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Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What is the best country to live in? 1

Submitted by chubs
chubs writes: I keep seeing news articles about the myriad ways the U.S government is trampling on peoples rights and privacy. I see similar stories about other countries as well. Stories of spying, censorship, intimidation and violations of basic human rights seem to be all over the world. Therefore, my question is this: if I were to want to live in a developed country that actually respects its citizens' rights, where would I go? Let's assume there are some basic criteria I would want a candidate to meet. First, they don't spy on their own citizens without suspecting them of committing a crime. Second, they allow free speech, from the right to publicly disagree with government actions down to the right to post a negative review about a restaurant. Third, government officials are elected and there is a fair degree of confidence that this is done by the people and not just paid for by the donors with the deepest pockets.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What to do after digitizing VHS tapes? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now that I've spent close to a month digitizing a desk drawer's worth of VHS tapes, deinterlacing and postprocessing the originals to minimize years of tape decay, and compressing everything down to H.264, I've found myself with a hard drive full of loosely organized videos. They'll get picked up by my existing monthly backup, but I feel like I haven't gained much in the way of redundancy, as I thought I would. Instead of having tapes slowly degrade, I'm now open to losing entire movies at once, should both of my drives go bad. Does anyone maintain a library, and if so, what would they recommend? Is having them duplicated on two drives (one of which is spun down for all but one day of the month) a good-enough long term strategy? Should I look into additionally backing up to optical discs or flash drives, building out a better (RAIDed) backup machine, or even keeping the original tapes around despite them having been digitized?

Submission + - 3D-Printed Car takes it's first test drive

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This week, at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago, Arizona-based automobile manufacturer Local Motors stole the show. Over the six day span of the IMTS, the company managed to 3D print, and assemble an entire automobile, called the ‘Strati’, live in front of spectators. Although the Strati is not the first ever car to be 3D printed, the advancements made by Local Motor with help from Cincinnati Inc, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have produced a vehicle in days rather than months.

Comment Re:Waaa? (Score 1) 937

by Z00L00K (#47900713) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

I agree - both do science, and they cooperate well on the science part, it's their ideals that differs and brings their petty bickering around - they don't agree upon if taking a humanitarian perspective of saving a life is the best way. Save one life - but what about the countless others?

"The needs of the many outweighs the needs of the one" - but that might not always be true, what if the one is the person with the key to the future?

Comment Don't forget Scotty. (Score 1) 937

by Z00L00K (#47900701) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

Quite interesting. They are the main characters, but don't count out Scotty.

When you have all four personalities then you also have something that can be found in some successful companies.
Kirk - the leader, emotional and active.
Spock - the cool logic mediator.
Bones - the humanistic perspective.
Scotty - the fixer geek.

Comment Re:Waaa? (Score 1) 937

by Z00L00K (#47900687) Attached to: Why Atheists Need Captain Kirk

And of all emotions that have formed humanity curiosity is the most important. The questions of "Why" and "How" are more important for progress than hate and anger. Love is an important part of the progress too.

Comment Indications of a corrupt system. (Score 1) 124

It feels like this is just one indication that the patent system is corrupt. How can you prevent that a patent isn't going through an application process without a flaw?

One way to weed out bad workers is to have a cross-examination of the patents. If there's a great deviation between the review results from the two reviewers (or three if you want to make it even safer) then it's an indication that one of the reviewers may not be doing his/her job. Of course - it's not a single patent that you can detect this on but a number of patents. So sometimes statistics is your friend - but it requires that the ones that review the statistics aren't corrupted.

Submission + - MOM or Mangalyaan has now done 95% of its journey without a hitch (nvonews.com)

Submitted by rinka
rinka writes: There's been progress since: http://science.slashdot.org/st...

The Indian Mars mission is on target has completed 95% of it's journey and will reach its destination before the month end. Indian scientists have successfully restarted the Mars orbiter. Meanwhile there are reasons to believe that NASA and ISRO, both space agencies that have sent Mars rovers, have decided to coordinate their mars missions: http://nvonews.com/india-mars-...

Submission + - School to fingerprint students to 'monitor their diets' (eagnews.org) 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: STOURBRIDGE, England – A school is implementing a biometric system to better track what students are eating each day.

The Express & Star reports students at Redhill School in Stourbridge, England will be fingerprinted in an attempt to reduce lunch lines and “monitor pupils’ diets.” The system requires pupils to press a finger against a machine which converts the print into biometric data. This can then be used to identify individual pupils accounts.

Headteacher Stephen Dunster wrote to parents, “We are aiming to have a cashless system throughout the school. The catering system is better for parents because they don’t have to provide children with lunch money every morning. From our perspective it is far more efficient as it reduces waiting times. We will also be able to monitor what children are buying to make sure they are eating a healthy diet.”

Submission + - Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen 19 km below Earthâ(TM)s surface (globalnews.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Living in a strange environment is just a typical day for Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
Hansen is taking part in the 19th NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), a seven-day underwater mission that is helping NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) learn about what it might be like to live and work on an asteroid or another planet.

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