Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Transportation

Sen. Rand Paul Introduces TSA Reform Legislation 585

Posted by Soulskill from the freedom-from-getting-pawed-and-groped dept.
OverTheGeicoE writes "Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his desire to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss..."
Crime

UK Plans Private Police Force 252

Posted by Soulskill from the very-polite-unless-you-spill-their-tea dept.
An anonymous reader writes "'Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighborhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatization plan,' The Guardian reports. 'The contract is the largest on police privatization so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.' A worrying development in a country with an ever-increasing culture of surveillance and intrusive policing."
The Military

US Military Working On 'Optionally-Manned' Bomber 278

Posted by Soulskill from the contract-paid-by-skynet dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Despite massive budget deficits, the U.S. military is working towards a stealthy and 'optionally-manned' bomber capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The craft is intended to replace the 1960s B-52, 1970s B-1 and 1990s B-2 bombers. The new aircraft is meant to be a big part of the U.S. 'pivot' to the Pacific. With China sporting anti-ship weapons that could sink U.S. carriers from a distance, a new bomber is now a top priority."
The Internet

Submission + - Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web (wired.com)

Submitted by wiedzmin
wiedzmin writes: A low-profile Chicago biologist, Michael Doyle, and his company Eola Technologies, who has once won a $521m patent lawsuit against Microsoft, claim that it was actually he and two co-inventors who invented, and patented, the “interactive web” before anyone else, back in 1993. Doyle argues that a program he created to allow doctors to view embryos over the early Internet, was the first program that allowed users to interact with images inside of a web browser window. He is therefore seeking royalties for the use of just about every modern interactive Internet technology, like watching videos or suggesting instant search results. Dozens of lawyers, representing the world’s biggest internet companies, including Yahoo, Amazon, Google and YouTube are acting as defendants in the case, which has even seen Tim Berners-Lee testify on Tuesday.
Firefox

Submission + - Firefox 11 integrated SPDY (huntall.com)

Submitted by
huntall
huntall writes: "SPDY is a network protocol developed and introduced by Google in late 2009 with the goal of improving our experience of internet browsing, printing faster in loading web pages . While SPDY is part of Google Chrome since its early versions, the public character"
Image

Pancake Flipping Is Hard — NP Hard Screenshot-sm 260

Posted by samzenpus from the sorting-a-large-stack dept.
mikejuk writes "French computer scientists have finally proved that sorting pancakes is hard — NP hard. No really — this isn't a joke. Well, it is slightly amusing but that's just because it is being presented as pancake flipping. The algorithm in question is sorting a permutation using prefix reversal — which is much easier to understand in terms of pancakes. Basically you have to sort a pancake stack by simply inserting your spatula and flipping the top part of the stack. We now know that if you can do the this in polynomial time then you have proved that P=NP."
Science

EU Scientists Working On Laser To Rip a Hole In Spacetime 575

Posted by samzenpus from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong? dept.
astroengine writes "Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart. Why? To prove the existence of virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, potentially unravel extra dimensions and possibly find the root of dark matter. The $1.6 billion Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility (known as ELI) will be built somewhere in Europe by the end of the decade and physicists are hoping the ten high-powered lasers — delivering 200 petawatts of power at a target for less than a trillionth of a second — will turn up some surprises about the very fabric of the Universe."

Comment I'll believe it when I see it... (Score 1) 271

by sajuuk (#36416994) Attached to: The Internet Is Killing Local News, Says the FCC
If by "local news" you mean Local TV News, well, there's none of that around me. On the other hand, if you mean "local newspaper" and "local radio" then you are sadly mistaken, at least up here in the Adirondacks. We get a high quality locally published and printed newspaper 6 days a week - with a superb website accompanying - but NOT replacing it. And the local NPR station isn't half bad either.
Security

Sony Officially Blames Anonymous For PSN Hack 575

Posted by samzenpus from the in-today's-sony-hack-news dept.
H_Fisher writes "In a letter to Congress, Kazuo Hirai, chairman of Sony's board of directors, blames hacker group Anonymous for making possible the theft of gamers' personal information. 'What is becoming more and more evident is that Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack designed to steal personal and credit card information for illegal purposes,' Hirai wrote. He also indicated that Sony waited two days before notifying the FBI of the theft."
Mars

Submission + - NASA Quest for Gas Stations in Space (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Last week, Slashdotters read about a NASA proposal for in-space 'gas' stations located at strategic spots along a route — a potential boon to spaceflight. The system would be set up ahead of time, with depots drifting idly through the blackness while waiting for a rocket to dock. All the fuel and the propellant depots would be launched before a human mission left for the asteroids or for Mars. FoxNews.com spoke with NASA about the proposal, which the space agency says "could create a small space economy in propellants and refueling."

Space policy expert James Muncy agrees. “We will need the technologies eventually anyway,” he said. “We can’t go to Mars without them.”
Iphone

Submission + - Putting 'Apple iPhone' in a headline gets views (motherboard.tv)

Submitted by HansonMB
HansonMB writes: A recent article by CNN Tech blogger John Sutter makes the claim that, despite Apple’s recent release of a white iPhone 4 (and kudos to Apple, by the way, for making whites the minority for once), real Apple nerds are actually more interested in the upcoming release of, you guessed it, the iPhone 6.

However, by not directing readers anywhere in particular on the subject, Sutter ignores the risk of getting pwned by other writers covering the same non-story — like, say, Jared Newman at PCWorld, who has written essentially the same article, but in a sharper, funnier, and more self-aware way. Not only that, but Sutter doesn’t actually link to anything in his post, which is a decided no-no in the time-sucking, hyper-threaded blogosphere we’ve come to know and dread, whose cardinal dictum is that you have failed as a blogger if a reader is capable of dead-ending at your particular post, rather than being sucked further down the rabbit hole after drinking from one of a myriad of linking elixirs.
Blackberry

Submission + - RIM to make BING the default for search and maps (edibleapple.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Steve Ballmer announced today at BlackBerry World 2011 that Bing will soon be the default for both search and maps on upcoming BlackBerry devices. Further, the service will soon be integrated into RIM devices on an OS level, which means voice activated and location-aware search from the folks in Redmond.
PlayStation (Games)

Submission + - PlayStation controller pilots tiny quadrocopter (gamepron.com)

Submitted by dotarray
dotarray writes: While the PlayStation Network remains down, and your thoughts keep drifting to the safety of your personal details, it’s understandable that you might be looking for something to distract you.

How about using that Bluetooth PlayStation controller to navigate a teeny tiny little quadrocopter? It’s not like you can use it for much else, these days
iMac

Submission + - Apple iMac gets Thunderbolt I/O, quad-core (gizmag.com)

Submitted by fergus07
fergus07 writes: Apple's desktop lineup has typically pushed users requiring plenty of fast I/O towards the Mac Pro — but the latest iMac refresh has broken the tradition. Quad-core Sandy Bridge CPUs and faster ATI Radeon HD GPUs are welcomed, but it's the addition of Thunderbolt ports (one in the 21.5-inch and two in the 27-inch) that really ups the ante for a number of professional users.

Slashdot Top Deals

"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb." -- Spaceballs

Close