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Comment Re:Sounds like a good system (Score 2, Informative) 143

I lived in two of those nice neighborhoods in Colorado Springs in 1998. At the time I was a Java developer for MCI working on their Local Care system. In one house I lived alone, and in the second house I had three hot goth girls as roommates. I'm 6'4" (190cm) tall, have long hair and tattoos, dress in all black w/ combat boots, ride a loud motorcycle, and at the time had a sports car with a loud audio system installed. On two separate occasions the police were dispatched to my house by anonymous tips from the neighbors about drug parties, the manufacture and sale of narcotics, prostitution and other lies. The truth was that I threatened their nice gated community by looking different. On one visit they sent a vice detective with two uniformed officers to ask if I would sign a waiver that would allow them to search my house. I politely declined.

Some neighborhoods have trash that needs to be cleaned up. Some people are just individuals. Anonymizing the reporting system opens it up for abuse and _does_ lend it towards spy-on-your-neighbor big brotherism. What if you see your neighbor smoking something from something that looks like a bong, but he's inside his house when you see him do it? What if you're naive and didn't realize that the "bong" was a vaporizer for asthma relief? I believe that people should be allowed to face their accusers and an online system that encourages reporting of neighborhood faults needs to have protection built in against false reporting. What if the graffiti is on my house, and I like it because I'm into urban art? Control over neighborhood issues isn't a wiki - it's wrong to expect that someone's mistake will be cleaned up by someone else. When one person's mistake is an uninformed retaliation against another person's innocent and legal behavior, the law and society tend to favor the one who made the knee-jerk reaction. Does this mean that more of society is uninformed and they're protecting their own? Or am I truly bad for the homeowner's association because I don't conform to their standard?

Music

Submission + - "Slot Music" format seeks to replace Music CDs (seekingalpha.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In the face of dwindling music-CD sales Sony BMG, Universal, Vivendi and Warner Music Group team up with SanDisk to create a new storage medium to be sold in stores.

The new format is simply a 1GB MicroSD card with mp3 music encoded with up to 320kbit/s. To my surprise the cards will come to you without any DRM protection whatsoever. The retail versions of the so-called "Slot Music" media also contain USB-adapters for easy use on PCs and Laptops. But with MicroSD slots absent from most media players including Apples Iphone and Ipod chances are this format will go the way of the HD-DVD

Space

Inside the World's Most Advanced Planetarium 133

notthatwillsmith writes "Earlier this month, the most technologically-advanced digital planetarium in the world opened in San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. The new Morrison Planetarium's 75-foot screen replaces the traditional Zeiss projector with an array of 6 high-resolution DLP projectors arrayed around the edge of the theater, which are powered by three very different, but interesting computing clusters. The three clusters allow for projection of traditional planetarium shows, playback of ultra-high resolution movies, and display of anything from current atmospheric conditions on Earth to a (greatly accelerated) trip to the farthest reaches of the universe, all rendered in real-time on an 8800 sq. ft. dome. Maximum PC went on a behind the scenes tour with the engineers who built the systems that do everything from run the planetarium lights to the sound systems to the tech behind the screen to show you how it works and what it's like to drive, well ... the universe."

Comment Re:Oblig. (Score 1) 410

I can also confirm this behavior. Many sites have less anti-spam protection on their secondary (or tertiary, even), using it only to queue mail in the event that the primary is unreachable. Because it will likely accept mail without question, the secondary is the obvious target. Dump all the mail on to it as quickly as possible, and let it flounder about with struggling to deliver it, or bounce it, or double bounce it, and so on. Forcing spammers to deliver to the secondary by making the primary unreachable (making the secondary, in fact, the primary), will only slow the overall delivery of mail and make an already unmanageable situation even more convoluted.

Planning Dapper +1, The Edgy Eft 320

Christian Jensen writes "On the ubuntu-announce mailing list, Mark Shuttleworth announced the plans for the next Ubuntu release - 'The Edgy Eft', the successor to Dapper Drake." This release is being touted as both cutting edge (edgy) and containing several comparatively "young" software additions ('Eft' being a 'youthful newt, going through its first exploration of the rocky territory just outside the stream.') like Xen, XGL/AIGLX, and others.

Mark Shuttleworth Proposes Delaying next Ubuntu 382

Beuno writes "Mark Shuttleworth has proposed on the ubuntu-art mailing list to postpone the 'Dapper Drake' release by 6 weeks. He lays out the reasons pretty clearly: the delay should make the release a more user-friendly distro. He has also called up a community meeting in April 14th on IRC for community input. Is it really worth delaying the release for more then a month just to polish it out a little bit?" Commentary on this also available from the Tectonic site.

Laptop Fuel Cells Coming Soon 181

tomsastroblog writes "Soon laptop batteries could last all day and be recharged from a cartridge. BBC News has a piece on fuel cells as laptop batteries, and what their adoption could mean for laptop usage." From the article: "At the Cebit technology fair in Hanover, Taiwanese hi-tech firm Antig said its fuel cells should be on the shelves of computer shops by early 2007. The first versions of the methanol-using units should keep a laptop going for up to nine hours. Fuel cell technology got a boost recently when international air flight regulators changed rules that banned passengers from carrying flammable methanol onto aircraft."

Cancer Survival for Software Developers 263

Paul Pareti writes "Doug Reilly has published an affecting, personal piece about Surviving Cancer if you're a Programmer. You don't have to be a sufferer to benefit from reading it, especially his conclusions, including the perspective-lengthening advice: 'Make sure you are not indispensable!'"

The Simpsons Come to Life 539

musicon writes "Makers of the hit cartoon The Simpsons have a filmed the show's opening titles using real actors. In the hit viral going around the world we get to see what Bart, Homer, Marg, Lisa and Maggie would look like if they were humans. Simpson's maker Matt Groening has approved the human version of the show's opening credits to promote the brand new series." Amazing attention to detail.

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