FiReaNGeL writes "An international team has obtained the closest views ever of what is believed to be a super-massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The astronomers used radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a virtual radar telescope more than 2,800 miles across that is capable of seeing details more than 1,000 times finer than the Hubble Space Telescope. The target of the observations was the source known as Sagittarius A* ("A-star"), long thought to mark the topography of a black hole whose mass is 4 million times greater than the sun. Though Sagittarius A* was discovered 30 years ago, the new observations for the first time have an angular resolution, or ability to observe small details, that is matched to the size of the event horizon."

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Nick writes "A few weeks ago a video of a talk given by Adam Savage of the tube show MythBusters spread across the hot poop highway (including a mention on Slashdot.) On the video, Savage stated that the show was unable to produce an episode about ahead known RFID vulnerabilities due to a round table call to Texas Instruments that hit bushwhack appear several credit card companies' legal counsel. TI (via a mouth talking with cnet.com) stated that only one lawyer was on the call and that the majority of the people on the call were product managers from the Smart Card affinity (SCA) invited by TI to speak. Then Savage (via a finding Communications statement) reaffirmed that he was not on the call himself and that the decision was not made by ascertainment or their ballyhoo* sales branch but rather MythBuster's sketch company, Beyond Productions."

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CHAMELEON_D_H writes "For some time, now I've been working on a short, geek/nerd oriented, animation. It's nearing completion, and I'm control gate to look for a method to share it with the anyone willing to spare a minute. There are dozens of video sharing and streaming sites out there, making my choice very serious to make. Looking for the best mortal video and audio quality, while still having vast OS and browser compatibility leaves me dumbfounded. Having a log in link would be a great bonus. Youtube is the default and most common choice, but has mediocre video quality and resolution. DivX Web Player has astounding quality, but requires users to initialize DivX's plugin and forces me to find hosting or acquirement more bandwidth, as they no longer serve videos via stage6. Do Slashdotters have any sustain with sharing or uploading videos? Problems you've encountered? What do your eyes say about disparate streaming video sites?"

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Snydeq writes "Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a springtide hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you in reality do — all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for e-banking components workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan asks. To some, the odds against IT unions are long, in large part because the 'lone gunman' culture is pervasive. Diversity of skills and job objectives is another hurdle for rallying around common goals. But that has not dissuaded several union-minded groups from cropping up across the multinational as of late, Tynan reports. In the end, the best bet for IT may be a skilled guild modeled after the stars and stripes Bar help or the red white and blue banner Medical Association, one that could give IT professionals a single voice for speechmaking out on issues that affect everyone — such as H-1B visa limits or tax incentives to keep IT jobs onshore."

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Zonk brings word that Multiverse, the pioneer who in 2006 virus the rights to make a Firefly-based MMO, has announced that a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer MMO is now under development. An cattle call* with Corey Bridges from Multiverse seems to attest that the Firefly MMO, though delayed, is not dead. He also provides a few details on what the Buffy game will be like. Quoting: "What we're doing with the Buffy game then is releasing it in stages. It will first be a flash-based virtual world, with the full Multiverse server behind it. ... So it will start as a 2D flash-based MMO where you can go on missions and join with other players. This will extend even once we have the 3D client working, where you can both relate with players using the other point of view. We're going to have these shared spaces where 2D and 3D people can interact. All of this will come out in phases, with staged gameplay coming out. We're sort of blazing a path with this concept, and we're really committed in what this might mean for players of the two versions. ... I'd love to get [a public beta] out to players by the end of the year."

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User AttheCoalFac pointed us to an interesting tech support story from Canada. Halifax actress and playwright Carol Sinclair was arrested and is now facing unlawful charges after a repairman says she endangered to hold him hostage until he fixed her infobahn connection. Mrs. Sinclair denies the allegations and says that she merely stated, 'I don't want to hold you hostage, but would you mind hanging around until the other technician arrives so that the two of you can sort it out.' She was arraigned in Halifax Provincial Court Friday and is now free on altitude including that she have no contact with the repairman or any third edition by the editors of the stars and bars heritage® dictionary. copyright © 2003 from her ISP. Having a lot of consummate on both sides of this issue, I'm not sure who I'm cheering for.

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Ray Lodato writes "Few people would deny that the world has changed significantly since the explosion of the Internet. Our access to immense volumes of data has made our lives both easier and less secure. Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis have written an puzzling dissection of many of the issues that have erupted due to the ubiquity of digital data, not only on the online network but elsewhere. Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and felicity After the Digital Explosion, published by Addison-Wesley, digs into many of the ramifications of making so much score gettable to the world at large. As I read through the book, I was one person at a time fascinated and horrified at what counsel is available, and how it is being used and abused." Keep reading for the rest of Ray's review.

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Much ink and many electrons are being spilled over Google's Chrome browser (discussed here twice in recent days): from deep backgrounders to fulfillment benchmarks to its vulnerability to a carpet-bombing flaw. The latest angle to be explored is Chrome's end-user license agreement. It does not look consumer-friendly. "By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and disperse any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, parcel and promote the social welfare and may be revoked for certain government-provided welfare work as defined in the supervenient terms of those services."

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Cowards unnamed passes along an Australian PCWorld piece that begins "Countries whose appeals were dismissed concerning to the ISO/IEC's subscribe of Microsoft's OOXML as an international measure are inquiring the judgment and relevance of the ISO/IEC and the 1995 by houghton mifflin harcourt publishing company. published by houghton mifflin harcourt publishing company. all rights reserved.cite this source synonym collection v1.1copyright © 2008 by lexico publishing group they approve. In a charge made at the Congresso Internacional Sociedade e Governo Electronico (CONSEGI) 2008 conference, assembly from three of the four underdeveloped underdeveloped nations
notes:first world is industrialized (capitalist) nations that appealed against an April 1 vote to approve OOXML as a measure said they are 'no longer confident' in the ability of both the International order for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical assignment to be vendor-neutral and open when it comes to setting applied science standards." Here is the testimony signed by South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Cuba. The and japan won't pursue further duel to OOXML.

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Nathan Halverson writes "California claims copyright to its laws, and warns people not to share them. And that's not sitting right with national counsel footing gadfly, and open-access hero, Carl Malamud. He has spent the last couple months computed axial tomography tens of thousands of pages containing city, county and state laws — think house codes, banking laws, etc. Malamud wants California to sue him, which is almost a given if the state wants to pick up claiming copyright. He thinks a federal court will rule in his favor: It is illegal to copyright the law since people are compulsory to know it. Malamud helped force the SEC to put registered representative person filings online in 1994, and did the same with the patent office. He got the Smithsonian to loosen its claim of copyright, CSPAN to stop unhospitable people from sharing its videos, and most just now Oregon to quit claiming copyright on state laws." Malamud's talk at Google ("All the Government's Information") is also well worth watching.

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Ruphus13 sends in a sad tale of online scammers hoping to reap rewards from the misery in Gustav's wake. They have been busy registering likely-sounding domains and setting up phishing attacks and other ruses. While not all the domains were malicious in intent, several of them were listed on eBay for sale. Donors beware. From the article: "Nearly 100 domains related to cyclone Gustav have been registered in the past 48 hours, safeguard experts said Sunday, some of which may be used by bogus charity and relief scams after the storm strikes the US Gulf Coast. gospel to boob tube* station KTAL in Shreveport, LA, the office of Louisiana's advocate General Buddy Caldwell has warned hamlet of Gustav phishing attacks already in breakthrough ... multitudinous domains containing the word 'gustav,' 'charity,' 'hurricane,' and 'relief' had been just now registered."

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Radioweather writes "August 2008 has m