Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Long time User (see UID of three digits) Agrees (Score 1) 178

by dbarron (#41543421) Attached to: CmdrTaco Looks Back on Fifteen Years of Slashdot

Yes, I suppose you're right (excellently thought out post btw). I seldom do anything I'd call hacking these days either. I do more 'system integration' and still nerdy stuff on occasion, but far far less frequently than back in the day, when we lived/breathed/and didn't eat it.
I was just learning PERL when Rob first put up the site and I was impressed at what he'd done with it as CGI. Nowdays, I write in PERL on occassion for quick and dirty scriplets, but not often. And you're right, Slashdot was a great place for tech exchange (Ask Slashdot) when there weren't many places (beside old USENET).
Mostly things these days just work (as you point out). However, I'm still glad to have the insight into how to diagnose varying issues, from all that experience of years gone, when you had to do that sort of thing with everything you did.
News

Submission + - California's Unspoken Health Problem: Brain Parasites (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Sunnyvale, California is a town 40 miles outside of San Francisco, in the Bay Area. As in most of California, the weather is mild, and the winters are short, even sometimes warm. On December 20, Sara Alvarez took her youngest child for a walk in the park in town. As daylight faded, Alvarez lost feeling in her right leg, then her left foot. Her body became numb, and she became weak. At 10:15 pm, her husband drove her to a hospital in Redwood City, about 20 minutes away from their town. There, over the course of Christmas, doctors batted around diagnoses: tumor, cancer.
Finally, Alvarez received a brain scan that revealed the truth: neurocysticercosis, a calcified tapeworm in her brain.
Idle

Submission + - "Old Person Smell" May Have Evolutionary Origins (sciencemag.org) 2

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Older folks give off a characteristic scent that's independent of race, creed, or diet. In a new study, researchers confirm--through some fairly unpleasant sniff testing--that there really is a smell people associate with the elderly. The ability to sniff out someone's age may have conferred an evolutionary advantage, the team reports. It's possible that those who lived longer were assumed to be stronger, healthier, or smarter and would have children who would be better equipped to survive. Thus they'd be seen—or smelled—as the most desirable mates.

Comment Ludicrous (Score 4, Insightful) 667

Being a semi-pro photographer myself (and facing the same problem), I find the woman in the original article ludicrous.
There's a lot of problems with trying to share your photos with the world (under copyright) and people using them w/o permission. I know my own photos are being used (and quite often abused) all over the place.
The photos aren't very pleasing to look at if they have watermarks all over them obscuring detail:(
Not that I don't freely allow many non-profits (including zoos) to use my photos all over the world and that I have certainly been paid for legal use of some few.
The Media

Submission + - Is "Good Enough" the future?

Submitted by himitsu
himitsu writes: In an article titled "The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine" Wired claims that the future of technology, warfare and medicine will be filled with "Good Enough" solutions: situations where feature-rich and expensive products are replaced with bare-bones infrastructures and solutions. Are we moving toward a Diamond Age scenario where only people of means can have well designed products while the general population makes due with just the cheapest possible option?
Google

Submission + - Notice something missing?

Submitted by hjf
hjf writes: Take a close look at the logo at www.google.com. Notice something missing? Well. I guess even Google can make mistakes.
Portables

Submission + - GPS in your shoes

Submitted by
nithinraju
nithinraju writes: "Introducing Quantum Satellite Technology, a new line of $325 to $350 sneakers arriving in stores next month. Whats so special about these high-priced shoes? Because of embedded GPS technology, the wearer can be located anywhere in the world."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Amazon asserts right to adjust prices after sale

Submitted by An anonymous reader
An anonymous reader writes: On December 23, Amazon advertised a "buy one get one free" sale on DVD boxsets, but did not test the promotion before going live. When anyone placed two boxsets in their cart, the website gave a double discount — so the "grand total" shown (before order submission) was $0.00 or something very small. Despite terms stating that Amazon checks order prices before shipping, Amazon shipped the vast majority of orders. Five days later (December 28), after orders had been received and presumably opened, Amazon emailed customers advising them to return the boxsets unopened or customers' credit cards would be charged an additional amount. (You can read more threads about this here and here.) Starting yesterday, Amazon has been (re)charging credit cards, often without authorization. On Amazon's side, they didn't advertise any double discount, and the free or nearly-free boxsets must have cost them a mint. But with Amazon continually giving unadvertised discounts that seem to be errors, is "return the merchandise or be charged" the new way that price glitches will be handled?
Power

Submission + - City tries to cut energy bills with LEDs

Submitted by
AkumaKuruma
AkumaKuruma writes: "Raleigh, N.C., wants to become LED City.

The city, which is in the center of the state's tech hub, is conducting experiments to see if it can cut energy consumption and maintenance costs by replacing conventional public light fixtures with ones based around light-emitting diodes.

In December, Raleigh — in conjunction with LED manufacturer Cree — replaced high-pressure sodium lights in a downtown parking garage with LED lights. Although the LED lamps cost substantially more than regular sodium lamps, they require less electricity and need to be replaced far less often.

Early projections indicate that the expense of retrofitting the garage's lighting system will get recovered in cost savings in two to three years, said Mayor Charles Meeker.

"We are saving over 40 percent of the energy we would otherwise use," said Meeker, who's currently on his third two-year term. "And the quality is better. With sodium lights, you get bugs in the cover, and the light is kind of yellowish."

Next, Raleigh will kick off a pilot program with LED streetlights and will also seek funds to convert the city's other parking garages. If all seven municipal parking lots in the city were retrofitted, it could save the city $100,000 a year in energy consumption and decreased maintenance, he said. The lights in stadiums, gyms, schools, parks and other public venues could be next.

If successful, the experiment could ultimately serve as a showcase for something several LED manufacturers are angling to accomplish: maneuvering LEDs into the commercial and residential lighting market. LEDs are used in flashlights and car headlights and taillights, but commercial and residential lighting represents a much larger opportunity. Approximately 22 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States goes toward lighting, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

LEDs can last 75,000 hours or longer and consume far less power than standard incandescent bulbs. Only about 5 percent of the energy that goes into conventional bulbs actually turns into light; the rest gets dissipated as heat. If 25 percent of the lightbulbs in the United States were converted to LEDs putting out 150 lumens (a measure of light output) per watt — higher than the most current models — the country as a whole could save $115 billion in utility costs cumulatively by 2025, according to University of California Santa Barbara professor Stephen DenBaars.

LEDs also have begun to outperform fluorescent bulbs in energy efficiency, said Cree CEO Chuck Swoboda. The company last year unveiled an LED that can put out about 70 lumens per watt. That's a bit better than many compact fluorescent bulbs — those cone-shaped things that fit into regular light fixtures — on the market, which often get 60 lumens per watt.

The problem up until now has been cost. Consumers and businesses can buy lighting fixtures based around LEDs now, but the price is high compared with other types of lights. While fluorescent manufacturers dispute many of the energy efficiency claims by the LED industry, they also note that their products cost far less.

The rising cost of electricity, combined with the declining prices of LEDs, however, is making diodes more attractive to manufacturers of lighting fixtures, Swoboda said. Over the next year, LED-based light fixtures for commercial buildings and signs will begin to increase in number, he said. The commercial market in many ways is inherently more attractive because they don't need to be replaced as often, which cuts down the number of times the maintenance crew has to put up a ladder.

Nonetheless, he added that LED lights would likely begin to appear in new homes in six months to a year. Contractors can absorb the cost in the overall price of the home.

Making an LED light fixture stronger or less bright is largely a matter of how the fixture is designed and the number of LEDs inside. A lawn light based around LEDs might have two of the diodes inside, said Swoboda; a light for a garage might have 84.

LEDs emit red, blue or green light on their own. To make white light, the light from blue LEDs passes through a yellowish phosphor."
Businesses

Submission + - Canon to erase users' photos and start afresh

Submitted by freeAgent (Kevin Noonan)
freeAgent (Kevin Noonan) writes: Canon announced on January 5th that it would shut down (0) its existing photo-site (1) and launch a revamped site. Rather than automatically transfer users' existing photos (and movies) to the new site, Canon has adopted the novel approach of erasing all of their data. Canon has left it to users to save any photos they haven't backed up elsewhere and upload photos again manually to the new site. February 15th is the deadline for deletion. (0) http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Canon_Image_Gatewa y/termination_announcement.asp (1) http://www.cig.canon-europe.com/

Slashdot Top Deals

The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.

Close