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Face-Scanning Vending Machine Denies Children Access To Pudding 215

Posted by timothy from the you-are-an-unfit-mother dept.
smitty777 writes "What do you do when you spend over a billion dollars on products targeted specifically for adults? Simple, just put a device on your pudding dispensing vending machines that scans faces, and denies the delicious food to the kiddies. The Minority Report-like device will apparently judge the age of the individual based on the space between their eyes and ears. If the criteria is not met, the vending machine will shut down and ask the individual to step away from the machine. There are some vending machine combos that this makes sense for, but seriously — pudding?"

Comment HEAD! PANTS! NOW!! (Score 1) 572

by realmojo (#37819584) Attached to: The 147 Corporations Controlling Most of the Global Economy

Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, *and* Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with is wee *beady* eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!
The Almighty Buck

The 147 Corporations Controlling Most of the Global Economy 572

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the free-markets-for-the-rest-of-us dept.
rubycodez writes "Researchers at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute in Zurich have identified a 'Capitalist Network' [PDF] of well-connected companies that control most of the global economy. They further identified the 147 'super-connected' companies that control forty percent or more of the global financial network. If one believes the mega-corporations have most governments of the west in their pockets, does this mean we have a global oligarchy?"

Comment Re:Another benefit of blocking Facebook domains (Score 3, Informative) 338

by realmojo (#37751146) Attached to: Facebook Is Building Shadow Profiles of Non-Users

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com

Comment Another benefit of blocking Facebook domains (Score 2) 338

by realmojo (#37750418) Attached to: Facebook Is Building Shadow Profiles of Non-Users

As a former Facebooker, I already block all Facebook domains to keep the stupid Like buttons and other debris off of the websites I do visit. This is just another reason to do so.

It's amazing how much faster it is to load pages when there are no calls to Facebook.com or their content delivery domains.
Image

Ask William Shatner Whatever You'd Like Screenshot-sm 368

Posted by timothy from the make-it-count dept.
He's Canadian, he's proven himself a successful comedic actor and writer, filmmaker, and musician, but (no matter what else he does) in many people's minds he will always be James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise. Now, William Shatner has agreed to answer your questions. We'll pass on to him a selection of the best reader questions; you might want to read up on Shatner's official home page (and the Wikipedia link above) to knock out some of the most obvious ones. We'll pass on to him a selection of the best questions. Note: it's tempting to pile them on, but please try to follow the interview question guidelines by posting one question per post — ask as many questions as you'd like, though. Shatner is on vacation right now, but will work on answering your questions when he gets back.

Comment Sad day for Spotify founders (Score 2) 286

by realmojo (#37527830) Attached to: Spotify Defends Facebook Sign-Up Requirement

How embarrassing to spend all that time building up a company only to effectively "resign" from the internet and cede your entire company to become just a feature of another company. Facebook is the king of getting people to work for them gratis. Spotify did the heavy lifting with the labels and Facebook eats their lunch.
Supercomputing

Will Quantum Computing Make It Out of the Lab? 129

Posted by Soulskill from the those-crafty-rats-did dept.
alphadogg writes "Researchers have been working on quantum systems for more than a decade, in the hopes of developing super-tiny, super-powerful computers. And while there is still plenty of excitement surrounding quantum computing, significant roadblocks are causing some to question whether quantum computing will ever make it out of the lab. 'Artur Ekert, professor of Quantum Physics, Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford, says physicists today can only control a handful of quantum bits, which is adequate for quantum communication and quantum cryptography, but nothing more. He notes that it will take a few more domesticated qubits to produce quantum repeaters and quantum memories, and even more to protect and correct quantum data. "Add still a few more qubits, and we should be able to run quantum simulations of some quantum phenomena and so forth. But when this process arrives to 'a practical quantum computer' is very much a question of defining what 'a practical quantum computer' really is. The best outcome of our research in this field would be to discover that we cannot build a quantum computer for some very fundamental reason, then maybe we would learn something new and something profound about the laws of nature," Ekert says.'"
Power

Coffee-Powered Car Breaks World Record Screenshot-sm 174

Posted by samzenpus from the sugar-and-cream-optional dept.
MrSeb writes "A bunch of tea-drinking northern Brits have set a new land speed record for a gasification-powered vehicle, fueled only by coffee beans. The car is called The Coffee Car, and it was created by the Teesdale Conservation Volunteers of Durham, England. The previous gasification-powered speed record — held by some Americans called 'Beaver Energy' — was a mere 47mph, fueled by wood pellets. The Coffee Car averaged no less than 66.5mph and was granted a Guinness World Record in return. Gasification is a process in which any organic fuel is turned into 'syngas,' a mixture of carbon dioxide/monoxide, hydrogen, and methane which can be used in conventional internal combustion engines. The Coffee Car was created with the sole intention of proving that renewable/green energy sources can power cars — and it looks like it succeeded!"
Handhelds

Fusion Garage Going After Lower-Price Tablet Market 196

Posted by Soulskill from the wising-up dept.
nk497 writes "Fusion Garage has dropped the price of its follow-up to the JooJoo tablet, cutting the Grid10's price by $200 to $299 in the US and £259 in the UK. Outspoken CEO Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan has clearly been following the HP TouchPad fire sale, and noticed the importance of price when it comes to taking on Apple's iPad. He said there's no point in buying 'a poor carbon copy' of the Apple tablet for the same price. 'At $499, why would you buy — it's like going to China and buying a [fake] Louis Vuitton bag, at the same price as the real Louis Vuitton bags. It doesn't make sense, when you know it's a rip-off product,' he said."
Advertising

NYT Working On 'Magic Mirror' For Bathroom Surfing 138

Posted by Soulskill from the in-case-you-didn't-have-enough-webcams-by-your-toilet dept.
MrSeb writes "If the New York Times Research & Development Lab has its wicked way, you will soon be able to stop taking your mobile computer of choice into the bathroom — and use a 'magic mirror' instead. On average we spend an hour in the bathroom every day, and the magic mirror — which is built from a 'data-bearing' mirror, Microsoft Kinect, and a healthy dollop of ingenuity — is designed to capitalize on that time by letting you surf the web and increase the New York Times' advertising revenue."
Handhelds

Is the Quick Death of Failed Tech Products a Good Thing? 181

Posted by Soulskill from the first-impressions-are-everything dept.
Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, HumanEmulator writes "The NY Times reports on how the Hollywood summer-movie business model is being applied to tech products: 'Every release needs to be a blockbuster, and the only measure of success is the opening-weekend gross. There is little to no room for the sleeper indie hit that builds good word of mouth to become a solid performer over time.' New products are being pulled from shelves only weeks after a lackluster release. What if the TouchPad, the Microsoft Kin, or even Google Wave had had more time on the market? Is this blockbuster-or-bust model a good thing for consumers, or for the industry in general?"
EU

EU Central Court Could Validate Software Patents 77

Posted by timothy from the we-have-come-seeking-rent dept.
protoshell writes "'Software patents in Europe could be validated with a central patent court,' warns Richard Stallman in an article published in the Guardian. After the rejection of the software patent directive in 2005, large companies have shifted their lobbying towards the validation of software patents in Europe through a central patent court, which is foreseen with the Unitary Patent project. Even if the European Patent Convention literally excludes software from patents, the European Patent Office and the German courts interpret the exclusion narrowly, which makes software patents valid in the end."
Security

Court Filing On How 2004 Ohio Election Hacked 504

Posted by CmdrTaco from the still-not-over-this-yet-eh dept.
chimpo13 writes "A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush."

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