My Blog

Mars Express Captures Phobos and Deimos

Soulskill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:04:00 +0000

westtxfun writes "The Mars Express Orbiter captured a very cool movie of Phobos and Deimos on Nov 5. Besides the 'wow factor,' the images will be used to refine models of the moons' orbits. The orbiter has also captured high resolution images of Phobos back in July. 'The images were acquired with the Super Resolution Channel (SRC) of the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The camera took 130 images of the moons on 5 November at 9:14 CET in a span of 1.5 minutes at intervals of 1s, speeding up to 0.5-s intervals toward the end. The image resolution is 110 m/pixel for Phobos and 240 m/pixel for Deimos — Deimos was more than twice as far from the camera. '"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Documentation Compliance Means MS Can Resume Collecting Protocol Royalties

Soulskill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 04:57:00 +0000

angry tapir writes "Microsoft may begin collecting royalties again for licensing some protocols because clear technical documentation is now available, according to the US Department of Justice. The change comes after the DOJ issued its latest joint status report regarding its 2002 antitrust settlement with Microsoft. The settlement required Microsoft to make available technical documentation that would allow other vendors to make products that are interoperable with Windows."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

$860 Million In Fines Handed Out For LCD Price-Fixing

Soulskill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 02:55:00 +0000

eldavojohn writes "Six companies have pleaded guilty to worldwide price fixing of Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Displays from Sept. 14, 2001, to Dec. 1, 2006. For violating the Sherman Act, the companies have agreed to pay criminal fines of over $860 Million. In addition, nine executives have been charged in the scandal. The pricing scam affected some of the largest companies at the time, including Apple, HP and Dell. (If you bought a TFT-LCD from them in that time frame, you may be one of the victimized consumers.) From the DOJ release, 'According to the charge, Chi Mei carried out the conspiracy by agreeing during meetings, conversations and communications to charge prices of TFT-LCD panels at certain pre-determined levels and issuing price quotations in accordance with the agreements reached. As a part of the conspiracy, Chi Mei exchanged information on sales of TFT-LCD panels for the purpose of monitoring and enforcing adherence to the agreed-upon prices.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sci-Fi Author Peter Watts Beaten, Charged During Border Crossing

Soulskill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:50:00 +0000

JoeGee writes "On December 8th, Canadian sci-fi author Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy and Blindsight, was crossing the US/Canadian border at Port Huron, Michigan when he was involved in an altercation with US Border Patrol agents. According to Watts, he was beaten, left half-naked in a cold cell, and finally dumped on the Canadian side of the border with no coat. A legal consultant from the Electronic Frontier Foundation was successful in helping a civil rights lawyer in Michigan free Watts. Watts faces US charges of assaulting a federal officer. Based on the accounts, one can assume Watts did so by hitting the officer's hand with his face. If convicted, Watts faces two years in a US Federal prison."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

DIY Book Scanners Turn Your Books Into Bytes

Priya Ganapati — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:45:00 +0000

For about $300, Daniel Reetz created a book scanner at home that can scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes. Now, he's helping others build similar scanners, spawning a community that could pose a new challenge to copyright and publishers.

Is Earth’s Atmosphere an Import?

Soulskill — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:55:00 +0000

garg0yle writes "One of the questions about the formation of our planet is: where did the atmosphere come from? One theory is that the oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases were part of the coalescing ball, and 'seeped out' during the final stages of the planet's formation. However, a new article at Wired says isotopic analysis of krypton and xenon indicates that they (and the rest of our atmosphere) may be of extraterrestrial origin, either arriving via comets or being swept up from gas clouds."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Myspace/Imeem Deal Leaves Thousands of Artists Unpaid

Eliot Van Buskirk — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:35:00 +0000

Independent artists won't see a dime for songs sold through their Snocap storefronts on MySpace.

Wired.com Readers’ Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009

Brian X. Chen — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:17:00 +0000

Your votes are in. Here are Wired.com readers' favorite iPhone apps of 2009.

Slashdot Turns 100,000

CmdrTaco — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:03:00 +0000

This entry represents the 100,000th story posted on Slashdot. Technically this is a bit late since we're missing the first few months of stories from the DB, but there are now 100k items in the story database and I thought that milestone was worthy of sharing with the universe. We've come a long way in the last 12 years, and while the site isn't always exactly what I want it to be, I'm very proud of the work done by our thousands of submitters and to the editors our readers have "affectionately" referred to as "The Slashdot Janitors" for so many years. Special grats to timothy who is just short of his 17,000th story and is far and away the most prolific person here. The hall of fame has a few other bits of trivia.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Video: Takahashi-Meijin’s Button-Mashing Secrets Revealed

Chris Kohler — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:00:00 +0000

"The Famous Takahashi" shares uncanny tips and techniques for squeezing an amazing 16 shots per second out of a videogame controller.