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The Military

US Congress Funds Laser Weapons 423

Posted by Soulskill from the vaporize-ware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that the US Congress is funding laser weapons for use in the near future. Low-power lasers called 'dazzlers' are already being used in Iraq to temporarily reduce a person's vision. High-power laser weapons would allow precision attacks that minimize civilian casualties. From the Post: 'The science board said tactical laser systems could be developed for broader use because they "enable precision ground attack to minimize collateral damage in urban conflicts." The report suggested, for example, that "future gunships could provide extended precision lethality and sensing." The board also proposed using lasers to protect against rockets, artillery, mortars and unmanned airborne vehicles by blasting them out of the sky. Last month, the Army awarded Boeing $36 million to continue development of a high-energy laser mounted on a truck that could hit overhead targets. But deployment is not expected until 2016, even if all goes well.'"

Judge Munley is So Out of My Top 8 791

Posted by CmdrTaco from the surprised-he-was-there-in-the-first-place dept.
Frequent Slashdot Contributor Bennett Haselton writes "A federal judge has ruled that a school district didn't violate a student's free speech rights when it suspended her for a parody MySpace page she created calling her principal a sex addict who "hits on students". In the ruling, Judge James M. Munley made the curious argument that if the case involves a student publishing lewd and offensive speech outside of school on their own time, then the proper precedent-setting cases to look to, are cases involving students making offensive statements in school during school hours, not cases involving students making less-offensive statements outside of school on their own time. In other words, if you can't find prior caselaw where all of the factors are the same, then the lewd-speech issue is more significant than the issue of whether the speech was made in or out of school." Hit that magical link below to read the rest of these words.

Microsoft Innovates Tent Data Centers 201

Posted by CmdrTaco from the don't-touch-the-fabric dept.
1sockchuck writes "The outside-the-box thinking in data center design continues. Microsoft has tested running a rack of servers in a tent outside one of its data centers. In seven months of testing, a small group of servers ran for seven months without failures, even when water dripped on the rack. The experiment builds on Intel's recent research on air-side economizers in suggesting that servers may be sturdier than believed, leaving more room to save energy by optimizing cooling set points and other key environmental settings in the server room."
United States

Submission + - California sues US over emissions

Submitted by
gollum123
gollum123 writes: "California is suing the US federal government, in an attempt to force car makers to conform to tougher cuts in greenhouse gas emissions ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7169200.stm ). The lawsuit comes after the federal Environmental Protection Agency denied California a waiver from US law needed to enact its own efficiency targets. Fifteen other states or state agencies are set to join the action. It challenged the Epa's denial of California's request to implement its own emissions law — which would require a 30% reduction in motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 2016 by improving fuel efficiency standards. For years, California has been allowed to set its own environmental targets in recognition of the "compelling and extraordinary conditions" the state faces — and the Epa has never before denied California a waiver request. The other states joining the fight are: Massachusetts, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington."
PHP

Submission + - Mastering regular expressions in PHP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Perl may be regex king, but PHP can slice and dice input quickly, too. Pattern matching is such a common chore for software that a special shorthand — regular expressions — has evolved to make light work of the task. Learn how to use this shorthand in your PHP code.
The Internet

Submission + - Web Spider Sued By Colorado Woman

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Internet Archive is beind sued by a Colorado woman for spidering her site. Suzanne Shell posted a notice on her site saying she wasn't allowing it to be crawled. When it was, she sued for civil theft, breach of contract, and violations of the Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations act and the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act. A court ruling last month granted the Internet Archive's motion to dismiss the charges, except for the breach of contract claim. If Shell prevails on that count, sites like Google will have to get online publishers to "opt in" before they can be crawled, radically changing the nature of Web search.
Security

Submission + - People Don't Know Which Network They're On

Submitted by
Elliot
Elliot writes: "You don't really know which wireless network you're connected to. "About 14.3 million American households use wireless Internet," and millions of their laptops are configured to automatically connect to common open networks. Attackers can easily set up a wireless hotspot named "Linksys", "D-Link", or "NETGEAR", and unsuspecting laptop users will connect to it. At that point, the hacker could access the laptop's network shares, or act as a "man in the middle" and log their website usage activity. Even more sinister is when the attacker names the network something official, such as "USC Wireless", "Marriott Wireless", or "LAX Wireless", and then redirects the visitor to an official-looking page asking for their log-in and password. Lawmakers are aware of the problem: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the Wi-Fi User Protection Bill on Sept. 30. Elliot Lee discusses the problem, and suggests that using a reliable VPN is the only way to get a secure connection away from home."
Communications

Submission + - AT&T/Cingular Blocking legitimate phone number

Submitted by
kickassweb
kickassweb writes: "PennPIRG is reporting that AT&T/Cingular is blocking calls to the popular, and competing, service, FreeConferenceCall.com, as well as other similar services.

PennPIRG has learned that AT&T/Cingular recently began blocking phone numbers on its wireless service used by consumers to access free conference call services, such as those provided by Free Conference Call.com. The telephone giant has argued that calls to free conference call services are resulting in millions of dollars in losses to the company due to re-routing and termination fees, and has sued free conference call services and local phone companies in Iowa over the fees.


The article goes on to state that the free conference call service being blocked competes directly with Cingular's conference call service, and that this is the type of anti-consumer action we can expect on the internet if Net Neutrality is not mandated."
Software

Submission + - UK's Conservative Party Pro OSS

Submitted by
Paul Giannaros
Paul Giannaros writes: "The UK's Conservative Party website top story states that 'an incoming Conservative government would create a level playing field for open source software in the UK', following the Conservative Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's speech on recasting the political settlement for the digital age.
He talks about the importance of the 'equality of information' that the Internet has provided, social networks and their use in society, and open source, saying 'it is estimated that the Government could save at least 5% [£600m] of its annual IT bill if more open source software was used as part of a more effective procurement strategy'. He also briefly discusses 'the lack of open standards in government IT'."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Cattle Produce More Greenhouse Gases Than Cars

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: EARTHtimes.org has an article covering a letter that PETA sent to Al Gore. The letter points out that rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases that driving cars. PETA sites a U.N. report to support their case. Will Al Gore put his mouth where his mouth is and become vegetarian?
Role Playing (Games)

Submission + - Second Life, Nazis, And Exploding Pigs.

Submitted by wetelectric
wetelectric writes: The first night I arrived at the protest against the Second Life headquarters of Front National, the far right French political party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute. By the second night I came (this was late last week), the conflict had become more literal, for many Residents had armed themselves. Multi-colored explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine, a shopping island which FN had inexplicably picked for the site of their virtual world HQ, in December.
— Second life makes jeebus cry.
Software

Submission + - Optimum Hardware for Visual Studio Development?

Submitted by
blaster151
blaster151 writes: "What would your "dream development machine" look like and how would you configure it for performance?

My team is working on a large software system on the Visual Studio 2005 platform (over a thousand source files). We have fairly fast machines, but they often take 15-20 seconds to do a complete rebuild and since this happens rather often I can't help but wonder how to eke out better performance. Our developers typically have VS2005 and database client tools concurrently, but we don't usually run local databases on our machines so that's less of a consideration.

I'm in a position to do some hardware recommendations and I want to understand how to prioritize the following factors:
  1. Processor (How much does a coding/build environment like VS2005 benefit from having a Core Duo processor as opposed to a traditional, higher-end CPU?)
  2. RAM (Obviously, more is good; we currently have a minimum of 1.5GB per developer)
  3. Disk (Is SCSI worth the price difference?)
  4. Laptop (Any drawbacks or considerations if we go the mobile route?)
I am also interested in configuration tips (whether it's worth having a separate internal drive for the the paging file, etc.)

So, to restate the question, what would your "dream development machine" look like and how would you configure it?"

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