ReidMaynard - Slashdot User

Submission + - world's largest mobile solar shower (navitron.org.uk)

Submitted by

ivan lucas

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @08:16AM

ivan lucas writes: "Speaks for itself — Navitron Ltd have implemented the world's largest solar shower unit at Glastonbury. Will provide up to 8000litres per day of hot showers. Also to be rolled out for the Big Green Gathering in August.

Full details, pictures and press release available on the webpage (www.navitron.org.uk/glastonbury.htm)

Hope you can include it!

Thanks

Ivan"

Submission + - T-Mobile mistakenly sells cellphone with porn (blorge.com)

Submitted by

destinyland

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @04:54AM

destinyland writes: "T-Mobile sold a woman a new cellphone, but when she got home it had 60 X-rated pictures on it. T-Mobile's phone rep wrongly insisted she or her boyfriend had taken the photos, or they'd received them via email and added them to their phone's photo gallery. T-Mobile later admitted an "isolated incident," and said they were taking "appropriate measures" to correct it. Apparently the number they assigned the phone corresponded to an already-existing photo gallery.

Besides the corporate incompetence, there's privacy implications. Whose naked photos did T-Mobile just hand out at the mall? And if you have time, watch the local newscasters feigning alarm."

Submission + - FBI to restrict student freedoms (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:57AM

amigoro writes: "US university students will not be able to work late at the campus, travel abroad, show interest in their colleagues' work, have friends outside America, engage in independent research, or make extra money without the prior consent of the authorities, according to a set of guidelines given to administrators by the FBI. Feds are going around briefing top universities including MIT about "espionage indicators" aimed at identifying foreign agents and terrorists who might steal university research."

Submission + - Generating a CAPTCHA of your email address (jgc.org)

Submitted by

JohnGrahamCumming

on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @08:26AM

JohnGrahamCumming writes: "Web crawlers that search for email addresses on web sites are a big problem. My simple and free email image generator service generates a randomized image containing your email adddress. Simply copy and paste the relevant HTML to your web site to get a human-readable image that contains your email address but hides it from web crawlers."

Submission + - MBA as a Fresher - What can I learn?

Submitted by on Wednesday June 20, 2007 @08:16AM

An anonymous reader writes: I am an CS Engineer with no work experience. I have taken admission to the MBA course run by a prestigious national institute in India. Is there anybody else who had done this and would like to share their experience? Is there anything in particular that I should try to learn, outside of what is taught as curriculum? What, in your opinion, are the most important skills required to run a business successfully? Is there anything you did/didn't do that you regret or are particularly happy you did??

Submission + - Ubuntu Linux = Genuine Windows? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by

bobbocanfly

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @05:16PM

bobbocanfly writes: "Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few years you will have heard about the problems with the Windows Genuine Advantage system. Well here is another one. A user at UbuntuForums.org managed to validate their Ubuntu installation as a genuine copy of Microsoft Windows and get to the download page of Windows Defender, using IE4Linux and Wine. This along with the advancement of LiveCD technology could mean the end of Microsoft's control over who gets their updates."

Submission + - Tuning your MySQL server for LAMP

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 17, 2007 @02:25PM

An anonymous reader writes: Allocating memory to the right places and giving mysqld an idea of what type of load to expect is one of the best things you can do to pump-up your performance. This article covers MySQL tuning, which is largely about understanding how things work, determining if they're working properly, making adjustments, and re-evaluating. Each component — Linux, Apache, PHP, or MySQL — has various needs. Understanding them individually helps eliminate the bottlenecks that can slow your application.

Submission + - A book full of real-world applications of CSS (nateklaiber.com)

Submitted by

nateklaiber

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @01:37PM

nateklaiber writes: "The Art and Science of CSS was a quick read (208 pages) and packed full of valuable code examples. Unlike other CSS books that teach you the specifics of CSS with vague examples (not vague in a bad way), this book teaches you specific examples and gives you extra resources. This book is somewhat of a cookbook of commonly used CSS methods. Each author brings their unique writing style to the table, and each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of design and its CSS and styling methods.

Chapter 1 starts with Headings. The author of this chapter gives a brief introduction to hierarchy and branding, and how you can achieve more control with your look and typography. As typography is discussed, he moves on to talk about image replacement and the many techniques available to us today. There is no perfect solution when it comes to image replacement, but the author does a great job of showing current methods, their advantages, and their disadvantages (including an in-depth section on sIFR).

Chapter 2 is all about Images. The author starts by showing you how to create a basic but aesthetically pleasing image gallery. The task at hand is to create the enlarged version, the thumbnail page, and the galleries page while keeping the markup lean and semantic. Each of these are put together very nicely with flair not usually seen in off the shelf image galleries. The author also discusses how to create images (in context) with captions, including a nice use of transparent PNGs. The authors creative use of captions give you options outside of the box (both semantically and philosophically) of normal captions that are seen all around the web.

Chapter 3 shows us that backgrounds dont have to be boring. This is a very simple chapter that discusses backgrounds of the past (repeating pictures, large pictures, etc), and then looks forward to the present in getting creative with your backgrounds. He uses a case study as an example, and it shows specifics of positioning and layering.

Chapter 4 jumps into Navigation. Different types of navigations are discussed (vertical, horizontal, tabbed, variable width, etc) and shown with specific examples. The author shows how to take from each of those to create advanced navigation systems using images and your semantic markup. I think that from this chapter a user could create an advanced navigation simply because the foundation is set pretty solid before he gets to the advanced section. This chapter goes hand-in-hand with chapter 1 when talking about image replacement.

Chapter 5 discusses the dreaded (sometimes feared) Forms. Forms come in all shapes and sizes and it is up to us to build them accordingly with the user in mind. The styling in this chapter spruces up what is a rather mundane form while giving you great flexibility and hooks to extend yourself. The author discusses the several different layout types (top aligned label, left aligned label, right aligned label) and shows how to enhance each. If you work with forms often, this chapter will help you whip up a clean interface for the task.

Chapter 6 is everybodys favorite chapter Rounded Corners. The author gives you an arsenal of tools (and knowledge) to attack the task of adding rounded corners. He discusses the different methods (horizontal stretching, vertical stretching, and full flexibility) and shows you how to achieve each keeping in mind the task of keeping the markup minimal and meaningful. We also get a brief glimpse into what CSS3 will have to offer us with multiple backgrounds per element.

Chapter 7 closes out the book with Tables. Tables still have a strong place in web development and the author shows you how to use tables properly (with semantic markup) and then how to give them a little visual jump-start and interaction. The markup presented here helps you give clear meaning to your tables as well as building with accessibility in mind (which is always important with tables, specifically). We round off the chapter looking at some interaction enhancements via Javascript that we can use with our tables (sorting, striping, and hovering).

Overall I found this book to be an excellent read. It was short and to the point, and gives the reader a great starting point (as well as inspiration). The book itself is well designed. My only qualms with the book is that the code examples are listed in full in many places, which gives less room for content related to the chapters. As I said in the beginning, this was a fairly quick read but well worth it. I would say that this is for an intermediate CSS developer, as specific CSS is not discussed in great detail but given to you as a way to achieve a specific design task. If you are familiar with CSS and need a quick way to achieve the tasks listed above, then this book is perfect for you."

Submission + - Two young atheists visit the Creation Museum[PICS]

Submitted by christinabelle on Sunday June 17, 2007 @12:54PM

christinabelle writes: Save yourself (and your money) by browsing through these images rather than attending the museum, located near Cincinnati. With the exception of a few videos, the museum's exhibits are documented in their entirety. The homemade t-shirts are worth a look alone. Look no further, here are your Answers in Genesis...

Submission + - great blogger at M2TV makes Comcast cower (multichannel.com)

Submitted by

bill jackson

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @12:35PM

bill jackson writes: ""Comcast: the Fleecing of a Subscriber"..... This blogger, Mary McNamara, has really caught them this time! She's a regular reporter for Multichannel News (which is pretty much the bible of the cable industry) — and she spanks Comcast on her blog. She says she's "fed-up" with their "bait-and-switch and shakedown tactics."...and she gets very very specific about the Comcast consumer rip-off games. http://www.multichannel.com/blog/1300000330/post/4 0010804.html?"

Submission + - Michael Moore's new "Sicko" leaked on BitT (zeropaid.com)

Submitted by

Jared

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @12:26PM

Jared writes: "Michael Moore went so far as to stash a copy of his new documentary "Sicko," a scathing indictment of the US healthcare system, in Canada over fears the Feds would seize it since a portion of it was filmed in Cuba despite the current US embargo against it. Buyt, it won't matter after all since a copy of it has been leaked on BitTorrent and P2P networks everywhere.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/8846/Michael+Moore's+ new+documentary+%22Sicko%22+leaked+on+BitTorrent"

Submission + - Microsoft Getting into American Election Business!

Submitted by myspace-cn on Sunday June 17, 2007 @07:47AM

myspace-cn writes: The 800 pound gorilla of software development has moved forcefully into New York State with proposed changes(PDF WARNING) to New York State Election Law drafted by Microsoft attorneys that has been circulating among the Legislature. These changes would gut the source code escrow and review provisions provided current LAW!! There's more information on Bo Lipari's web blog and on Bradblog.com Ain't it time to get rid of these machines?!

Submission + - Closed captioning in web video

Submitted by

mforbes

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @06:17AM

mforbes writes: "I, like many geeks, enjoy watching TV, movies, and streamed video. However, I suffer from a problem known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD), which essentially means that I often have difficulties separating the sounds of human voices from various background noises.

When watching TV and when watching movies at home, this isn't a problem, as I can simply turn on the closed captioning. I never watch any television programs without CCTV, actually, and find radio to be an annoyance for the same reason.

Given this, and that CAPD only effects two to three percent of the population (see the preceding link), how much effort would it take the major purveyors of internet video (the broadcasting majors, etc) to include an option for CCTV? I ask this not as a technical expert, although I doubt the bandwidth required would be more than 1% of that required for the video already being presented, but as someone who simply cannot understand much of the dialogue due to this handicap.

As a social libertarian, I would never ask that there be government regulation of such an enterprise; I ask only that the major studios be aware of the difficulties that those of us with auditory disorders face. If it's rough for me, how much more difficult can it be for someone who can't hear at all?

To answer the obvious question, "Why did you post this to Your Rights Online?"
The only response I have is through the American with Disability Act. I acknowledge that this is a law, not a constitutional principle, and that it doesn't matter at all in countries other than the US. Nevertheless, as an American citizen who is subject to the ADA, I find that this is the relevant forum for such discussion."

Submission + - MIT Chemists Create Fluorescent Bomb Sensor

Submitted by SoyChemist on Sunday June 17, 2007 @04:11AM

SoyChemist writes: An MIT graduate student and her adviser have designed a simple test for RDX, the principal ingredient of C-4 explosives. When dissolved in the common solvent acetonitrile and blasted with ultraviolet radiation, the chemical will give off a blue glow if the high explosive is present. In the early 1980s, Army scientists studied how anaerobic bacteria from sewage can destroy RDX. Wired reports that the old Army study was an inspiration for this new sensor. The bacteria in that study used NADH, a coenzyme that is found everywhere in nature, to break down the explosives. The chemical sensor is a VERY distant relative of NADH that reacts with RDX and becomes highly fluorescent. A cool picture of vials filled with the glowing blue liquid appears in the MIT Technology Review.

Submission + - Business Week shows offshoring bad for the economy (businessweek.com)

Submitted by

Obasan

on Sunday June 17, 2007 @01:00AM

Obasan writes: "A 'gaping flaw' in the way economic numbers are computed may be the cause of a disconnect between GDP growth claims and actual growth, especially in terms of real wages, a phenomenon many of us are at least anecdotally familiar with. Business week calls this gap "phantom-GDP", gains in reported GDP that cannot be correlated with domestic production."

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