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Technology

Submission + - Lighting up via gravity (engadget.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: I've in the tech business for quite some time and I've met with more than my share of great ideas,

And still, there are ideas that is so incredibly simple and yet, so incredibly useful, that I often kick myself of not thinking of them first.

One such ideas is the "GravityLight".

Basically the contraption is an LED device attached to a heavy bag.

Lift the heavy bag up and the "spring" or whatever inside winds up storing up the potential energy and when the bag is released, gravity takes over.

As the bag slowly descends, the LED light will shine for about 30 minutes.

Another lift, another 30 minutes of light.

Simply can't argue with the marvelous ingenuity.
Crime

Submission + - Ransomware Is On The Rise (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
WheezyJoe
WheezyJoe writes: "Ransomware is becoming big enough that the NY Times is covering it. Essentially online extortion, ransomware involves infecting a user’s computer with a virus that locks it, scours the drive for personal info, and demands money before the computer will be unlocked. In some countries, the payout rate has been as high as 15 percent. Early variations of ransomware locked computers, displayed porno, and, in Russian, demanded a fee to have it removed. Now, fake messages from local law enforcement accuse victims of visiting illegal pornography, gambling or piracy sites and demand fines to unlock the computer, many originating from sites hacked from GoDaddy. 'This is the new Nigerian e-mail scam... We’ll be talking about this for the next two years.'"

Comment Re:Pack your suitcase? (Score 1) 219

by Maintenance Goof (#42211105) Attached to: John McAfee Collapses At Guatemala Detention Center
An antivirus legend,
his name was MacAfee!
An expert on drug stuffing,
and how to stay free!
He ruled his roost in Belize,
and played around with drugs.
eventually his lifestyle,
fell to persistent bugs.

Yipiyiyahhh!
Yipiyiyoohhh!
McAfee in Belize!

McAffee used his freedom,
more ways than you or me,
trying to seduce women,
chemically!,
Trying to update drug rape,
while fighting to be free,
that is why the legend,
is called McAfee!

Yipiyiyahhh!
Yipiyiyoohhh!
McAfee in Belize!

Sheen sits in the shadow,
of the legend McAfee!
McAfee boasts of lying
no take backs McAfee!,
when you brag about a lie you made,
should we then buy your brag?
Too many false positives,
makes your story just a wag!

Yipiyiyahhh!
Yipiyiyoohhh!
McAfee in Belize!

One day his next door neighbor,
complained about his dogs.
Then things got complicated,
by the turning of the cogs,
Some dogs were dead by poison,
the neighbor dead by slugs.
it seems like John McAfee,
has more persistent bugs.

Yipiyiyahhh!
Yipiyiyoohhh!
McAfee in Belize!
...
Advertising

Submission + - Advertising May Soon Follow You from One Device to the Next (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by moon_unit2
moon_unit2 writes: We're all familiar with ads that seem to follow you around as you go from one website to another. A startup called Drawbridge has developed technology that could let those ads follow you even when you pic up a smartphone or tablet. The company, founded by an ex-Google scientist employs statistical methods to try and match identify users on different devices. The idea is that this will preserve privacy while making mobile ads more lucrative, although some experts aren't convinced that the data will be truly anonymous.

Submission + - John McAfee Suffers Possible Heart Attack at Guatemala Detention Center (go.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Software millionaire John McAfee has been taken to a Guatemala City hospital via ambulance after suffering a possible heart attack at the detention center where he is being held.

McAfee, 67 — who may soon be deported back to Belize, where authorities want to question him about the shooting death of his neighbor — was reportedly prostrate on the floor of his cell and unresponsive. He was wheeled into the hospital on a gurney, but when nurses began removing his suit, he became responsive and said, "Please, not in front of the press."

Earlier today, McAfee had complained of chest pains.
NASA

Submission + - Source of Pioneer space probe deceleration anomaly found. (ieee.org)

Submitted by deathcow
deathcow writes: After forty years, a fresh perspective on old Pioneer data leads to new conclusions as to why the Pioneer probes are decelerating. Many theories to the slowing probes have persisted over the years — was it gravity? some type of unforeseen radiation? dark matter?

Thanks to the data backup preservation efforts of a NASA Ames Research engineer, mountains of old telemetry data were still available for studying this curious anomaly.
Power

Submission + - DOE wants 5X improvement in batteries in 5 years (computerworld.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The U.S. Dept. of Energy has set a goal to develop battery and energy storage technologies that are five times more powerful and five times cheaper within five years. DOE is creating a new center at Argonne National Labratory, at a cost of $120 million over five years, that’s intended to reproduce development environments that were successfully used by Bell Laboratories and World War II’s Manhattan Project. “When you had to deliver the goods very, very quickly, you needed to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines to get very focused,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, on Friday. The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research isn’t designed to seek incremental improvements in existing technologies. This technology hub, according to DOE’s solicitation, “should foster new energy storage designs that begin with a 'clean sheet of paper' — overcoming current manufacturing limitations through innovation to reduce complexity and cost.” Other research labs, universities and private companies are participating in the effort.
DRM

Submission + - 4 Microsoft Engineers Predicted DRM Would Fail 10 Years Ago (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ars is running an article about a paper written just over a decade ago by four engineers at Microsoft, who presented it at a security conference. In it, they talk about the darknet, and how it applies to distributing content online. They correctly predicted the uselessness of DRM: 'In the presence of an infinitely efficient darknet – which allows instantaneous transmission of objects to all interested users – even sophisticated DRM systems are inherently ineffective.' The paper's lead author, Peter Biddle, said he almost got fired over the paper at the time. 'Biddle tried to get buy-in from senior Microsoft executives prior to releasing the paper. But he says they didn't really understand the paper's implications—and particularly how it could strain relationships with content companies—until after it was released. Once the paper was released, Microsoft's got stuck in bureaucratic paralysis. Redmond neither repudiated Biddle's paper nor allowed him to publicly defend it.' The paper itself is available in .DOC format.

Comment Re:good (Score 2, Interesting) 783

To come clean I personally believe in intelligent design. Part of that design is evolution. That is however my belief.

Science is the study of that which is reproducible, controllable, predictable or measurable. To study something you at least need be able to observe it. There are things that we cannot carry into the lab to study. There are things that occur that cannot be reproduced, controlled, predicted, or measured. Science cannot disprove a deity nor can it prove one without that deities cooperation. Dogma has always been the enemy of science. Good science is without dogma, so intelligent design has no business in a science lab. It is quite possible that good faith is also without dogma. :)

On the other side, to declare how your deity did something is blasphemy, unless the deity has clearly communicated with you on the subject. For a believer to attempt to drag their deity into the lab and make positive assertions on how the deity works is quite blasphemous.

Consider that all manner of evil is allowed. Sparrows fall, good men die in pain, alone and without respect Natural selection means that out of a million horrible endings, some bright benefit can emerge. I love the end results of evolution, I despise the process. Evolution does however give meaning to suffering. This is something that few dogmas can manage to do.
Privacy

Submission + - FBI Dad's Misadventures W/Spyware Exposed School Principal's Child Porn (forbes.com)

Submitted by nonprofiteer
nonprofiteer writes: This is a crazy story. An FBI agent put spyware on his kid's school-issued laptop in order to monitor his Internet use. Before returning the laptop to the school, he tried to wipe the program (SpectorSoft's eBlaster) by having FBI agents scrub the computer and by taking it to a computer repair shop to be re-imaged. It somehow survived and began sending him reports a week later about child porn searches. He winds up busting the school principal for child porn despite never getting a warrant, subpoena, etc. Gift-wrapped present thanks to spyware. A judge says the principal has no 4th Amendment protection because 1. FBI dad originally installed spyware as a private citizen not an officer and 2. he had no reasonable expectation of privacy on a computer he didn't own/obtained by fraud.

Comment Interactive food! Yummy! (Score 1) 69

by Maintenance Goof (#41484781) Attached to: Scientists Invent Electronics That Dissolve In the Body
Remember when your Mom used to tell you not to talk to your food? That day is over! The best thing since toast is talking toast! Kids, tell Mom to get you some breakfast boats, the only cereal that putters around the bowl! (This product contains compounds that the state of California has determined may cause open weeping sores.)

Comment I have explained it as a database. (Score 1) 2

by Maintenance Goof (#41457511) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Explaining Version Control to Non-Techincal People
The database analogy works pretty well for bean counters of all types. Without locks and other methods of keeping track on a database, If you have an entry up while I change it and save the change, they you will not see my change and when you save your change, my input is lost., This can produce bugs further down the line. If I make a change and it is not shown to you, then your change can be made with incomplete data. Two corrections, that might on their own, move a record to being more accurate, can multiply inaccuracy if they are not coordinated. A program or system configuration can be a very complex and dynamic collection of data that has to remain coherent in ways that would make most databases unusable. Revision control is the complex system equivalent of database index, backup, and security.

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