Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Education

Jumentum Introduces a Single-Chip Linux System 76

Posted by timothy from the ok-but-can-you-make-one-with-fewer-chips dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Jumentum open source project has announced a single-chip programming system based on the NXP LPC1768 (the same as in the mbed) that can generate PAL/NTSC video and use a PS/2 keyboard, so it may operate as a standalone BASIC programmable computer, similar to many old BASIC computers (e.g. Apple ][ or C64) of yore. Projects such as the Raspberry Pi provide a multichip Linux solution, and the Humane PC uses three AVR microcontrollers, but the Jumentum system can provide a true one-chip solution. Video is generated by software, and only a few external resistors are required to interface to a composite video input. With the Jumentum system, you can take your tiny one-chip computer on-the-go, or use it as part of your own electronics projects (using for example, the mbed) to give it a convenient interface (along with Jumentum's Ethernet web and USB interfaces)."
Australia

In German Trials, Airport Body Scanners Easily Confused 91

Posted by timothy from the bitte-to-be-straightening-dein-pleats-maedchen dept.
OverTheGeicoE writes "The German government just finished a 10-month test of millimeter-wave body scanners made by L3 Communications. It appears they are not happy with the results. The devices raise false alarms 7 times out of 10, and are confused by layered clothing, boots, zippers, pleats, and even incorrect posture. Australia recently started a trial, and the second person in at the Sydney airport set off the alarm repeatedly due to sweaty armpits."
Medicine

Magnetic Nanoparticles Fry Tumors 111

Posted by Soulskill from the fried-tumors-are-a-delicacy-in-the-south dept.
sciencehabit writes "In a new study, a team found that injecting mice with tiny magnets and cranking up the heat eliminated tumors from the animals' bodies with no apparent side effects. The nanoparticles heat up when a magnetic field is applied, and because they are only injected into tumors, only cancerous cells get fried. Researchers hope the technique, known as magnetic hyperthermia, could be used in cancer patients, obviating the need for chemotherapy and radiation."

Comment Re:Well done (Score 4, Interesting) 95

by Sprite_tm (#36300124) Attached to: Bringing Old Arcade Machines Into the Internet Age

Sixpack for the win :) Nope, I didn't see the pacman machine, though I have heard about it. When I obtained an Atari from somewhere, I was inspired by the story and put it in the hallway with a copy of Xenon 2 permanently plugged in. Good times were had, until the machine broke. A bit later we got a PC next to the living room TV to watch all the creative-commons-licensed movies shared around the campus on (*cough*) and we played Puzzle Bobble completely to death. So yeah, the game , if anything, was an inspiration for more gaming :)

The PC connected to the TV still runs a menu on top of X that's written by me. I also automated the beer-list to a LCD+touchscreen thing, and while it's made out of bad soldering joints and gaffer tape, somehow that contraption still manages to survive.

Comment Not sure if that'd work... (Score 4, Interesting) 145

by Sprite_tm (#33905828) Attached to: Unspoofable Device Identity Using Flash Memory

From what I know of flash, the 'bad bits' aren't repeatedly bad. The bad-sector-swap-out-routine in most flash drives and USB sticks will actually swap out a sector after a single read that can't be ECC-corrected, but that doesn't mean all the bits in the sector can't be written correctly ever again.

For example, in this article (IEEExplore, so paywalled for you, sorry) a generic NAND flash chip has been tested for bit-error-rates. In the 5K write cycles after an average bit has failed, it only failed to be written correctly 4 times more. That would mean that a single erase-rewrite cycle would write the complete sector without any bit errors 99% of the time: to find 'most' of the bad bits, the sector would have to be rewritten 1000s of times every time the software would want to check the fingerprint.

Not only would that take a fair amount of time, it would also introduce new failed bits. That would mean the ID of the flash chip can only be checked so many times beffore the complete sector goes bad.

Comment Re:score tables (Score 2, Interesting) 153

by Sprite_tm (#28578325) Attached to: Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released

It indeed is packed BCD. Some processors of that time have special instructions for that kind of notation, which makes calculating with them not much more difficult than normal binary. (Dunno if the 6502c has these kinds of opcodes, though; the Z80 for example does.) The advantage is that it makes blitting to screen really easy: instead of constantly dividing by 10, which is a processor-intensive task, you could just bitshift the number, which is much easier.

Comment Some fun stuff... (Score 5, Interesting) 153

by Sprite_tm (#28576011) Attached to: Source Code of Several Atari 7800 Games Released
* From the devkit readmes:

2600/7800 DEVELOPMENT KIT<br>
CARE AND FEEDING INSTRUCTIONS<br>
[...]
Feel free to telephone John Feagans at Atari (U.S.) at area  code
(408)  745-xxxx  any  time you have a question  about  using  the
software.   He  wrote the download program and the  transfer  rom
code.   He's the one who did not write any support  documentation
to go with his software.

* From the base sw:
CPX     #1               ;HACK: WE STOP AT 1
BEQ     SELRTS
INX                     ;BIGGER HACK: PUSH X INTO RANGE.
LDA     ZHACKMOD+2,X     ;BIGGEST HACK: TABLE LOOKUP NEXT MODE.

* Ofcourse, we have explicit words:
CMP     #$FF                   ;SEE IF ANY INPUT
BEQ     FUCKYOU
JMP     GOTOSEL                ;GO TO SELECT MODE
FUCKYOU   BIT     INPT4                  ;LOOK AT FIRE BUTTON INPUT
BMI     ATIT4

LDA     #0                     ;ENOUGH TIME HAS ELAPSED TO ALLOW CAPS
STA     $1                     ;TO DISCHARGE SO CONTINUE FUCKING WITH
LDA     #$14                   ;IO HARDWARE

STA     AUDC0,X         ;GO POUND SAND IN YOUR ASS

* Citizen Kane anyone?
LDA     INPT0,Y                ;THESE FOUR LINES MUST BE INCLUDED IN
                                         ;THE FINAL VERSION
AND     INPT1,Y                ;REMEMBER
BMI     FUCKBAR                ;REMEMBER,. . ., ROSEBUD

* In Galaga, at 'a boss hit':
JSR    ABOSSHIT               ; HOW YOU PRONOUNCE IT IS YOUR OWN
       ;BUSINESS

* Liek wtf?
* GROUND TARGET SECRET CODES (SSHHHH!)
*         0       regular dome           logram
*         1       regular pyramid        barra
*         2       detector dome          zolbak (and your mama, too)

*And finally, an original comment which couldn't be more to the point in 2009:
*PROGRAMMERS BEWARE: THIS CODE IS OLD AND VERY UGLY! TAMPER AT YOUR OWN RISK

It looks like Hattrick is written mostly in Forth btw. I personally didn't know they wrote games in that language!
Cellphones

Mobile Wi-Fi Hot Spot 202

Posted by kdawson from the boy-in-a-bubble dept.
bsharma writes to let us know about a little goodie that we will be able to buy starting May 17: a battery-powered, rechargeable, cellular, Wi-Fi hot spot that you can put in your pocket. "What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It's a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. ... If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don't travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270." The device has its Wi-Fi password printed on the bottom, so you can invite someone to join your network simply by showing it to them.
Space

PG&E Makes Deal For Solar Power From Space 392

Posted by Soulskill from the just-watch-out-for-the-shadow-square-wire dept.
N!NJA writes "California's biggest energy utility announced a deal Monday to purchase 200 megawatts of electricity from a startup company that plans to beam the power down to Earth from outer space, beginning in 2016. Solaren would generate the power using solar panels in Earth orbit and convert it to radio-frequency transmissions that would be beamed down to a receiving station in Fresno, PG&E said. From there, the energy would be converted into electricity and fed into PG&E's power grid."
The Media

Lawsuit Stops Headline Scraping 85

Posted by kdawson from the ok-geez-so-i'll-stpop-sending-you-traffic dept.
Stephen Larson alerts us to the out-of-court settlement of Gatehouse v NY Times, a lawsuit that attempted to stop the Boston Globe from linking to headlines and excerpting initial sentences from a competitor's Web site. At issue was the Globe's practice — barely distinguishable from those of Google News, Yahoo, and others — of linking to another news source's coverage of local news. The upshot is that the Boston Globe will stop the linking. No judicial precedent was set, because the case was settled before reaching a judge.
AMD

AMD Plans 1,000-GPU Supercomputer For Games, Cloud 148

Posted by Soulskill from the still-won't-run-crysis dept.
arcticstoat writes "AMD is planning to use over 1,000 Radeon HD 4870 GPUs to create a supercomputer capable of processing one petaflop, which the company says will make 'cloud' computing a reality. When it's built later this year, the Fusion Render Cloud will be available as an online powerhorse for a variety of people, from gamers to 3D animators. The company claims that it could 'deliver video games, PC applications and other graphically-intensive applications through the Internet "cloud" to virtually any type of mobile device with a web browser.' The idea is that the Fusion Render Cloud will do all the hard work, so all you need is a machine capable of playing back the results, saving battery life and the need for ever greater processing power. AMD also says that the supercomputer will 'enable remote real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.' Meanwhile, game developers would be able to use the supercomputer to quickly develop games, and also 'serve up virtual world games with unlimited photo-realistic detail.' The supercomputer will be powered by OTOY software, which allows you to render 3D visuals in your browser via streaming, compressed online data."
Security

How Do You Monitor Documents? 237

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-yourself-at-all-times dept.
JumpDrive writes "I have been presented with a problem recently, which I know others have probably faced. During the last month, one of our customers accused us of providing another customer with their specification. So the question arose: how do we, or can we trace documents and find if they are being opened or used somewhere where they weren't intended. We don't want to be restrictive, because at times, we have people all over the place, but if one of our documents were opened in a foreign country, that would arouse suspicions. Most of our documents are made with MS office suite, and I have been thinking of working on a macro to ping a server, but that would require the user to enable the macros, and it would also require the insertion into about 1000 documents. But it's been difficult for me to find a solution that doesn't prevent someone in Omaha from opening a document for legitimate use and is not a solution that can easily be disabled or hacked around."
United States

Barack Obama Is One Step Closer To Being President 601

Posted by kdawson from the donkey-faithful-one-hundred-percent dept.
At 3:00 Eastern time on Monday Dec. 15, 538 electors in state capitols across the US cast the votes that actually elected Barack Obama the 44th President. Obama received, unofficially, 365 electoral votes (with 270 needed to win). The exact total will not be official — or Obama officially elected — until Congress certifies the count of electoral votes in a joint session on Jan. 6, 2009. The Electoral College was established in its present form in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution. Electors are not required to vote for the candidate who won their state — in fact, 24 states make it a criminal offense to vote otherwise, but no "faithless elector" has ever been charged with a crime. "On 158 occasions, electors have cast their votes for President or Vice President in a manner different from that prescribed by the legislature of the state they represented. Of those, 71 votes were changed because the original candidate died before the elector was able to cast a vote. Two votes were not cast at all when electors chose to abstain from casting their electoral vote for any candidate. The remaining 85 were changed by the elector's personal interest, or perhaps by accident. Usually, the faithless electors act alone. An exception was in 1836 when 23 Virginia electors changed their vote together. ... To date, faithless electors have never changed the otherwise expected outcome of the election."

Slashdot Top Deals

Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.

Close