Brazilian Geek - Slashdot User

Comment Not exactly related to the patent (Score 3, Informative) 150

by Brazilian Geek on Friday November 20, 2009 @01:23PM (#30173322) Attached to: Patent Issued For Podcasting

But weren't there a few guys, back in 1999 that used to have a pretty neat weekly show. Back then I don't think they were called podcasts but I do remember that the shows were really fun.

Anyway, I found a link to it on Wikipedia but I'm sure there are more links around.

It was called Geeks in Space, or something like that, and the site's admins that used to make the show was called flashdot, dashdot, slashdort or something like that.

Comment Spread the controversy... (Score 0) 1172

by Brazilian Geek on Tuesday November 10, 2009 @12:11PM (#30046592) Attached to: Glenn Beck Loses Dispute Over Parody Domain

The parody domain has been given to Glenn Beck but the controversy still hasn't been answered.

Here's the new(ish, same content, different domain) site: http://gb1990.com/

Spread the controversy because, after all, people are asking whether or not Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990. I, personally, cannot believe he did such a thing but why hasn't Glenn denied these allegations?

What is Glenn hiding, if he's hiding anything at all.

Comment Robert Heinlein! (Score 5, Insightful) 1021

by Brazilian Geek on Monday October 05, 2009 @04:27PM (#29649225) Attached to: What Belongs In a High School Sci-Fi/Fantasy Lit Class?

Robert Heinlein!

Note: I'll write only about the books I've read, other folks might have other points of view.

Heinlein might have had a weird way of looking at things but he has great stories as an introduction to the scifi genre - light(ish) reading with plenty of topics to discuss.

Take two of his works that I recommend to folks, Starship Troopers and Farmer in the Sky. Both are "juvenile" books - sex and misogyny are themes in Heinlein's later works - but deal with life in space in a very realistic way. They're wildly speculative yet, just barely, they're plausible enough to make sense.

If you're looking for short stories, there's The Man Who Sold The Moon - short stories populated with really far-fetched ideas yet it's a really fun read.

I'm sure other people will suggest other things but I strongly suggest you take a look at Heinlein for the kids, after all he wrote a bunch of stories for them that are easy reads and are, as far as I can remember, kid-safe.

I'm resisting recommending more authors - as I'm sure this thread will be full of them - but Heinlein's earlier works, from what I recall, are nice examples of scifi aimed towards younger audiences.

Comment Re:Elite spiritual successor- Infinity: QFE (Score 1) 159

by Brazilian Geek on Tuesday September 22, 2009 @07:05AM (#29502065) Attached to: <em>Elite</em> Turns 25

It looks great but for space sims I'd prefer a single player experience - nothing against MMORPGs but I'm not all that into fighting to stay alive and get better ships nor participating in a corporation. I want to freely explore space and pick fights only when I want to fight all at my own time.

The ability to freely fly through space is something that really attracted me in Final Frontier (my first game of the series) and I really liked swooping down on planets and explore them without worrying to much about making a buck.

Anyway, thanks for the heads up, nice game but I'm not too sure that's for me.

School System Considers Jamming Students' Phones 785

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 31, 2009 @03:30PM from the only-one-man-would-dare-give-me-the-raspberry dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The St. Ansgar, Iowa school system is considering buying cell-phone jamming equipment for up to $5000 if it is deemed legal. The use of the equipment would be suspended in the case of an emergency, but one has to wonder if they would be quick enough to shut it down should an emergency arise. 'A Federal Communications Commission notice issued in 2005 says the sale and use of transmitters that jam cellular or personal communications services is unlawful.'"

Dye Used In Blue M&Ms Can Lessen Spinal Injury 324

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @02:33PM from the lands-where-the-jumblies-live dept.

SydShamino writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that the dye used in blue M&Ms and other foods can, when given intravenously to a lab rat shortly after a spinal injury, minimize secondary damage caused by the body when it kills off nearby healthy cells. The dye is called BBG or Brilliant Blue G. Given that 85% of spinal injury patients are currently untreated (and some doctors don't trust the treatment given to the other 15%), a relatively safe treatment like this could help preserve some function for thousands of patients. The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue." The researchers are "pulling together an application to be lodged with the FDA to stage the first clinical trials of BBG on human patients."

The Pirate Bay to Become a Distributed Storage Cloud? 131

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday July 17, 2009 @04:28PM from the volunteer-to-make-your-computer-run-slower dept.

eldavojohn writes "After announcing the sale of The Pirate Bay to Global Gaming Factory X, it was unknown what would become of TPB. Details of the future plans have been released. 'According to Rosso, GGF plans to build a massive "storage cloud" on top of TPB that would use individual users as storage system's nodes. Apparently users can opt out for being part of the decentralized storage system, but then they'd have to pay a monthly fee for the service. More resources the user is willing to commit for the service, the cheaper the monthly subscription fee will be ... GGF's plan is to harness the resources users are willing to allocate to the cloud service and sell that computing power and bandwidth to 3rd party companies, essentially creating a service that could be used as a content delivery network (system that most large sites — including ours — use to deliver static content, such as images, software downloads and stylesheets, faster to the end user) or even as a web hosting cloud. As the service would use P2P technology, it could bring massive savings to ISPs, as the delivery of content to an end user would be provided from the closest possible "node," most likely from an user within the same ISP network.'"

Microsoft Puts C# and the CLI Under "Community Promise" 465

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 07, 2009 @08:06AM from the if-it's-a-trap-please-clarify dept.

FishWithAHammer writes "Peter Galli of Microsoft posted a blog entry on Port25 today, regarding the explicit placement of C# and the Common Language Infrastructure (the ECMA standard that underpins .NET) under their Community Promise: 'It is important to note that, under the Community Promise, anyone can freely implement these specifications with their technology, code, and solutions. You do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate to Microsoft how you will implement the specifications. ... Under the Community Promise, Microsoft provides assurance that it will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who makes, uses, sells, offers for sale, imports, or distributes any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including open-source licensing models such as the LGPL or GPL.'" Adds reader anshulajain: "Understandably, Miguel De Icaza is jumping with joy."

FDA Considers Banning Acetaminophen-Based Pain Killers 631

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Thursday July 02, 2009 @12:57PM from the welcome-to-the-nanny-state dept.

Greg George writes "The FDA has determined that Tylenol enhancing pain killers are dangerous enough to potentially be pulled from the market. Drugs including Vicodin, Hydrocodone, Lortab, Maxidone, Norco, Zydone, Tylenol with codeine, Percocet, Endocet, and Darvocet may be permanently banned from the US market, even if the patient has a prescription from a doctor. The problem is the key ingredient — acetaminophen — can easily damage or destroy a patient's liver if more than 2000 mg are used per day. In many cases that means if you take a pain killer and then take two extra strength Tylenol, you may have gone over the maximum dosage per day."

Comment Re:workaround in firefox (Score 1) 174

by Brazilian Geek on Thursday July 02, 2009 @12:43PM (#28559389) Attached to: Your Browser History Is Showing

Worked for me too.

On Firefox 3.5 and with the about:config edit, the tests return zero results.

NASA Sticking To Imperial Units For Shuttle Replacement 901

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday June 24, 2009 @11:01AM from the stones-per-furlong dept.

JerryQ sends in a story at New Scientist about the criticism NASA is taking for deciding to use Imperial units in the development of the Constellation program, their project to replace the space shuttle. "The sticking point is that Ares is a shuttle-derived design — it uses solid rocket boosters whose dimensions and technology are based on those currently strapped to either side of the shuttle's giant liquid fuel tank. And the shuttle's 30-year-old specifications, design drawings and software are rooted in pounds and feet rather than newtons and meters. ... NASA recently calculated that converting the relevant drawings, software and documentation to the 'International System' of units (SI) would cost a total of $370 million — almost half the cost of a 2009 shuttle launch, which costs a total of $759 million. 'We found the cost of converting to SI would exceed what we can afford,' says [NASA spokesman Grey Hautaluoma]."

Microsoft Launches New "Get the Facts" Campaign 524

Posted by timothy on Friday June 19, 2009 @08:00AM from the grease-monkey-vs.-redmond-rhinos dept.

ko9 writes that Microsoft has re-launched its "'Get the facts' campaign, in an attempt to promote Internet Explorer 8. It contains a chart that compares IE8 to Firefox and Chrome. Needless to say, IE8 comes out as the clear winner, with MS suggesting it is the only browser to provide features like 'privacy,' 'security,' 'reliability.' It even claims to have Firefox beat in 'customizability.'"

The Pirate Bay Seeks Interesting Route To "Pay" Fine 545

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday May 11, 2009 @03:53PM from the crowd-sourced dept.

Drivintin is one of many who have written to tell us about how The Pirate Bay has taken an interesting approach to the 30 million SEK fine levied in their recent court case (which they said they wont pay). "The bill inspired anakata to devise a plan involving sending money to Danowsky's law firm, but not to pay the fine of course which they say will never be paid. Anakata's clever plan is called internet-avgift, internet-fee in English. Anakata encourages all Internet users to pay extremely small sums around 1 SEK (0.13 USD) to Danowsky's law firm, which represented the music companies at the Pirate Bay trial. The music companies will not benefit from this, instead it will cost them money to handle and process all the money."

News Corp Will Charge For Newspaper Websites 453

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 07, 2009 @10:55AM from the probably-not-for-fox-news dept.

suraj.sun writes "Rupert Murdoch says having free newspaper websites is a 'flawed' business model. Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation's newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a 'malfunctioning' business model. Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an 'epochal' debate over whether to charge. 'That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience,' he said."

Adobe Confirms PDF Zero-Day, Says Kill JavaScript 211

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @03:18PM from the kpdf-has-better-panning-anyhow dept.

CWmike writes "Adobe Systems has acknowledged that all versions of its Adobe Reader, including editions for Windows, the Mac and Linux, contain at least one, and possibly two, critical vulnerabilities. 'All currently supported shipping versions of Adobe Reader and Acrobat, [Versions] 9.1, 8.1.4 and 7.1.1 and earlier, are vulnerable to this issue,' said Adobe's David Lenoe said in a blog entry yesterday. He was referring to a bug in Adobe's implementation of JavaScript that went public early Tuesday. A "Bugtraq ID," or BID number has been assigned to a second JavaScript vulnerability in Adobe's Reader. Proof-of-concept attack code for both bugs has already been published on the Web. Adobe said it will patch Reader and Acrobat, but Lenoe offered no timetable for the fixes. In lieu of a patch, Lenoe recommended that users disable JavaScript in the apps. Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security, said of the suggestion in lieu of patches, 'Unfortunately, for Adobe, disabling JavaScript is a broken record, [and] similar to what we've seen in the past with Microsoft on ActiveX bugs.'"

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