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Comment This already exists. (Score 1) 431

This already exists to some extent, just working in the other direction.

When you drop a 'physical package' off in the toilet, it's routed to a specific location which in many places is miles away from where it originated. I could see something like this working (and perhaps even utilizing part of the same infrastructure) in many cities in the US.

Movies

Submission + - BitTorrent only movie denied listing on IMDB (torrentfreak.com)

Ransak writes: The Tunnel (a publicly funded movie being paid for a frame at a time) movie is currently in production and despite pleas from the makers, IMDb won’t allow it on their site. The creators of this horror movie believe that because they have shunned an official distributor and chosen a BitTorrent model instead, this has put them at a disadvantage with the Amazon-owned site.
Privacy

Submission + - 'Pre-crime' Comes to the HR Dept. (earthweb.com)

storagedude writes: Like something out of the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, a startup called Social Intelligence is mining social media to weed out job applicants based on their potential for violence, drug abuse or just plain bad judgment. The startup also combs sites like Facebook and Twitter to monitor current employees, presumably to monitor compliance with company social media policy, but as the criteria are company-defined, anything's possible. Just one more reason to watch what you post, folks.

Submission + - Canadian-Iranian Blogger Sentenced to 19.5 Years (cnn.com)

alexo writes: CNN reports that an Iranian court has sentenced Hossein Derakhshan, the so-called "blogfather" of Iran, to 19.5 years in prison.

Derakhshan, a 35-year-old Canadian-Iranian blogger and activist, was "convicted of cooperating with enemy states, making propaganda against the Islamic system of government, promoting small anti-revolutionary groups, managing obscene web sites and insulting Islamic sanctities".

Slashdot mentioned Derakhshan in an article about Iranian bloggers back in 2006.

Comment Context (Score 1) 100

The DoD has issues with classifying data, yes, but they have to deal with some odd situations. A good example is a well known (publicly) Air Force project that I can't remember the acronym of but someone Googling could find it in a few minutes I'd imagine. This project used a 30 node Teradata system (NCR) with a combined total of 18TB (36TB if you count the mirror). None of the data was even classified as 'sensitive' on it's own, but after several years of gathering data it was decided by an audit that in aggregate the data was Top Secret. This meant physically moving the servers and logically moving the data along with network/load balancers/IDS and combing through Jiggabytes of data and labeling each... and no, only the data owners could do that so just running some SQL queries against it and going away for the weekend wasn't sufficient.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen plenty of WTF issues with data classification and many other OT issues, but the DoD is a big, constantly moving animal and not all of the appendages talk to one another. I've come to accept something Douglas Adams tried to teach me back in 1987 with Bureaucracy: this is how the government works and changing it would only result in more paperwork.

Comment Delusions of Grandeur (Score 4, Funny) 152

Certainly I don't know what Tim Allen was doing. He seemed to be the head of a group of actors and for the life of me I was trying to understand who he was imitating. - William Shatner, on Galaxy Quest

At the 2009 Vegas ST convention Shatner was on stage and fans were asking questions. A fan of the original series went up to the mic and told him how good of an actor he was; he then proceeded to take the next 20 minutes agreeing with her. At some point I said in a low voice 'It's like throwing gasoline on a flame,' (a quote from Galaxy Quest describing the parody character of Kirk at a convention) and the entire section burst out laughing so much he had to stop talking to find out what was going on.

Comment 640x480 should be good enough for anyone! (Score 2, Informative) 218

... to paraphrase a certain someone in the IT industry.

In all seriousnessity, check out the Zonet ZVC7630W if 640x480 meets your needs. It runs an embedded Linux kernel with Busybox, supports LAN/WiFi/USB sticks for recording, MJPEG streaming, and has some nifty motion trigger features.

I use a few of these for security cameras and they're pretty easy to weather proof with some caulk and tupperware. My one big complaint however (which might be a showstopper for many on ./) is the built in web features such as 2-way talk require Internet Exploder. It utilizes an ActiveX applet that I haven't been able to get around.

Submission + - The Emerging Field of Zombie Academics (blogspot.com)

rblakem writes: I developed an agent-based computational model of zombie outbreak dynamics. It makes some improvements to Robert Smith et. al's dynamic model methodology from last summer, which received widespread attention in the blogosphere for its academically rigorous approach to modeling zombie outbreak scenarios.
AMD

Submission + - State of the CPU: how Intel and AMD stack up (pcauthority.com.au)

An anonymous reader writes: The most eye-opening way to survey the current CPU landscape is to plot price against performance. PC Authority magazine has benchtested 50 CPUs, and based on those benchmark results, they have come up with this graph showing where AMD and Intel chips sit in terms of price and performance. The most apparent trend is that despite the hype over Intel's Core i7 parts, AMD's CPUs still beat Intel's for pure value. The Athlon II is much better value than Intel's Core 2 parts, while the Phenom II line is way better value than all but the best of the new Core i3 and i5 parts (which are beginning to rival AMD for value). Based on price alone, AMD's aggressive strategy is working. Though it's disappointing to see AMD still languishing in terms of raw performance.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Demonstrate Mammalian Limb Regeneration (sciencedaily.com)

telomerewhythere writes: A quest that began over a decade ago with a chance observation has reached a milestone: the identification of a gene that may regulate regeneration in mammals. The absence of this single gene, called p21, confers a healing potential in mice long thought to have been lost through evolution and reserved for creatures like flatworms, sponges, and some species of salamander.

Researchers found mice lacking the gene p21 regrew limbs instead of creating scar tissue.

Here is original link for those with PNAS access.

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