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Education

Submission + - Why Are College Dorms Such Dumps?

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "'I will be paying for this overcrowded, unsanitary, fly-infested, sinking dorm with hostile doorways for what could be half my life.' So writes 'Stephan K.' of the trailer that serves as his home-away-from-home at Bard College, where students can shell out $36,534 in tuition and $10,346 for room-and-board for such luxurious digs. Which begs the bigger question: With the nation's brightest minds on their payrolls, why can't universities and colleges figure out how to provide students with something better than slumlord-level accommodations?"
Classic Games (Games)

Submission + - Playing a Video Game Marathon for Charity 1

Submitted by Cerlyn
Cerlyn writes: Members of the LoadingReadyRun comedy group are playing a marathon session of the Desert Bus video game to support the Child's Play charity. Child's Play goal is to provide toys, games, books and cash to a variety of hospitals within the United States as well as abroad.

While this video game marathon may seem straightforward, the goal of Desert Bus is to make a series of eight-hour trips from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real-time without pausing, and the amount of time members of LRR are willing to play the game depends on how much in donations they receive. So far, they have driven the bus for 17 hours, and have another 73 hours paid-in-advance to go...
Wireless Networking

Submission + - XO Laptop Despised by Intel and Microsoft (wsj.com)

Submitted by
gregsim
gregsim writes: "The Wall Street Journal today reports that the new XO laptop, the brainchild of Mr. Nicholas Negroponte, a professor on leave from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is stimulating an active response from both Intel and Microsoft which evidently feel threatened by the little upstart, intended to help third world children. Microsoft has cut their software to $3 each and Intel has designed their own laptop called the Classmate to sell between $230 and $300, nearly double that of the XO. Rather than defend the relative merits of his creation, professor Negroponte is crying foul and (if the article is to be believed) not even arguing the technical merits. The initial demand for the XO has fallen well below Mr. Negroponte's projections as Intel and Microsoft have successfully argued that their entries are superior. 45,000 have been ordered through the Give One, Get One campaign. I am happy that I ordered mine — it will be a landmark model in any case."
Christmas Cheer

Submission + - Group raises money for Child's Play w/ video game. (desertbus.org)

Submitted by
James
James writes: "Hey, just thought you guys might find this kinda cool. A Victoria, BC (Canada) web based sketch comedy group has found a cool way to raise some money for Child's Play this year. They are playing Desert Bus, a mini game within Penn and Teller: Smoke and Mirrors. Basically they keep driving until the donations stop. They have already raised 1100.00 dollars and haven't really gotten much press about it. If you guys were able to give them a link i am sure that would help them emensely in reaching their 5000.00 dollar goal. Check them out at www.desertbus.org"
Books

Submission + - good web design practices?

Submitted by gnomungus
gnomungus writes: My girlfriend is interested in learning some web design for a new job that she's starting soon, but she has very little prior programming experience. I told her that a book on introductory programming and good programing practices would be the most valuable thing she could read before trying to pick up specific languages. When she asked for a recommendation, however, I was stumped. Is there a good introduction to programming book out there with a focus on web design?
NASA

Submission + - High-tech shuttle protected by low-tech traps

Submitted by Cerlyn
Cerlyn writes: The Kennedy Space Center, where the high-tech Space Shuttle launches and can land, is actually part of a wildlife sanctuary. But in order to deal with the alligators, coyotes, wild boar, and other animals which pose a risk to the space facility, NASA takes an extremely low-tech approach.

The Miami Herald has an article on John Tanner, who has been in charge of trapping wildlife around the Kennedy space center for over 40 years. So whether you have an alligator beneath an ice machine or inside of a missile silo, Tanner's your best bet.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - New Laws of Robotics proposed for US kill-bots

Submitted by jakosc
jakosc writes: The Register has a short commentry about a proposed new set of laws of robotics for war robots by John S Canning of the Naval Surface Warfare Centre. Unlike Azimov's three laws of robotics Canning proposes (pdf) that we should "Let machines target other machines and let men target men." although this sounds OK in principle, "a robot could decide under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear.."
Privacy

Submission + - YouTube Takedowns: Any 15-year old can do it

Submitted by BillGatesLoveChild
BillGatesLoveChild writes: Recently Slashdotters wondered how easy it would be to take down YouTube videos. Wonder no longer:

A 15-year old Australian Boy with nothing more than a HotMail account emailed YouTube saying he was the "Australian Broadcasting Corporation" and under the DMCA ordered YouTube to take down hundreds of videos. They did without immediately and without question. YouTube did not try and call the ABC back, nor ask why the email came from Hotmail. Given Cringely's recent report which lead to Slashdotters asking the question, YouTube seem remarkably slow to learn. How many more DMCA attacks will there be before they get the message?

Many of the Video's were from the ABC's The Chaser, including one where a prankster rolling a cigar asked Senator Hillary Clinton if he could be her new intern. The Chaser Staff were impressed with the youngster, "I don't think we should prosecute him — we should probably hire him."
America Online

Submission + - ACS (aka AOL's Crappy Software)

Submitted by
Speaker for the Masses
Speaker for the Masses writes: "Hiya Slashdotters. I just got done a reboot after using XP's Add/Remove feature to remove the program "AOL Connectivity Services from my computer. It boots up as a little AOL logo on my system tray that was impossible to close without going into CTL+ALT+DEL. I uninstalled it, and lo and behold, upon reboot, it's still there. According to XP though, it's no longer installed, but booted up like I hadn't done a thing to it. Any help for removing AOL software that DOESN'T involve formatting the HD?"
Data Storage

Submission + - Plextor Exits DVD drive market

Submitted by
mrshowtime
mrshowtime writes: "It's a shame, but Plextor, maker of the best DVD burners in the business has decided to exit the business. They cited competition from Korea and falling profit margins.
http://wesleytech.com/plextor-exits-cd-dvd-marke ts/"
Software

Journal Journal: Why "C:\Program Files\" ?!? 2

Journal by ChezWhiz
I've always installed software to the default location authored by the vendor, usually somewhere under "c:\Program Files\". Most installation software vendors (InstallShield, Wise, etc.) tout that location as an "industry standard best practice" for installing software on Windows systems and point to Microsoft's Application Development Guidelines. Now I'm working on the next release of some software that has been installed to a folder on the root of the hard drive for 25 years (that's not a ty
Businesses

Submission + - Whatever happened to Aerogel?

Submitted by
BK117
BK117 writes: "When I first saw the news releases for this amazing material (in the early 1990's) they said it would revolutionize refrigerators, hot water heaters and many other devices needing lightweight insulation. Well, I have yet to see any consumer-level appliances using aerogels. Why not?"
The Media

Submission + - Dinosaurs, humans coexist in U.S. creation museum

Submitted by jlowery
jlowery writes: Yeah, yeah: flamebait. But it's not the museum I find darkly amusing, it's the following paragraph in this Reuters story.

Mocking publicity is free publicity," Looy said. Besides, U.S. media have been more respectful, mindful perhaps of a 2006 Gallup Poll showing almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve, but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.
I long for the days when journalists aspired to the old-fashioned ideal of being guardians of the truth. Instead, media chooses to be 'respectful' of quaint pre-19th century theologic explanations of the natural world just because half of Americans would rather be spoonfed fairy stories instead of cracking open a science book. If they did, they would soon understand how the miraculous world they live in today is due entirely to men and women applying the scientific method to understand the world around them.

While the truth may be murky at times, that does not mean that every half-baked extreme point of view has to be given equal deliberation or respect.
The Internet

Submission + - High Latency on my Internet Connection

Submitted by
Hoganchild
Hoganchild writes: "For the past week, my connection has been troubled with bouts of unusually high ping. Anyone who plays games online knows how frustrating it can be trying to play an FPS with a ping of about 150-200... It just doesn't work. It started sometime last Sunday, and has been popping up here and there ever since. It usually lasts a few hours, then goes away. I've scanned for spyware with spybot and adaware, and removed some "threats". I did the same with my antivirus (used AVG free, and avast!). When this didn't work, I promptly phoned my ISP, and was on the phone with tech support for at least an hour, trying to fix it. Alas, this was to no avail. My question is, is there anything I can do on my end, by tweaking my connection settings, or anything else, that can help stop this lag? I'm not running on a router or anything, my modem is hardwired directly to my pc. Any help would be greatly appreciated."

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