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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Every boy used to do this (Score 5, Interesting) 1078

When I was in school, it was basically a full time job for many of us boys to figure out ways to make ever larger and more dramatic explosions happen. We used to fill trash bags full of methane from the lab, seal them with tape, then release them with a lit fuse and watch this huge fireball in the sky (I stopped before the principal took notice, so I didn't get caught:). I mean, kids just do stuff like that.

The difference today is the zero-tolerance rules in many public schools where even a little 6-year-old boy making a shape of a gun with his hand and going "bang!" at another kid is grounds for suspension.

As usual, bureaucracy gets it wrong. That girl should be reinstated and an apology should be issued, otherwise she'll be barred for life from many professions (albeit, as a minor theoretically her record is sealed, but in reality she's screwed).

And racism? That was just an extra little tidbit the OP added to spice things up. Ridiculous.

Comment It's a pretty neat little gadget (Score 2) 74

I got one about a month ago from Newark. I got a ($12) case too, and that came much sooner; the Pi took about two weeks to arrive.
Setting it up was pretty straightforward. I installed the Raspbian image to an 8gb Sd card (about $7 from Amazon), plugged the Pi directly into my router, and powered it up using one of my various microUSB chargers I have lying around.

Then I was able to get in easily using ssh. I updated the OS, added a few utilities, and started vncserver. From that point, I could access the graphical UI from a window on my Suse desktop. SSH is faster, however; the board isn't that fast.

I plugged in a spare bluetooth dongle that was not recognized by my Suse desktop, but the Pi recognized it properly and could see other bluetooth devices around the house. Neat!

I then plugged in a USB wireless dongle that I had lying around, and it came right up. Now it's completely portable around the house, no longer tied to the router. I attached a cheap webcam I had gotten a while back on ebay, and I installed motion, as per a nice how-to, and immediately the Pi became a surveillance system.

I was going to set it up in front of the house, but then I got the idea I wanted to interface it to my electronic piano in the living room. I got a $6.75 MIDI-to-USB cable and attached the Pi to the piano. Previously I had an identical cable working nicely with a midi keyboard and my Suse desktop. This one did not seem to register as a midi device; I'm going to have to find a driver, or else write some software of my own. My goal is to have a tablet-controlled midi sequencer, so that I can record midi to the Pi and play it back through the piano. A bigger project than I've had time for up to now, but I hope to get to it soon.

It's a fun little board and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys hacking around with Linux and automating things around the house. There's probably fifty other uses for it that I haven't thought of yet.

Comment Re:bullet in the head (Score 1) 524

Your point is taken, but it might be better worded: "After years of watching Yahoo twitching on the gurney, Mayer is finally putting a bullet in their head."
Otherwise, it sounds as though Mayer is the one doing the twitching on the gurney. Which I suppose she was, back in October when she was delivering her baby boy. Could have been done on a gurney.

Comment Re:Why not popular? (Score 1) 245

Are you figuring in the $16,000 to $18,000 cost of an economy sedan?

Or the $24,000 for an SUV or more option-laden vehicle that many opt for (on monthly payments)?

Even if you're paying $100 for a public transport monthly pass, it would take around 15 years to make up for purchasing a vehicle, and that's not even counting fuel, insurance, and maintenance costs. Then there's the risk to life and limb that is much lower for bus/train riders.

Comment Re:How was it broken into again? (Score 1) 272

What if they're wearing ski masks or stockings over their faces? So much for high def cameras.

The question in my mind is, what is motivating these crooks to break into this office? If it's such a lean, barebones kind of operation, I wonder what it is that makes thieves think, this room must have valuable stuff that is worth the risk?

Maybe they should move their office to a safer neighborhood. Or, remove all the bars and obvious theft-deterrence stuff (keep the hidden cams and alarms, if they're already in place) and take the hard disks home at night. Lock down the gear such as monitors and CPUs with cables strong enough to satisfy the insurance company, don't keep a box of petty cash, empty the filing cabinet and make the company files virtual, and leave it at that.

Or maybe let your friend's Rottweiler sleep in the office every night for a few months. The gang that's working that neighborhood will get the message and stay away.

Comment Re:maybe they read xkcd (Score 4, Insightful) 108

Actually that's pretty spot-on. I hate how every news organization today has to have its own downloadable app. "Welcome to the South Butt-hole Sentinel! Click OK to download our app! Or [typesize=0.001]click here to continue to site."

I don't want to have a whole menagerie of single-site news apps of varying quality and usability. Aggregator apps such as Currents and Flipboard are a step in the right direction, but they leave me cold as well; they're weird, they pick and choose articles they think I want to see (usually off the mark) and a lot of the periodical's value is lost in translation. Among other things, the talkbacks are stripped out and these days, I find the talkbacks more entertaining and, sometimes more informative, than the original article.

Comment Re:what (Score 1) 443

"nowadays"? How old are you? This has always been the way of the world. Ideals and outliers aside, journalism is not about telling the complete truth and nothing but the truth. It's about making a name for oneself, influencing decisionmakers, having power over people.

As for "justice", this too has always been an arbitrary, agenda-driven kind of goal. This poor, depressed kid was obviously victimized by an abusive DOJ prosecutor trying to make a name for herself. His conviction would not have brought any kind of justice. All he did was unlock something that millions of college students and professors and affiliated academics already have full access to. Thirty-five years! This Ortiz is the one who should go to prison.

Comment Re:Funny (Score 5, Insightful) 82

Patents are definitely a big problem for start-ups. When you are big enough to have a Legal Department with an Intellectual Property specialist or three, you can maybe deal with all the patent trolls out there not to mention the few legitimate patents that may challenge your product.

But for the rest of us, it's an almost insurmountable challenge. Once when I was trying to develop a voicemail contraction (yeah this was sort of pre-cell phone and pre-Google Voice and all that nice stuff we have today) for small offices, I was astounded by the kinds of patents out there. Some guy patented a "method to push a button to record a voice". Someone else patented a "method to store voice recordings in digital format in computer memory". Was I as a one person start-up going to have to find a way around ridiculously obvious patents like this?

So if someone big comes along and offers you a million or two for your baby company, it's going to be awfully tempting. Then again, as I recall, Microsoft offered the Netscape guys about $20 million for their browser back in the early Web days. They politely declined and went on to be worth hundreds of millions. It's a tough call to make, but you do have to be a bit of a gambler if you want to really make it big.

Slashdot Top Deals

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning. -- Plato

Working...