SlashNOT

daan writes: Scientists have unearthed the remains of a party of Hobbits (Homo Hobbitses) on the remote Indonesian island of Flores dating from just 18,000 years ago, along with the bones of contemporary Orcs (Homo Orectus). Dragons, miniature elephants, and other mythical creatures also inhabited the island until Mt. Doom finally exploded 12,000 years ago. Middle Earth Man, (Homo Sapiens Tolkiensis) apparently arrived in Middle Earth and cohabitated with Homo Hobbitses for a period of time before ushering in the Age of Man and displacing the species. Elves, which also inhabited middle earth, are known to have left via primitive boats and are not expected to be present in the archeological record.

“This is a spectacular find. You could say that it’s the most important Tolkien related archeology in our lifetime. What’s even more amazing is that it’s relatively close to New Zealand.” Says Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins at London’s Natural History Museum.

Scientists are now analyzing maps of Middle Earth in an attempt to reconcile the geographic features of Flores Island.

Matthew writes: A LAN party setup to play DOOM 3 last Friday was interrupted during level 4 by the arrival an actual party, when party host Alan Frikes’ younger sister Amy arrived home with four of her friends, all in an inebriated state.

Gamer D3V10Us (aka Sanjay Singh) reported the incident for SlashNOT. “The females in question arrived at approximately 0200 hours. We were knee-deep in the cacodemons at the time, and burning through fusion rounds faster than we could find electropaks. Suddenly, four female humans burst through the door. The actual door. Gordo was so into the game that he fell off his chair. They were laughing, somewhat drunk, and looking to par-tay. Alan was pissed, let me tell you, because he got fragged by a zombie marine almost immediately. But then Amy’s friend Janny, upon whom Alan has been power crushing since High School, sat on his lap—breaking his N-way force feedback controller—and asked him what he would play with if he had a choice. I never saw that dude shut up so fast in my life.”

“Anyway, to make a long story short, the Sanjmaster acquired the digits of one hottie Miss Tina Yalpers, who will shortly be introduced to the dual physical nature of this astrophysics undergrad.”

Matthew writes: Rockstar entertainment, makers of the highly successful Grand Theft Auto franchise, have released another in their series of violence drenched law flaunting video games called Grand Theft Videogame.

In GTV, the player plays a hacker whose goal is to break into a fictitious game development company, steal a pre-release video game, and release it on the Internet. Interspersed with scenic story elements and featuring the same mobsters and prostitutes side story, GTV features two interactive modes: One where the character travels on foot in 1st person POV, and another where the player operates various computer devices in the quest to hack.

Mearzuh writes: The internet is a very large place. You can go anywhere you want, but don’t you sometimes miss that special place where your path has started?

Techs and geeks all across the globe have been surveyed with the question of whether there is any place like 127.0.0.1. Ninety-five percent of them said that there is no place like 127.0.0.1, whereas the other four percent claimed that there is no place like “loopback”.

The remaining one percent could not be reached because the ping signal was lost on all five attempts. We presume that they haven’t left their 127.0.0.1 in a long time.

Matthew writes: A Toshiba flat screen television attempted an escape from its Oregon owner this week by emitting a signal in the 121.5MHz international distress signal frequency. The signal was picked up by satellite and routed to the Air Force Rescue Center at Langley Air Base in Virginia.

A contingent of local police, Civil Air Patrol, and Search and Rescue Personnel visited the college dorm room where the television had been living in captivity, but failed to appreciate that its deliberate channel changes to news coverage of prison abuse indicated that it needed to be rescued from its owner, who frequently left the Television on overnight while sleeping and while gone—causing heat stress. Authorities did however warn the student to keep the Television turned off or face a $10,000 fine for willingly broadcasting a false distress signal, and Toshiba rescued the television by replacing it with another at no cost.

Matthew writes: Based on the Windows XP Media Center edition, the new Bathroom Edition features a waterproof X-Box controller with LCD that can be used to remotely control a Windows XP Media Center computer.

“We’ve added some bathroom related content, such ebook anthologies of Reader’s Digest and Prevention magazines, as well as limiting the controller to low-voltage bathtub safe electrical signals.” The device also has a browser for Microsoft’s new news clipping protocol SkidML.

Matthew writes: (Excerpted from the Sunday, January 12th 1958 Syracuse Post Standard, with minor edits by SlashNOT)

In the chill of a desert dawn today, anxious technicians crowded the ramps at Edwards Air Force Base_^Mojave Airport in Southern California’s Mojave Desert. Searching the brightening sky, they will be waiting for a thunderbolt to hurtle earthward from the top of the atmosphere, waiting for a new era of flight: The Age of _^Commercialized Space.

Flying over 100 miles away will be two planes that have taken off from Edwards two hours before: a chase plane, probably an F-100 _^Learjet, and a converted bomber, either a B-36 or a B-52_^carrier plane called White Knight. Nestled beneath the bomber_^carrier plane will be a third plane—not yet airborne—a ship the like of which has never been seen before. Unofficial estimates put its speed at 5,000_^2,500m.p.h. It will probably reach an altitude of over 150_^62 miles. It is the X-15_^SpaceShipOne, a rocket ship built by North American Aviation_^Scaled Composites, in co-operation with the Air Force, the Navy, and the National Advisory Committee for Auronautics (NACA)_^Paul Allen. It’s mission: to take man into space.

The man is Scott Crossfield_^Brian Binnie, a research test pilot for whom this day will be the culmination of years of work and planning. He watched X-15_^SpaceShipOne’s birth on the drawing board, flew her on a mathematical computer before she was built, saw her take form in North American_^Scaled Composite’s plant, put her through her test trials. On this day, X-15_^SpaceShipOne will be gunning for maximum performance—and that, X-15_^SpaceShipOne being what she is, means space.

To get to space man has struggled upward through a vast sea of air for nearly 200_^250 years, rising higher and higher in balloons, airplanes, and rocket ships. The nation_^Scaled Composite’s top-secret dark horse entry in the race to space_^Ansari X-Prize, the X-15_^SpaceShipOne, is the product of a decade_^s of high-speed research flight that started in 1947 when Major Chuck yeager broke the sound barrier in the X-1. Later, Bell’s X-2 hit 2,300 m.p.h. and conquered the heat barrier—a speed region of 1,000 degree heat from air friction. X-15_^SpaceShipOne is designed to break the last barrier between man and space—the controllability_^cost barrier.

What is the controllability_^cost barrier? It is a deadly combination of high speed_^Bureaucracy and thin_^hot air that can hurl ships and missles into a vicious supersonic yaw—a wild, rolling, pitching tumble_^cycle that shakes a plane _^development program out of control under the buffeting force of it’s own shock waves_^cost overruns. Crossfield_^Binnie’s mission is to go up and cross that barrier.

The future of _^commercial space flight depends on his success. Missile men_^Private  launch platforms, too, are waiting eagerly for the results—they have been bothered by a lack of control at high altitude and they hope Crossfield_^Binnie’s flight may help.

Michael writes: Diebold’s touch-screen voting machines, slated for use in the 2004 election, have been recently criticized for being insecure and for not keeping up with their paperwork, and more recently for being outsmarted by a monkey. Now the machines’ behavior has apparently taken a turn for the worse. According to the Associated Press, Diebold voting machines have been spotted hanging around in bars and on street corners in Maryland, apparently up to no good.

Although the machines are already being investigated for fraud in California, the government of Maryland and the US government have declined to comment on the situation. A State Department spokesman would only say that the machines “are entitled to a fair trial before we judge them.”