maXXwell - Slashdot User

Officers Lose 243 Homeland Security Guns 125

Posted by samzenpus on Friday February 19, 2010 @02:23PM from the they-were-right-here-a-second-ago dept.

In a screw up so big it could only be brought to you by the government or a famous athlete, 243 guns were lost by Homeland Security agencies between 2006 and 2008. 179 guns, were lost "because officers did not properly secure them," an inspector general report said. One of the worst examples of carelessness cites a customs officer who left a firearm in an idling vehicle in the parking lot of a convenience store. The vehicle was stolen while the officer was inside. "A local law enforcement officer later recovered the firearm from a suspected gang member and drug smuggler," the report said.

Anti Terror Honor System 74

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday February 15, 2010 @01:31PM from the yeah-that'll-work-out-fine dept.

Fortunately for us, the FAA has imposed the honor system as our next best defense against terrorism. Hopefully this will allow them to increase the volume of non-bladder liquid I'm allowed to take on planes.

Why Time Flies By As You Get Older 252

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 02, 2010 @11:03PM from the like-a-banana dept.

Ant notes a piece up on WBUR Boston addressing theories to explain the universal human experience that time seems to pass faster as you get older. Here's the 9-minute audio (MP3). Several explanations are tried out: that brains lay down more information for novel experiences; that the "clock" for nerve impulses in aging brains runs slower; and that each interval of time represents a diminishing fraction of life as we age.

Man Sues Neighbor For Not Turning Off His Wi-Fi 428

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday January 12, 2010 @06:27PM from the have-you-never-wondered-why-I-drink-only-distilled-water-or-rain-water-and-only-pure-grain-alcohol dept.

Scyth3 writes "A man is suing his neighbor for not turning off his cell phone or wireless router. He claims it affects his 'electromagnetic allergies,' and has resorted to being homeless. So, why doesn't he check into a hotel? Because hotels typically have wireless internet for free. I wonder if a tinfoil hat would help his cause?"

Comment "Small range of ports"? Really? (Score 2, Informative) 213

by maXXwell on Friday December 04, 2009 @07:28PM (#30330676) Attached to: A Look At the Safety of Google Public DNS

"In his view, it looks like the source ports are sufficiently random,
even though they are limited to a small range of ports."

The distribution graph appears to show Google resolver using random ports
between 32768 and 65535. While that's only half the ports available,
it's misleading to characterize it as "a small range of ports".

Comment New article, old subject (Score 1) 418

by maXXwell on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @10:06PM (#29740207) Attached to: The Ultimate Limit of Moore's Law

This topic has been visited numerous times. A particularly good article on theoretical computational limits appeared in Nature in 2000:

Lloyd, Seth. "Ultimate Physical Limits to Computation". Nature 406, pp. 1047-1053 (31 August 2000)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6799/full/4061047a0.html

The Ultimate Limit of Moore's Law 418

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 13, 2009 @05:39PM from the double-double dept.

BuzzSkyline writes "Physicists have found that there is an ultimate limit to the speed of calculations, regardless of any improvements in technology. According to the researchers who found the computation limit, the bound 'poses an absolute law of nature, just like the speed of light.' While many experts expect technological limits to kick in eventually, engineers always seem to find ways around such roadblocks. If the physicists are right, though, no technology could ever beat the ultimate limit they've calculated — which is about 10^16 times faster than today's fastest machines. At the current Moore's Law pace, computational speeds will hit the wall in 75 to 80 years. A paper describing the analysis, which relies on thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and information theory, appeared in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters (abstract here)."

Comment Mod parent up (Score 1) 452

by maXXwell on Thursday June 18, 2009 @04:37AM (#28371005) Attached to: FDA Says Homeopathic Cure Can Cause Loss of Smell

This is the single most coherent remark I've seen about this story. Unfortunately critical reasoning in the mainstream media doesn't pay the bills, so we'll never see it reported there.

Using Linux To Make a Slow, Awful WAN Connection 110

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 09, 2009 @10:21PM from the too-bad-to-be-true dept.

Julie188 writes "This is a brilliant little Linux trick from Windows fanboy Tyson Kopczynski. He wanted to test a new Windows 7 feature called Branch Cache, which caches remote data on the local machine to reduce traffic on a stressed out WAN connection. But how to fake a crappy WAN? Linux. 'The command that I executed (tc) made use of Linux Traffic Control (a kernel thing) which allows me to easily interject 100ms latency on eth1. Boff, Bonk, Pow, Plop, Kapow, swa-a-p, whamm, zzzzzwap, bam ... instant WAN crappiness,' he writes."

TomTom Can License FAT Without Violating the GPL 261

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 12, 2009 @10:59PM from the ask-a-master-license-delver dept.

dp619 writes "Capped per-unit royalties make FAT licensing agreements permissible under the GPL, and SD Times has found that Microsoft's public license policy caps royalties at $250k. If the royalties are capped — as they seem to be — TomTom should be able to license FAT without violating the GPL. And if that is the case ... TomTom needs some serious explaining to do as to why they aren't licensing FAT. That said, Microsoft still needs to explain why it just cannot say that folks won't violate the GPL if they license FAT under its terms."

Slashdot Top Deals