Comment Re:Dear Slashdot, this is a joke site. (Score 1) 201
Captain, our sarcasm detectors have taken damage. Take evasive action.
Comment Re:Web crawler shell script + Starbucks = Profit! (Score 1) 549
Yes, please.
Pay Or Else, News Site Threatens 549
WED Fan writes "The North Country Gazette, a news blog, says users who read beyond a single page of an article must pay up or they will be tracked down. They don't have a pay wall. If you go beyond page 1, you owe them. From the article: 'A subscription is required at North Country Gazette. We allow only one free read per visitor. We are currently gathering IPs and computer info on persistent intruders who refuse to buy subscription and are engaging in a theft of services. We have engaged an attorney who will be doing a bulk subpoena demand on each ISP involved, particularly Verizon Droids, Frontier and Road Runner, and will then pursue individual legal actions.'"
Submission + - Segway Company Owner Rides One to His Death (msn.com)
RockClimbingFool writes: Jim Heselden, a British businessman who bought the Segway company less than a year ago, died after riding one of the scooters off a cliff and into a river near his Yorkshire estate.
Submission + - Segway Company Owner Dies While Driving A Segway 3
necro81 writes: Jimi Heselden, the British multi-millionaire defense contractor and philanthropist, who bought the Segway company last December from inventor Dean Kamen, died yesterday after an accident while riding one of the machines. While using a ruggedized X2 version of the two-wheeled balancing scooter at his estate in North Yorkshire, he apparently drove over the edge of a precipice and into the River Wharfe. He was found later by a passerby and declared dead on the scene.
Jupiter Is Missing a Belt 187
mbone writes "Jupiter just went through Superior Conjunction (i.e., went behind the Sun as seen from the Earth), so it has been out of view for a while. Now that it has returned, it is different — the South Equatorial Belt (SEB) is missing. The SEB has about 10 times the surface area of the Earth, so this is not a small change. Here are a series of photos of Jupiter's new look. The Great Red Spot typically inhabits the southern border of the SEB, but it doesn't seem to be affected by the change. It's a pity that this happened at Superior Conjunction, and that there is no satellite in Jupiter orbit, so details of the change are largely missing. The SEB has previously gone missing in 1973 and 1990. Since no one really knows what makes the Jovian belts, no one knows why they disappear either. If the belts are really just material from deeper layers coming to the surface, it is possible that the convection has stopped for some reason, or that high-altitude clouds have covered it over."
Comment Re:More is good, but (Score 2) 209
Can I nominate a second in Papyrus???
Salad Spinner Made Into Life-Saving Centrifuge 87
lucidkoan writes "Two Rice University students have transformed a simple salad spinner into an electricity-free centrifuge that can be used to diagnose diseases on the cheap. Created by Lauren Theis and Lila Kerr, the ingenious DIY centrifuge is cobbled together using a salad spinner, some plastic lids, combs, yogurt containers, and a hot glue gun. The simple and easily-replicated design could be an invaluable tool for clinics in the developing world, enabling them to separate blood to detect diseases like anemia without electricity."
What Happened To Obama's Open Source Adviser? 296
gov_coder writes "Back in January of 2009, various news articles announced that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser. Currently, however, a search for Scott on the whitehouse.gov website yields zero results. Searching a bit more, I found that Scott is currently working on CurriWiki, a kind of Wikipedia for school curriculum. So my question is, what happened? Did some lobbyist block the appointment? Did Scott decide his other activities were more important? Scott, if you are out there — please tell us what happened. There are many people working in government IT, such as myself, who were really excited about the possibilities of an expanded role for open source software in government, and are now wondering what went wrong."
Comment BUZZ WORD ALERT! (Score 1) 555
Can we get some recourse for overuse of the word "Draconian" in recent months? I practically expected this rant to include something about Draconian DRM and how it spells the end of the world.
Rogue Brown Dwarf Lurks In Our Cosmic Neighborhood 188
astroengine writes "The UK Infrared Telescope in Hawaii has discovered a lone, cool brown dwarf called UGPSJ0722-05. As far as sub-stellar objects go, this is a strange one. For starters, it's the coolest brown dwarf ever discovered (and astronomers using the UKIRT should know; they are making a habit of finding cool brown dwarfs). Secondly, it's close. In fact, it's the closest brown dwarf to Earth, at a distance of only 10 light years. And thirdly, it has an odd spectroscopic signature, leading astronomers to think that this might be the discovery of a whole new class of brown dwarf."
Why Mozilla Needs To Go Into Survival Mode 464
Crazzaper writes "I have been using Firefox for many years, and the war of the browsers has been around for longer than that. It just so happens that now we have a lot of options out there: IE, FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and others. People are always talking about how one browser is going to take down another, but maybe that's not the issue at all. It seems very possible that one browser, like Firefox, can be taken down by multiple browsers at once, whether or not there was any intention to compete specifically with Firefox. I hadn't seen it this way, but I do now."
Netflix Streaming Arrives For the Wii 171
Grant,thompson writes "As announced in January and mentioned here on Slashdot, Netflix is sending out discs today to enable streaming on the Nintendo Wii. 'Netflix has sent out emails to customers who pre-ordered the Wii's instant streaming disc, indicating that the disc will arrive in mailboxes tomorrow, and that the service will likely start within the next day.'"
Submission + - China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. (nytimes.com)
gollum123 writes: For years, many of China’s best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge. But Mark R. Pinto is moving in the opposite direction. Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays. Applied Materials, whose headquarters are in Santa Clara, Calif., has just built its newest and largest research labs here. Last week, it even held its annual shareholders’ meeting in Xi’an. It is hardly alone. Companies — and their engineers — are being drawn here more and more as China develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States A few American companies are even making deals with Chinese companies to license Chinese technology. Applied Materials set up its latest solar research labs here after estimating that China would be producing two-thirds of the world’s solar panels by the end of this year. Not just drawn by China’s markets, Western companies are also attracted to China’s huge reservoirs of cheap, highly skilled engineers — and the subsidies offered by many Chinese cities and regions, particularly for green energy companies.
Submission + - China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S. (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: We were told that it was just low end labor that was leaving the U.S and that we needed to re-tool for high value positions. Now that even this work will no longer be available due to subsidies offered to corporations along with low wages fueled by a devalued currency, does anyone have an answer as to how Americans can hope to compete?
