davburns - Slashdot User

Plug-in Hybrids May Not Go Mainstream, Toyota Says 519

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 02, 2008 @05:10PM from the charge-up-before-wyoming dept.

mattnyc99 writes "Honda's challenger to the Prius — the Insight hybrid that we discussed so lividly a month ago — got its official unveiling today at the Paris auto show, with insiders confirming it would be cheaper than the world's most popular 'green' car while still hitting the same fuel-efficiency range. But the hybrid-electric showdown comes in the midst of a sudden rethink by Toyota about plug-in hybrids. Apparently all the recent hype — over the production version of the Chevy Volt, plus Chrysler's new electric trio and even the cool new Pininfarina EV also unveiled today — has execs from the world's number one automaker, and alt-fuel experts, questioning how many people will really buy electric cars, whether people will really charge them at night to keep the grid clear, whether batteries will make them too expensive and more. "

How Kernel Hackers Boosted the Speed of Desktop Linux 380

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 02, 2008 @04:17PM from the mild-claims dept.

chromatic writes "Kernel hackers Arjan van de Ven and Auke Kok showed off Linux booting in five seconds at last month's Linux Plumbers Conference. Arjan and other hackers have already improved the Linux user experience by reducing power consumption and latency. O'Reilly News interviewed him about his work on improving the Linux experience with PowerTOP, LatencyTOP, and Five-Second Boot."

Submission + - SPAM: Software improves airdrops by 70%

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday September 30, 2008 @11:55AM

coondoggie writes: "When it comes to airdropping tons of water on a huge forest fire or loads of food to flood survivors, dropping things from an airplane to a precise spot on the ground in the face of wind and nasty weather can be a black art. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists have developed wind-forecast software that promise to improve aircraft airdrop target accuracy up to 70%. The US Air Force is already using they system for dropping Army cargo and paratroopers into Iraq and Afghanistan, but the package can be used for releasing almost any cargo from an airplane into a target area: water over a blazing wildfire, food to a famine-stricken population, or supplies, tanks, and Humvees into a war zone, NOAA said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Domains May Disappear After Search 1

Submitted by

Ponca City, We Love You

on Thursday December 27, 2007 @07:47PM

Ponca City, We Love You writes: "A perfect domain name pops into your mind, a quick check at your registrar reveals that the domain is available, you put off the registration a few minutes and when you come back to register the domain, it's taken by someone else. How much time has elapsed between the search and the attempted registration — in one case, less than 90 seconds. Daily Domainer has an interesting story alleging that there may be a leak that allows domain tasters to intercept, analyze and register your domain ideas in minutes. "Every time you do a whois search with any service, you run a risk of losing your domain," says one industry insider. ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC ) has not been able to find hard evidence of Domain Name Front Running but they have issued an advisory (pdf) for people to come forward with hard evidence it is happening. Here is how domain name research theft crimes can occur and some tips to avoiding being a victim."

Submission + - Dissecting Apps Source Code for Vulnerabilities (net-security.org)

Submitted by Chim3 on Thursday December 27, 2007 @06:06PM

Chim3 writes: Application source code scanning for vulnerability detection is an interesting challenge and relatively complex problem as well. There are several security issues which are difficult to identify using blackbox testing and these issues can be identified by using whitebox source code testing methodlogy. Application layer security issues may be residing at logical layer and it is very important to have source code audit done to unearth these categories of bugs.

Submission + - Feng-GUI : Feng Shui for graphic user interfaces

Submitted by

Feng-GUI

on Saturday February 10, 2007 @04:13PM

Feng-GUI writes: "http://www.feng-gui.com/ is an online heatmap generator of how people look at your website? Designers, Photographers, Web Developers, Creatives ! Find out how people View your website or image and which areas are getting most of the attention. The ViewFinder Heatmap service, simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap."

Submission + - How many passwords do you have to remember?

Submitted by G3ckoG33k on Monday January 15, 2007 @01:50AM

G3ckoG33k writes: * less than 20 * 20-39 * 40-59 * 60-79 * 80-99 * 100 or more * none, I have them on paper

Journal Journal: Google Redoing Pr Soon?

Journal by Firestorm_Hellkite_ on Monday January 08, 2007 @04:14AM

Alas, i must say that though i concur google is redoing the PR, i dont think there is a particular runup of bots crawling around at this point in time. I have a site that is consistently getting crawled, to the tune of 3000+ hits a day. Granted, although google is one of the largest, it isnt the biggest. Here for example is my December Bot Stats:

Journal Journal: Gates at CES: Offering What You Already Have

Journal by twitter on Monday January 08, 2007 @03:17AM

Google News is pointing to the first CES Keynote reports. Shiny Shiny, has a refreshing and detailed account. San Jose Mercury News is more direct, and BBC is always good.

Submission + - Sealand put up for sale

Submitted by antic on Monday January 08, 2007 @12:00AM

antic writes: The Principality of Sealand is up for sale. The 550 square metre steel platform boasts "uninterrupted sea views", complete privacy and has been mentioned on Slashdot in the past for its offers of hosting outside the jurisdiction of (some) traditional laws.

ABC News has more

Submission + - Please Turn Off Your Computers Over Vacation

Submitted by

mikesd81

on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:16AM

mikesd81 writes: "Over Silicon.com there is an article about how much power is wasted leaving PC's and printers on over the holisdays. From the article: "The amount of energy wasted by UK office equipment left on standby over the ten-day Christmas period would be enough to roast 4.4 million turkeys, predicts hardware maker Canon."

Apparently, the study by Canon determined the devices left running over the holiday system will user 43.6 million kWh of electricity totaling £8.66 million dollars ($16,800,976.80 USD). In enviromental terms, Canon's research suggests that around 19,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide will be produced unnecessarily — enough to fill the same number of 25-metre (~82 feet) swimming pools. Canon determines the unattended PC's use 37.8 million kWh of energy. David Smith, marketing director at Canon UK, said the figures show that "businesses that don't turn off their PCs and printers are literally throwing money away as well as damaging the environment over the festive period". The research was carried out by Canon and partially based on figures from the National Energy Foundation, Infosource and the Carbon Trust."

Submission + - FCC to Drop Morse Testing for All Amateur License

Submitted by Wapiti-eater on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:58AM

Wapiti-eater writes: NEWINGTON, CT, Dec 15, 2006 — In an historic move, the FCC has acted to drop the Morse code requirement for all Amateur Radio license classes. The Commission today adopted, but hasn't yet released, the long-awaited Report and Order (R&O) in WT Docket 05-235, the "Morse code" proceeding.

Full story at ARRL Homepage

Journal Journal: An Open Letter to the Owners of Star Trek 6

Journal by Shadow Wrought on Thursday December 14, 2006 @07:25PM

Today's Frontpage story on a new ST animated series reminded me of a JE I wrote a year ago, June. I'd like to attempt to restate it and, if you happen to be one of the owners of the Star Trek universe, I hereby grant you full license to take and use this as your own.

Submission + - Why can't Acrobat Reader just not hang?

Submitted by Gentle Reader on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @11:17PM

Gentle Reader writes: This is something that bugs me because it would seem to be a basic issue that should never happen. When (in my browser) I click on a pdf that happens to be large, invariably, I get hung, unless I wait for it to complete the full download. Nowadays, acrobat gives you the first page fast, then you can get wedged when you click to the 2nd page and want the rest. If I save the pdf, I can surf the net at the same time. no hangs, while the pdf is downloading. So conceptually, the idea of background loading of pdf and browsing shouldn't interfere. There's no reason why my web browser (IE or Firefox) should hang because of something acrobat is trying to do with a file. Why can't this just be fixed? Seems to have been like this for ages. Is there something basic that's broken in acrobat reader as a plugin to the browser? From a usability point of view, it seems like we're just putting up with a bad design cause it's free. Do other people get bugged by this? Why can't it just work just work = I should not be able to make my browser hang and be insensitive to mouse or keyboard activity, because I clicked on a pdf link recently, regardless of the pdf size. If this happened in a desktop gui, people would go berserk, "oh it's because you have a slow disk" That kind of answer wouldn't fly.

Submission + - No Axions for you!

Submitted by

avitzur

on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @10:57PM

avitzur writes: "No Axions for you!

One week ago, Slashdot headlined the astounding "Tiny Particle With No Charge Discovered" The headline was utterly wrong, and the announcement itself was overhyped to the point of being meaningless. Will the Slashdot editors give as high a profile to a careful de-bunking of the sensational claims? Given Slashdot's history of credulity in linking to sensational physics claims, this regular reader doubts it. But hope springs eternal."

Slashdot Top Deals