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Comment Re:What's not to like? (Score 5, Informative) 284

by andolyne (#34636452) Attached to: Hacking Neighbor Pleads Guilty On Death Threats and Porn

when you read TFA, it actually just sounds like he was screwing around and the child porn was more like "this'll get the dude in trouble" rather than "I have a private collection because i'm a pedo".

Either way, the dude was really stupid and deserves to get jail time for it.

edit: changed the word "article" to TFA cause that's the way it's done here ;)
Input Devices

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World 124

Posted by Soulskill from the gesticulating-at-robots dept.
kkleiner writes "A student at MIT's Personal Robotics Group is going to put Microsoft's Kinect to a good use: controlling robots. Philipp Robbel has hacked together the Kinect 3D sensor with an iRobot Create platform and assembled a battery-powered bot that can see its environment and obey your gestured commands. Tentatively named KinectBot, Robbel's creation can generate some beautifully detailed 3D maps of its surroundings and wirelessly send them to a host computer. KinectBot can also detect nearby humans and track their movements to understand where they want it to go." In related but less agreeable news, "Dennis Durkin, who is both COO and CFO for Microsoft's Xbox group, told investors this week that Kinect can also be used by advertisers to see how many people are in a room when an ad is on screen, and to custom-tailor content based on the people it recognizes."
Australia

Aussie Research Company Brings Wi-Fi To TV Antenna 74

Posted by CmdrTaco from the humdrums-and-spectrums dept.
joshgnosis writes "The CSIRO has unveiled new technology that could bring internet to people in rural or remote parts of Australia using their existing TV antennas. Analog TV signal is set to be switched off in 2013 but this technology could see the spectrum used to deliver internet straight into people's homes through their TV antenna. Gartner expert Robin Simpson told ZDNet Australia that this would make it much easier for companies to get new customers. 'What appeals to me about it is that it re-uses existing infrastructure, all of the competing wireless technologies tend to use high frequencies and therefore require new base stations, new spectrum and new receiving antenna infrastructure as well,' he said. 'The fact that they're re-using the analog TV stuff gives them a much easier market entry strategy.'"
Image

Denver Rejects UFO Agency To Track Aliens 80

Posted by samzenpus from the name-and-galaxy-of-origin-please dept.
Republicans weren't the only ones to win big yesterday. Aliens in The Mile-High City can breathe easier thanks to voters rejecting a plan to officially track them. From the article: "The proposal defeated soundly Tuesday night would have established a commission to track extraterrestrials. It also would have allowed residents to post their observations on Denver's city Web page and report sightings." Let the anonymous probings begin!

Submission + - The Creepiest TV Moments of Google's CEO (gawker.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has been a creepy, arrogant-sounding disaster in the press lately, especially on TV. Google issued a retraction in which Schmidt said "I clearly misspoke" on CNN, when he told the hosts of Parker Spitzer that they could "just move" to evade Google's Street View cameras. Time and time again Schmidt has managed to snatch PR defeat from the jaws of victory. The article contains several more links to other legendary Google cock ups, and a video making Schmidt look cynical, creepy and out-of-touch.
Google

Submission + - Google CEO: Don't like Street View? 'Just Move' (computerworld.com)

Submitted by CWmike
CWmike writes: Google chief Eric Schmidt started a firestorm in a CNN interview on Monday when responding to questions about what Google knows about people. Schmidt said that if people don't like having their homes photographed for Google Street View for the world to see, they can 'just move.' 'With Street View, we drive by exactly once, so you can just move,' said Schmidt, eliciting uncomfortable laughter from interviewer Kathleen Parker of the Parker Spitzer show. 'The point is, we only do it once. This is not a monitoring situation.' Those few sentences stirred up the blogosphere, and news sites erupted with stories, such as the San Francisco Chronicle's, which called Schmidt's statement an 'epic gaffe.'

Comment Re:I know it's silly to ask, but... (Score 1) 272

by andolyne (#32454816) Attached to: Study Finds That "Extreme Gamers" Play 48 Hours a Week

It's likely the weekends you're forgetting.

When my wife is away on the weekend and i've got nothing else to do (read: friends are busy), I could easily do 10-15 hours a day. Then that just leaves 3-4 hours a night during the week.

Normally, though, it's not that much... and it takes an mmo for me to have that much interest in a game - most other games I'm "finished" in 20 hours and bored.
Games

Submission + - License an Abandonware Game? (slashdot.org) 3

Submitted by WolverineOfLove
WolverineOfLove writes: I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed in a Slashdot Journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away.
Networking

Researchers Beam 230Mb/sec Wireless Internet WIth LEDs 218

Posted by timothy from the binded-by-the-light dept.
MikeChino writes "A group of scientists from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute have devised a way to encode a visible-frequency wireless signal in light emitted by plain old desklamps and other light fixtures. The team was able to achieve a record-setting data download rate of 230 megabits per second, and they expect to be able to double that speed in the near future. While the regular radio-frequency Wi-Fi most of us use currently is perfectly fine, it does have its flaws — it has a limited bandwidth that confines it to a certain spectrum and if you've ever had someone leech off of your connection, you know that it also leaks through walls. LED wireless signals would theoretically have none of these downsides."

Submission + - Twitter Security: Are they serious?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Twitter's Director of Trust and Safety announced that they are rolling out a URL shortening service to help deal with malicious links. Twitter's growth rate has slowed by tenfold while the malware rate has increased by tenfold according to a recent report from Barracuda Labs. Is Twitter really rolling out a URL shortening service for the sake of security or is this just an excuse to compete with their partners like bit.ly?
Google

Submission + - Google, Italian Culture Ministry sign book pact (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Google and the Italian Culture Ministry have signed an agreement for the digitization of books held in Italy's two main national libraries, the first such pact between the U.S. company and a national government. Works by authors such as Dante, Machiavelli, Petrarch, Leopardi and Manzoni, whose ideas helped to forge Western culture, will be included in the project, which will scan public domain books published prior to 1868"

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