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Comment Re:Conveniently forgetting the details (Score 2, Interesting) 929

by Gkeeper80 (#30458870) Attached to: Israeli Border Police Shoot US Student's Laptop

Then again, mere blocks from The Capitol building in Washington D.C. there are whole neighborhoods that routinely go on lock-down where you have to present ID before entering and murders are reported weekly.

I'm not sure what part of Israel you were visiting, but your account sounds pretty suspicious. I've never tried to order a peperoni pizza there, but you can get a cheeseburger almost anywhere since most Israelis are secular (even though there is a large observant population). I also didn't seen any fish barrels on my visit, but I suggest that your brother not visit any Walmarts on the day after Thanksgiving lest he get trampled.

I'm not sure what your idea of "western-civilized" is, but Israel is a place like many others. There is an unfortunate level of violence in some areas but on the whole it is as safe as most US cities. If you act with disregard to local customs and expectations, you may not receive a warm welcome.

Anecdotal comments without context shouldn't cause concern for anyone considering a trip to a beautiful and historically significant place.

Comment Re:Cell phones? (Score 1) 253

by Gkeeper80 (#29769327) Attached to: FCC Considers Opening Up US Broadband Access

If so, please hurry. They just finished the first stage of a plan to increase cell phone coverage in the D.C. Metro so every newspaper and newscaster in the area has been repeating "Can you hear me now" to the point where the words have lost all meaning.

I loathe you grey-jacket glasses man.

Comment Re:take that SF (Score 1) 429

by Gkeeper80 (#29285607) Attached to: Judge Won't Lower $5M Bail For Jailed SF IT Admin

And if the judge doesn't want him out of jail, why set bail at all? Is a $5 million bail really any different than denying bail? If he could arrange for $5 million as opposed to $1 million (or any other sum), would he be any less likely to leave town or commit a crime?

Seems like his bail should either be something that he could muster, but which would ruin him financially if he did something to forfeit it, or it should be denied outright.
Data Storage

How To Manage Hundreds of Thousands of Documents? 438

Posted by timothy from the you-have-the-planes-just-fly-files-around dept.
ajmcello78 writes "We're a mid-sized aerospace company with over a hundred thousand documents stored out on our Samba servers that also need to be accessed from our satellite offices. We have a VPN set up for the remote sites and use the Samba net use command to map the remote shares. It's becoming quite a mess, sometimes quite slow, and there is really no naming or numbering convention in place for the files and directories. We end up with mixed casing, all uppercase, all lowercase, dashes and ampersands in the file names, and there are literally hundreds of directories to sort through before you can find the document you are looking for. Does anybody know of a good system or method to manage all these documents, and also make them available to our satellite offices?"
Music

Submission + - Are there any non-RIAA radio stations? 1

Submitted by
Gkeeper80
Gkeeper80 writes: "I guess I'm an old fart, but the only place I hear new music lately is on the radio. I do listen to some music at the gym and on my computer so I'd like to start finding new music that I could feel good about purchasing (i.e. non-RIAA), but I usually listen while I'm doing something else or when I'm not online so I can't engage with personalized music services like Pandora. The one place I really get to hear music is in the car.

Are there any radio stations that don't play RIAA music? I suspect that standard FM is out, but what about HD radio? How else can I passively find new indie music?"
Government

Submission + - Executive Order Releases Presidential Records

Submitted by Gkeeper80
Gkeeper80 writes: In one of the first two Executive Orders signed by President Obama, we see the easing of restrictions on the release of Presidential Records. This new EO repeals George W. Bush's Executive Order 13233 of November 1, 2001 which granted former and incumbent presidents broad powers to restrict the release of presidential (and vice presidential) records.
Image

The Walking House Screenshot-sm 304

Posted by samzenpus from the baba-yaga-eat-your-heart-out dept.
What is 10' tall, has six hydraulic legs, and is powered by the wind and solar panels? The prototype pod house built by art collective N55 in Copenhagen, Denmark. With the help of MIT, N55 built the pod over a two-year period at a cost of £30,000. Designers say it provides a solution to the problem of rising water levels as the house can simply walk away from floods. One of the designers says, "This house is not just for travellers but also for anyone interested in a more general way of nomadic living." It won't be long now until the Japanese make Howl's Moving Castle.
Hardware Hacking

X-Rays Emitted From Ordinary Scotch Tape 190

Posted by timothy from the unusual-circumstances dept.
Maximum Prophet writes "When I was in High School, I built an X-Ray machine that (probably) didn't produce any X-Rays. I used an old vacuum tube and high voltage. Little did I know that simple triboluminescence would have enough energy to do useful work." The catch: you'll need to peel your tape in a vacuum, and have the x-ray film at the ready.
Microsoft

Microsoft Calls Today Global Anti-Piracy Day 500

Posted by timothy from the pirates-live-for-live-cd-distros dept.
arcticstoat points out an article at Custom PC, according to which: "Microsoft has announced that today is Global Anti-Piracy Day. Launching several global initiatives, the aim is to raise awareness of the damage to software innovation that Microsoft says is caused by piracy. ... As well as educating people about piracy, Microsoft has also initiated a huge list of legal proceedings that it's taking out against pirates. Microsoft isn't messing about when it says 'global' either. The list of 49 countries that Microsoft is targeting spans six continents, and ranges from the UK and the US all the way through to Chile, Egypt, Kuwait, Indonesia and China." Interestingly enough, unauthorized copies of Vista might not be harming the company all that much: reader twitter was among several to contribute links to a related story at Computer World which highlights Microsoft attorney Bonnie MacNaughton's acknowledgement that pirates prefer Windows XP over Vista and Office 2003 over 2007.
Biotech

Single Neuron Wired To Muscle Un-Paralyzes Monkeys 180

Posted by samzenpus from the gentlemen-we-can-rebuild-him dept.
GalaticGrub writes "A pair of paralyzed monkeys regained the ability to move their arms after researchers wired individual neurons to the monkeys' arm muscles. A team of researchers at the University of Washington temporarily paralyzed each monkey's arm, then rerouted brain signals from a single neuron in the motor cortex around the blocked nerve pathway via a computer. When the neuron fired above a certain rate, the computer translated the signal into a jolt of electricity to the arm muscle, causing it to contract. The monkeys practiced moving their arms by playing a video game."

Spammer Perjury is Worth Prosecuting 161

Posted by CmdrTaco from the love-a-little-alliteration dept.
Slashdot regular Bennett Haselton summarizes his essay by saying "Spammers really do lie more often under oath than other parties in court (surprise). Judges and prosecutors could promote respect for the law by cracking down on it, and maybe make a dent in spam in the process." Read on to learn of his experiences with (shocking!) spammers who lie in court.
Software

Stallman Says Cloud Computing Is a Trap 621

Posted by kdawson from the head-out-of-the-clouds dept.
stevedcc writes in to tell us about an interview with RMS in The Guardian, in which he gives his views on cloud computing, with a particular focus on user access to data and the sacrifices made for convenience. "'It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign,' he told The Guardian. 'Somebody is saying this is inevitable — and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.'" Computerworld has a summary of some of the blogosphere's reaction to RMS's position.
Microsoft

Three Takers Named for Microsoft's Linux Support 149

Posted by Zonk from the step-right-up dept.
narramissic writes "According to an article on ITworld, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank AG, and AIG Technologies have signed on for Microsoft's technical support for Novell Inc.'s Suse Enterprise Linux. This follows last month's announcement of a deal between Novell and Microsoft that Steve Ballmer described as an effort to 'bridge the divide between open-source and proprietary-source software.' None of the companies cited the price of the support certificates, nor would they say how many they were activating. Even more interesting, Credit Suisse is a brand new cusomter for Novell."

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