dbarclay10 - Slashdot User

Ask Slashdot: Changing Passwords For the New Year? 339

Posted by timothy on Friday December 30, 2011 @07:50PM from the just-use-2012-and-your-initials dept.

A new submitter asks "Every New Year's Day, I assemble and memorize a random collection of seven to ten mixed-case alphanumeric characters and proceed to change every password I have on the interwebs to these characters (plus a few extra characters unique to the site). The problem is I only change them on the sites I visit. Once in a while, I'll come across a site I haven't visited for a few years, and I may end up not being able to guess the password before the try-lockout takes effect. What are your password-changing rituals, and how do they deal with situations like mine? I do use Keepass for work, but it is sometimes impractical for times I'm at other computers."

Quantum Coherence Found Fueling Photosynthesis 135

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 07, 2011 @04:22PM from the spooky-energy dept.

A user writes "Ars Technica has posted an interesting article about new findings regarding quantum physics and photosynthesis. Their excerpt for the article: 'Physicists have found the strongest evidence yet of quantum effects fueling photosynthesis. Multiple experiments in recent years have suggested as much, but it has been hard to be sure. Quantum effects were clearly present in the light-harvesting antenna proteins of plant cells, but their precise role in processing incoming photons remained unclear.' Here's a little background info for those unaware of what coherence and quantum coherence are."

China Building Gigantic Structures In the Desert 412

Posted by timothy on Monday November 14, 2011 @07:01PM from the what's-your-best-guess? dept.

A user writes "New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. It's located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide. The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit."

Ask Slashdot: GNU/Linux Laptops? 708

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Monday October 24, 2011 @07:08PM from the the-internet-tells-me-this-is-easier-today dept.

"I'm an OS X user looking to switch to a Linux laptop. I like the Unix/BSD aspect of OS X. Simple things like when I close the lid the laptop goes to sleep, the sound card works out of the box, long battery life, minimum cooling fan noise, and a comprehensive but relatively straightforward backup system and 'AppleCare' package are important to me. What all-inclusive model of laptop and distro would you recommend?" He didn't mention it, but I am presuming that working Wifi should be on that list too.

German Court Upholds Ban On Samsung Galaxy Tab 314

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 09, 2011 @02:20PM from the win-some-lose-some dept.

A user writes "It seems Samsung has finally lost the battle against Apple in Germany. Today the district court in Düsseldorf ruled that Samsung must not sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany. Furthermore, it has banned Samsung Germany from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 anywhere in Europe."

Victory For Music Locker Services? 51

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday August 23, 2011 @02:55PM from the save-those-redundant-bits dept.

Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, a user writes "Michael Robertson, the owner and founder of the MP3Tunes music locker service, has been locked in a copyright infringement case with EMI Records for a while now, especially because of the Sideloading search engine that is tacked along with the locker service. Now the case has been resolved though: EMI Records won. But lost on all the accounts that actually really matter." The important parts here are that MP3Tunes was granted safe harbor protection under the DMCA, and that merging multiple copies of the same file doesn't make distributing that master copy a public performance.

Nevada Authorizes Development of Driverless Car Rules 122

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 23, 2011 @06:25PM from the must-take-asimov-test-first dept.

A reader writes "Via Forbes: 'The State of Nevada just passed Assembly Bill No. 511 which, among other things, authorizes the Department of Transportation to develop rules and regulations governing the use of driverless cars, such as Google's concept car, on its roads.' Pretty soon, cars will be able to dump their own dead bodies into the Nevada desert."

Mono Comes To Android 257

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 06, 2011 @06:00PM from the here-have-some dept.

A reader writes "After releasing Monotouch for iPhone which allows c# development on iOS, Novell has announced the availability of Mono for Android. Will this give us the 'one language to rule them all' that Java failed to bring, or will the bad blood between the F/OSS groups and Microsoft make this a dead end?"

German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows 901

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @03:21AM from the it'll-be-different-this-time-baby-i-promise dept.

A user writes "The German government has confirmed that the German Foreign Office is to switch back to Windows desktop systems. The Foreign Office started migrating its servers to Linux in 2001 and since 2005 has also used open source software such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on its desktop systems. The government's response to the SPD's question states that, although open source has demonstrated its worth, particularly on servers, the cost of adapting and extending it, for example in writing printer and scanner drivers, and of training, have proved greater than anticipated. The extent to which the potential savings trumpeted in 2007 have proved realizable has, according to the government, been limited – though it declines to give any actual figures. Users have, it claims, also complained of missing functionality, a lack of usability and poor interoperability."

Online-Only Currency BitCoin Reaches Dollar Parity 517

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 10, 2011 @02:59PM from the computationally-intensive dept.

IamTheRealMike writes "The BitCoin peer to peer currency briefly reached exchange parity with the US dollar today after a spike in demand for the coins pushed prices slightly above 1 USD:1 BTC. BitCoin was launched in early 2009, so in only two years this open source currency has gone from having no value at all to one with not only an open market of competing exchanges, but the ability to buy real goods and services like web hosting, gadgets, organic beauty products and even alpaca socks."

Comment Re:Of course they did (Score 1, Insightful) 268

by dbarclay10 on Sunday January 30, 2011 @11:36PM (#35053154) Attached to: EFF Uncovers Widespread FBI Intelligence Violations

Of course they did If you give the government an inch, they take a mile.

Let me fix that for you: If you give anybody (particularly an asshole) an inch, they take a mile. Oh, and cops are generally assholes.

A Lego Replica of the Antikythera Mechanism 74

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 29, 2011 @03:07AM from the hard-to-get-enough-antikythera dept.

A user writes "The Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known scientific computer, built in Greece at around 100 BCE. Lost for 2000 years, it was recovered from a shipwreck in 1901. But not until a century later was its purpose understood: an astronomical clock that determines the positions of celestial bodies with extraordinary precision. In 2010, a fully-functional replica out of Lego (YouTube video) was built."

GE Venture Will Share Jet Technology With China 266

Posted by Soulskill on Monday January 17, 2011 @11:03PM from the send-them-the-tsa-while-you're-at-it dept.

A user writes "This week, during the visit of Chinese president Hu Jintao to the United States, GE plans to sign a joint-venture agreement in commercial aviation that shows the tricky risk-and-reward calculations American corporations must increasingly make in their pursuit of lucrative markets in China. GE, in partnership with a state-owned Chinese company, will be sharing its most sophisticated airplane electronics (NYT reg. required, reg.-free alternative here), including some of the same technology used in Boeing's new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner."

Bitcoin Releases Version 0.3 491

Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 11, 2010 @05:09PM from the nobody-to-prosecute dept.

Teppy writes "How's this for a disruptive technology? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network. Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government." Here are the FAQ, a paper describing Bitcoin in more technical detail (PDF), and the Wikipedia article. Note: a commercial service called BitCoin Ltd., in pre-alpha at bitcoin.com, bears no relation to the open source digital currency.
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Related: Crypto Tools

DHS Wants To Monitor the Web For Terrorists 285

Posted by kdawson on Sunday June 20, 2010 @08:09AM from the in-most-instances dept.

a user writes "Under the belief that terrorists are 'increasingly' recruiting US citizens, Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano says that increased government monitoring of the Internet is necessary to thwart them. It is believed that Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hassan and attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad were inspired by radical Internet postings. Speaking at a meeting of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, Napolitano said, 'We can significantly advance security without having a deleterious impact on individual rights in most instances. At the same time, there are situations where tradeoffs are inevitable.'"

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