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Comment The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (Score 1) 570

by VonGuard (#38410172) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Most Efficient, Worthwhile Charity?

If you want your money to go really, really far, I have to recommend the videogame museum we started here in downtown Oakland. We raised $20,000 on Kickstarter and 100% of that money has gone to rent, Internet, and insurance. We've not spent a dime on anything except those expenses. Everything else in the museum is donated, save for the meager tables and shelves we have, which we purchased via funds donated by people visiting the museum (About $400).

Any funds donated to the MADE will be used to continue to keep the doors open. Why is that important? Because we are offering free programming classes for local inner city kids. We currently only have 2 teachers, but we're looking for more. Those teachers spend 1 hour teaching the kids MIT Scratch, then a second hour teaching Python.

Of course, we also have exhibits, events, talks, and adult classes, but all of those are just icing on the cake for our "everything playable" videogame museum. The real change the world part of our organization are our classes. We've only been open since November, but with some more monetary donations and volunteers, we'll be able to expand our classes in 2012, and maybe even offer after school programs instead of just weekend classes.

Oh, and we're 100% volunteer run.

http://www.themade.org/

Comment Giant nerd questions (Score 1) 188

by VonGuard (#37569152) Attached to: Ask <em>They Might Be Giants</em> About Almost 30 Years of Music

OK, I've been a fan since about 89, so I have a lot of questions to ask.

First: For each of you, which 1 song of yours is your favorite.

Second: The World's Address is a sad pun that reflects a sadder mess. Where did the idea for this song come from, and why the violin version?

Third: Who thinks she's Edith Head? Some specific person you knew?

Fourth: Any chance of releasing the visual song tie-in games from No on the Web?

Fifth: Do ya'll actually use metal detectors at the beach?

Sixth: What was it like trying to play the that bazookie thing in "older than you've ever been?" Was it a klezmer?

Seventh: I've seen you in concert a few times, and Angel is a tough one to get ya'll to play. It's a popular tune with the fans, is it out of favor with ya'll?

Eighth: What did ya'll think of the Tiny Toons episode your songs were in?
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Stephenson Mentions Slashdot in Reamde (cmdrtaco.net) 1

Submitted by
CmdrTaco
CmdrTaco writes: "It's total navalgazing and I wouldn't post it if I was still working here, but I thought my heirs would be pleased to know that Slashdot got a mention in Neal Stephenson's Reamde. Be proud and keep up the fight. It's page 161 if you have the hardcover."
Slashdot.org

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot 1521

Posted by CmdrTaco from the steve-got-front-cutsies dept.
After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it's finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it's time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*. Personally I don't have any plans, but if you need to get ahold of me for any reason, you can find me as @cmdrtaco on twitter or Rob Malda on Google+. You could also update my mail address to be malda at cmdrtaco dot net. Hit the link below if you want to read some nostalgic saccharine crap that I need to get out of my system before I sign off for the last time.
NASA

NASA Discovers 7th Closest Star 137

Posted by CmdrTaco from the practically-in-my-back-yard dept.
Thorfinn.au says "Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE's infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years. 'WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision,' said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 'They are 5,000 times brighter at the longer infrared wavelengths WISE observed from space than those observable from the ground.'"
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Sports Bars Changing Channels For Video Gamers 351

Posted by CmdrTaco from the we-watch-channel-zero dept.
dtmos wrote in to say that "This summer, StarCraft II has become the newest bar room spectator sport. Fans organize so-called Barcraft events, taking over pubs and bistros from Honolulu to Florida and switching big-screen TV sets to Internet broadcasts of professional game matches. As they root for their on-screen superstars, StarCraft enthusiasts can sow confusion among regular patrons... But for sports-bar owners, StarCraft viewers represent a key new source of revenue from a demographic—self-described geeks—they hadn't attracted before."
Security

Researchers Report Spike In Boot Time Malware 132

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can't-fight-the-fever dept.
wiredmikey writes "In their most recent intelligence report, Symantec researchers pointed out a massive increase in the amount of boot time malware striking users, noting there have already been as many new boot time malware threats detected in the first seven months of 2011 as there were in the previous three years. Also known as MBR (master boot record) threats, the malware infect an area of the hard disk that makes them one of the first things to be read and executed when a computer is turned on. This enables the threats to effectively dodge many security defenses."
Businesses

MakerBot Gets $10 Million Investment 160

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-a-lotta-money dept.
First time accepted submitter chrisl456 writes "MakerBot Industries, makers (hah!) of 3D printers / personal fabrication devices, just got a big boost in the form of $10 million from an 'all-star lineup.' Replicators, here we come!"

Submission + - Facebook Data Collection Under Fire Again (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
JohnBert
JohnBert writes: "A German privacy protection authority is calling on organizations there to close their Facebook fan pages and remove the social networking site's "Like" button from their websites, arguing that Facebook harvests data in violation of German and European Union law.

The Independent Centre for Privacy Protection (ULD), the privacy protection agency for the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, issued a news release on Friday saying Facebook builds a broad, individualized profile for people who view Facebook content on third-party websites.

Data is sent back to Facebook's servers in the U.S., which the agency alleges violates the German Telemedia Act, the German Federal Data Protection Act and the Data Protection Act of Schleswig-Holstein. The agency alleges the data is held by Facebook for two years, and wants website owners in the state to remove links to Facebook by the end of next month or possibly face a fine."
NASA

Humanoid Robot Wakes In Space, Tweets 91

Posted by CmdrTaco from the kill-all-humans dept.
DeviceGuru writes to note that "Robonaut 2 (aka R2), the first humanoid robot to become a permanent resident of the International Space Station (ISS), was awakened from stasis this week after six months in orbit. R2s first words? 'Those electrons feel GOOD!' The success of R2's activation on the ISS paves the way for putting R2 through its first movements in orbit on Sept. 1, when R2 will be sent commands for moving its arms and hands. Assuming these and other tests proceed without a hitch, R2 will start assisting the ISS crew with simple tasks in 2012. Coffee? Tea? Cigarettes?"
Robotics

Submission + - SD cards: the cheap way to boost laptop storage (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
Barence
Barence writes: "Many modern laptops come with only a limited capacity SSD that cost hundreds of pounds to upgrade. PC Pro has investigated whether SD cards make a cheaper alternative to upgrading your SSD. The biggest problem is that SD cards have limited number of guaranteed write cycles before the card risks failing, so they’re best considered for storing files you don’t update often – a media collection, for example. Read and write speeds are also much slower than those available from SSDs. Nevertheless, "if you’re after only a quick boost in capacity for non-critical files, the sheer convenience of being able to leave an SD card in the laptop at all times makes it a great way to save money," PC Pro concludes."
Patents

Interview With 'Idiot' Behind Key Software Patent 223

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hate-when-that-happens dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Last week, an appeals court ruling opened the door to making it easier to kill software patents. It turns out that the guy whose name was on the actual patent didn't even realize it was at the center of the debate, and doesn't like software patents very much. 'So I was thinking — great they invalidated software patents, lets see what crappy patent written by an idiot they picked to do it — then I realized the idiot in question was me.'"
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows 8: estimated transfer time is no more (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Ahh, the Windows Explorer progress dialog. For years it has been struggling to figure out how to calculate how long our copy and delete operations would take, sliding the progress bar back and forth in a seemingly random, haphazard way, the laws of time all but ceasing to exist — five seconds remaining one moment and 13 minutes the next. That’s (almost) all going to change, with the arrival of a greatly improved file management experience in Windows 8. Copy, move, delete, rename, and conflict resolution are all being overhauled for Windows 8 — and it's about time!"
Security

Submission + - Researchers Report Spike in Boot Time Malware (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: In its most recent intelligence report, Symantec researchers reported a massive increase in the amount of boot time malware striking users, noting there have already been as many new boot time malware threats detected in the first seven months of 2011 as there were in the previous three years.

Also known as MBR (master boot record) threats, the malware infect an area of the hard disk that makes them one of the first things to be read and executed when a computer is turned on. This enables the threats to effectively dodge many security defenses.

In June, Microsoft warned Windows users about a bootkit Trojan known as Popureb, touching off discussions about whether or not infected users were better off completely re-installing Windows.

Infecting the MBR is not a new technique per se; many of the old boot sector viruses from over a decade ago did something similar, the report notes. The difference is modern MBR malware do so much more than just infecting the MBR. It certainly looks as if MBR malware is making a comeback in 2011.

Submission + - Has cellular technology advanced in 10 years?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday's earthquake in Virginia brought back some clear memories from 9-11 when I was unable to call my wife to check on her from either of my cellular or my landline phones. With all of the money spent on emergency communications infrastructure post 9-11, I was very disappointed and I'm left thoroughly disturbed about the potential of not being able to call 911 or reach my loved ones in the event of an actual emergency. So I'm left with two questions — 1) when are the cellular providers going to step up and provide more reliable networks, and 2) what is a reliable, affordable means of contacting emergency services that doesn't involve a landline or cellular telephone?

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