maXXwell - Slashdot User

Submission + - Hacked PBS reports Tupac, Biggie alive (scmagazine.com.au)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity on Monday May 30, 2011 @12:21AM

mask.of.sanity writes: Infamous hacking group LulzSec has cracked the Public Broadcasting Service website and published a fake story claiming Tupac Shakur and Biggie are alive and living in New Zealand.
The group said it crack a database and stole usernames and passwords which were used to publish the story.
A screenshot of the article is here.

Submission + - Linus Renames 2.6.40 Kernel To Linux 3.0 (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 29, 2011 @09:31PM

An anonymous reader writes: Linus just released the first -rc of the next kernel series, but rather than continuing development as the Linux 2.6.40 kernel, he has renamed it to be the Linux 3.0 kernel.

Comment Re: Not really new from him. (Score 1) 347

by maXXwell on Sunday March 20, 2011 @01:25PM (#35551576) Attached to: Michio Kaku's Dark Prediction For the End of Moore's Law

I remember this. Quote from that programme:

"Prof MICHIO KAKU (City University of New York): The end of Moore's Law is perhaps the single greatest economic threat to modern society, and unless we deal with it we could be facing economic ruin."

Really?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/hendrikshontrans.shtml

Comment Re:ICANN is open? (Score 1) 27

by maXXwell on Monday January 17, 2011 @06:31AM (#34903040) Attached to: Today, the IETF Turns 25

ICANN has a history of antipathy toward public participation.

Kieren McCarthy, who has alternately been a journalist covering ICANN and also worked as ICANN's , general manager of public participation, has very good commentary on ICANNs merits (there are a few) and foibles (there are many):

http://kierenmccarthy.com/category/internet-governance/icann/

Heroic Engineer Crashes Own Vehicle To Save a Life 486

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 22, 2010 @11:09AM from the delta-vee dept.

scottbomb sends in this feel-good story of an engineer-hero, calling it "one of the coolest stories I've read in a long time." "A manager of Boeing's F22 fighter-jet program, Innes dodged the truck, then looked back to see that the driver was slumped over the wheel. He knew a busy intersection was just ahead, and he had to act fast. Without consulting the passengers in his minivan — 'there was no time to take a vote' — Innes kicked into engineer mode. 'Basic physics: If I could get in front of him and let him hit me, the delta difference in speed would just be a few miles an hour, and we could slow down together,' Innes explained."

Badgers Digging Up Ancient Human Remains 172

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 14, 2010 @04:06AM from the someone-get-a-snake dept.

One of England's oldest graveyards is under siege by badgers. Rev Simon Shouler now regularly patrols the grounds of St. Remigius Church looking for bones that the badgers have dug up. The badger is a protected species in England so they can not be killed, and attempts to have them relocated have been blocked by English Nature. From the article: "At least four graves have been disturbed so far; in one instance a child found a leg bone and took it home to his parents. ... Rev. Simon Shouler has been forced to carry out regular patrols to pick up stray bones, store them and re-inter them all in a new grave."

Russian Army Upgrades Its Inflatable Weapons 197

Posted by samzenpus on Monday October 11, 2010 @11:18AM from the blowing-up dept.

jamax writes "According to the BBC: 'The Russian military has come up with an inventive way to deceive the enemy and save money at the same time: inflatable weapons. They look just like real ones: they are easy to transport and quick to deploy. You name it, the Russian army is blowing it up: from pretend tanks to entire radar stations.' But the interesting thing is these decoys are not dumb - actually they appear to be highly advanced for what I thought was a WWII-grade aerial photography countermeasures. Apparently they have heat signatures comparable with the military tech they represent, as well as the same radar signature."

Ray Kurzweil Responds To PZ Myers 238

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 20, 2010 @11:27AM from the dem's-fightin'-woids dept.

On Tuesday we discussed a scathing critique of Ray Kurzweil's understanding of the brain written by PZ Myers. Reader Amara notes that Kurzweil has now responded on his blog. Quoting: "Myers, who apparently based his second-hand comments on erroneous press reports (he wasn't at my talk), [claims] that my thesis is that we will reverse-engineer the brain from the genome. This is not at all what I said in my presentation to the Singularity Summit. I explicitly said that our quest to understand the principles of operation of the brain is based on many types of studies — from detailed molecular studies of individual neurons, to scans of neural connection patterns, to studies of the function of neural clusters, and many other approaches. I did not present studying the genome as even part of the strategy for reverse-engineering the brain."

Comment Re:learn python (Score 1) 565

by maXXwell on Sunday August 01, 2010 @07:33PM (#33105094) Attached to: How Can an Old-School Coder Regain His Chops?

While learning Python isn't the only reasonable option, it's way up there. It has several key advantages:

1. Object oriented

This is one of the key paradigm shifts since you were coding, and Python embodies the principle more cleanly than Perl or C++ . In fact, learning Python will probably make it easier to understand C++, Objective C and Java, which are arguably more awkward embodiments of OO.

2. Interpreted

The rise in interpreted languages is another major development since the 80s. It also helps speed the edit-test-debug cycle, making it faster to learn.

3. Popular

Python is one of the top 10 most popular languages at the moment: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html. It's pretty much eclipsed Perl, which has been on the wane for a while. Interest in Ruby (the other "hot" interpreted language) also seems to be flagging.

Woman's Nude Pics End Up Online After Call To Tech Support 197

Posted by samzenpus on Friday July 30, 2010 @02:31PM from the how-was-your-service-today? dept.

Tara Fitzgerald couldn't find the nude pictures she planned on sending to her boyfriend, but instead of just taking more, she decided to see if a Dell tech support call could fix her problem. Apparently the tech support guy found them. Unfortunately, he then put them up on a site called "bitchtara."

Doctor Slams Hospital's "Please" Policy 572

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday June 03, 2010 @01:07AM from the paging-doctor-manners dept.

Administrators at England's Worthing Hospital are insisting that doctors say the magic word when writing orders for blood tests on weekends. If a doctor refuses to write "please" on the order, the test will be refused. From the article: "However, a doctor at the hospital said on condition of anonymity that he sees the policy as a money-saving measure that could prove dangerous for patients. 'I was shocked to come in on Sunday and find none of my bloods had been done from the night before because I'd not written "please,"' the doctor said. 'I had no results to guide treatment of patients. Myself and a senior nurse had to take the bloods ourselves, which added hours to our 12-hour shifts. This system puts patients' lives at risk. Doctors are wasting time doing the job of the technicians.'"

Installing Linux On ARM-Based Netbooks? 179

Posted by timothy on Friday May 21, 2010 @07:40PM from the super-easy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I am sure that many other Slashdotters have noticed an increase in ARM-based netbooks over the past several months. For example, the Augen E-Go. It is a widely touted theory that it is impossible to install Linux on one of these notebooks, replacing the commonly installed Windows CE operating system. The sub-$100 netbooks carry decent specs, including 533MHz ARM processor; 128MB DDR RAM; and a 2GB Flash drive, as well as most expected netbook components (USB, Wi-Fi, etc.). I find it hard to believe that a computer with these specs is impossible to hack and install Linux to, but Google searches have been largely unsuccessful in finding proper information. Do any Slashdot readers have experience in installing ARM Linux distros to these cheap netbooks like this? If so, what distros do they recommend?" (In particular, I wonder if anyone can comment on Ubuntu on ARM.)

Why Overheard Cell Phone Chats Are Annoying 344

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 20, 2010 @06:26PM from the they-drown-out-the-bark-of-my-gun dept.

__roo writes "American researchers think they have found the answer to the question of why overhearing cell phone chats are annoying. According to scientists at Cornell University, when only half of the conversation is overheard, it drains more attention and concentration than when overhearing two people talking. According to one researcher, 'We have less control to move away our attention from half a conversation (or halfalogue) than when listening to a dialogue. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can't tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated.' Their study will be published in the journal Psychological Science."

The LHC Is Back Online 123

Posted by kdawson on Sunday February 28, 2010 @10:10PM from the exercising-the-formula-one-around-town dept.

medea and several other readers noted that the LHC came back online early this morning. Here is the tweet from CERN announcing the milestone. As we discussed a few weeks ago, CERN plans to run the LHC at half power or less through 2011.

Leak Shows US Lead Opponent of ACTA Transparency 164

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 25, 2010 @04:31PM from the putting-on-an-acta dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Throughout the debate over ACTA transparency, the secret copyright treaty, many countries have taken public positions that they support release of the actual text, but that other countries do not. Since full transparency requires consensus of all the ACTA partners, the text simply can't be released until everyone is in agreement. A new leak from the Netherlands fingers who the chief opponents of transparency are: the United States, South Korea, Singapore, and Denmark lead the way, with Belgium, Germany, and Portugal not far behind as problem countries."

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