Tepar - Slashdot User

Submission + - More Linux loving: Fixing GRUB

Submitted by

naser

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @02:06PM

naser writes: "http://atunu.blogspot.com/2007/03/more-linux-lovin g-fixing-grub.html : Ubuntu and GRUB get along pretty good. But if your GRUB records get screwed somehow, so shall your boot record. Then there is no way left but to restore the old windows mbr. But what if you wanted to restore the GRUB menu? Here's a tutorial meant for the absolute beginners to restore the GRUB menu to the way it looked before the screw-up."

Submission + - Italy village gets 'sun mirror'

Submitted by

Gre7g

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @02:05PM

Gre7g writes: "A sun-deprived village in the Italian Alps has come up with a novel solution to fix the problem — by installing a giant mirror.

The mirror — an eight-by-five metre (26x16ft) sheet of steel — was placed on a nearby peak to reflect sunlight onto Viganella's main square below.

The computer-operated mirror will now be constantly following the sun's path."

Submission + - Continuous testing through Automation

Submitted by

BlueVoodoo

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @02:00PM

BlueVoodoo writes: "Find your application problems early and spot light on code quality. This article will cover some of the various types of automated developer tests you can run with every source code change."

Submission + - MySpace Sues Sanford Wallace

Submitted by

Talaria

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @01:43PM

Talaria writes: "MySpace has sued the original king of spam, Sanford Wallace, claiming that he set up an elaborate phishing scheme to gain access to MySpace user accounts, spammed MySpace users, and used deceptive means to direct MySpace users to Wallace's websites. Sanford Wallace is best known as the spammer behind the infamous CyberPromotions, which was brought down nearly ten years ago in twin lawsuits by AOL and CompuServe."

Submission + - Cassini Spies Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn

Submitted by

Riding with Robots

on Tuesday March 27, 2007 @12:46PM

Riding with Robots writes: "NASA has posted pictures of an odd, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet," said one of the mission scientists. The feature was actually discovered by the Voyager probes, but is now being examined in unprecedented detail."

Submission + - Sources for 3D graphics?

Submitted by

RedBear

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @11:23AM

RedBear writes: "If you were looking for 3D graphics suitable for use with computerized carving machines or 3D printers, where would you go? The few sources I've seen online have a rather dismal selection of very unoriginal patterns (flowers, boats, deer? whoopety-doo) and are charging ridiculous prices, from $10-25 per graphic for even the simplest patterns like a circular rope border. Surely there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of non-copyrighted shapes, drawings, devices and carvings in this world that have been catalogued by various institutions (e.g. Egyption heiroglyphs, statues, carvings and stone writings from all over the ancient world, fascinating ancient devices like astrolabes, compasses and sundials, religious icons, all sorts of ancient buildings and monuments, etc.). Where are they? If nothing else are there any sources of hi-res photographs that could conceivably be converted for 3D use?

At least one software package I've seen can create 3D patterns from grayscale images. Are these sorts of graphics out there but only available to businesses who can afford to spend vast amounts of money to acquire them for commercial reproductions? What about all those computer reproductions they show on places like the History Channel, is all that stuff created from scratch or what? How would an individual who wanted to do for instance a reproduction in miniature of ancient Athens get access to the necessary data files to do it?

As a complementary question, if you were tasked with recording physical objects in 3D, how would you go about it, short of an MRI machine or 3D probe? What methods and software are out there for converting 2D images to 3D data? Is there some way to convert (for instance) stereoscopic image pairs into true 3D information? What other methods can be used to create detailed 3D patterns short of recreating objects from scratch with expensive CAD applications?"

Submission + - IT Wish List

Submitted by PHPNerd on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @11:10AM

PHPNerd writes: The company I work for has bought a new four story building with 90,000 square feet of space. This is an engineering company with just over five hundred employees. Before finalizing the new interior construction plans as needed by the company, the board of directors asked the IT department for our wish list of what we want to do with the new building. If you were in the same situation, what would your no limits IT wish list be? What are your own dreams for the best IT setup ever?

Submission + - AACS Processing Key discovered, HD DRM is toast.

Submitted by

passthecrackpipe

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @10:54AM

passthecrackpipe writes: "The nice folks over at doom9 really don't like DRM. After the discovery of the individual title keys used for AACS "protection" a while back, and the subsequent release of a tool that makes it nice and simple for you to back up your (obviously legally purchased) HD-DVD or Blue-Ray discs, arnezami has found the processing keys — this key can be used to decrypt *all* titles as opposed to just a single title of which the key is known. His approach sounds actually pretty easy (but is probably a lot harder then it sounds):

what I wanted to do is "record" all changes in this part of memory during startup of the movie. Hopefully I would catch something insteresting. In the end I did something a little more effiecient: I used the hd dvd vuk extractor (thanks ape!) and adapted it to slow down the software player (while scanning its memory continously) and at the very moment the Media Key (which I now knew: my bottom-up approach really paid off here) was detected it halted the player. I then made a memdump with WinHex. I now had the feeling I had something. And I did. Not suprisingly the very first C-value was a hit. I then checked if everyting was correct, asked for confirmation and here we are. For me, the best part is imagining the insane amount of money the *IAA pumps into these braindead schemes to begin with.

Well done arnezami, beer's on me!"

Submission + - 5 years innocent in jail

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday February 13, 2007 @10:41AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "I stumbled upon this, and it never left my thoughts: http://www.justice4kirstin.com/index.html http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/justiceforkirstin/ index.html Quotes: "She was the victim of an attempted rape in May 2001, and had defended herself against her rapist." "The twist is that the crime she was convicted of was not even connected with what occured at the scene of the attempted rape. The murder she was framed for took place in July, while Kirstin was at her parents' house in Panaca. There was no forensic evidence connecting her to the crime, and she had a solid alibi." "How did a victim of attempted rape who defended herself only enough to flee her rapist find herself with a 1st degree murder charge for someone else's crime? Better yet, what judge would limit the testimony of an expert witness who was to testify to the fact that due to blood spatter evidence there was no possible way she had committed the crime?" "Eyewitness testimony and phone records prove accused was in a different town and nowhere near the scene at the time of the crime ""

Slashdot Top Deals