8204482
story
kkleiner writes
"The Shadow Dextrous Hand is a robotic arm that allows for fine motor control and precise movements. It's accurate enough to pick up an egg, screw in a light bulb, or thread a needle. Even cooler, researchers can control it with a 'Cyber glove,' allowing for 24 distinct human movements that mimic the user's own hand. A British based company, Shadow, has been displaying the hand for several years now, and recently demonstrated its latest model at IREX 2009. The hand, toted as the world's most advanced, is available for sale to researchers (pricing has not been made public)."
7959542
submission
JynxMe writes:
Video taken at the scene shows people pelting a man with snowballs after his car, a Hummer, gets stuck in the snow. The man — not in uniform at the time — then appears to pull out a gun while an angry crowd gathers and chants: "Don't freak out to a snowball fight." At one point in the video the man identifies himself as a "detective", but refuses to give his full name or badge number. Then he proceeds to admit to pulling his gun. BBC has an article on the incident.
7958970
submission
Dubbel writes:
In 1993, I was in College and took advantage of a dial up \ SLIP account for internet access from home which my university made available to all students with shell accounts. It was a blazing 14.4Kbps connection. As internet usage increased and I began to get busy signals more often that not, I took advantage of a student discount at a local ISP and got a dial up 33.6 Kbps "Unlimited" PPP service for the princely sum of $40 a month...a significant portion of my net worth at the time. At that point in internet history, online services such as Prodigy and Compuserve were charging by the minute for World Wide Web access which was outside of the content they hosted and this still didn't give you access to the full breadth and depth of what the internet had to offer. I had 1 friend whom I considered to be filthy rich who had a dual channel 128Kbps ISDN line. As soon as broadband became available, I was the first person I new to get it. First it was 1 MBps, then 1.5, then 3 and currently I subscribe to a 6 Mbps DSL service all the while never really exceeding the $40 a month price barrier (now after service bundle discounts and prior to the addition of taxes). Now my ISP is offering their new VDSL internet, TV, & IP telephony service in my area which tops out at a staggering 18 Mbps for around $65 a month which is separate from the bandwidth available for telephony & TV. For the first time ever, I find myself asking....do I really need more bandwidth? Am I ludicrous for asking this question? How many others in the Slashdot community have found their personal broadband saturation point to be beneath fastest service available separate from personal financial constraints?
7958302
submission
Josh04 writes:
Due to a 900,000+ Facebook campaign, 90's rap metal group Rage Against the Machine are this year's Christmas number 1, beating out Simon Cowell's X-Factor contestant Joe McElderry to the top spot, making 'Killing in the Name' the first ever UK download-only Christmas number 1. The popular 90's rock song had support from celebrities and the BBC, who got in trouble earlier in the week for allowing five 'fucks' to slip through the censor on a live performance.
7958272
submission
thomst writes:
One week ago today, Rob McKenna, the Attorney General of Washington State, file suit against DirectTV, alleging 16 counts of unfair, deceptive, and unethical business practices. The charges include failure to disclose important contract information (such as early termination fees, "service maintenance" fees, and rebate terms), misrepresentation, "negative option" billing, "unconscionable enforcement of contract to which there has been no mutual consent", failure to honor promotional offers, and "imposing charges when no service has been provided". MSNBC's Bob Sullivan writes about it in his Red Tape Chronicles, but you can read the actual complaint (in PDF format) here. Sullivan states that McKenna's office received 375 complaints against DirectTV in the 11.5 months before he filed suit, and 59 additional complaints in the 24 hours immediately after the filing was announced. Sullivan's story also states, "McKenna said he'd been working with DirecTV for months in an attempt to avoid a court battle, and he was surprised DirecTV refused to change its business practices voluntarily."
7957932
submission
Voulnet writes:
Hello Slashdot, I am a Computer Engineer, fresh off graduation, and I would like to educate myself on a broad range of technological fields and aspects. I am the kind of person who is easily distracted while reading from a screen, and so I would like to ask fellow slashdotters about the best books for computer related topics. I consider my level to be intermediate in some fields, and beginner in others.
Some books are de facto standards in a certain technology field, others can be classified as Hidden Gems, while others are Interesting Reads (like GUI Bloopers). Therefore, I would love to hear what is everybody's book recommendation in the following fields:
- Programming (C++, C#, Java, Python, Ruby, Pike..etc)
- Secure coding
- Networking
- Electronics (design and simulation)
- Security (attacks and countermeasures)
- Web development (especially Ruby and Perl)
- Unix systems
- Win32 development
- Databases
- Computer Architecture
- Infrastructure (Think national level)
- Computer industry business management
These are my desired topics for the next 8 months or so, and I would like to immerse myself into said topics in different methods.
So what do you think is the best book for the aforementioned categories in terms of being a (de facto standard/ Hidden Gem/ Interesting Read)?
Hopefully this submission passes through, being so useful to me, young engineers and developers. Thanks in advance!"
7955938
submission
rsmiller510 writes:
With the purchase of NBC Universal, Comcast's power grows unabated. It may be up to cities and towns building their own town networks to find a way to fight that growing hegemony.
7954782
submission
EagleHasLanded writes:
Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman doesn't talk to journalists. Actually, he doesn't talk to anyone anymore. So we'll have to settle for insights via his biographer, Masha Gessen, who, strangely enough, has never talked to him either. But she has spoken with just about everyone who has ever had any significant interaction with Perelman, and the result is the book 'Perfect Rigor,' which more than adequately explains why Perelman has gone into self-imposed exile, and why he hasn't collected the million dollars owed him for solving the Poincare Conjecture.
7954770
submission
gQuigs writes:
According to StatCounter Global Statistics the most used browser version on the web is Firefox 3.5. Congrats to Mozilla (and the open web)!
But we can use this as a rallying call to do more. Let's Finish Off IE6 (remove the links to IE8 and Safari if you want, and maybe add one for Opera). And how many of you end up upgrading your family's browsers over the holidays? Good job keeping them safe, but bring everything you need this time on a USB stick, and then get back to enjoying the holidays.
7952670
submission
theodp writes:
When it came to protecting Tiger Woods' image in the print media, Tiger's PR folks displayed a lot of ingenuity. Attempts were also made to control the spin on tigerwoods.com, which was always a shrine to the golfer. But in the aftermath of the recent scandal, the comments section was left wide-open, allowing critics to bash Tiger on his own site. But the folks who manage tigerwoods.com have been scrambling — visitors are no longer allowed to leave comments, and embarrassing items have disappeared from the site (although you'll still find a Vegas showgirl or two). So, is there really any good strategy for dealing with a website in a PR meltdown? Or is simply making your problems disappear, a la IBM, usually the road best taken?
7951156
submission
jammag writes:
A veteran developer looks back — in irritation — at those times he had to work late, and his unskilled manager stayed too, just to look over his shoulder and add worry and fret to the process. Now that same developer, lo and behold, is a manager himself — and recently stayed late to ride herd over late-working developers. "And guess what? Yep, I hadnâât coded in years and never in the language he had to work with." Yet now he understood: his own butt was on the line so he was staying put. Still, does it really help developers to have management hovering in late evening, even if the boss handles pizza delivery?
7947710
submission
VValdo writes:
As you may recall, the citizens of the US shelled out about $85 billion to bail out AIG and its creditors (Goldman Sachs in particular) last year. But as 80% owners of AIG, we still don't know what happened exactly. That may change. In an NYTimes Op-Ed, former prosecutors (including former NY governor Eliot Spitzer) are calling for the US Treasury to force to AIG release its treasure-trove of emails to the public before allowing AIG to "break free" of our control. As the prosecutors put it, "By putting the evidence online, the government could establish a new form of "open source" investigation. Once the documents are available for everyone to inspect, a thousand journalistic flowers can bloom, as reporters, victims and angry citizens have a chance to piece together the story." Good idea?
7947052
submission
pmdubs writes:
Michael Freedman updates us on experience with dubious DMCA takedown notices. As a result of the publicity his initial post received, the Video Protection Alliance has dropped Nexicon, the company to which they outsource infringement detection. In this case, while there may be little legal recourse to issuing invalid DMCA notices, the threat of bad press seems to have reigned in highly questionable practices.
