Comment Yes but... (Score 2) 57
... does it run emacs?
Comment No Child Left Alone... (Score 2) 684
made things a lot worse. When my oldest (who is actually good at math) went to school, he never got in trouble because he'd get some A's, a few B's and occasionally he'd even get an F... by now, math and other subjects are so dumbed down that any reasonably smart person gets straight A's - and suddenly you're being punished for being too smart... In the end, we need kids to fail more in every way.
Peter.
Comment Re:after seeing what happened in Egypt (Score 1) 339
I can't remember anyone recently claiming that the US was a democracy... House members voting against what their constituents want, presidents signing clearly unconstitutional bills into law and the supreme court refusing to hear important cases? Just cause the president belongs to the democratic party, doesn't mean our formerly great country is still a democracy...
Comment Would be a great way... (Score 2) 339
To bring jobs back to the US... put in the internet kill switch, use it once, and all those call center jobs will come right back!
Australian Government May Shelve Internet Filter 143
RobHart writes "It is reported that the proposed filters are seen as too toxic a policy to take to the next federal election — due later this year. This is according to a spokesman for the Greens party. A Labor senator has called for the filter to be opt-in."
DIY Synthetic Aperture Radar 118
An anonymous reader lets us know about a DIY synthetic aperture radar built for $240 in parts (give or take). Here's PDF slideware from the Ph.D. student's research. "Using a discarded garage door opener, an old cordless drill, and a collection of surplus microwave parts, a high resolution X-band linear rail synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging system was developed for approximately $240 material cost. Entry into the field of radar cross section measurements or SAR algorithm development is often difficult due to the cost of high-end precision pulsed IF or other precision radar test instruments."
Comment simple != good (Score 1) 344
I like the touch surface but that "simple" window manager is just that. Simple. Too bad that there is a difference between simple and better. Just like a skateboard is simpler than a car doesn't make it more suitable to go to the grocery store with.... After all that talk of "lets increase interactivity because you can't reduce 10 fingers to one x/y coordinate" I think its a little strange that they then go to "lets reduce x/y window layouts to just x"...
In the end it just looks like an effort in changing things just for the sake of change.
Peter.
NASA Offering Free Zero Gravity Flights 52
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that NASA is offering free zero-g flight time for anyone with a viable proposal for emerging space technologies. While NASA will provide the flight time, approved projects will be responsible for all other expenses. "NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology Development and Training, or FAST, program helps emerging technologies mature through testing in a reduced gravity environment. To prepare technologies for space applications, it is important to demonstrate they work in a zero-gravity environment. This unique testing environment can be provided in an aircraft flying repeated parabolic trajectories which create brief periods of zero gravity. The aircraft also can simulate reduced-gravity levels similar to those found on the surface of the moon or Mars."
Comment DIY or it will be broken (Score 5, Interesting) 183
Any method you use can be broken. Your only chance is to reduce the likelihood that your site is worth the effort.
Basically, if you use a common solution - no matter of FOSS or commercial - then there will be a thousand other sites that use it too. This attracts attackers because they know when they hack it once, they can re-use it.
However, if you handcode something, no matter how primitive, it likely lasts a lot longer because nobody bothers hacking into your site...
Of course that doesn't work if you have a large site like myspace - there, a single site is worth the effort by itself.
Anyway - then there are two things - a really fast moving animated gif and silly things where you ask people to identify items usually work.
I help out with a site that randomly takes five pictures of cats and dogs and it asks you to identify which of the images contains the highest number of kittens... We barely ever get spam through - and that with almost 20K attempted submissions by non-humans a day makes us pretty happy
Peter.
Comment is this guy related to... (Score 1) 508
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899?
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
Peter.
Submission + - Intel X38 High End Chipset Launch and Benchmarks (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "Though many leaks of the product have been circulating for some time, Intel officially took the wraps off and launched their new X38 Express chipset for the high-end desktop motherboard market. With this launch, the Intel desktop chipset line-up gets a new flagship.
Intel's new X38 chipset encompasses all of the technology advances that have made the P35 a success and adds a slew of new features designed to increase memory and graphics subsystem performance, like PCI Express 2.0 SerDes and Intel Extreme Memory technology in the new X38 MCH.
The
Asus motherboard tested in this article at HotHardware even features an embedded Linux-based OS that boots in a matter a seconds."
Submission + - Florida Scraps Touch Screen Voting, Literally (nytimes.com) 1
Kaseijin writes: "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical scan models by July 1, 2008. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
Submission + - Fans or No Fans for Silent PCs
An anonymous reader writes: Can a PC with a fan ever be made quiet enough? Is it enough to use a big fan and run it very slowly? Is the best solution a huge heat sink made of aluminum or copper that runs on convection? This article examines the question of how to make a computer quiet enough to sit proudly in the living room without drowning out the movie playing on the TV next to it?
Feed Engadget: Sony's PlayStation 3 to double as IPTV set-top-box (engadget.com)
Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment
Sony hasn't exactly been shy about expanding the capabilities of its PS3, and according to new reports from The Korea Times, even more non-game-related goodness will be headed its way. Apparently, KT (Korea's primary telecom operator) and Sony will "launch an internet-based TV service in November that runs on the PlayStation 3 game console," and as expected, the machine would act as a set-top-box for KT's IPTV service (Mega TV). Reportedly, neither company was willing to disclose pricing information (or any additional details, for that matter) just yet, so it looks like we'll be forced to play the wait-and-see game for now.[Thanks, Stafford l.]
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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!
Feed Tom's Hardware: WD Caviar GP: The "Green" 1 TB Drive (pheedo.com)
Terabyte drives from Samsung and Seagate have been delayed, but WD just released a new 1,000 GB hard drive called the Caviar GP. It's no performance champion, but it's probably the most efficient desktop hard drive ever.
