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Comment Interesting if true (Score 1) 1

If this is true, that a small design flaw in the suit is enough to drop people from placing to a much lower place (over a second in some cases) that really seems like a bad thing. Why is it possible for different countries to use different tech in the first place? The ones with the best engineering team win? That's ridiculous. Level the playing field and have all the participants use the exact same equipment and have the contest settled by the individual's skill, not their equipment!

Submission + - Internet censorship back on Australian agenda (brisbanetimes.com.au)

Submitted by aberglas
aberglas writes: The conservative government's George Brandis wants to force ISPs to block sites that might infringe copyright. Brandis said he stood firmly on the side of content creators (a.k.a. Hollywood). Ban gross violators today, obscure ones tomorrow, porn sites, far left sites the day after...

Submission + - Under Armour-Lockheed Designed Suit Blamed for Poor US Speedskating Perfomance (wsj.com) 1

Submitted by Koreantoast
Koreantoast writes: The United States surprisingly poor performance in speedskating, despite strong performances in recent World Cup events, has been blamed in part on an untested speedskating suit. The Mach 39, designed through a joint venture between Under Armour and Lockheed Martin, was supposed to provide Team USA with a high tech advantage, using advanced fluid dynamic models and dimpled surface to disrupt air flow and improve comfort. Instead, performances have been disastrous thus far, with athletes going as far as modifying their suits at the Olympics to try and reverse their fortunes. The suits have caused enough concerns that US Speedskating is taking the unusual step of seeking special dispensation from International Skating Union to ditch the high tech suits and switch back to their old uniforms. Teams are normally required to keep the same equipment through the entire Games. Insert jokes and comparisons to Lockheed's more famous product, the JSF, here.

Submission + - The Tale of How an NVIDIA Engineer's Cube Became His Castle (nvidia.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Jonathon Evans — who leads the team that designs the host interface and context scheduling unit for NVIDIA GPUs — decided to play a prank on one of his colleagues, Alan Kaatz, while he was away. So, he wrapped Alan’s computer, keyboard and many of the objects in his cube in cellophane. Alan, a quick-witted engineer with a keen sense of the absurd, decided to hit back — hard. 'I wanted to do something so big that it would be impossible to retaliate,' Alan says. So Alan and a small group of other GPU designers — Eric Tyson, Steve Mueller and Rafal Zboinski — huddled around a whiteboard to sketch out what revenge might look like. They would turn Jonathon’s cube into a castle. For the project King's Quest they would need high-quality cardboard and about 200 hours. The result is quite monumental and unequaled office prank.
Crime

Cops With Google Glass: Horrible Idea, Or Good One? 192

Posted by timothy from the depends-when-it's-conveniently-turned-off dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes "Earlier this week, news reports leaked that the NYPD is evaluating whether to give its officers Google Glass for investigations and patrols. Google, which is sensitive to accusations that it works hand-in-hand with governments or law-enforcement agencies to monitor civilians, suggested that the NYPD must have purchased the units on its own initiative, rather than partner with the company. Some pundits and many civil libertarians hate the idea of law enforcement wearing Google Glass or other electronics that can send a constant stream of video and audio to a government (or even third-party) server. But at the same time, wearing Google Glass could also compel cops (and other law-enforcement personnel) to be on their best behavior at all times, particularly when it comes to use of force; the prospect of instantly available video detailing every aspect of an officer's shift could prove a powerful incentive to behave in a courteous and professional manner. But that's a very broad assumption; the reality—if cops really do start wearing Google Glass and other video-equipped electronics in large numbers—will likely end up determined by lots and lots of lawsuits and court-actions, many of them stemming from real-world incidents. Do you think cops should have Google Glass and other wearable electronics? And if so, what sort of regulations could be put in place to ensure that such technology isn't abused by the powers that be?"
Hardware Hacking

How To Take Control of a Car's Electronics, Cheap 109

Posted by timothy from the at-that-point-you've-already-controlled-the-door dept.
mspohr writes with this excerpt from The Register: "Spanish hackers have been showing off their latest car-hacking creation; a circuit board using untraceable, off-the-shelf parts worth $20 that can give wireless access to the car's controls while it's on the road. The device, which will be shown off at next month's Black Hat Asia hacking conference, uses the Controller Area Network (CAN) ports car manufacturers build into their engines for computer-system checks. Once assembled, the smartphone-sized device can be plugged in under some vehicles, or inside the bonnet of other models, and give the hackers remote access to control systems. 'A car is a mini network,' security researcher Alberto Garcia Illera told Forbes. 'And right now there's no security implemented.'"
Privacy

UK Police Will Have Backdoor Access To Health Records 108

Posted by timothy from the public-servants'-prerogative dept.
kc123 writes "David Davis MP, a former shadow home secretary, has told the Guardian that police would be able to access the new central NHS database without a warrant as critics warn of catastrophic breach of trust. The database that will store all of England's health records has a series of 'backdoors' that will allow police and government bodies to access people's medical data. In the past police would need to track down the GP who held a suspect's records and go to court for a disclosure order. Now, they would be able to simply approach the new arms-length NHS information centre, which will hold the records. The idea that police will be able to request information from a central database without a warrant totally undermines a long-held belief in the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship."
Technology

Smartphone For the Blind Invented In India 46

Posted by samzenpus from the let-your-fingers-do-the-talking dept.
hypnosec writes "The world's first smartphone for the blind that features a display capable of converting text and pictures into Braille and raised patterns has been invented in India. Based on Shape Memory Technology – a concept whereby metals expand and contract to retain their original shape – the phone's screen has a grid of pins. These pins move up and down based on the text or display to be represented."
User Journal

Journal Journal: Why I can't be a liberal 15

Journal by Marxist Hacker 42

Hatred.

A conversation with a much more left wing friend over the weekend made me realize that most of my conservative politics, are not conservatively sourced. They are sourced in my own personal form of liberalism, which is often repelled by the political rhetoric of other liberals.

Gay marriage for instance. I was once, a decade or so ago, for civil unions. I was considered a liberal for being so. I reveled in the fact of being Catholic and how entire grou

Comment I had a civet (Score 1) 112

by CrackHappy (#43497335) Attached to: Demand for Kopi Luwak May Be Threatening Wildlife
When I was a kid, I lived in Jakarta, and my parents bought me a civet as a pet. BAD idea. It was a captured wild civet. We only had it about 3 months before it having bitten and scratched me so much, we ended up taking it out to the jungle where there were a bunch of wild civets and releasing it. I hope it did ok, and never blamed it for being wild and attacking me occasionally. I think it's terrible to "farm" animals in this fashion for something that we don't actually need really. It's one thing to milk cows, quite another to force feed civets coffee.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: Is it possible to launch a drop of water across 10s of meters?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I would like to use an Arduino to make a solenoid valve based squirt gun but I don't want to spray the water, I want to launch a 1-2 mL drop. Is it possible to keep water in a drop across such a distance and if so what is the nozzle design?
Earth

One Giant Cargo Ship Pollutes As Much As 50M Cars 595

Posted by kdawson from the stink-pots dept.
thecarchik writes "One giant container ship pollutes the air as much as 50 million cars. Which means that just 15 of the huge ships emit as much as today's entire global 'car park' of roughly 750 million vehicles. Among the bad stuff: sulfur, soot, and other particulate matter that embeds itself in human lungs to cause a variety of cardiopulmonary illnesses. Since the mid-1970s, developed countries have imposed increasingly stringent regulations on auto emissions. In three decades, precise electronic engine controls, new high-pressure injectors, and sophisticated catalytic converters have cut emissions of nitrous oxides, carbon dioxides, and hydrocarbons by more than 98 percent. New regulations will further reduce these already minute limits. But ships today are where cars were in 1965: utterly uncontrolled, free to emit whatever they like." According to Wikipedia, 57 giant container ships (rated from 9,200 to 15,200 twenty-foot equivalent units) are plying the world's oceans.
Games

Submission + - RAGE on iOS shows promise (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: RAGE from id Software for iOS devices is finally available and has been tested over at PC Perspective. The game obviously looks impressive with a nearly 750MB download (and about double that when uncompressed) and not much else can rival it on the platform. The game itself is a rail-based shooter making the touchscreen interface more intuitive and less cumbersome but it does take away some of the feeling of control in the game. Video of the game running is also included in the short review.
Hardware Hacking

Google Voice Controls Giant LED Display 66

Posted by kdawson from the can-you-understand-me-now dept.
compumike writes "What geek among us has never thought about how cool it would be if you could call your computer and have it do stuff? Josh Davis put together a quick video demo and source code of his Voice Controlled LED Marquee, powered by Google Voice speech recognition and a DIY LED Array Kit. Imagine using the same display for monitoring server uptime, or RSS feeds!"

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