Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Earth

Bill Clinton Says 'Paint Your Roofs White' 722

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-get-right-on-that dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Former President Bill Clinton thinks 'every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar-surface roof anywhere! In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week.' Noting that Mayor Bloomberg started a program to hire and train young people to paint New York's roofs white, Clinton says a big percentage of the kids have been able to parlay this simple work into higher-skilled training programs or energy-related retrofit jobs. The benefit: not only will 'cool roofs' lower the utility bill in every apartment house 10 to 20 percent, but it frees cash that can be spent to increase economic growth. Clinton presented this with fourteen additional ideas for growing the economy, saving energy, and attacking the jobs crisis."
Education

NCAA to Tighten Twitter Rules 116

Posted by samzenpus from the not-until-you-turn-pro-kid dept.
theodp writes "Facebook and Twitter have made student athletes more accessible than ever, but Tweets that catch the watchful eye of the NCAA could be all that's needed to bring down a successful college athletic program. Among the allegations leveled against the Univ. of North Carolina by the NCAA is a failure to 'adequately and consistently monitor social networking activity,' which the NCAA argues would have caused the school to detect other violations sooner than they did. To cope with the daunting task of monitoring hundreds of accounts on a daily basis, some sports programs are turning to software like UDiligence, while others are opting for a simpler approach, such as having a coach frequently check on posts from the team's players."
Hardware Hacking

Japanese Military Invents Tumbling, Flying Sphere 156

Posted by Soulskill from the didn't-darth-vader-have-one-of-these dept.
thebchuckster writes "A Japanese developer has released a cool, new sphere that is billed as being able to go where humans can't. The sphere is 17-inches, features eight movable rudders, and can hover in the air for at least eight minutes. While reaching speeds of up to 37 miles per hour, the sphere deftly moves through the air without much effort. It doesn't take much to get it up in the air and moving, and it will be adept at going into tight areas."
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: An Open Handheld Terminal For Retail Stores? 114

Posted by timothy from the give-in-to-hegemony dept.
Evil Al writes "From the ubiquitous Verifone card terminals to the fancy Apple Store terminals, point-of-sale devices are everywhere. But does anyone know of an open terminal (with printer + Wi-Fi), preferably running Linux, that we can use to run a custom application for retail, made by a reputable manufacturer?"
Transportation

Tesla Will Discontinue the Roadster 523

Posted by samzenpus from the end-of-the-power-line dept.
Attila Dimedici writes "Tesla has announced that their business model has failed. Their basic idea was to sell a boutique electric car to fund the development of a regular consumer electric car. With this announcement they are saying that they did not sell enough of the Roadster to make producing it profitable. If that is the case, it is only a matter of time until Tesla closes its doors. I thought their approach was the most likely to create a successful fully electric car. Although it is possible that the technology they have developed will allow the existing car companies to develop successful fully electric cars, it is a shame that Tesla has failed to become a successful car manufacturer." CT: As a huge number of you pointed out, the linked article is not nearly as doom and gloom as the submitter: Tesla isn't locking the doors and throwing away the keys, they plan on selling a $80k sedan in 2012 with a 300 mile range.
Power

Italy Votes To Abandon Nuclear Power 848

Posted by Soulskill from the giving-progress-the-boot dept.
ElementOfDestruction writes "Italy has joined Germany in halting the production of energy from atomic power generation. This differs from Germany in that the Italian decision was made by a public vote, rather than a government mandated shutdown. 57% of Italian Households voted in this public measure. While democracy should trump all, is it wise to hold majority opinion so high that it slows down progress?"

Comment Deaths Per Megawatt (Score 1) 657

by pinqkandi (#36378096) Attached to: Could the US Phase Out Nuclear Power?

Look at deaths/megawatt hour. Nuclear is much lower than coal, gas/oil, hydro, and wind. (Forget about solar). Sure nuclear makes the news more often, but it's because it's scarier. Just as the e. coli outbreak is terrifying people but less than 20 have died from it.

Forget the source on the deaths/megawatt, will look for it now.
Power

Could the US Phase Out Nuclear Power? 657

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-mutants dept.
mdsolar writes "In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, [German Chancellor] Merkel announced that her country would close all of its 17 existing reactors by 2022. Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have announced plans to pare back nuclear power, but none have gone as far as Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy. Merkel vows to replace nuclear power with alternatives that do not increase greenhouse gases or shackle the economic growth. Could the US do the same? An increasing number of reports suggest it is not beyond the realm of possibility, and Germany could provide a road map."
Businesses

Ask Slashdot: Uses For a Small Office Server? 260

Posted by timothy from the networked-games-obvious-choice dept.
ragnvaldr writes "I'm the 'IT guy' for an office of about a dozen people. And when I say IT guy, I mean I'm the only one here who can use google well enough to figure out how to make things work. We have a 500GB Mac server with a Drobo with 6TB of storage attached. So far all this server does is back up data, and I want to make it a little more useful. We also have a Filemaker server on it, which I have yet to learn how to use at all, let alone efficiently. Any suggestions to make this machine a little more useful?"
Medicine

CDC Warns of Zombie Apocalypse 300

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.
scotbuff writes "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have written an article about preparing for a zombie apocalypse on their blog. The CDC knows that a zombie apocalypse is no joke. 'If zombies did start roaming the streets, CDC would conduct an investigation much like any other disease outbreak. CDC would provide technical assistance to cities, states, or international partners dealing with a zombie infestation. This assistance might include consultation, lab testing and analysis, patient management and care, tracking of contacts, and infection control (including isolation and quarantine). It’s likely that an investigation of this scenario would seek to accomplish several goals: determine the cause of the illness, the source of the infection/virus/toxin, learn how it is transmitted and how readily it is spread, how to break the cycle of transmission and thus prevent further cases, and how patients can best be treated.'"
Google

Google Lobbies Nevada To Allow Self-Driving Cars 275

Posted by samzenpus from the to-drive-or-not-to-drive dept.
b0bby writes "The NY Times reports that Google is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state in which self-driving cars could be legally operated on public roads. 'The two bills, which have received little attention outside Nevada's capitol, are being introduced less than a year after the giant search engine company acknowledged that it was developing cars that could be safely driven without human intervention.'"

Submission + - The Legality of Time Travel (loc.gov)

Submitted by pinqkandi
pinqkandi writes: The Library of Congress has released an article on the Legality of Time Travel. Not the Back to the Future time-space continuum adventure type, but how governments can effectively manipulate time and switch today with tomorrow, etc. An interesting read for anyone who has loved a good sci-fi time travel story.
Social Networks

Who Owns Your Social Identity? 190

Posted by Soulskill from the somebody-stole-your-pretentious-latin-nickname dept.
wjousts writes "Who actually owns your username on a website? What rights do you have to use it? An IEEE Spectrum podcast reports: 'What happens if Facebook or Twitter or, say, your blog hosting service, makes you take a different user name? Sound impossible? It's happened. Last week, a software researcher named Danah Boyd woke up to find her entire blog had disappeared, and in fact, had been renamed, because her hosting service had given her blog's name to someone else.' And as important as they are, what protects our accounts are the terms of service agreements. If you read them — and who does? — you'd learn, probably to no surprise, that they protect the provider a lot more than they protect you."

Slashdot Top Deals

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken

Close