Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power

New Rechargeable Battery Uses Water 179

Posted by samzenpus from the I-want-my-water-engine dept.
fergus07 writes "Scientists at Stanford have developed a battery that uses nanotechnology to create electricity from the difference in salt content between fresh water and sea water. The researchers hope to use the technology to create power plants where fresh-water rivers flow into the ocean. The new 'mixing entropy' battery alternately immerses its electrodes in river water and sea water to produce the electrical power."
NASA

Programmer For Endeavor Now Crew On Final Flight 68

Posted by timothy from the geek-makes-good dept.
Lucas123 writes "Greg Chamitoff, a computer programmer who wrote software for NASA's Endeavour spacecraft, will be blasting off on shuttle's final 15-day flight as a mission specialist on Friday. Chamitoff, who created software focused on spacecraft analysis and maneuver optimization, will operate the space station's robotic arm, and he'll also take part in two spacewalks."
Privacy

Pirate Party of Canada Promises VPN For Freedom 98

Posted by timothy from the at-least-we-don't-need-it-in-the-u.s. dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Pirate Party of Canada has announced that it will extend a VPN originally set up to allow people in Tunisia to browse freely while internet censorship was imposed there. Canada may soon be added to that list since the ruling Conservative Party has vowed to introduce a bill that would provide unprecedented systematic interception and monitoring of Canadians' personal communications. So the Pirate Party of Canada has announced it will extend that service to Canadians."
Advertising

Tearing Apart a Hard-Sell Anti-Virus Ad 192

Posted by timothy from the what-naive-users-face dept.
climenole writes "I came across an email sent by a security vendor, reminding me, no urging me with the liver-transplant sort of urgency, to renew my subscription to their product, lest my pixels perish. I spent a minute or two staring at the email, thinking about all the poor souls out there who do not have the comfort of being a geek and who may actually take the advertisement seriously." That led to this insightful deconstruction of these over-the-top ads, the kind that make it hard to keep straight the malware makers and the anti-malware makers.
Moon

3-D Printer Creates Buildings From Dust and Glue 139

Posted by timothy from the one-layer-at-a-time dept.
An anonymous reader writes "D-Shape, an innovative new 3-D printer, builds solid structures like sculptures, furniture, even buildings from the ground up. The device relies on sand and magnesium glue to actually build structures layer by layer from solid stone. The designer, Enrico Dini, is even talking with various organizations about making the printer compatible with moon dust, paving the way for an instant moonbase!"

Comment Re:Dvorak isn't better (Score 1) 425

by Mark4ST (#31400594) Attached to: Correcting Poor Typing Technique?

(3) at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands[.]

That sounds backwards. A Dvorak has, for example, A and S on opposite sides of the keyboard. In fact, all the vowels are on the left side of the home row. And all of your most popular consonants are the other side.

Looking over at my wife's Qwerty, A and S are are close. So are E and R.

[This is off topic in regards to the above quote] Please realize that there's hardly anyone that just types Dvorak. Those that have two weeks to learn the new layout type both Qwerty and Dvorak! Your Qwerty speed can't go down, unless you neglect Qwerty entirely for years.
Games

Copyright and the Games Industry 94

Posted by Soulskill from the your-super-mario-toilet-paper-is-probably-illegal dept.
A recent post at the Press Start To Drink blog examined the relationship the games industry has with copyright laws. More so than in some other creative industries, the reactions of game companies to derivative works are widely varied and often unpredictable, ranging anywhere from active support to situations like the Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes debacle. Quoting: "... even within the gaming industry, there is a tension between IP holders and fan producers/poachers. Some companies, such as Epic and Square Enix, remain incredibly protective of their Intellectual Property, threatening those that use their creations, even for non-profit, cultural reasons, with legal suits. Other companies, like Valve, seem to, if not embrace, at least tolerate, and perhaps even tacitly encourage this kind of fan engagement with their work. Lessig suggests, 'The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer.' Indeed, the more developers and publishers that take up Valve's position, the more creativity and innovation will emerge out of video game fan communities, already known for their intense fandom and desire to add to, alter, and re-imagine their favorite gaming universes."
First Person Shooters (Games)

ioquake3 1.36 Goes Gold 176

Posted by Soulskill from the can't-we-all-just-get-along dept.
Time Doctor writes "The de-facto standard in Quake 3 engine technology, ioquake3, has hit version 1.36 recently. It includes a garbage bag full of improvements: in-game VOIP; optional external Mumble (voip); OpenAL; IPV6; anaglyph stereo rendering; Full x86-64 architecture support; Rewritten PowerPC JIT compiler, with ppc64 support; new SPARC JIT compiler, with support for both sparc32 and sparc64; improved console command auto-completion; persistent console command history; improved QVM (Quake Virtual Machine) tools; colored terminal output on POSIX operating systems; multiuser support on Windows systems (user-specific game data is stored in their respective Application Data folders); PNG format support for textures. Of course, there are even more fixes for security holes and other bugs in there. So, if you don't like ads and queues in your Quake 3 experience, get a copy of Quake 3 off Steam and copy your data files and key into your ioquake3 directory."

Slashdot Top Deals

A penny saved is a penny to squander. -- Ambrose Bierce

Close