Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power

Submission + - Mechanical Amplification Demonstrated

Submitted by
Sterling D. Allan
Sterling D. Allan writes: "A physicist from Serbia, from whence Tesla sprang, has come up with a notion that could be the most monumental discovery in gravity and inertia since Newton. Veljco Milkovi has received patents (awarded the rare "an original scientific work" designation) and has built demonstration devices to show how secondary up-and-down oscillations created by the primary back-and-forth oscillations of pendulum action evince many times more force than the force required to keep the pendulum in motion. A researcher from Utah recently replicated Milkovic work using bicycle parts, confirming the claim, and setting forth a simple DYI approach for the quest to derive useful energy from this phenomenon."
Privacy

Submission + - Bill Would Require Isps To Track Users

Submitted by
Dan
Dan writes: ""A Republican congressman has introduced legislation that would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep information about their users' identities and, possibly, their actions online."

"Earlier this month, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced a bill (H.R. 837) with a stated purpose of combating child pornography but the legislation also includes a measure that would force ISPs to monitor their users, an item that has long been on law enforcement's wish list. The bill mandates that the U.S. Attorney General determine the exact regulations, but the rules should "at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders.""

Clicky:
http://www.governmentsecurity.org/forum/index.php? showtopic=24884"
The Matrix

Submission + - The Linden dollar Game

Submitted by
Randolph Harrison
Randolph Harrison writes: "Following up on my article about how I found the Second Life economy to really be more of a virtual pyramid Ponzi scheme, I analyzed recently published "virtual economic data" from Linden Labs. Second Life's virtual economy probably isn't technically a "ponzi" scheme, but more of a HYIP game. I'm now more convinced than ever that the Linden dollar based economy is a house of cards, whether by intention or poor judgment. Either that or Second Life will have 45 million unique players by the end of 2008. Printing money, operating a treasury, managing a central bank, adjusting fiscal policy, and maintaining a currency peg are difficult for the even most hardened international economic policy wonks. Invest your time and money into such an "economy" run by trippy computer game designers at your own peril. Lots of nice graphs and charts included in the read."
Privacy

Submission + - REAL ID Could Endanger Domestic Violence Victims

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Many states have "address confidentiality programs" in which victims of domestic violence register a dummy address with the state. The state uses this dummy address on official documents, such as drivers licenses, thus assuring that abusers with access to state databases are not able to track down their victims. The newly enacted federal REAL ID Act may change this, however, by forcing domestic violence victims to list their real addresses in a nationwide database. Under REAL ID, all holders of state drivers licenses and ID cards must submit their information to a nationwide database which can be accessed at tens of thousands of terminals by officials ranging from cops to DMV workers. Privacy rights groups such as EPIC are warning that this new law may force domestic violence victims to reveal their true addresses, thus undermining state programs designed to protect them.
User Journal

Journal SPAM: Iraq and the Sioux Nation

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

When President Bush says he's prepared to stay in Iraq "until the job is done," those poor Iraqis have no idea just how long he means. But the Lakotas do. The United States government has been "stabilizing" the Great Sioux Nation and promoting democracy for 139 years.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Wireless Wii Hack for SNES and NES Controllers

Submitted by GooglyWoogly
GooglyWoogly writes: One of the nice features of the marvelous Wii is that you also can play all those retro NES/SNES/Genesis/other games. To be more retro, you could buy one of these, but who wants wires in a Wii world ?
Mark Feldman decided to take a step further by hacking the old NES & SNES controllers to work wirelessly with the Wii. Retro games can now be enjoyed how the makers intended — with the 'real' controllers but with the wireless convenience of Wii.
He has a YouTube video showing the gear, with an iPod replacement battery used to power the controllers.
Communications

Submission + - What causes cell phone connection errors?

Submitted by Anonymous Cell Phone User
Anonymous Cell Phone User writes: Earlier today, I called a friend on my cell phone and was connected to "Tom", a stranger. I knew I didn't have the wrong number because my friend's number was saved in my phone. I tried the same number again and got my friend this time. My friend told me he had just gotten a call from somebody wanting to speak to Tom, but his caller ID had said that the call was from me. This has happened to me a few times, both when I tried calling somebody on a landline from my cell phone and also when somebody tried to call me on my cell phone from a landline (it might also have happened between two cell phones once, but I'm not sure about that). The information in the caller ID seems to always match the intended call, but the voices get switched. I have had this happen with a Cingular/ATT contract in the USA and with a Vodaphone pay-as-you-go card in Germany (different phones). I am wondering if this error is due to a limitation of the GSM protocol or how it's implemented. I'm hoping that there's some cell phone / telecommunications expert here that can shed some light on the issue. Can anybody here explain how/why these errors happen?
The Internet

Submission + - "NO HUNTING" in cyberspace!

Submitted by
AlHunt
AlHunt writes: "According to the AP and our friends at The Globe and Mail, A Texas businessman who wanted to allow computer users to kill from the comfort of their homes has instead spawned dozens of state laws banning the practice.

Mr. Lockwood, 42, said in an interview that he was trying to help disabled hunters when he ... linked a rifle to a digital camera and high-speed Web connection."
The Media

Submission + - Web 3.0 = Paying For User Content?

Submitted by Alan
Alan writes: Web 2.0 is all about social networking sites, wikis, and tools that emphasize online collaboration. But if Web 2.0 is the introduction of user-centric services, what's Web 3.0 going to look like? My guess is paying for user-contributions.

Think about it. YouTube is going to pay users for submitting content. Even an independent website like FiringSquad.com is running a contest offering US$10,000 for the best blogger in their 'Matrix'. Shouldn't MySpace pay users for putting up their pages?
Businesses

Submission + - Does not having signed an NDA give any leverage?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the past few months, I've worked with a startup developing a new technology that could be of interest to many different sectors when market ready. Despite the fact that the company is well funded, I have yet to be paid, and the issue will likely soon come to a head. Through a combination of circumstance and oversight, I also happen to be the only employee at the company who has not signed a non-disclosure agreement, despite having full access to the technology at hand. Does this give me any discernible leverage in getting the money that is owed to me?
Software

Submission + - VR used to treat US soldiers with PTSD

Submitted by
dhardisty
dhardisty writes: "Researchers at the University of Southern California have created a virtual reality program 'that simulates life in the war zone for Iraq veterans suffering from conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).' The program incorporates wrap-around vision, sounds, physical sensations, and even smells. It is used to support exposure therapy, an empirically supported cognitive behavioral treatment for PTSD."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista Drivers Listing

Submitted by
RadarSync
RadarSync writes: "Check out this page of free links to Vista drivers: http://www.radarsync.com/vista In many cases it has drivers that Microsoft doesn't have and that aren't easily found on the manufacturer's site: For example, see what this guy wrote: http://www.onemetal.com/neotoxic/blog/?p=13 "I have an on-board C-media High Definition surround sound Audio system. Again after hunting for drivers on the manufacturer sire I was having no luck. There was mention of Vista Drivers but nothing to download. After hunting on the net I eventually found this site http://www.radarsync.com/vista/ that and downloaded there driver.. and after a reboot... I had sound!""
Programming

Submission + - Did D-Wave really demonstrate a quantum computer?

Submitted by Qubert
Qubert writes: Was D-Wave's quantum computer demo last week the real thing? Ars Technica takes a look inside the cold, black box and concludes that whatever was in there, it probably wasn't a 'pure' quantum computer: 'Jumping off the fence, we will say that we think D-Wave demonstrated a real device; however, we think their device is going to set off a debate in the physics community over where the boundary between classical and quantum computation is. At present, quantum computers are "globally phase coherent," which means that every qubit's state is entangled (and therefore correlated) with every other qubit... The D-wave system, however, is certainly not globally phase coherent, which raises the question of whether it is a quantum computer.'
Businesses

Submission + - CompUSA Gives Customer 4+ Month Run-around

Submitted by
Andy
Andy writes: "I've had an ongoing...adventure...with CompUSA's repair and customer service departments for the last four months, the short version of which is that — two years in a row — they damaged my laptop while repairing it (this second time more than once!) and are dragging their feet in responding to me and replacing the computer their service center damaged. I've tried to handle it privately for four months, but at this point, I'm running out of options and hope that Slashdot can help bring some attention to my troubles and turn the heat up on CompUSA a bit so they'll do the right thing!

In October 2005 I brought my Sony laptop to them for service, and it came back with all the case screws in the wrong places, causing physical damage to the case and a big loose gap in the front edge. Then, a year later, they again returned my laptop to me with incorrect screws, and with a wad of tape wedged between the keyboard and the cooling fan!

That started a saga, still ongoing, with more missing screws, a heat-related video problem, a damaged hinge cover, missing protective covers for the LCD's screws, and four months of broken promises, abysmal customer disservice, and lack of returned calls on all levels from the local store's tech services manager, operations manager, and GM up to the corporate manager of customer service and chief of escalation.

I've posted my story on my blog at http://www.onefromtheroad.com/index.php?cat=11 (posts are in reverse order, since it's a blog!)

Please help me spread my story, and hold CompUSA responsible for mistreating their customers like this!

— Andy

P.S.-For futher episodes of CompUSA being involved in grossly mishandling repairs, see http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=28004 5"

Slashdot Top Deals

The following statement is not true. The previous statement is true.

Close