Dr_Ken - Slashdot User

Submission + - Amazon and the Kindle have killed the bookstore. (typepad.com)

Submitted by Dr_Ken on Wednesday December 30, 2009 @11:22AM

Dr_Ken writes: Sure if you go to the local Barnes & Noble or Borders there are plenty of people in there. But that's not the issue economically. The average person buys (maybe) two or three books a year tops. And at least one of them is a gift for someone else. No the real customer the brick and mortar stores care about are those amongst us that buy a book every other week or so. And that customer is now buying eBooks for their virtual library instead of dead tree editions.
"iTunes and file sharing killed Tower Records. The key symptom: the best customers switched. Of course people who were buying 200 records a year would switch. They had the most incentive. The alternatives were cheaper and faster mostly for the heavy users."
Are brick and mortar bookstores about to go the way of the home landline, newspapers, and full service stock brokers and be disinter-mediated?

Submission + - Microbes that keep us healthy starting to die off (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by Dr_Ken on Saturday December 26, 2009 @12:07PM

Dr_Ken writes: "The human body has more microbial than human cells, but this rich diversity of micro-helpers that has evolved along with us is undergoing a rapid shift--one that may have very macro health consequences." Oh oh.

Submission + - Astronaut's Toolbag Vaporizes (gearlog.com)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Thursday August 06, 2009 @03:33PM

Dr_Ken writes: "From Gear Log.com —
"Last November, [ a space shuttle] astronaut accidentally lost the tool bag during a spacewalk. At the time, it slowly drifted away from the International Space Station, forever out of reach. Ever since, the tool bag has been orbiting earth--and monitored by the U.S. Air Force's Joint Space Operations Center, which tracks over 19,000 other pieces of space junk in orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, the report said.

The tool bag weighed about 30 pounds and contained a scraper tool, grease guns, and trash bags. It was about the size of a small backpack, according to the article. This would have been a perfect video clip for YouTube, if someone could have, well, orbited the Earth and filmed it before burning up with the bag. Guess that wouldn't have worked out." From Gear Log.

Various *high tech solutions* such as a shoulder chord, a tether line or Velcro patches were not employed for some reason. Go figure?"

Submission + - Should Copyright Of Academic Works Be Abolished? (harvard.edu)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Sunday July 26, 2009 @11:22AM

Dr_Ken writes: "From the Tech Dirt summary of this Harvard Cyber-Law Center study: "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone." Indeed it is and especially so given the huge amounts of tax dollars spent doing research that then gets published in proprietary journals where it can't be accessed without payment."

Submission + - Hows Teen Uses The Internet / New Media (seattlepi.com)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @03:34PM

Dr_Ken writes: "From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer blog comes this post about diaries kept by teenagers about their Internet use.

Some revelations: Teens don't use twitter that much. They like to make their own play lists and shun net radio. They avoid paying for music and other media AMAP. They like their TV shows on the net rather than on the living room box. And newspapers? They don't read 'em. Some more items that were surprises (to me anyhow) and some others that were fairly predictable are also mention.

All in all an interesting read and glimpse of what the media-centric society they've started evolving looks like."

Submission + - Wife Exposes chief spy's personal life on Facebook (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Sunday July 05, 2009 @11:31AM

Dr_Ken writes: "From a news story in the (U.K.) Daily Mail: "The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website. Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all Britain's spying operations abroad. But his wife's entries on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, who their friends are and where they spend their holidays.""

Submission + - William Gibson's Neuromancer After 25 Years (macworld.com)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Saturday July 04, 2009 @08:57PM

Dr_Ken writes: ""Neuromancer is important because of its astounding predictive power. Gibson's core idea in the novel is the direct integration of man and computer, with all the possibilities (and horrors) that such a union entails. The book eventually sold more than 160 million copies, but bringing the book to popular attention took a long time and a lot of word-of-mouth. The sci-fi, community, however, was acutely aware of the novel's importance when it came out: Neuromancer ran the table on sci-fi's big three awards in 1984, winning the Hugo Award, the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award, and the Nebula Award.""

Submission + - Indian military to use hot chili pepper grenades (ananova.com) 1

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Sunday June 28, 2009 @11:21AM

Dr_Ken writes: "According to this news story in Ananova The Indian Defence Ministry is looking into a cheaper and simpler form of tear gas agent for riot dispersal and crowd control.
Defence researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them, reports the BBC.The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.

Probably much cheaper to fabricate than conventional CN or CS gases and way less toxic too."

Submission + - GM's Killing Off The Wrong Brands! (wired.com)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @01:03PM

Dr_Ken writes: "GM's decision to kill off the historic and innovative Pontiac brand while saving (for now)Hummer, Saab, and Saturn seems ass backward to many automotive geeks. Saab is for librarians that want an import, Hummers are for the double Y chromosome types who will buy the most powerful machine offered whatever the price, and Saturn is for soccer dads who want the automotive transportation equivalent of sensible shoes . Not exactly bankable demographics, eh? On the other hand Pontiac gave us the Corvette, GTO, Firebird and some other real classics and is currently offering the uber-cool Solstice. So which brand is more likely to have a real future?"

Submission + - Some In Silicon Valley Rue Earlier Obama Support (pajamasmedia.com)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Sunday June 14, 2009 @02:55PM

Dr_Ken writes: "Michael S. Malone @ Pajamas's Media says some of the Silicon Valley crowd who championed Obama last year are starting to rue the day they made that decision. "What I think is most misunderstood by outsiders is that the electronics industry is not monolithic, and that its players do not all share the same interests. And nowhere is this divide greater than between start-up companies and the giant, well-known corporations — even though the latter, just a few years before, were start-ups themselves. For example,"says Malone,"you may think that the competitive challenge that big tech companies fear most is from other big tech companies. You know: Apple v. Microsoft, HP v. Dell, Cisco v. Juniper, MySpace v. Facebook. But in fact, that isn't the case. Sure, those are dangerous competitors; but far more threatening is that clever new start-up that seems to appear out of nowhere. That's the threat that wakes up Fortune 500 tech CEOs at 3 a.m." Not all taxes, laws, regulations and other red tape are created equally. Larger companies can add them to the mix, pay the taxes and add the costs to the price of their service or product, but little ones and start-ups find these things to be a much higher hurdle."

Submission + - Norhtec's $199 Gecko EduBook to Run on 8 AA Batter (enduserblog.com)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Sunday June 14, 2009 @02:28PM

Dr_Ken writes: "From Tom Milnes @ End User: "Norhtec is aiming at bulk school orders with this model. In the video the speaker says that they are shopping the model around to "developing markets" and according to Engadget are offering $150-160/unit pricing on bulk orders, and according to other sources for as little as $110 assuming a bare bones configuration running Linux. That still sounds like it might be a little pricey for the developing world." Perhaps, but it's a good start assuming that their kleptomaniac leaders don't steal all the grant money to buy them with first."

Submission + - Tatical Leather Corsets? Hot, Kinky & Bullet P (boingboing.net)

Submitted by

Dr_Ken

on Sunday June 14, 2009 @01:46PM

Dr_Ken writes: "The Tactical Corset- It's leather for that post-apocalyptic fashion style that all pop culture hipsters love, it lifts and separates, has garters, and includes a pistol holster and an attached equipment pouch for "interrogation gear" too. Practical, tactical, stylish and kinky. What more could a geek like you ask for?"

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