Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Security

Submission + - Israeli general claims Stuxnet attacks as one of h (net-security.org)

Submitted by dinscott
dinscott writes: Last month, The New York Times run a story about Stuxnet having been developed by the Americans and the Israelis as a part of a joint project, but it was based on the claims by confidential sources.

But, it now seems that the information from these sources was correct. The Haaretz — Israel's oldest daily newspaper — reports about the a surprising video that was played at a party organized for General Gabi Ashkenazi's last day on the job.

Comment CT Homes have 4-5ft deep piles. (Score 1) 203

by thebiss (#35091624) Attached to: 1948 Mayor To MIT: Use Flamethrowers To Melt Snow?

I'm not sure what we will do if another 12" falls.

Although gasoline and flamethrowers would just lead to fires, I've wondered what a 100K BTU industrial propane heater would do. (Picture below.) Has anyone tried this?

http://www.globalindustrial.com/p/hvac/heaters/kerosene-propane/propane-heater-forced-air-50000-btu?utm_source=nextag&utm_medium=shp&utm_campaign=Propane-Kerosene-nextag&utm_term=245995&infoParam.campaignId=WI
Earth

New Sunlight Reactor Produces Fuel 269

Posted by CmdrTaco from the summon-danny-boyle dept.
eldavojohn writes "A new reactor developed by CalTech shows promise for producing renewable fuel from sunlight. The reactor hinges on a metal oxide named Ceria that has very interesting properties at very high temperatures. It exhales oxygen at very high temperatures and inhales oxygen at very low temperatures. From the article, 'Specifically, the inhaled oxygen is stripped off of carbon dioxide (CO2) and/or water (H2O) gas molecules that are pumped into the reactor, producing carbon monoxide (CO) and/or hydrogen gas (H2). H2 can be used to fuel hydrogen fuel cells; CO, combined with H2, can be used to create synthetic gas, or "syngas," which is the precursor to liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Adding other catalysts to the gas mixture, meanwhile, produces methane. And once the ceria is oxygenated to full capacity, it can be heated back up again, and the cycle can begin anew.' The only other piece of the puzzle is a large sunlight concentrator to raise the temperature to the necessary 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The team is working on modifying and refining the reactor to require a lower temperature to achieve the two-step thermochemical cycle. Another issue is the heat loss which the team claims could be reduced to improve efficiency to 15% or higher. Since CO2 is an input, the possibility exists for coal and power plants to collect CO2 emissions to be used in this process which would effectively allow us to "use the carbon twice." Another idea listed is that a "zero CO2 emissions" is developed along these lines: 'H2O and CO2 would be converted to methane, would fuel electricity-producing power plants that generate more CO2 and H2O, to keep the process going.' The team's work was published last month in Science."

Comment TopCoder and ODesk Not Surveyed (Score 1) 337

by thebiss (#34886472) Attached to: Study Says Software Engineers Have the Best US Jobs

This fails to consider the growing segment of software development: the component contractor, making $500-$1000 per job. What they earn annually, and how that impacts existing project staffing, has yet to fully play out. My assumption is that piece-part work pays less than salary, but we need a real study to see the impact.

Comment Re:Neat and Buggy (Score 1) 107

by thebiss (#34607568) Attached to: Browsing the Body

You're not alone. Despite a radically different platform (Firefox 4beta7 on XP with Nvidia graphics,) I experienced hangs and full-screen artifacts several times.

I suspect "beta" extends beyond the site, to the browser engines...

Comment Children and Security - Recipie for disaster (Score 4, Informative) 1135

by thebiss (#34259104) Attached to: TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old

For those of you without kids:

I've traveled domestically and abroad 14 times in the last 4 years, with a 1 through 4 year old, plus gear. At 1, they don't notice. At two and three, she would reliably freak out at security. My conclusions: The wait tests her patience. The packing/unpacking, undressing/dressing, unstrollering/strollering, takes away all of her comfort. Then, her mother walks away, through a big machine, towards a person with a wand.

We've learned it's best if mom goes first carrying nothing but a boarding pass, so that my daughter walks through the machine, to her mother. Then I follow, with absolutely all the gear. Often there is a meltdown, but then one parent is 100% focused on it, while the other worries about stuff, repeat scans, etc.

Now three of those twelve times, security has helped us a lot. In JFK, Hong Kong, and Beijing, they pulled us aside, and screened us in the priority/first-class lane. There's fewer people, a more enclosed space, and less overall distraction.

This post is just about kids and travel trouble; everyone else has the body-cavity-searches-sucks thread covered.
Security

TSA Pats Down 3-Year-Old 1135

Posted by samzenpus from the security-theater dept.
3-year-old Mandy Simon started crying when her teddy bear had to go through the X-ray machine at airport security in Chattanooga, Tenn. She was so upset that she refused to go calmly through the metal detector, setting it off twice. Agents then informed her parents that she "must be hand-searched." The subsequent TSA employee pat down of the screaming child was captured by her father, who happens to be a reporter, on his cell phone. The video have left some questioning why better procedures for children aren't in place. I, for one, feel much safer knowing the TSA is protecting us from impressionable minds warped by too much Dora the Explorer.
Biotech

Scientists Turn Skin Into Blood 229

Posted by samzenpus from the horror-movie dept.
Breakthru writes "In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012."
Books

Kindle Allowing Chinese Unfettered Access To Web 138

Posted by Soulskill from the not-for-long dept.
jcl-xen0n writes "Apparently, some Chinese Kindle owners have discovered that they are able to access banned sites such as Twitter and Facebook without a problem. The article speculates that Amazon may be operating a local equivalent to Amazon Whispernet with a Chinese 3G provider. Professor Lawrence Yeung Kwan, of the University of Hong Kong's electrical and electronic engineering department, told the paper that mainland internet patrols might have overlooked the gadget (perhaps because they consider it solely a tool to purchase books). How long before Kindle traffic is locked down?"
Government

How Technology Gets the News Out of North Korea 173

Posted by CmdrTaco from the information-finds-a-way dept.
itwbennett writes "Kim Dong-cheol is a North Korean with 'a double life,' writes the IDG News Service's Martyn Williams in a story on ITworld. 'In addition to his job as a driver for a company, Kim also works as a clandestine reporter for AsiaPress, a Japanese news agency that's taken advantage of the digital electronics revolution to get reports from inside North Korea,' says Williams. 'When we started training journalists in 2003 or 2004, getting cameras into North Korea was a real problem,' said Jiro Ishimaru, chief editor of the news agency, at a Tokyo news conference on Monday. 'Nowadays, within North Korea you are able to have your pick of Sony, Panasonic or Samsung cameras.' The images they're capturing are 'often startling,' and it 'documents a side of the country the government doesn't want the world to see,' says Williams."
Transportation

TSA To Make Pat-Downs More Embarrassing To Encourage Scanner Use 642

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
Jeffrey Goldberg writes for the Atlantic about his recent experiences with opting out of the back-scatter full-body scanners now being used to screen airport travelers. Passengers can choose to submit to a pat-down instead of going through the scanners, but according to one of the TSA employees Goldberg talked to, the rules for those are soon changing to make things more uncomfortable for opt-outs, while not doing much for actual security. He writes, 'The pat-down, while more effective than previous pat-downs, will not stop dedicated and clever terrorists from smuggling on board small weapons or explosives. When I served as a military policeman in an Israeli army prison, many of the prisoners 'bangled' contraband up their a**es. I know this not because I checked, but because eventually they told me this when I asked. ... the effectiveness of pat-downs does not matter very much, because the obvious goal of the TSA is to make the pat-down embarrassing enough for the average passenger that the vast majority of people will choose high-tech humiliation over the low-tech ball check."

Submission + - 'Apocalypse Zombies' a possibility says scientist (helium.com)

Submitted by Terrence Aym
Terrence Aym writes: A virulent rabies-influenza viral hybrid could lead to masses of infected victims turning into veritable zombies. The hapless former humans would exhibit all the classic features of the horror movies: the would become lumbering, mindless monsters with murderous tendencies and the ability to transform others into shuffling zombies with merely a bite. This gruesome possibility is discussed (quite calmly) by Samita Andreansky, a virologist at Florida's University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. Andreansky is one of the guests interviewed on the National Geographic special documentary "The Truth About Zombies" that aired during October 2010.

Comment Option: XEN can passthrough PCI/PCIe graphics (Score 1) 384

by thebiss (#34008786) Attached to: Recommendations For Home Virtualization?
After the good advice in the comments above, if you still really really want to virtualize, you could try Xen with PCIe passthrough to DOM running your graphics intensive apps. It will appear natively to the virtualized OS. I have no experience with this - I use virtualization purely to run windows-only financial apps - but there are reports of success in the Xensource forums and examples of it working on YouTube. Good luck. See: http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2009-01/msg00865.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I13E1MQbMc&feature=related

Slashdot Top Deals

Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.

Close