Comment Three words (Score 4, Interesting) 94
About Fucking Time.
I was printing wirelessly off my Palm Pilot 15 years ago.
Comment Re:Doggie porn? (Score 1) 574
At least it wasn't kitty porn.
Comment Re:Agenda? (Score 1) 790
What is their agenda? (other than to promote lung health, which no reasonable person could criticize)
When their agenda includes banning a legal product because they think it sends the wrong message, then they've crossed the line. They've done noble work over the years, but they're becoming as bad as those fools from the Center For Science In The Public Interest. If you want to convince someone to change habits, more power to them. If you're trying to ban a legal product because, well, you just know what's good for them, then ALA can go pound sand.
Note: I don't even smoke. Never have. But ALA is just being a nannying busybody here.
It wouldn't make much sense pushing to ban an illegal product, now would it?
Comment Re:What temperature does this work at though?! (Score 4, Funny) 72
This doesn't do us a lot of good in most applications if we have to cool our processors with liquid nitrogen.
Except that most slashdotters already cool their systems with liquid nitrogen, or would love the excuse to make it so.
Comment Re:Well, at least the important keys still work. (Score 2, Insightful) 324
More importantly, is there a way to disable F1 in Windows? I can't tell you how many times I've accidentally hit it when trying to hit Esc.
A screwdriver will work. It's even cross-platform.
Comment Re:Fusion (Score 1) 365
Can't we just teleport energy from the sun?
Not unless the sun is sending us entangled particles and measuring them just the right way at just the right time.
Comment Re:I was considering one to replace my macbook (Score 1) 348
Man up and learn Objective C
Knowing objective-c isn't going to do any good if there isn't a program on the tablet to compile it.
And is it really worth porting all your favorite FOSS programs to objective-c just to have them on the iSlate anyway?
Comment Re:Put him away... (Score 1) 1079
I would like to point out that in both of these cases, the subjects in question were under the influence of drugs, and presumably they would have both acted differently sober (and it appears that both of those situations were caused by the drugs in the first place). Watts was, presumably, not under any such effects.
Comment Re:Pointless hype (Score 1) 275
I won't be switching DNS servers until/unless I notice a problem with my ISP's, but if I do need to switch, or even just test my internet configuration, I'll probably use Google's servers because they have addresses I can memorize: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
Comment Re:Backfire on PETA (Score 1) 820
As I understand your post, you're saying that animals domesticated solely for food will (mostly) die out if this lab meat process goes ahead. I think PETA and others who refuse to eat meat based on the common mistreatment of factory farm animals ("Ethical vegetarians") would say that it's better for these species not to exist than to be mistreated in factory farms. They might take issue with how we get there (if e.g. we just slaughtered all food animals, or turned them loose, etc.), but I think they would actually prefer extinction over "torture" for animals.
Comment Re:babies (Score 1) 326
... That said, AT&T should have the right to block my use of the network if they don't like what I'm doing on it...
I must disagree with you there. AT&T is/should be a neutral service provider. IPhone users pay $30 every month for *unlimited* data bandwidth. That ought to mean, although in practice providers never acknowledge and rarely accept it, that the user can use as much bandwidth as they need/want/can doing whatever they want whenever they want (and as such a neutral carrier, the provider need not even ensure that such activity is legal).
As a sidenote, does anyone know what this app does that isn't available through the regular Google voice service and safari anyway? I don't think bandwidth should come into this at all, should it?
Submission + - Possible backdoor found in RNG standardizedby NSA (schneier.com) 1
kfz versicherung writes: "Defining algorithm for random numbers is one of the hardest fields in mathematics. We all know Microsoft failed miserably, even Linux (pdf) and SSL had their fair share of troubles. But now Bruce Schneier tells us the Strange Story of Dual_EC_DRBG, one of four random number generation algorithms standardized by the NSA (pdf). While on first look just slower than the other three, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed at Crypto 2007 that the algorithm contains a weakness that can only be described a backdoor. Their presentation showed that the constants used have a relationship with a second, secret set of numbers that can act as a kind of skeleton key. If you know the secret numbers, you can predict the output of the random-number generator after collecting just 32 bytes of its output."
Submission + - Canada may tax legal music downloads 3
FuriousBalancing writes: MacNN reports:
Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download, says a new measure (PDF) sanctioned by the Copyright Board of Canada. Requested by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the tax would apply at least 2.1 cents to every individual song download and 1.5 cents per track for complete albums. Subscription download and streaming services would themselves be charged between 5.7 and 6.8 percent of a user's monthly fees. Minimum fees would also apply for every larger download or subscription. The new tax would be retroactive to January 1st, 1996.
Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download, says a new measure (PDF) sanctioned by the Copyright Board of Canada. Requested by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), the tax would apply at least 2.1 cents to every individual song download and 1.5 cents per track for complete albums. Subscription download and streaming services would themselves be charged between 5.7 and 6.8 percent of a user's monthly fees. Minimum fees would also apply for every larger download or subscription. The new tax would be retroactive to January 1st, 1996.
Submission + - Home Grown Multi-Touch Input Device (medallia.com)
Daniel Spiewak writes: "Erling Ellingsen has found a way to whip up one of those cool, multi-touch input devices using nothing more than some dye, a plastic-bag and an iSight. From his blog: "I guess most of the people reading this will have seen some of the multi-touch demos by Jeff Han, Apple and Tactiva. I wanted to play around with some ideas that required a multi-touch pad, but there aren't any devices available (Tactiva aren't shipping...) Long story short, I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera."
Video of the "device" in action included in the entry."
Submission + - Self-powered nanowires
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Many research teams around the world are building nanodevices of some kind. But these very small devices need very small sources of power to be fully functional. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have shown that a single nanowire can produce power by harvesting mechanical energy from its environment. 'Made of piezoelectric material, the nanowire generates a voltage when mechanically deformed.' But don't think that this nanowire, made of an oxide of barium and titanium, and measuring approximately 280 nanometers in diameter and 15 microns long, will be able to power anything more than a nanoscale sensor. It was able to generate an electrical energy of about 0.3 attojoules — less than one quintillionth of a joule or about 2.8E-25 kilowatt-hour. But read more for additional references and a diagram showing how these self-powered nanowires were tested."
