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Comment Re:Neflix != Amazon, and postal service == bad (Score 1) 504

by bsa3 (#32700544) Attached to: Amazon Opposes Plan To End Saturday Mail Delivery

If there's a need to subsidize rural mail delivery, the government can just as well levy a tax on all postage and contract with privatized-USPS or someone else to provide service in areas where it would otherwise be uneconomical.

In the current system, the USPS monopoly allows it to have hours that make banks look good and send men with guns to shut you down if you even think about sending a non-urgent document by FedEx.
Earth

Obama Sends Nuclear Experts To Tackle BP Oil Spill 389

Posted by kdawson from the step-aside dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the 'catastrophic' flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant's inability to control the situation. The five-man team — which includes a man who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb in the 1950s — is the brainchild of Steven Chu, President Obama's Energy Secretary." Let's hope this doesn't mean they actually try the nuclear option. In other offshore drilling news, reader mygoditsfullofdoom informs us that a Venezuelan gas rig has sunk in the Caribbean (with no loss of life). This one is being laid at the feet of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, which hasn't exactly been regarded as uber-competent "after President Hugo Chavez fired half the company's managers and senior engineers following a 2002 strike."
Transportation

Submission + - eyeDriver Lets Drivers Steer Car With Their Eyes

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "NPR reports that German researchers have tested a new technology called eyeDriver that tracks a driver's eye movement and, in turn, steers the car in whatever direction they're looking at speeds up to 31 mph. "The next step will be to get it to drive 60 miles per hour," says Raul Rojas, an artificial intelligence researcher at Berlin's Free University. A Dodge Caravan fitted with eyeDriver has been tested on the tarmac at an abandoned airport at Tempelhof Airport, However, it remains unclear when — or if — the technology will be commercialized as questions about safety and practicability abound: What about looking at a cute girl next to the road for a few seconds? Not to mention taking phone calls or typing a text while driving. But the researchers have an answer to distracted drivers: "The Spirit of Berlin" is also an autonomous car equipped with GPS navigation, scores of cameras, lasers and scanners that enable it to drive by itself. And should the technology-packed vehicle have a major bug, there's still an old fashioned way of stopping it. Two big external emergency buttons at the rear of the car allow people outside to shut down all systems."
Government

Economy Tanked While Government Surfed Porn 405

Posted by Soulskill from the gotta-have-your-priorities dept.
unixan writes "In a report by the SEC Inspector General that smacks of fiddling while Rome burns, 33 recent ethics investigations all showed that the government employees responsible for keeping an eye on the economy were instead obsessed with surfing porn — while the economy was tipping over. One cited example: 'A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office.'"

Comment Re:My first first? (Score 1) 74

by bsa3 (#31445058) Attached to: T-Mobile's First HSPA+ Modem Goes On Sale Sunday

Outside the M25? Could be ages.

Then again, T-Mobile's US UMTS network is practically nonexistent. Take Boston as an example: they've got 3G inside 495, except for a large number of inexplicable nulls and EDGE-only areas. Then you go from Worcester to Springfield and it's EDGE only. 2G coverage for a 4G world.
The Military

Directed Energy Weapon Downs Ballistic Missile 297

Posted by kdawson from the sharks-as-witnesses dept.
A**masher writes "In a test off the Califoria coast late last night, Boeing's Airborne Laser successfully destroyed a sub-launched ballistic missile. 'This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform,' reported the Missile Defense Agency. It should be noted that destroying a liquid-fueled ballistic missile is generally considered easier than killing a solid-fueled equivalent due to the relative fragility of the fueling and other systems."
Privacy

Kodak Wireless Picture Frames Open To Public 185

Posted by kdawson from the look-ma-a-picture-of-a-goat dept.
Jaxoreth writes "The Kodak Easyshare Wireless Digital Picture Frame displays images via a per-frame RSS feed hosted by FrameChannel. Each frame's URL is identical except for a parameter matching its particular MAC address, enabling public browsing of users' feeds. And worse, if you reach the feed of a not-yet-activated frame, it gives you the code to activate it, allowing you to preload it with whatever content you choose."
The Courts

DC Sues AT&T For Unclaimed Phone Minutes 145

Posted by timothy from the sheila-dixon's-mistake-was-subtlety dept.
Suki I submits news that Washington, D.C.'s attorney general has filed suit (District of Columbia vs. AT&T Corp, Superior Court of the District of Columbia), claiming the city has the right, through laws applying to unclaimed property, to unused calling-card balances held in the name of D.C. residents. "The suit claims that AT&T should turn over unused balances on the calling cards of consumers whose last known address was in Washington, D.C. and have not used the calling card for three years. 'AT&T's prepaid calling cards must be treated as unclaimed property under district law,' the attorney general's office said in a statement. ... [That sum] represents some 5 to 20 percent of the total balances purchased by consumers who use the calling cards. States and municipalities have often similarly used unclaimed property laws, known as escheat laws, to claim ownership of unused retail gift card balances." Suki I links also to Reason Magazine's coverage.
The Military

Data-Sifting For Timely Intelligence Still an Elusive Goal 131

Posted by timothy from the even-if-you-like-all-the-sifting dept.
gyrogeerloose writes "Although there was evidence to suggest that the Japanese navy was up to something in December 1941, that information was scant and came too late. Today's intelligence agencies have another problem altogether — more information than they can deal with, and computers aren't helping as much as one might expect for reasons that will be familiar to Slashdot readers: computers can crunch numbers faster and more accurately than humans, but they're still easily baffled by language as it is commonly used in the real world. Metaphor, slang and simple figures of speech can confuse the best algorithm and, as quoted in the linked article in the San Diego Union-Tribune, 'A system that takes a week to discover a bombing that will occur in a day isn't very useful.'"
Communications

India Hanging Up On 25 Million Cell Phones 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.
jvillain writes "India is about to pull the plug on 25 million cell phones in the name of fighting terrorism and fraud. 'The ban by India's Department of Telecommunications has been unfolding gradually since Oct. 6, 2008, six weeks before the attacks in Mumbai killed 173 people and wounded 308. A memo then directed service providers to cut off cellphone users whose devices didn't have a real IMEI — or unique identity number — in the interests of 'national security.' Since then, the move has picked up steam as a way to circumvent terrorists using black market, unregistered cellphones. The Mumbai attackers kept in touch with each other via cellphones and used GPS to pinpoint their attacks, which started Nov. 26, 2008, and went on for three days. The telecommunications department has issued warnings and deadlines through 2009 but has announced this one is for real, telling operators to block cellphones without valid IMEI numbers. Previously, it warned companies to stop importing them and customers to stop buying them.'"
Networking

Home Router For High-Speed Connection? 376

Posted by kdawson from the beyond-consumer-grade dept.
soulprivate writes "My cable company has recently begun to offer Internet access plans with speeds over 30 Mbps (60, 80 and 100 Mbps). However my D-link router is unable to go beyond 30 Mbps if I use NAT; it reaches 60-70 Mbps only if NAT is disabled. Is there any recommendation for a brand/model of residential router that is able to get more than 70 Mbps with NAT enabled? I have been looking for benchmarks or comparisons, to no avail. Does anyone know one? What are your experiences at home?"
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

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