n2doc

n2doc's Journal

December 6, 2012

Tom the Dancing Bug Toon: Union Man vs. Captain Industry!

December 5, 2012

Hacker locates John McAfee through smartphone tracks

By Craig Timberg,

Weeks of international intrigue about the whereabouts of tech millionaire John McAfee ended Tuesday after the Internet pioneer made an elementary digital mistake that highlighted the fraught relationship Americans have with what they once quaintly called “the telephone.”

That homely communication tool, wired into walls everywhere for the better part of a century, has become an untethered e-mailer, browser, banker, shopper, movie viewer, music player and — to an extent that few appreciate — digital spy of extraordinary power.

McAfee, 67, who founded the popular antivirus company that bears his name, has been wanted for questioning by police in Belize since a neighbor turned up dead of a gunshot wound near McAfee’s beach-side home Nov. 11. The troubled tech savant, insisting that he had no role in the shooting, went on the run and has been taunting police by blog, Twitter and occasional podcast.

Authorities couldn’t catch him. But a hacker called Simple Nomad learned McAfee’s location shortly after journalists posted an image of him from his supposedly secret locale under the provocative headline, “We are with John McAfee right now, suckers.”

more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/hacker-locates-john-mcafee-through-smartphone-tracks/2012/12/04/55a498d8-3e4a-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

December 5, 2012

This Cowboy needs no gun!

Still got it! Retired cowboy, 79, stops intruder high on bath salts using a quick karate chop-punch

An intruder high on bath salts was no match for a retired bull rider who was able to stop the man with a karate chop and a punch to the throat.

'The guy went down cold,' said Ervin Brittnacher, the 79-year-old who took down the intruder half his age.

Charles Smith, 38, was arrested after Brittnacher called the local League City police and charged him with burglary of a habitation with intent to commit assault since he had a gun.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243177/Retired-cowboy-79-stops-intruder-high-bath-salts-using-quick-karate-chop-punch.html

December 5, 2012

Mars Rover Curiosity Gets Mission Extension, new rover Mission announced

SAN FRANCISCO — When NASA's next Mars rover touches down in 2021, its six-wheeled sister, Curiosity, may still be chugging around the Red Planet.

NASA announced Tuesday (Dec. 4) that it plans to launch an unmanned rover toward the Red Planet in 2020, to help pave the way for an eventual Martian sample-return mission. The new rover will be based heavily on Curiosity, whose Aug. 5 landing kicked off a mission to determine if the Red Planet could ever have supported microbial life.

Curiosity's mission was originally planned to last two years. It has now been extended indefinitely.

"We've already decided with this plan that we will continue to operate Curiosity as long as it's scientifically viable," John Grunsfled, NASA's associate administrator for science, said here Tuesday at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "And that could be a long time." [Latest Mars Photos by Curiosity]

Just how long Curiosity could keep roving is an open question. The $2.5 billion robot is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which should be able to continue converting the heat of plutonium-238's radioactive decay into electricity for a long time to come.

"I never get a straight answer on this, but I think it has 55 years of positive power margin," Grunsfeld said.

more
http://www.space.com/18769-mars-rover-curiosity-mission-extension.html

December 5, 2012

Stunning Gallery of Previously Unpublished Images from “Hubble’s Universe”

The new book, Hubble’s Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images includes several previously unpublished images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and author Terence Dickinson has graciously shared a few of those images with Universe Today. All images are courtesy of NASA, ESA, and “Hubble’s Universe.”

Above is NGC 2467, a nebula similar to the Orion Nebula, but 11 times farther away, in the southern constellation Puppis. A churning foam of strangely shaped dust clouds forms the backdrop to the newborn blue stars emerging from the gas and dust. Most of the radiation that is eating away at the cloud is being emitted by the single brilliant massive star near the center of the image. Its fierce radiation has cleared the surrounding area, and some of the next generation of stars are forming in the denser regions around the edge.
See more beautiful Hubble images below: