Comment Re:I wish they'd do it here. (Score 1) 372
We've got it here in Oakland. The lights were changed about 2 weeks ago, at least on my street.
Comment All I can say is..... WOW! (Score 2) 353
Jeez - I knew this guy. For me this is what makes this story incredibly interesting.
He used to frequent a fairly small yoga class in Aptos about 10 years ago with his wife at the time. I remember he brought in a bunch of yoga books which he wrote and gave copies to everybody. I didn't know he was the McAfee guy at first but he seemed like an interesting person.
He later suffered from the local small-town rumor mill for something he did that I didn't pay attention to.
But this story is astounding to me! It reads like a gangster movie script.
Comment Re:not new... (Score 1) 133
... and I just used up all my mod points.
South Korea Will Revisit Plan To Nix Evolution References in Textbooks 286
After reports that South Korean had "surrendered to creationists" by removing references to evolution in several textbooks, openfrog writes with this excerpt from Science Insider that indicates the fight is still in progress: "The South Korean government is poised to appoint a new committee that will revisit a controversial plan to drop two examples of evolutionary theory from high school textbooks. The committee, to be led by insect taxonomist Byoung-Hoon Lee, a member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, has been asked to re-evaluate requests from a Korean creationist group to drop references to bird and horse evolution that they argue promote 'atheist materialism.' At the same time, about 50 prominent Korean scientists are preparing to present government officials with a petition, organized by the Korean Association of Biological Sciences, which calls for rejecting the proposed changes. 'When these things are done, I think it will turn out that after all Korean science will not surrender to religion' says Jae Choe, an evolutionary biologist at Ewha Womans University in Seoul who helped organize the petition."
Comment WiFi enabled printer? (Score 0) 203
The hardware is there to print from a WiFi device like an Android tablet. Windows computers are able to print this way with the drivers available to them so it may be a hack to do it from Android. You would need a conduit to allow all apps to print this way.
OTOH, printing from a given app would be easier to do, just have to reverse-engineer the printer drivers.
USPS Ending Overnight First-Class Letter Service 713
New submitter cstacy writes "The United States Postal Service will be closing half of its processing centers this spring. Currently, 42% of first-class mail is delivered the following day for nearby residential and business customers. But that overnight mail will be a thing of the past, with delivery guaranteed only for 2-3 days. About 51% will be delivered in two days. Periodicals may take up to nine days. (Additional delays beyond this may come into play when Congress also authorizes USPS to close operations for some days each week.)"
Senator Wants 'Terrorist' Label On Blogs 370
itwbennett writes "Terrorist suspect Jose Pimentel had a blog on Google-owned Blogger. And so it follows that Senator Joe Lieberman sent a letter to Google CEO Larry Page taking him to task because 'Blogger's Content Policy does not expressly ban terrorist content.' Lieberman also pointed out that YouTube does ban terrorist content and added that 'Google's inconsistent standards are adversely affecting our ability to counter violent Islamist extremism online.'"
Submission + - Rights to Intelligent Design move to be auctioned (wsj.com) 1
madirad writes: "The WSJ reports:
Actor Ben Stein’s controversial documentary, which blasts evolution in favor of intelligent design, is up for the sale to the highest bidder.That’s right. Between June 21 and June 28, you can submit bids online for all the rights to Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” film. According to Forbes, it’s up for grabs as part of the liquidation of film producer Premise Media Holdings LP. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in December 2009 and is now seeking to sell the rights, court papers show.
In the film, Stein—a lawyer and former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon as well as the monotone-voiced teacher in both the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and television’s “The Wonder Years”—argues that the academic world unfairly
punishes those who question evolution and support the theory of intelligent design."
Actor Ben Stein’s controversial documentary, which blasts evolution in favor of intelligent design, is up for the sale to the highest bidder.That’s right. Between June 21 and June 28, you can submit bids online for all the rights to Stein’s “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” film. According to Forbes, it’s up for grabs as part of the liquidation of film producer Premise Media Holdings LP. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in December 2009 and is now seeking to sell the rights, court papers show.
In the film, Stein—a lawyer and former speechwriter for President Richard Nixon as well as the monotone-voiced teacher in both the movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and television’s “The Wonder Years”—argues that the academic world unfairly
punishes those who question evolution and support the theory of intelligent design."
'Reading Level' Filter Added To Google Search 266
entotre writes "A new feature has been added to the advanced Google search: reading level. From the blog post: 'The feature lets you filter or annotate the search results by reading level. The reading levels include basic, intermediate and advanced. You can either have Google label or annotate the results with those labels, only show basic results, only show intermediate results or only show advanced results.' At the time of writing, Slashdot is 1 % advanced, 64 % intermediate and 34 % basic."
Comment Re:The Count of Cagayan de Oro City (Score 1) 87
The story would definitely not be the same!
Things You Drink Can Be Used To Track You 202
sciencehabit writes with an intriguing story about the potential of figuring out where people have been by examining their hair: "That's because water molecules differ slightly in their isotope ratios depending on the minerals at their source. Researchers found that water samples from 33 cities across the United State could be reliably traced back to their origin based on their isotope ratios. And because the human body breaks down water's constituent atoms of hydrogen and oxygen to construct the proteins that make hair cells, those cells can preserve the record of a person's travels. Such information could help prosecutors place a suspect at the scene of a crime, or prove the innocence of the accused." Or frame someone by slipping them water from every country on the terrorist watchlist.
Submission + - Casino Loses Some $60,000 Due to Software Upgrade (ieee.org)
madirad writes: The Lumiere Place Casino & Hotel in downtown St. Louis, Missouri had to shut down its slot machines this Wednesday morning after a software upgrade the previous night went badly, a story in the St. Louis Today reports. The slot machines were shut down from 0800 to 1130 when they were brought back on-line.
The casino reportedly brings in an average of $23,100 per hour while it is open. Wednesday morning is not a busy time so the losses were likely less than that or conversely, what could have occurred over a weekend.
An intriguing bit of the story was that IBM technicians were called in to fix the problem, which wasn't described in any detail. I may be wrong, but I don't think IBM is in the slot machine software business, so I suspect the problem had to do with some networking software connecting the slot machines themselves.
The casino reportedly brings in an average of $23,100 per hour while it is open. Wednesday morning is not a busy time so the losses were likely less than that or conversely, what could have occurred over a weekend.
An intriguing bit of the story was that IBM technicians were called in to fix the problem, which wasn't described in any detail. I may be wrong, but I don't think IBM is in the slot machine software business, so I suspect the problem had to do with some networking software connecting the slot machines themselves.
Comment Flying cars are coming soon! (Score 1) 135
The 1933 article on flying cars is wonderful. The article describes the general plan for a flying car infrastructure - using a lot of rubber - for flying cars - which use steam power. I would love to know what ever happened to these plans because it sounds like a sure thing from the tone of the article.
Has Apple Created the Perfect Board Game Platform? 531
andylim writes "recombu.com is running an interesting piece about how Apple has created a 'Jumanji (board game) platform.' The 9.7-inch multi-touch screen is perfect for playing board games at home, and you could use Wi-Fi or 3G to play against other people when you're on your own. What would be really interesting is if you could pair the iPad with iPhones, 'Imagine a Scrabble iPad game that used iPhones as letter holders. You could hold up your iPhone so that no one else could see your letters and when you were ready to make a word on the Scrabble iPad board, you could slide them on to the board by flicking the word tiles off your iPhone.' Now that would be cool."
Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes 538
artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote 'the results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'"
