last September, Samsung has announced plans to merge Tizen with its own Bada platform to create a new mobile OS that will fit well on low- and high-end smartphones. Last year, Bada had more global phone deployments than Windows Phone 7. The merger means each Linux-based platform will have access to more native- and HTML5-based apps." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Ubisoft Has Windows-Style Hardware-Based DRM For Games Jan 17 2012 19:07:00	Slashdot
Ubisoft Has Windows-Style Hardware-Based DRM For Games New submitter Man Eating Duck writes "Guru3D describes how the activation system in Ubisoft's RTS game Anno 2070 also tracks hardware changes: 'So yesterday I started working on a performance review. We know (well, at least we figured we knew), that the game key can be used on three systems. That's fair; the first activation is used on my personal game rig. The second we installed on the AMD Radeon graphics test PC and the 3rd on our NVIDIA graphics test PC. ... For the NVIDIA setup I take out t... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Apple Sues Samsung In Germany Again Jan 17 2012 18:25:00	Slashdot
Apple Sues Samsung In Germany Again New submitter tguyton writes "Apple is going after Samsung again in Germany, this time over 10 phones including the Galaxy S II. It should come before the courts in August, a month before their tablet case in September." Read the full article on Slashdot »
NYC To Open 1st High School Dedicated To Software Jan 17 2012 17:40:00	Slashdot
NYC To Open 1st High School Dedicated To Software stephencrane writes "NYC is to open The Academy for Software Engineering, with a focus on software design and college preparation. It'll be a 'limited, unscreened' high school, which means admission won't be tied to grades or test scores; solely on interest (and presumably a lottery, once words gets out)." Would you want to go (or have gone) to such a school? Would you want your kids to attend? Read the full article on Slashdot »
Serious Oracle Flaw Revealed; Patch Coming Jan 17 2012 16:58:00	Slashdot
Serious Oracle Flaw Revealed; Patch Coming GMGruman writes "A bug in Oracle Database that could take down large databases — or let a hacker do so — has been found, and Oracle promises a patch later today. When InfoWorld first heard of the bug two months ago, its investigation revealed how dangerous this bug could be, and after convincing Oracle to address the issue, InfoWorld held the news until a patch was available, so hackers could not exploit the bug in the meantime. Paul Venezia details just how this bug exposes companie... Read the full article on Slashdot »
Flu + La Nina = Pandemic? Jan 17 2012 16:28:00	Slashdot
Flu + La Nina = Pandemic? New submitter MrEricSir writes with some scary speculation from a BBC article about the confluence of climate and disease: "A correlation between illness and cold weather is nothing new but this one is very specific: La Nina changes the migratory patterns of birds which can (and often does, according to this theory) cause flu pandemics." Read the full article on Slashdot »
Koobface Malware Traced To 5 Russians Jan 17 2012 16:04:00	Slashdot
Koobface Malware Traced To 5 Russians New submitter theonlyholle writes "Naked Security, the Sophos IT security blog, has published an article about the authors of the Koobface malware that plagued Facebook users in 2008 and the investigation that led to their identification. Apparently the botnet was created by five Russians from St. Petersburg." Read the full article on Slashdot »
iTunes Match Expands To Latin America, Netherlands, Bal... Jan 17 2012 15:45:00	Slashdot
iTunes Match Expands To Latin America, Netherlands, Baltics Sir Mal Fet writes "iTunes Match, Apple's service that allows re-downloading all your music, ripped CDs, and other music files across all your libraries using the iCloud service, has been made available in most of Latin America, the Netherlands, and the Baltic states. " Here's one user's review of the service. Is it worth the $25/year? Do you use the service?" Read the full article on Slashdot »
Microsoft Announces ReFS, a New Filesystem For Windows 8 Jan 17 2012 15:23:00	Slashdot
Microsoft Announces ReFS, a New Filesystem For Windows 8 bonch writes "Microsoft has shared details about its new filesystem called ReFS, which stands for Resilient File System. Codenamed 'Protogon,' ReFS will first appear as the storage system for Windows Server and later be offered to Windows clients. Microsoft plans to deprecate lesser-used NTFS features while maintaining 'a high degree of compatibility' for most uses. NTFS has been criticized in the past for its inelegant architecture." Read the full article on Slashdot »

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