Ferret96 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Water droplet computers: An idea that's not all wet (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg on Friday September 07, 2012 @02:40PM

alphadogg writes: The innards of computers can be a dry topic, but researchers at Aalto University in Finland have come up with a concept that is anything but: computers based on colliding water droplets. They've discovered that water droplets on highly water-repellent (or superhydrophobic) surfaces rebound off each other in a consistent manner that could one day enable them to be used as digital information bits. They demoed use of this method in a memory device and Boolean logic device, and said water droplet-based systems could one day be used for biochemical labs on a chip

Submission + - NASA Mars Exploration Rover Team to be Honored (spaceindustrynews.com)

Submitted by littlesparkvt on Friday September 07, 2012 @01:50PM

littlesparkvt writes: The mission team for NASA’s long-lived Mars
Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity will be awarded the Haley
Space Flight Award. The team will receive the award Sept. 12 during
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space
2012 Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, Calif.

Submission + - Kindle Fire v iPad: The unintended consequences at work (infoworld.com)

Submitted by InfoWorld_Pete on Friday September 07, 2012 @01:33PM

InfoWorld_Pete writes: This week's Kindle Fire announcement shows Amazon is serious about displacing Apple's iPad/iTunes combination in the home, with major improvements in its hardware and Amazon's huge book and growing video and music libraries. But, as InfoWorld's Galen Gruman writes, the Kindle Fire could also diminish the iPad in the office, should the Fire displace it at home. Why? At its core, the iPad's ability to serve both business and personal uses means it's the perfect vehicle for BYOD; the Fire isn't so suited. So, that could favor corporate-issued iPad deployments, not user-driven ones, and thus constrain the iPad to being just another type of work PC. The odds remain in the iPad's favor, but the even possibility of such a shift is surprising.

Comment Re:Maemo - Nokia N900 (Score 1) 400

by Ferret96 on Saturday June 09, 2012 @11:59AM (#40268685) Attached to: My primary phone runs ...

Everything *free* is adware, in my experience if you pay for the software and are a bit careful about looking at permissions, you can avoid apps that are just stealth adware/info collection software.

Comment Fathers Story is BS (Score 1) 1343

by Ferret96 on Thursday March 11, 2010 @04:02PM (#31442956) Attached to: Accidental Wii Suicide

I want to know what the father was really doing. While it is an acceptable explanation that he thought there was a prowler around, I find it hard to believe that after that kind of scare (Honey there's someone outside, go get the kids and stay in the living room! or Honey there someone outside, I'm going to get my gun and check) that the parents wouldn't be more attentive to the situation. If I need to pull a gun out to go check out a possible danger to my family, my family knows it and is not casually laying around the house watching TV and Facebooking. It is more likely the guy was outside shooting things for fun, came back in the house and left the gun on the table. It just sounds better to say he was trying to protect his family.

California Lake's Arsenic Hints At a Shadow Biosphere 155

Posted by timothy on Saturday March 06, 2010 @12:00AM from the some-more-tea-dear? dept.

MichaelSmith writes "Scientists think that there might be arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, California. If it's shown to exist, such life could have evolved independently from our own, or it could have forked from ours at a very early stage."

Apple Removes Wi-Fi Finders From App Store 461

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 04, 2010 @09:30PM from the you've-been-very-very-naughty dept.

jasonbrown writes "Apple on Thursday began removing another category of apps from its iPhone App Store. This time, it's not porn, it's Wi-Fi. Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder."

Civilization V Announced For This Fall 326

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday February 18, 2010 @04:17PM from the more-cow-to-be-cashed dept.

sopssa writes "2K Games announced today that they will be releasing Civilization V in the fall. For the first time in the series, the square tiles will be changed to hexes, which 2K Games says provides 'deeper strategy' and 'more realistic gameplay.' Civilization V will also include a new graphics engine, new combat system including ranged bombardment, multiplayer and good support for the modding community. 'Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenges for our team. Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we're excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series,' Sid Meier said. In addition to Civilization V, the Facebook-based Civilization Network will also be released during 2010."

Submission + - "Impossible" technology (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by ianpm on Thursday November 26, 2009 @06:29AM

ianpm writes: CNET UK has a feature about technology that's "Totally Impossible". In reality, it's all perfectly possible, but it's reasonable to say that all of it does at least boggle the mind slightly. Interesting to hear if Slashdotters have any better suggestions of implausible technology that's either possible, or on the verge of being so?

Submission + - 30000 UK ISP Users Face Illegal P2P Threat Letters (ispreview.co.uk)

Submitted by Mark.JUK on Thursday November 26, 2009 @05:53AM

Mark.JUK writes: Solicitors at ACS:Law have been granted approval by the Royal Courts of Justice in London to demand the private personal details of some 30,000 customers suspected of involvement with illegal file sharing from UK broadband ISPs. The customers concerned are "suspected" of illegally file sharing (P2P) approximately 291 movie titles, they now face threatening demands for money (settlement) or risk the prospect of court action. It's noted that 25,000 of the IP addresses that have been collected belong to BT users.

Submission + - Obama administration throws out wiretap lawsuit (americaswatchtower.com)

Submitted by Mr Pink Eyes on Monday November 02, 2009 @07:11AM

Mr Pink Eyes writes: Obama campaigned against the Bush administration's use of warrantless wiretaps, yet as president he has continued the practice.

Submission + - CNet posts outrageous assault on OS X vs Windows 7 (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02, 2009 @06:50AM

An anonymous reader writes: It's hard to ignore out-right hate. In a lengthy article which begins "Apple's products are universally acclaimed for their wonderfulness and gorgeousness — except in the real world, where people use computers for actual work and not just for messing around," CNet's Rory Reid pens page after page of arguments as to why Apple's OS X operating system "failed to make significant in-roads against even an ailing Windows Vista."

Submission + - Shuttleworth praises "excellent" Windows 7 (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by Barence on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @05:29AM

Barence writes: In a rare piece of praise from the Linux world, Canonical boss Mark Shuttleworth has described Windows 7 as an "excellent release". Speaking on a conference call to announce that Ubuntu 9.10 will be released on Thursday, Shuttleworth labelled Windows 7 "a substantial improvement on the past. Even on netbooks, it's a credible release." However, he remains confident Ubuntu retains the upper hand. "I am delighted that Windows 7 is out. Now that Windows 7 is out, we can compete head to head," he added.

Submission + - SPAM: Harvard Medical creates Swine Flu iPhone app

Submitted by alphadogg on Tuesday October 27, 2009 @09:03PM

alphadogg writes: Harvard Medical School is selling an iPhone application for US$1.99 with a variety of information and services related to the flu. The Swine Flu Center application, developed by a new group at Harvard called HMSMobile, includes an interactive section to help users determine if they have the flu and at what point they should call the doctor.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - The Best Medications For Your Genes (forbes.com)

Submitted by blackbearnh on Tuesday October 27, 2009 @07:09PM

blackbearnh writes: Until recently, physicians prescribed drugs to patients with dosages based only on weight, and with no idea if the drug would be effective for that particular person. But as this article over on Forbes.com highlights, the same advances in genomics that are letting people know about their likelihood of getting certain diseases can also let doctors know what drugs, and what dosages, will be likely to do the most good. TFA: Tamoxifen, the much-heralded cancer-fighting drug, has been shown to have little benefit for 7% to 10% of patients taking it. In the past, we would have just said that it works 90% of the time. But now, with our new genomic knowledge under our belt, we can say that it works nearly 100% of the time for people with the "right" version of the CYP2D6 gene, and 0% of the time for people with the "wrong" version, who make up roughly 7% to 10% of the population.

Slashdot Top Deals