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Communications

Wi-Fi Allergy a PR Stunt 174

ADiamond writes "There is no Wi-Fi allergy. The English DJ claiming a Wi-Fi sensitivity, chronicled earlier, was a PR stunt to promote his new album. It would appear that the stunt was highly successful, appearing in multiple high-profile media outlets like The Sun, The Telegraph, and Fox News. The article at Ars goes on to discuss the evidence, or lack-thereof, of electromagnetic spectrum sensitivity."
Communications

School System Considers Jamming Students' Phones 785

An anonymous reader writes "The St. Ansgar, Iowa school system is considering buying cell-phone jamming equipment for up to $5000 if it is deemed legal. The use of the equipment would be suspended in the case of an emergency, but one has to wonder if they would be quick enough to shut it down should an emergency arise. 'A Federal Communications Commission notice issued in 2005 says the sale and use of transmitters that jam cellular or personal communications services is unlawful.'"
The Courts

Student Suing Amazon For Book Deletions 646

Stupified writes "High school student Justin Gawronski is suing Amazon for deleting his Kindle copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four (complaint, PDF), because doing so destroyed the annotations he'd created to the text for class. The complaint states: 'The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as "remember this paragraph for your thesis" is useless if it does not actually reference a specific paragraph.' The suit, which is seeking class action status, asks that Amazon be legally blocked from improperly accessing users' Kindles in the future and punitive damages for those affected by the deletion. Nothing in Amazon's EULA or US copyright law gives them permission to delete books off your Kindle, so this sounds like a plausible suit."

Comment Re:Hide them all (Score 2, Informative) 323

Rodrigovr is actually right, to a point. You do want to hide everything that you can. I have been racking eq and doing wiring work for 20+ years... Use cable ties, not velcro, or wraps or anything like that, just plain old cable ties. I know, if you have to replace something or move something you have to cut all those ties... YEP thats right. Big deal. Just tie it all up again and do a better job each time you have to do it. You want to keep power separate from everything else.

And thats a great idea to be able to turn off stuff you don't use all the time with diff power strips, I do that myself.

You may want to use a mounting head cable tie and screw stuff you your actual desk. This is the kind of tie http://www.cabletiesplus.com/Products/5-Mounted-Head-Cable-Ties-(40-lb)-(Natural)__CP-5-40MH-N.aspx and you can use very small screws.

BUT if you don't want harm your desk at all. Just leave it hang and lay on the floor and make it look at nice as you can. Don't use tape, or sticky strips, or sticky cable mounts, because NONE OF THEM WORK. About two days after you anchor something it will come off, trust me... Basic rule of thumb for cable work, if it seems like its going to be way too much work and a big pain in the ass, then your doing it right and it will look great in the end. And just remember I have done this with 20+ devices in a 72u rack (over 6 feet of eq...) and you could NOT see any power cable when I was done and all the network, KVM etc... were ladder wrapped and the rest of the ties were about 1ft apart... Took 2 days to do one rack, but it looked great when it was finished.

Duke

Comment Great Movie!! (Score 1) 592

New TV series spin off anyone???? Or at least 4 or 5 more movies outta this. I have been a Trek fan for a long time. Yea they messed around with some, but this was a great movie.

And it is cool to see some alt reality stuff sometimes. Come on we are Sci-Fi people right? I would have liked to seen a cameo of the real James T in there during the mind meld with future/older Spock and past/young James T, but can't have everything.

But, again I say a really great movie that I will be seeing again.

Duke

Biotech

Umbilical Cord Blood Banking? 409

Maestro writes "There must be many parents (and soon-to-be parents) here at Slashdot. What are your thoughts on umbilical cord blood banking? This seems like a major question for our newborn; the question is almost as stressful for us as naming the baby. Given Obama's stance on stem cells, the topic is timely. My understanding is that while the current uses for cord blood are limited, the sky's the limit for the future of stem cell therapies. But with the initial cost over $1000, and ongoing yearly fees, is it worth it?"

Comment haven't bought a PC err PC Game since.... (Score 1) 417

I had been gaming on the PC forever... (cough in my 40s now...)

But I have NOT bought a PC game since my 1st xbox... And I do not plan on buying one. REASON: guess what, my main PC is 5/6 years old and it STILL RUNS great....

I upgraded and bought new PCs all the time in the past... now I only spend money on the games, not the games and a new machine each year...

Duke

Wireless Networking

Concerns Over Increased 802.11n Power Usage 72

alphadogg writes "Next-generation 802.11n systems promise to considerably improve WLAN performance. But the processing required for the boost sucks up more power than the older 802.11a/b/g networks. Still, many enterprise-class Wi-Fi vendors claim to deliver full 802.11n capabilities without enterprise customers having to touch their power infrastructures. So what gives?"

Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones 472

Preedit writes "A free download that can cut Windows Vista's gargantuan footprint by half or more is developing a big following on the Internet. vLite is a configuration tool that lets users automatically delete a lot of unnecessary Vista components — such as Windows Media Player and MSN installer — to pare the OS down to a reasonable size. The software is catching on. An InformationWeek story notes that a forum that asks users to suggest new features has drawn nearly 50,000 page views. Meanwhile, Microsoft officials have themselves conceded that Vista is "bloated" and are developing the next version of Windows on a core called MinWin, which is smaller than Vista by an order of magnitude."
Toys

LEGO Brick 50th Anniversary 206

An anonymous reader writes "'The LEGO brick turns 50 at exactly 1:58pm today. This cool timeline shows these fifty years of building frenzy by happy kids and kids-at-heart, all the milestones from the Legoland themed sets to Technic and Mindstorms NXT, as well as all kind of weird curiosities about the most famous stud-and-tube couple system in the world.'" Of course, it all peaked in 1979 with the space set. These kids these days with their bionacle. bah.
Security

The Anatomy of Money-Mule Scams 135

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog has up an article on work-at-home money mule scams (backgrounder blog post here). These operations offer victims hundreds or thousands of dollars per week for moving money through their own accounts — a critical piece of the infrastructure for profiting from identity theft and phishing. The article links to the site of a UK fraud fighter named Bob Harrison, who lists hundreds of fradulent money-mule operations.
Space

Speculation On the Doomed Satellite 229

scim writes "Intelligent speculation has led one knowledgeable observer to believe the satellite recently announced to have failed is a radar satellite named USA 193. According to an earlier story on the satellite: 'The experimental L-21 classified satellite, built for the National Reconnaissance Office at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, was launched successfully on Dec. 14 [2006] but has been out of touch since reaching its low-earth orbit.'" The ArmsControlWonk story leads off with what purports to be a photo from the ground of USA 193.

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