Nuke Bloodaxe - Slashdot User

Comment Apologies for stating the obvious (Score 2) 279

by Nuke Bloodaxe on Sunday December 19, 2010 @10:03PM (#34611902) Attached to: US Army Considers a Smartphone For Every Soldier

"including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield."

Now, lets say I am a soldier that has just been killed. My device does not know this, but the opposing force does. They pickup my phone, start running through a list of who is on the battlefield, and designate where their snipers need to aim.

Alternatively, opposing force finds device, and now appears on the location system as the soldier. This could be a bit of an issue if they send a message via it for everyone to regroup... or medical evac. I can imagine a well booby trapped body for that.

My point being: convenience is very nice, but deactivating it on death is vital. This is not something you'll get off-the-shelf, but can be as simple as a plugin heart monitor with password reset in the event of no pulse.

Comment Re:transferring Window license? (Score 1) 606

by Nuke Bloodaxe on Sunday October 17, 2010 @08:05PM (#33927468) Attached to: Generic PCs For Corporate Use?

There is the possibility of buying the retail copies, which are a bit less restrictive, but they cost a bundle. However, once you have them, you only need to buy upgrade copies in the future when moving from OS to OS [which is considerably cheaper.] Having said that though, and assuming it is specified in US dollars, that is a very high price per PC. For a business environment, with a lot of spare machines [not just parts] you would be buying render-farm level material there. I'd say you'd be quite happy spending $500 per machine, and still have plenty of power to spare.

Memory Management Technique Speeds Apps By 20% 252

Posted by kdawson on Monday April 05, 2010 @08:04PM from the rememberance-of-data-past dept.

Dotnaught writes "A paper (PDF) to be presented later this month at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium in Atlanta describes a new approach to memory management that allows software applications to run up to 20% faster on multicore processors. Yan Solihin, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NCSU and co-author of the paper, says that using the technique is just a matter of linking to a library in a program that makes heavy use of memory allocation. The technique could be especially valuable for programs that are difficult to parallelize, such as word processors and Web browsers." Informationweek has a few more details from an interview with Solihin.

Child Receives Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells 103

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday March 24, 2010 @07:29PM from the just-add-oxygen dept.

kkleiner writes "Doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) along with colleagues at the University College London, the Royal Free Hospital, and Careggi University Hospital in Florence have successfully transplanted a trachea into a 10 year old boy using his own stem cells. A donor trachea was taken, stripped of its cells into a collagen-like scaffold, and then infused with the boy's stem cells. The trachea was surgically placed into the boy and allowed to develop in place. Because his own cells were used, there was little to no risk of rejection. This was the first time a child had received such a stem cell augmented transplant and the first time that a complete trachea had been used."

Passage of Time Solves PS3 Glitch 147

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @02:27PM from the if-only-they-were-all-so-easy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A quick update on the widespread PlayStation 3 glitch we discussed recently: as of last night (Monday, March 1st) the problem has resolved itself. I powered up my PS3 to find the clock was set to April 29th, 2020, but once I went into the system menu and set the date and time via the internet I got an accurate date. That seems to be the test of whether your PS3 is 'fixed' or not; Sony says you should be all set."

Comment Does anyone, seriously, have a torrent for it? (Score 1) 330

by Nuke Bloodaxe on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @07:28PM (#27668807) Attached to: Computer Spies Breach $300B Fighter-Jet Project

We hear about various hacking events all the time concerning military systems, but it begs the question "can I get a torrent for it?". Sure, the data might be several terabytes in size, but I'm sure there are sub-sections of that data that could be divided out for usage by... anyone. If the information connected to that aircraft were to enter the public domain I can imagine a serious leap in public technology, no sweat [not to mention foreign governments]. At the same time I can imagine some people currently sweating behind their keyboard, debating whether they should pay the $30 billion ransom to prevent just that. So, we currently know the information has been stolen from a secure facility. All someone needs to do now [big ask, I know] is to hack the systems of the individuals who gained that information.

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