fgodfrey - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Any objections? (Score 1) 571

by fgodfrey on Tuesday August 10, 2010 @12:30PM (#33205576) Attached to: Senate Approves the ______Act Of____

Not commenting on the merits of the amendment you propose, but the Constitution takes into account that the Senate and House may not wish to amend the Constitution. Article V (the one dealing with amendments to the Constitution) provides two ways. Way #1 is for 2/3 of the Senate and the House to propose an amendment. Way #2 is for 2/3 of the state legislatures can create a Constitutional Convention to propose amendments. The only restrictions are that before 1808, amendments couldn't change to a non-proportional tax or ban slavery. Also, for "all time", no amendment can reduce the number of Senators a state has without that state's consent. Obviously, both ways of getting amendments proposed (and then they must be ratified by 3/4 of the states) is really hard, but that's kind of the point. I think California is a good example of what happens when it's too easy.

Backdoor Malware Targets Apple iPad 196

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @09:04AM from the that-didn't-take-long dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple iPad users are being warned of an email-borne threat which could give hackers unauthorised access to the device. The threat arrives via an unsolicited email urging the recipient to download the latest version of iTunes as a prelude to updating their iPad software. Apart from opening up a backdoor, it also tries to read the keys and serial numbers of the software installed on the device, and logs the passwords to any webmail, IM or protected storage accounts."

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 04, 2010 @03:11PM from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.

Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."

An Open Source Compiler From CUDA To X86-Multicore 71

Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 23, 2009 @03:06PM from the abstraction-gains-a-layer dept.

Gregory Diamos writes "An open source project, Ocelot, has recently released a just-in-time compiler for CUDA, allowing the same programs to be run on NVIDIA GPUs or x86 CPUs and providing an alternative to OpenCL. A description of the compiler was recently posted on the NVIDIA forums. The compiler works by translating GPU instructions to LLVM and then generating native code for any LLVM target. It has been validated against over 100 CUDA applications. All of the code is available under the New BSD license."

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @01:32PM from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @05:40PM from the going-in-circles dept.

feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."

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