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Submission + - Tesla Adds Titanium Underbody Shield and Aluminum Deflector Plates to Model S &# (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla Motors made headlines several times last year for a few high-profile car fires in their Model S. Elon Musk criticized all the attention at the time, pointing out that it was disproportionate to the 200,000 fire in gas-powered cars over the same period. Musk didn't stop there, though. He's now announced that the Model S will now have a titanium underbody shield along with an aluminum bar and extrusion. He says this will prevent debris struck on the road from breaching the battery area. Musk offered this amusing example: 'We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph, shearing off 15 feet of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries and a fire, again limited to the front section of the vehicle, started several minutes later. The underbody shields will help prevent a fire even in such a scenario.' Included with the article are several animated pictures of testing done with the new underbody, which survives running over a trailer hitch, a concrete block, and an alternator.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is the best bluetooth barcode scanner for the money 1

Submitted by DorianGre
DorianGre writes: New project: iphone and android apps connected to the cloud doing stock inventory. We are targeting the low end of the market, so need the most reliable and inter-operable bar code scanner on the market at the low end of the cost spectrum. We are bootstrapping our project and need to buy a few thousand of these, so cost matters alot.

Submission + - Microsoft Releases Source Code For MS DOS And Microsoft Word

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today released the source code for MS DOS 1.1 and 2.0 as well as Microsoft Word for Windows 1.1a. With the help of the Computer History Museum, the move means means this code is now available to the public. MS-DOS was a renamed version of 86-DOS, written by Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products and initially released in August 1980. Microsoft hired Paterson in May 1981, bought 86-DOS 1.10 for $75,000 in July, and renamed it MS-DOS. Microsoft released the first DOS-based version of Microsoft Word in 1983. In 1989, Word for Windows arrived, and within four years was generating over half the revenue of the worldwide word-processing market.

Submission + - Mathematician Teaches How to Win $1 Billion on NCAA Basketball

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Jake Simpson reports at The Atlantic that Mathematician Tim Chartier, a Davidson College professor who specializes in ranking methods, teaches a math-heavy form of bracketology — the science of predicting the annual NCAA college basketball tournament at Davidson College in North Carolina. Chartier’s academic research is in ranking methods where he looks at things like the page-ranking algorithms of Google. "In 2009, my collaborator Amy Langville said: “You know what? ESPN has this huge online bracket tournament. Let’s create brackets with our ranking methods, just to see if it’s creating meaningful information.” Chartier’s formula, an evolving code-based matrix that ranks each of the 68 tournament teams, has helped several Davidson students score in the 96th percentile (or higher) in ESPN’s bracket challenge and this year, Chartier’s goal is to help someone win the $1 billion prize offered by Warren Buffett to anyone who correctly predicts all 63 games of the men’s tournament. Chartier uses two methods. One is the Colley Method, named after astrophysicist Wesley Colley who developed a method used by the BCS for college football (PDF). His basketball method only counts wins and losses, not margin of victory. The other method is the Massey method created by sports statistician Kenneth Massey (PDF), which does integrate scores. Chartier has not been banned from any office pools — at least none that he knows of. But as a result of coming pretty darn close to filling out a perfect bracket just by crunching the numbers, brackets have become a labor of love. "Now that the brackets are actually out, I've had students in and out of my office all week, sharing new ideas," says Chartier. "For me, that's more fun than filling out a bracket. They will all be filling out brackets, so it's like I'm doing parallel processing. I know what might work, but watching them figure out the odds, is a thrill."

Submission + - ICANN Up For Bids (doc.gov)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a press release dated Friday March 14, 2014 "...the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) today announces its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community. As the first step, NTIA is asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). "

What are your opinions on who should maintain global DNS? Should DNS be supported by a tax?

Submission + - SPAM: It was the worst industrial disaster in US history—and we learned nothing 1

Submitted by superboj
superboj writes: Forget Deepwater Horizon or Three Mile Island: The biggest industrial disaster in American history actually happened in 2008, when more than a billion gallons of coal sludge ran through the small town of Kingston Tennessee. This story details how, five years later, nothing has been done to stop it happening again, thanks to energy industry lobbying, federal inaction, and secrecy imposed on Congress.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Microsoft Launches Free OneNote For Mac And Windows

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today revealed three major announcements regarding its OneNote offering: a free version of OneNote for Mac, a freemium version of OneNote for Windows, and a new cloud API for first- and third-party apps to communicate directly with OneNote. With the launch of OneNote for Mac, Microsoft says OneNote is now available “on all the platforms you care about” and “they’re always in sync.” That includes the PC, Mac, Windows tablets, Windows Phone, iPad, iPhone, Android, and the Web. As for the free version for Windows, it has no ads nor any limit for how long you can use it for: this is not just a trial. Everything you create in the free PC and Mac clients is synced to OneDrive, so you can access them from your phone and tablet as well.

Submission + - ICANN considers using '127.0.53.53' to tackle DNS namespace collisions (computerworld.com.au) 1

Submitted by angry tapir
angry tapir writes: As the number of top-level domains undergoes explosive growth, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is studying ways to reduce the risk of traffic intended for internal network destinations ending up on the Internet via the Domain Name System. Proposals in a report produced on behalf of ICANN include preventing .mail, .home and .corp ever being Internet TLDs; allowing the forcible de-delegation of some second-level domains in emergencies; and returning 127.0.53.53 as an IP address in the hopes that sysadmins will have a WTF moment and Google it.

Submission + - Major Scientific Journal Publisher Requires Public Access to Data (plos.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: PLOS — the Public Library of Science — is one of the prolific publishers of research papers in the world. 'Open access' is one of their mantras, and they've been working to push the academic publishing system into a state where research isn't locked behind paywalls and subscription services. To that end, they've announced a new policy for all of their journals: 'authors must make all data publicly available, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the article.' The data must be available within the article itself, in the supplementary information, or within a stable, public repository. This is good news for replicating experiments, building on past results, and science in general.

Submission + - Is Microsoft planning a Freelancer MMO reboot?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An apparently internal early-days video of a stress test of a not-yet-seen space MMO called "Age of Ascent". Whilst I've never heard of the company making the game, what's interesting is that a google search shows a (now pulled) page titled "Welcome to the Microsoft Internal Beta", and mentions a "world record attempt".

The guy in the video says "6 million messages per second at 1% capacity" at one point, there are "Powered by Windows Azure" logos everywhere, and the twitter feed (visible at the end of the clip) is still up, reading 5,000 concurrent players. In realtime. And with direct piloting.

Anyone know anything?

Submission + - I need an anti-camera device for use in a small bus. 5

Submitted by Paul server guy
Paul server guy writes: I am building a limousine bus, and the owners want to prevent occupants from using cameras on board. (but would like the cameras mounted on the bus to continue to operate. I think they would consider this optional.) They would also like to do it without having to wear any "Anti-paparazzi" clothing. (because they also want to protect the other guests on board.)
They would like to do this without destroying the cameras. (So no EMP generators please)
We've done some testing with high power IR, but that proved ineffective. Several active emitters would be fine.
Does anyone have any ideas that they are willing to share? We will pay for a functional device.

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