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Submission + - Town Releases Red Light Camera Stats (farragutpress.com)

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: A transparent look at some statistics released by a small town's red-light camera program. Specifically in the last fiscal quarter 7,213 incidents were recorded, 2,673 incidents were rejected by the reviewing officer, and 662 incidents were not processed due to technical issues or lack of information. All in all 3,878 citations were issued between April I — June 30 in a town of 17,000 residents. Interestingly enough there are two nearby cities claiming that individuals "have no presumption of innocence" when accused by the red light cameras: http://blogs.knoxnews.com/humphrey/2010/07/cities-ask-judge-to-toss-anti-.html

Submission + - Npw you can make any plane a stealth plane (geekosystem.com)

Submitted by Dthief
Dthief writes: Stealth planes are so expensive these days, what’s a spy to do? You can’t just fly into enemy territory because now the enemies all have those damn radar devices that will go beep boop whenever you get too close, ruining your intricately planned diamond heist. Well for the low low price of an undisclosed amount that’s sure to be less than the price of a plane, you can (mostly) escape all those radar woes with a shiny new coat of paint.
Software

PETA Creates New Animal-Friendly Software License 356

Posted by samzenpus from the no-animals-were-hurt-during-the-creation-of-this-story dept.
Anders writes "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the largest animal rights organization in the world, endorse a new FLOSS license. From the article: 'The Harm-Less Permissive License (HPL) is a permissive, non copyleft, software license. It is based on the FreeBSD license but with one additional restriction; the "harm-less" clause. It prevents software, licensed under the HPL, to be used for harming humans or animals.'" I guess this leaves the bunny-fueled power plant in Stockholm out in the cold.
Cellphones

Why Overheard Cell Phone Chats Are Annoying 344

Posted by timothy from the they-drown-out-the-bark-of-my-gun dept.
__roo writes "American researchers think they have found the answer to the question of why overhearing cell phone chats are annoying. According to scientists at Cornell University, when only half of the conversation is overheard, it drains more attention and concentration than when overhearing two people talking. According to one researcher, 'We have less control to move away our attention from half a conversation (or halfalogue) than when listening to a dialogue. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can't tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated.' Their study will be published in the journal Psychological Science."
Operating Systems

Sony Refuses To Sanction PS3 "Other OS" Refunds 396

Posted by Soulskill from the you-paid-for-what-we-say-you-paid-for dept.
Stoobalou writes "Sony says that it has no intention of reimbursing retailers if they offer users partial refunds for fat PS3s. Last week, the first PS3 user successfully secured a partial refund from Amazon UK as compensation for the removal of the ability to run Linux on the console. The user quoted European law in order to persuade the online retailer that the goods he had bought in good faith were no longer fit for his purposes because of the enforcement of firmware update 3.21, which meant that users who chose to keep the Other OS functionality would lose the ability to play the latest games or connect to the PlayStation Network."
Education

Ocean-Crossing Dragonflies Discovered 95

Posted by samzenpus from the incredible-journey dept.
grrlscientist writes "While living and working as a marine biologist in Maldives, Charles Anderson noticed sudden explosions of dragonflies at certain times of year. He explains how he carefully tracked the path of a plain, little dragonfly called the Globe Skimmer, Pantala flavescens, only to discover that it had the longest migratory journey of any insect in the world."

Comment Faux News (Score 1) 433

by rdtripp (#28994209) Attached to: Murdoch Demands Kindle Users' Info
Fox News is Murdoch's main "news" outlet. Given time he can probably bring the Wall Street Journal down to their level. Why on earth would anyone want to even read such outright lies and propaganda much less pay for it.

Comment Re:MINIX guy (Score 1) 376

by rdtripp (#27743449) Attached to: Europe Funds Secure Operating System Research
Fooled around with Minix a couple years back. It appears to be a great teaching tool and I can see where it would be a versatile concept development platform. With Andrew S. Tanenbaum (duh, the guy that developed the OS) spearheading this project I see possibilities. He seems to just the type ornery old non-conformist b*astrd that could possibly pull it off. Hell, he makes most of us liberal open source microsoft-baiting pinko commie linux lovers (just flamed myself to save time) look conservative.
Security

Submission + - Mac is fun to hack... Windows less so

Submitted by DevStar
DevStar writes: Charlie Miller generated some buzz from CanSecWest when he said, "Safari on the Mac is easier to exploit. The things that Windows do to make it harder (for an exploit to work), Macs don't do. Hacking into Macs is so much easier." Of course the pushback was that there was a guy there who hit the trifecta, by exploiting IE, Safari, and Firefox — he would probably have a much more balanced view of the world. His take on this whole Mac vs Windows hacking... well it was surprisingly similar, "Dino [Dai Zovi] had a great quote during his talk: "Exploit writing on the Mac is fun. Exploit writing on Windows Vista is hard work." I totally agree with that."
The Internet

How To Keep a Web Site Local? 297

Posted by kdawson from the first-ban-google dept.
Cornwallis writes "The universal accessibility of the Internet is one of its attractions. But what do you do when you don't want your board to be Slashdotted? Back in the day it was great to run a local BBS where friends and neighbors could dial in using their 9600-baud modems to pick up mail or share games or stories. Now, my Web-based board gets slammed by people from all over the world who have no reason to access it, can't possibly take advantage of the locally focused services it offers, and generally take up my time because I have to block their accounts or explain to them why they can't have access. This despite the fact that the board explains quite clearly that it is for local use only and couldn't possibly be of interest to them. Other than putting thousands of entries in my hosts file to block IP ranges, what options do I have to restrict access to locals only? Or isn't that feasible?"
Medicine

Asthma Risk Linked To Early TV Viewing 266

Posted by kdawson from the near-the-carpet dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes "The number of children with asthma has been rising for many years. About 1 in 10 children in the UK develop asthma, compared with about 1 in 25 in the 1960s. The reason for this isn't clear, although several theories have been put forward such as keeping our homes cleaner, and having central heating and more soft furnishings where house dust mites can multiply. Now based on more than 3,000 children whose respiratory health was tracked from birth to 11.5 years of age, researchers have found a new correlation with young children who spend more than two hours glued to the TV every day doubling their subsequent risk of developing asthma. 'This study has shown for the first time a positive association between increased duration of reported TV viewing in early childhood and the development of asthma by 11.5 years of age in children with no symptoms of asthma in early childhood,' said the researchers, led by A. Sherriff, from the University of Glasgow. It's not clear exactly how sedentary behaviors like television watching are tied to asthma, but there is some evidence to suggest exercise and deep breaths that come with it stretch the smooth muscles in the airways, while lack of exercise may make the lungs overly sensitive. The results add asthma to a catalog of undesirable outcomes, including obesity, diabetes, smoking, and promiscuity, tied to TV viewing."

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