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Communications

Police In Britain Arrest Man For Bomb-Threat Joke On Twitter 577

Posted by timothy from the credibility-gap-looms dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A British man was arrested under anti-terrorism legislation for making a bomb joke on Twitter. Paul Chambers, 26, was arrested under the provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006). His crime? Frustrated at grounded flights over inclement weather, he made a joke bomb threat on the social networking site Twitter."

Comment Re:Let's just be clear on what they mean here (Score 1) 438

by th1nk (#30537596) Attached to: A Requiem For Saab
I second this. I've owned Saabs all my life (900S, 9000CSE, 9-3, 9-5), and do all my own work, including some stuff that does require a hoist (rebuilt the transmission in my 900). The 900 was the easiest car to work on that I've ever seen. You could do brakes and rotors with basic tools in under an hour. And the parking brakes were in the rear, not the front.
The Almighty Buck

America's Army Games Cost $33 Million Over 10 Years 192

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-play dept.
Responding to a Freedom Of Information Act request, the US government has revealed the operating costs of the America's Army game series over the past decade. The total bill comes to $32.8 million, with yearly costs varying from $1.3 million to $5.6 million. "While operating America's Army 3 does involve ongoing expenses, paying the game's original development team isn't one of them. Days after the game launched in June, representatives with the Army confirmed that ties were severed with the Emeryville, California-based team behind the project, and future development efforts were being consolidated at the America's Army program office at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. A decade after its initial foray into the world of gaming, the Army doesn't appear to be withdrawing from the industry anytime soon. In denying other aspects of the FOIA request, the Army stated 'disclosure of this information is likely to cause substantial harm to the Department of the Army's competitive position in the gaming industry.'"
Science

LHC Reaches Record Energy 347

Posted by CmdrTaco from the spinning-and-spinning dept.
toruonu writes "Yesterday evening the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for the first time accelerated protons in both directions of the ring to 1.18 TeV. Even though the 1 TeV barrier per beam was first broken a week ago, this marks the first time that the beam was in the machine in both directions at the same time, allowing possibly for collisions at a center of mass energy of 2.36 TeV. Although the test lasted mere minutes, it was enough to have detectors record the very first events at 2.36 TeV. LHC passes Tevatron (the particle collider at Fermilab that operates at 1.96 TeV) and becomes the highest energy particle collider in the world (so far it was effectively just the highest energy storage ring...)"
Science

LHC Knocked Out By Another Power Failure 338

Posted by CmdrTaco from the future-gremlins-are-watching dept.
known_ID writes "The Large Hadron Collider — the most puissant particle-punisher ever assembled by the human race — has suffered another major power failure, knocking not only the atom smasher itself but even its associated websites offline."

Comment Re:Not a bad little hack (Score 2, Insightful) 129

by th1nk (#30285202) Attached to: MacBook Mod Gives Base Station Chassis New Purpose
The worth of his time is only relevant if he was trying to sell these for profit.

See, people have these things called hobbies that keep them entertained.

I, for instance, enjoy working on my car. Sometimes it takes me 3 or 4 times longer than it would take a shop. Is it worth my time? Absolutely--it's fun.
The Internet

Are Ad Servers Bogging Down the Web? 387

Posted by CmdrTaco from the yes-of-course-they-are dept.
blackbearnh writes "The work of making high-volume web sites perform well is an ongoing challenge, and one that continues to evolve as the nature of web content changes. According to Google Performance Guru Steve Souders, fat JavaScript libraries and rich content are creating new problems for web site tuning, but one of the biggest problems lies outside the control of web site administrators — ad servers. In an interview previewing the upcoming Velocity Online conference run by O'Reilly, Souders talks at length about the real causes of poor web performance today, and in particular, the effect that poorly performing ad servers are creating. 'We adopted a framework of inserting ads, of creating ads, that's pretty simple. And because it's pretty simple, it's not highly tuned. That's one reason why we shouldn't be too surprised that we see performance issues in third party ads. The other reason is that ad services are not focused on technology. Certainly companies like Yahoo and Google and Microsoft, we're technology companies. We focus on technology. So it's not surprising that our web developers are on the leading edge of adopting these performance best practices. And it's also not surprising that ad services might lag two, three or four years behind where these web technology companies are.'"
Security

Easing the Job of Family Tech Support? 932

Posted by Soulskill from the shock-collars-and-a-willingness-to-yell dept.
DarkDevil writes "Ever since I was introduced to computers at a very young age, I've been the resident tech support for a household of 7 users. I've been in a cycle for the last ~8 years where something happens to my parents' computer, I spend a week or two trying to non-destructively fix the problem (and try to explain to the users what caused it and how to avoid it), and then if it's not easily fixed I'll reformat and start from scratch. Most often, the level of infection warrants a reformat, which usually ends up taking even more time to get the computer back to how my parents know how to use it. 4-8 months later, it happens again. Recently, I found ~380 instances of malware and 6 viruses. I only realized something was wrong with their computer after it slowed down the entire network whenever anyone used it. My question for Slashdot is: are there any resources out there that explain computer viruses, malware, adware, and general safe computer practices to non-technical people in an easy-to-digest format? The security flaws in my house are 9, 26, and ~50 years old, with no technical background aside from surfing the internet. Something in video format would be ideal as they are perfectly happy with our current arrangement and so it'll be hard to get them reading pages and pages of technical papers."
Communications

Home Phone System That Syncs To Computer? 405

Posted by timothy from the not-where-the-action-is dept.
An anonymous reader writes 'In comparison to the advanced technology in today's smart phones, the standard home phone is painfully backwards. My current setup is a Panasonic system that has 4 cordless phones over one base station. Setting the time on one phone changes the time on all the phones; however, this is not the case for the phone book. Each entry must be manually copied (pushed) to each handset. Is this as far as home phone technology has come? What I would like is a phone system that I could sync to my computer so I could update the phone book over all the units (if not sync with Address Book or Outlook), keep a log of caller IDs, or even forward me new voicemail notifications. Does anyone know if such a system exists?'

Comment Re:Realistic (Score 1) 356

by th1nk (#29826673) Attached to: Volunteers Wanted For Simulated 520-Day Mars Trip

Unless it is realistic with a real chance of death should an air leak occur, or a system fails, such as Apollo 13, it will be almost meaningless. Of course, if the participants think there is a chance of death, even if a rescue is allowed that they don't know about, it might be OK and not taint the results.

Not only that, but they also know that they are not really going to mars. I would think the psychological effects would be much harder to endure if you knew that you were just stuck in a bunker on earth and could feasibly go back to your normal life at any point.

Comment Re:Is day trading a good thing? (Score 1) 260

by th1nk (#29756533) Attached to: Device Protects Day Traders From Emotional Trading

I'm likely quite ignorant on this subject-- but *how* can a day trader (or even group of them) kill a company?

They can't. Even if a large group of daytraders attempted to drive a stock price down, they aren't actually affecting the underlying value of the company. It would quickly become apparent that the stock price was not accurately priced and buyers would come in.

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When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. - Edmund Burke

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