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Archive for the ‘Slashdot’ Category

Informative Shuttle Ascent Video

12.11.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

minterbartolo points out this video, produced by Matt Melis at the Glenn Research Center, excerpting from its description: “Photographic documentation of a Space Shuttle launch plays a critical role in the engineering analysis and evaluation process that takes place during each and every mission. Motion and Still images enable Shuttle engineers to visually identify off-nominal ...

BitTorrent Client Offers P2P Without Central Tracking

12.10.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

Shiwei writes “While BitTorrent is the most popular P2P protocol, it still relies on several centralized points for users to find the files they are looking. There have been several attempts at making BitTorrent more decentralized, and the latest Tribler 5.3 client is the first to offer the BitTorrent experience without requiring central trackers or ...

Microsoft Adds ‘Do Not Track’ Option For IE9

12.07.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

devbox writes “Microsoft says it will offer a privacy setting in the next version of Internet Explorer that will make it easy for users to keep their browsing habits from being tracked by advertising networks and other third-party websites. “oeBy designing these sorts of enhancements with privacy in mind at the design phase, we’re able ...

DOJ Ramping Up Crackdown On Copyright-Infringing Sites

12.06.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

An anonymous reader writes “The Obama administration is just getting started in its mission to shut down rogue websites that illegally share copyrighted content such as movies and music. The White House’s intellectual property czar, Victoria Espinel, said Monday that the Internet community should ‘expect more of that’ pre-emptive action as the administration ramps up ...

Bill Calls For Wi-Fi Base Stations In All Federal Buildings

12.04.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

GovTechGuy submits this from Hillicon Valley: “Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) introduced legislation on Friday that would require all public federal buildings to install WiFi base stations in order to free up cell phone networks. The Federal Wi-Net Act would mandate the installation of small WiFi base stations in all publicly accessible ...

Optical Camouflage Puts Kinect Into Stealth Mode

12.03.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

UgLyPuNk writes “Takayuki Fukatsu, a Japanese coder who works under the name Art & Mobile, has done a bit of trickery with Kinect and openFrameworks. The peripheral will still track your movement and position, but turns your image nearly transparent. Take a look (it’s particularly obvious at about 1:30):” Read more of this story at ...

Greg Bear, Others Cry Foul on Project Gutenberg Copyright Call

12.01.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

Nova Express writes “Recently a lot of science fiction stories from the 1950s and 60s (including work from still-living authors like Frederik Pohl and Jack Vance) have been showing up on Project Gutenberg as being in the public domain. However, according the science fiction writer Greg Bear and his wife Astrid Anderson Bear (daughter of ...

US Army Unveils ‘Revolutionary’ $35,000 Rifle

11.30.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

rbrander writes “Don’t call it a ‘rifle,’ call it the ‘XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System’ and get your $ 35,000 worth. Much more than a projector of high-speed lead, this device hurls small grenades that automatically detonate in mid-flight with 1-meter accuracy over nearly 800m. The vital field feature is the ability to explode ...

X-37B Secret Space Plane To Land Soon

11.27.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

Phoghat writes “The highly classified X-37B Space Plane is scheduled to land soon. It was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on April 22 atop an Atlas 5 rocket, and the Air Force is still being very secretive on all aspects of the flight. We do know that it’s set to touch down at Vandenberg ...

Google, Microsoft Cheat On Slow-Start — Should You?

11.26.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

kdawson writes “Software developer and blogger Ben Strong did a little exploring to find out how Google achieves its admirably fast load times. What he discovered is that Google, and to a much greater extent Microsoft, are cheating on the ‘slow-start’ requirement of RFC-3390. His research indicates that discussion of this practice on the Net ...

Homeland Security Drops Color-Coded Terror Alerts

11.25.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

Hugh Pickens writes “The LA Times reports that the Homeland Security Department is poised to end its five-tiered, color-coded terrorism warning system, a post-Sept. 11 endeavor that has been called too vague to be useful and has been mostly ignored or mocked by the public. The domestic security advisory system was created in 2002 under ...

Students Banned From Bringing Pencils To School

11.24.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

mernilio writes “According to UPI: ‘A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval. North Brookfield School District interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers at North Brookfield Elementary School, did not get approval from administrators before sending the memo ...

Utah vs. NASA On Heavy-Lift Rocket Design

11.23.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

FleaPlus writes “Utah congressmen Orrin Hatch, Bob Bennett, Rob Bishop, and Jim Matheson issued a statement claiming that NASA’s design process for a new congressionally-mandated heavy-lift rocket system may be trying to circumvent the law. According to the congressmen and their advisors from solid rocket producer ATK, the heavy-lift legislation’s requirements can only be met ...

Intel Talks 1000-Core Processors

11.22.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

angry tapir writes “An experimental Intel chip shows the feasibility of building processors with 1,000 cores, an Intel researcher has asserted. The architecture for the Intel 48-core Single Chip Cloud Computer (SCC) processor is ‘arbitrarily scalable,’ According to Timothy Mattson ‘This is an architecture that could, in principle, scale to 1,000 cores,’ he said. ‘I ...

Japanese Game Developers Go West

11.20.2010 · Posted in Slashdot

donniebaseball23 writes “More and more Japanese game studios and publishers are looking toward the West. But as the industry becomes more global, is this really such a bad thing? From the article: ‘Gameplay is an art that transcends borders, and it simply makes good business sense to keep your eyes open for opportunities no matter ...