aseth - Slashdot User

Submission + - Condom-wearing hands show up in Google Book Search (smh.com.au)

Submitted by AcidAUS on Thursday December 06, 2007 @05:23AM

AcidAUS writes: In its rush to digitize the corpus of human knowledge, Google inadvertently created a new type of "digital" database. Digital bookworms reading some books on Google Book Search have been surprised to find large chunks of pages blocked by manicured paws clad in pink finger condoms.

Submission + - flatulence ban (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 06, 2007 @05:15AM

An anonymous reader writes: There's a short, not very long-winded article at BBC about a stink being raised in Devon, UK. Seems one Maurice Fox has been asked (formally, in writing, though in bad English) to stop farting.
article at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7126973.stm

Submission + - FBI Requires a Warrant to Install Spyware

Submitted by mrogers on Thursday July 26, 2007 @08:58AM

mrogers writes: The FBI requires a warrant to install spyware on a suspect's computer, according to a new appeals court ruling. An earlier ruling had appeared to grant the FBI permission to install spyware under the weaker provisions applied to pen registers, which record the telephone numbers or IP addresses contacted by a suspect. However, yesterday's amendment made it clear that the pen register provisions only apply to equipment installed at the suspect's ISP.

The FBI recently used spyware to determine the source of a hoax bomb threat, as reported here and here.

Submission + - New quantum logic gates with laser lattices

Submitted by space_donkey on Thursday July 26, 2007 @08:44AM

space_donkey writes: New Scientist has a story about a new type of quantum logic gate created using three intersecting laser beams. Changing the polarisation of the lasers forces pairs of rubidium atoms together so that they exchange quantum information encoded in the direction of their spins. The research is published in this week's nature.

Submission + - Xbox 360 or PC for gaming? 1

Submitted by

Spamicles

on Monday July 23, 2007 @08:32AM

Spamicles writes: "I'm trying to decide between purchasing a new PC gaming rig and an Xbox 360. I already have a computer for doing the basics such as word processing and web browsing, but my dated video card and processor just aren't cutting it for new games like GRAW 2 and the soon-to-be-released Halo 2 for the PC. I have been a PC gamer for 10+ years (I'm 24). I love aiming with my mouse and playing all genres of games, but I am a graduate student and the cost of purchasing a just-under-bleeding-edge is going to hurt me quite a bit in the wallet. Although Xbox 360 games are slightly more expensive than most PC games, the cost of the Xbox 360 hardware will be only a fraction of what I would spend getting a new PC. So Slashdot, can you help me decide? Will I be put off by using analog sticks instead of a Logitech gaming mouse and a WASD keyboard setup?"

Submission + - Wikipedia corrects Enciclopaedia Britannica (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by

javipas

on Monday July 23, 2007 @08:27AM

javipas writes: "Despite all the controversy about Wikipedia's work model, no one can argue the potential of a project that has demonstrated the usefulness of the "wisdom of crowds" concept. And that wisdom has been able to detect several mistakes on one of the most relevant references on human knowledge: the Enciclopaedia Britannica. All kind of data has been spotted as wrong, such as the birthdate of Bill Clinton or the definition of NP problems in Mathematics."

The Search for Dark Matter and Dark Energy 212

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 12, 2007 @06:34PM from the someone-needs-to-turn-on-a-light dept.

mlimber writes "The New York Times Magazine has a lengthy article on dark matter and dark energy, discussing the past, present, and future. 'Astronomers now realize that dark matter probably involves matter that is nonbaryonic ["meaning that it doesn't consist of the protons and neutrons of 'normal' matter"]. And whatever it is that dark energy involves, we know it's not 'normal,' either. In that case, maybe this next round of evidence will have to be not only beyond anything we know but also beyond anything we know how to know.'"

Submission + - Is computer science dead?

Submitted by warm sushi on Monday March 12, 2007 @06:30PM

warm sushi writes: An academic at the British Computing Society asks Is computer science dead? Citing falling student enrolments, and improved technology, British academic Neil McBride claims that off-the-shelf solutions are removing much of the demand for high level development skills: "As commercial software products have matured, it no longer makes sense for organisations to develop software from scratch. Accounting packages, enterprise resource packages, customer relationship management systems are the order of the day: stable, well-proven and easily available." Is that quote laughable? Or has the software development industry stabilised to an off-the-self commodity?

Submission + - Google assists Indian goverment censorship

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12, 2007 @05:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: Google's Orkut has made a deal to provide IP addresses of posters of content deemed objectionable by Bombay police. They object to, among others, posts against certain Indian personalities, young women admiring Indian mobsters, and, amazingly, "anti-Indian words" (!).

Intel Stomps Into Flash Memory 130

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 12, 2007 @05:13PM from the hoping-for-solid-returns dept.

jcatcw writes "Intel's first NAND flash memory product, the Z-U130 Value Solid-State Drive, is a challenge to other hardware vendors. Intel claims read rates of 28 MB/sec, write speeds of 20 MB/sec., and capacity of 1GB to 8GB, which is much smaller than products from SanDisk. 'But Intel also touts extreme reliability numbers, saying the Z-U130 has an average mean time between failure of 5 million hours compared with SanDisk, which touts an MTBF of 2 million hours.'"

Submission + - Disk drive failures 15 times what vendors say

Submitted by

sysrammer

on Friday March 02, 2007 @04:32PM

sysrammer writes: "Computerworld has an article on disk drive failures from the 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies in San Jose, showing, among other things, "no evidence that Fibre Channel (FC) drives are any more reliable than less expensive but slower performing Serial ATA (SATA) drives", and that "that temperature seems to have little effect on drive reliability" (it looks like they're talking about temps closer to the upper operational limit, not catastrophic a/c failures, etc.). FTA: "About 100,000 disks are covered by this data, some for an entire lifetime of five years. The data include drives with SCSI and FC, as well as SATA interfaces. The mean time to failure (MTTF) of those drives, as specified in their datasheets, ranges from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000 hours, suggesting a nominal annual failure rate of at most 0.88%. We find that in the field, annual disk replacement rates typically exceed 1%, with 2-4% common and up to 13% observed on some systems. This suggests that field replacement is a fairly different process than one might predict based on datasheet MTTF." The authors did not identify particular vendors vs. the drive stats...their goal "is not choosing the best and the worst vendors but to help them to improve drive design and testing". Another note is that the study shows disk replacement rates, not necessarily actual failure. The article is at... http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012066&source=NLT _AM&nlid=1 ...and the Usenix site is here... http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/tech/schroeder .html mp"

Submission + - John Edwards Second Life HQ Flooded with Feces

Submitted by

silentounce

on Friday March 02, 2007 @04:23PM

silentounce writes: "The Table of Malcontents reports that late Monday, February 26, John Edwards Second Life Campaign HQ was attacked by cyber-vandalists. 'They plastered the area with Marxist/Lenninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obsenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in blackface.' Related post on John Edwards blog.

Stories like the above and this make me almost want to visit Second Life."

Microsoft Vista, IE7 Banned By U.S. DOT 410

Posted by Zonk on Friday March 02, 2007 @03:38PM from the that-is-a-serious-buzz-harsher dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to a memo being reported on by Information week, the US Department of Transportation has issued a moratorium on upgrading Microsoft products. Concerns over costs and compatability issues has lead the federal agency to prevent upgrades from XP to Vista, as well as to stop users from moving to IE 7 and Office 2007. As the article says, 'In a memo to his staff, DOT chief information officer Daniel Mintz says he has placed "an indefinite moratorium" on the upgrades as "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."'"

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