patowic - Slashdot User

Psystar Activation Servers Down? 245

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday January 09, 2010 @06:49PM from the bad-news-bears dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I purchased Rebel EFI in support of Psystar's crusade back in October. Just 3 short months later, I have no support. I found this out when I upgraded my hard drive and installed Snow Leopard using Rebel EFI. The program can no longer 'phone home' to activate or download/install drivers. This is a direct contradiction to Psystar's promise posted on their website: 'Psystar will continue to support all of its existing customers of hardware and software through this transitional period. Warranties on hardware will continue to be honored as long the customer has a valid warranty. Rebel EFI support for existing customers, as always, will remain exclusively available through email and the built-in ticket interface.' Has anyone else run into this issue? It has been 9 days with no response from Psystar by e-mail or phone."

Minnesota Introduces World's First Carbon Tariff 303

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 06, 2010 @05:29PM from the hey-cut-that-crap-out dept.

hollywoodb writes "The first carbon tax to reduce the greenhouse gases from imports comes not between two nations, but between two states. Minnesota has passed a measure to stop carbon at its border with North Dakota. To encourage the switch to clean, renewable energy, Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012 ... Minnesota has been generally pushing for cleaner power within its borders, but the utility companies that operate in MN have, over the past decades, sited a lot of coal power plants on the relatively cheap and open land of North Dakota, which is preparing a legal battle against Minnesota over the tariff."

Submission + - HP computers don't care about black people (facebook.com)

Submitted by patowic on Monday December 21, 2009 @02:42PM

patowic writes: After watching the video at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fgizmodo.com%252F5431190%252Fhp-face%252520tracking-webcams-dont-recognize-black-people&h=ee0f0ab07a49b11a658742d730776bef&ref=nf , I have begun to suspect that all of HP's QA engineers are a bit melatonin-challenged...

Simulation of Close Asteroid Fly-By 148

Posted by Soulskill on Monday December 21, 2009 @11:46AM from the close-enough-to-feel-the-vacuum-breeze dept.

c0mpliant writes "NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have released a simulation of the path of an asteroid, named Apophis, that will come very close to Earth in 2029 — the closest predicted approach since humans have monitored for such heavenly bodies. The asteroid caused a bit of a scare when astronomers first announced that it would enter Earth's neighborhood some time in the future. However, since that announcement in 2004, more recent calculations have put the odds of collision at 1 in 250,000."

Journal SPAM: Top prosecutor in AIPAC case quits 6

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday February 28, 2008 @09:00PM

Published: 02/28/2008

The top prosecutor in the case against two former AIPAC staffers is quitting.

Less than two months before the trial date Kevin DiGregory, an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia's Eastern District, is joining the private intellectual property firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips starting Monday.

Journal SPAM: ACLU: U.S. Terror Watch List Surpasses 900,000 Names 2

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday February 28, 2008 @08:43PM

Wow! Just by reading these words, you probably have a better chance of making this list than winning the lottery. "In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department that the terrorist watch list information in the United States had over 700,000 names, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month. At that rate, our list will have a million names on it by July." I wonder

Journal SPAM: Spooks Looking for Terrorists in MMRPG 1

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday February 28, 2008 @08:07PM

In another bogglingly absurd and potentially abusive reach of surveillance by military and intelligence agencies, it appears that US spies believe that Osama Bin Laden may have fled caves in Tora Bora, to a secret base in World of Warcraft. After the US Congress mandated the Director of National Intelligence to submit a public re

Journal SPAM: USAF Mining Data Useage Patterns to Find Thoughtcrime

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday February 28, 2008 @07:51PM

If shutting down access to blogs isn't enough to create resentment, the Air Force is "developing data mining technology meant to root out disaffected insiders based on their e-mail activity--or lack thereof." With "Probabilistic Latent Sema

Journal SPAM: Was Scientology Plagiarized by Hubbard? 2

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday February 28, 2008 @03:28PM

Based on the evidence of this 1934 German publication, by Dr. Anastasius Nordenholz, it appears that the notion of the Church of Scientology were copped by Hubbard - the church's purported founder and prolific pulp SciFi author. Another interesting note: the English-language term "Scientology" o

Submission + - Yahoo tries to patent "enhanced" drag and

Submitted by

Unequivocal

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @11:40PM

Unequivocal writes: "They're at it again. Yahoo has recently submitted an application to the USPTO describing "enhanced drag and drop" functionality. Patents are supposed to be non-obvious, useful and novel. You think this doesn't qualify? You may be in for a surprise. Andy Oram notes that "this application seems to be a tough one to crack, despite its simplicity. Only two comments are posted, and no actual instances of prior art (although one comment tentatively suggests on instance). If no prior art is found in 35 days, the comment period closes on Peer to Patent and little stands in the way of granting the patent." Law Profs Jason Schultz and James Grimmelman discuss this issue in greater detail.

Bottom line: Unless the public submits some useful prior art soon, the patent examiner who gets this application will likely approve it. So show some holiday spirit and dig into your TurboPascal source files from 1987 and find some clever drag and drop tools that show this idea has been around for a long, long time."

Submission + - Toshiba Builds Ultra-Small Nuclear Reactor.

Submitted by

DeusExCalamus

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @11:25PM

DeusExCalamus writes: "Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs. Read more here: http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html"

Submission + - A Master's Degree in Intelligent Design (chron.com)

Submitted by

ParanoidDrunkard

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @11:24PM

ParanoidDrunkard writes: "The Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research is seeking state approval to grant an online master's degree in science education to prepare teachers to "understand the universe within the integrating framework of Biblical creationism," according to the school's mission statement. Last week, an advisory council made up of university educators voted to recommend the program for approval by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, sparking an outcry among science advocates who have fended off attempts by religious groups to insert creationism into Texas classrooms. But students and faculty must profess faith in a literal translation of Biblical creation — that God created the world in six days and made humans and animals in their current life forms; that the Earth is only thousands of years old; and the fossil record is the result of a global flood described in the Bible, according to the Web site. Is this another attempt to validate intelligent design as a science?"

Submission + - HP Unwilling to Fix BIOS for Linux Users (mattparnell.com)

Submitted by

ilikenwf

on Wednesday December 19, 2007 @11:11PM

ilikenwf writes: "Many users have had issues with the HP laptops that are currently on the market as a result of a BIOS bug persists to pop up on HP's laptops, regardless of the various updates. This causes users to have to disable lapic, which keeps features like high resolution timers from being used to increase speed and drastically increase battery life. Contacting customer support has been less than helpful, as displayed by HP's arrogance. Any BIOS hackers out there?...And no, LinuxBIOS will not work on these laptops."

Submission + - Tour my floor (jaycharles.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 15, 2007 @08:01PM

An anonymous reader writes: Concept is simple. Some dude rigged up a webcam to an R/C car and wrote some funky backend code with a Flash interface so you can control his R/C car online, from anywhere and take a tour around his room. And the best bit about it... no cops or speed cameras anywhere!

Submission + - Surfer's Theory of Everything Stuns Physicists (arxiv.org)

Submitted by

Baldrson

on Thursday November 15, 2007 @08:01PM

Baldrson writes: "The UK Telegraph reports that: A surfer dude named Garrett Lisi has come up with a new theory of everything which physicists are calling "fabulous", "incredibly beautiful", "profound" and "most compelling". Lisi's peer-reviewed paper titled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" is being published with the New Scientist. The Telegraph article continues: "Lisi is now calculating the masses that the 20 new particles should have, in the hope that they may be spotted when the Large Hadron Collider starts up.""

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