Comment Oh great, this is just what we need (Score 1) 182
Yet another Linux distro.
Comment Untrustworthy when most needed (Score 2) 632
If I really need my pistol to function, and I have blood on my hands, I don't think I'd trust one of these.
Comment Re:Scientists Are Cracking the Primordial Soup Mys (Score 1) 278
Isaac Asimov wrote an essay about this, "The Left-Handed Universe". The book, of the same title, in which it was published is a collection of non-fiction science essays; "Why does ice float?", "Why is the night sky black?", etc.. I don't know if Asimov's ideas in "The Left-Handed Universe" are correct, but Asimov is always fun to read anyway.
Comment Re:Unix (Score 1) 207
WTF does public domain have to do with the GPL?
Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to best block web content 1
willoughby writes: Many routers today have the capability to block web content. And you all know about browser addons like noscript & adblock. But where is the "proper" place for such content blocking? Is it best to have the router only route packets & do the content blocking on each machine? If using the content blocking feature in the router, will performance degrade if the list of blocked content grows large? Where is the best place to filter/block web content?
Submission + - Using relativity to encrypt data (hou2600.org)
hessian writes: "Bob Way has a great post up about his brainstorm for a file-sharing system that technically does not include the actual data it shares, but can reconstruct it from a relative measurement of it, which is stored.
This is much like coming up with a mold for a part and using relative vectors to describe it, so that when needed, it can be re-created using some seed data and thus used to create the part in question."
This is much like coming up with a mold for a part and using relative vectors to describe it, so that when needed, it can be re-created using some seed data and thus used to create the part in question."
Submission + - Electricity Gives Bubbles Super Strength (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: Left to its own devices, a bubble will weaken and pop as the fluid sandwiched between two thin layers of soap succumbs to gravity and drains toward the floor. But when researchers trapped a bubble between two platinum electrodes and cranked up the voltage, the fluid reversed direction and actually flowed up, against the force of gravity. The newly strong and stable bubbles could live for hours, and even visibly change colors as their walls grew fatter. Because soap film is naturally only nanometers thick, this whimsical experiment could help scientists create more efficient labs-on-chips, the mazes of nanotunnels that can diagnose disease based on the movements of a miniscule drop of blood.
Submission + - Tiny, Hackable Quadcopter Drone Launches Pre-Orders (wired.com)
Kinwolf writes: "A tiny new open source drone kit made by Bitcraze is buzzing its way to market this spring, targeted at hackers and modders who want to explore droning indoors as well as out."
Now I know what I'll do for the first 7 minutes of lunch break! The pre-order price is 173$ for the most avanced model, and some soldering is required. The telemetry being available is a pretty nice touch.
Now I know what I'll do for the first 7 minutes of lunch break! The pre-order price is 173$ for the most avanced model, and some soldering is required. The telemetry being available is a pretty nice touch.
Submission + - Intel Gigabit NIC Packet of Death (krisk.org)
An anonymous reader writes: All it takes is a quick Google search to see that the Intel 82574L ethernet controller has had at least a few problems. Including, but not necessarily limited to, EEPROM issues, ASPM bugs, MSI-X quirks, etc. We spent several months dealing with each and every one of these. We thought we were done.
Using Ostinato I was able to craft various versions of this packet — an HTTP POST, ICMP echo-request, etc. Pretty much whatever I wanted. With a modified HTTP server configured to generate the data at byte value (based on headers, host, etc) you could easily configure an HTTP 200 response to contain the packet of death — and kill client machines behind firewalls!
Using Ostinato I was able to craft various versions of this packet — an HTTP POST, ICMP echo-request, etc. Pretty much whatever I wanted. With a modified HTTP server configured to generate the data at byte value (based on headers, host, etc) you could easily configure an HTTP 200 response to contain the packet of death — and kill client machines behind firewalls!
Comment Wouldn't work for me (Score 2) 167
I drink whisky neat.
Comment Sounds like a good deal to me (Score 2) 65
If we can raise children who are better, more agile thinkers & at the same time put a dent in the corporate America machine I say, "Go for it".
Comment My favorite non-apology (Score 4, Funny) 413
In the Tracy Kidder book, "The Soul of a New Machine", he documents a year or so with the engineering team designing a new computer. Time pressure... long hours... high tension... and finally one of the engineers called one of the others an asshole.
The project manager called the fellow into the office & explained that we all need to be able to work with each other... yadda yadda.... and you must apologize to him.
The fellow left the office, approached the other engineer and said, "I'm sorry you're an asshole".
Comment How can I say thanks? (Score 2) 612
Although I'd love to meet you, shake your hand and thank you for your contributions to computing history, it's never going to happen. So, what would you prefer I do locally in order to express my gratitude? Contribute to a charity, community service, something else...?
Comment microSD cards (Score 1) 414
What does "better support for microSD cards" mean? Were they having problems with reliable reads/writes?
Comment To paraphrase Slashdot... (Score 2, Insightful) 16
If you're using Wikipedia as a metric to measure anything, you're insane.
