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Things That Turbo Pascal Is Smaller Than 487

Posted by timothy on Tuesday November 01, 2011 @10:05AM from the celestial-emporium-of-benevolent-knowledge dept.

theodp writes "James Hague has compiled a short list of things that the circa-1986 Turbo Pascal 3 for MS-DOS is smaller than (chart). For starters, at 39,731 bytes, the entire Turbo Pascal 3.02 executable (compiler and IDE) makes it less than 1/4th the size of the image of the white iPhone 4S at apple.com (190,157 bytes), and less than 1/5th the size of the yahoo.com home page (219,583 bytes). Speaking of slim-and-trim software, Visicalc, the granddaddy of all spreadsheet software which celebrated its 32nd birthday this year, weighed in at a mere 29K."

Mass. Court Says Constitution Protects Filming On-Duty Police 473

Posted by timothy on Sunday August 28, 2011 @05:03PM from the good-setting-for-the-scene dept.

Even in a country and a world where copyright can be claimed as an excuse to prevent you from taking a photo of a giant sculpture in a public, tax-paid park, and openly recording visiting police on your own property can be construed as illegal wiretapping, it sometimes seems like the overreach of officialdom against people taking photos or shooting video knows no bounds. It's a special concern now that seemingly everyone over the age of 10 is carrying a camera that can take decent stills and HD video. It's refreshing, therefore, to read that a Federal Appeals Court has found unconstitutional the arrest of a Massachusetts lawyer who used his phone to video-record an arrest on the Boston Common. (Here's the ruling itself, as a PDF.) From the linked article, provided by reader schwit1: "In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights."

Eight Major 3G & 4G Networks Tested Nationwide 123

Posted by Soulskill on Monday June 27, 2011 @03:38PM from the who-coddles-their-packets dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Building on last year's efforts, PCMag once again hit the road on a 6,000 mile trip to test out eight 3G and 4G networks to determine which ones were the fastest (and slowest) in 21 different cities. With 10 stops in each city for at least 15 minutes each, the team used custom speed test software on 16 different handsets which ran HTTP upload and download tests every 25 seconds to 3 minutes. The test results were broken down by city as well as region. As expected, Verizon's 4G led the pack. It performed the best in Dallas, where it averaged 15.75 Mbsp and also hit the highest download speed of 37.66 Mbsp. On the other hand, Sprint's 4G results were disappointing; in some cities even AT&T provided better download speeds. Beyond the 4G, T-Mobile's HSPA+ offered blazing fast speeds as well, going as high up as 15.93 Mbsp in Detroit while averaging the best in Dallas at 6.44 Mbps. Amongst the 3G networks, AT&T mostly outperformed all others."

Global Warming To Hinder Wi-Fi Signals, Claims UK Gov't 280

Posted by Soulskill on Monday May 09, 2011 @06:32PM from the stock-up-on-tinfoil dept.

radioweather writes with news of a government report from the UK's Dept. for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which warns of global warming's harmful effect on Wi-Fi and other communication protocols. Quoting the Guardian: "Presenting the report, the secretary of state for the environment, Caroline Spelman, said that higher temperatures can reduce the range of wireless communications, rainstorms can impact the reliability of the signal, and drier summers and wetter winters may cause greater subsidence, damaging masts and underground cables. The threat posed by climate change to internet and telephone access is a rare example of when the developed world would be hit harder than developing countries, which are in general more at risk from increased floods, droughts and rising sea levels. 'If climate change threatens the quality of your signal, or you can't get it because of extreme fluctuations in temperature, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question,' said Spelman, 'and just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected.'"

Internet Kill Switch Back On the US Legislative Agenda 376

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 29, 2011 @08:54PM from the reasonable-measures dept.

suraj.sun points out a story at Wired that US lawmakers have revived the idea of a government-controlled "Internet Kill Switch," which reads, in part: "The bill, which has bipartisan support, is being floated by Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The proposed legislation, which Collins said would not give the president the same power Egypt's Hosni Mubarak is exercising to quell dissent, sailed through the Homeland Security Committee in December but expired with the new Congress weeks later. 'My legislation would provide a mechanism for the government to work with the private sector in the event of a true cyber emergency,' Collins said in an e-mail Friday. 'It would give our nation the best tools available to swiftly respond to a significant threat.'"

Democrats Crowdsourcing To Vote Palin In Primaries 1128

Posted by timothy on Thursday December 30, 2010 @05:50PM from the can-you-see-the-primary-from-here? dept.

SharpieMarker writes "In what could be the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing project ever, Democrats are beginning to organize to purposely vote for Palin in the 2012 Republican primaries. Their theory is by having Palin as an opponent, Obama will have the best odds at winning reelection. Recent polls have shown that Obama comfortably leads Palin by 10-20 points, but Obama is statistically tied with Romney and barely ahead of Huckabee. They even have a state-by-state primary voting guide to help Democrats navigate various states' rules for voting Palin in Republican primaries."

Pumpkin Pie increases Male Sex Drive 173

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 23, 2010 @04:05PM from the we're-going-to-need-more-whipped-cream dept.

Dr. Alan Hirsch, Director of Chicago's Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Center, says the key to a man's heart, and other parts, is pumpkin pie. Out of the 40 odors tested in Hirsch's study, a mixture of lavender and pumpkin pie got the biggest rise out of men ages 18 to 64. That particular fragrance was found to increase penile blood flow by an average of 40%. "Maybe the odors acted to reduce anxiety. By reducing anxiety, it acted to remove inhibitions," said Hirsch.

Military Uses 'Bat-Hook' To Tap Power From Lines 282

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday November 11, 2010 @02:50PM from the cutting-corners dept.

Zothecula writes "As soldiers are fitted out with more and more electrical sytems to extend their capabilities, they become increasingly dependent on the power needed to run them. Since soldiers in the field don't always have ready access to an electrical outlet when they need to top up the batteries, the US Air Force has developed a device that taps directly into the electricity flowing through overhead power lines ... a kind of bat-hook for real-life superheroes."

Comment Re:One man's problem... (Score 3, Insightful) 293

by ifdef on Tuesday November 09, 2010 @12:39PM (#34175032) Attached to: Is Your Laptop Cooking Your Testicles?

My wife and I would look after each other until we no longer could, at which point we would put ourselves in a home.

How would having kids just so they could take care of us be any better? That seems like a real dick move.

Who is going to staff this "home"? Other 80 and 90 year olds? Or other people's kids and grandkids?

The grandparent post overstated the case, because of course there's no need for everyone to have their own kids to look after them when they're old. But we still need young people to follow us. So it's perfectly fine for lots of people to choose to be "evolutionary dead ends", as long as not everyon makes that choice. :-)

VLC Developer Takes a Stand Against DRM Enforcement 717

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:09AM from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.

jamie writes "The GPL gives Apple permission to distribute this software through the App Store. All they would have to do is follow the license's conditions to help keep the software free. Instead, Apple has decided that they prefer to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and proprietary legal terms on all programs in the App Store, and they'd rather kick out GPLed software than change their own rules."

Comment Re:For those of you who don't speak bullshit (Score 1) 134

by ifdef on Monday August 02, 2010 @09:59AM (#33109592) Attached to: BlackBerry Services To Be Halted In UAE

That's assuming that we know how the story will end. It won't necessarily end that way.

Comment Re:While I agree that anonymity is a good thing... (Score 4, Insightful) 780

by ifdef on Friday June 25, 2010 @01:46PM (#32693540) Attached to: SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record

I agree.

I think I'm missing something here in this discussion. Signing a petition is a way of saying that *I* support this, it's a way of taking a public stand on the issue. That's why you sign your *name*, instead of ticking a box anonymously. That's also why petitions are, at least in theory, taken seriously -- it's not an anonymous mob who support the petition, it's a bunch of specific people who are willing to put their names on record.

Comment Re:While I agree that anonymity is a good thing... (Score 1) 780

by ifdef on Friday June 25, 2010 @01:37PM (#32693358) Attached to: SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record

Sometimes I think that if they did nothing, that might be a GOOD thing :-)

Comment Re:As a Canadian (Score 1) 318

by ifdef on Wednesday June 23, 2010 @11:25AM (#32665504) Attached to: Might Shatner Boldly Lead Canada As Governor?

Just as a by-the-way, "apologist" does not mean what you seem to think it does.

Israeli Startup Claims SSD Breakthrough 159

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 15, 2010 @11:43PM from the believe-in-what-you-write dept.

Lucas123 writes "Anobit Technologies announced it has come to market with its first solid state drive using a proprietary processor intended to boost reliability in a big way. In addition to the usual hardware-based ECC already present on most non-volatile memory products, the new drive's processor will add an additional layer of error correction, boosting the reliability of consumer-class (multi-level cell) NAND to that of expensive, data center-class (single-level cell) NAND. 'Anobit is the first company to commercialize its signal-processing technology, which uses software in the controller to increase the signal-to-noise ratio, making it possible to continue reading data even as electrical interference increases.' The company claims its processor, which is already being used by other SSD manufacturers, can sustain up to 4TB worth of writes per day for five years, or more than 50,000 program/erase cycles — as contrasted with the 3,000 cycles typically achieved by MLC drives. The company is not revealing pricing yet."

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